by Mick Finlay
‘They know me,’ I said. ‘And there’s nowhere else to watch the house from. It’s either the park or standing in plain sight. It ain’t a busy road, and they’ll be looking out in case there’s anyone there now.’
‘That makes things difficult,’ said Napper, a curl to his lip.
‘There is a way,’ said the guvnor, leaning forward with both hands open. ‘Get an officer in an upper room of one the houses down the road. Plainclothes. Better still, two officers so that one can follow anyone who leaves while the other stays watching.’
‘I’ve only been given one constable. I need him.’
‘Two murders isn’t enough to get another officer?’
‘Not for my superintendent, no.’
The guvnor sighed. ‘Did you speak to Madame Delacourte?’
‘Not yet. There’s only so much I can do with one PC, Arrowood.’
‘We’ll go and see her.’
‘Leave that to me,’ answered Napper sharply. ‘I want to search the premises. I’ll get a warrant.’
‘Mrs Fowler didn’t appear?’
‘No. She must have been taken too.’
The guvnor grunted. ‘What did you find out in St Martin’s Lane? Any witnesses?’
‘A few of the printers said they saw two Africans running down towards Trafalgar Square. A man and a woman.’
‘Being chased?’
He shrugged. ‘They didn’t know. It happened as they were escaping the fire. There was bedlam on the street.’
‘Could the fire have been started deliberately as a cover?’
Napper shook his head. ‘The engine driving the rotary thing exploded. Seems the workers had warned the owner about it a few times recently. The thing kept blocking.’
‘Did the ones who saw the Africans running also see Mrs Fowler?’
‘They only reported the two of them, but she could have been there. Folk were pouring out of all the buildings nearby lest the flames caught.’
‘Where was the last point the Africans were seen running?’ asked the guvnor.
‘Just past the printworks, opposite the theatre. Heading towards the river.’
‘Did you question the theatre staff?’
‘They were watching the fire. None of them saw the Africans. We’ve questioned everyone we could find along that stretch.’
‘How far down did your officer go?’
‘Down to the bank on the corner.’
‘Not Trafalgar Square or the Strand?’
Napper shook his head. ‘There are three roads out of St Martin’s Place, and those divide into eleven more. We can’t check all of them. And Trafalgar Square’s just a moving mass of people.’
‘What about the vagrants who sleep there?’
Napper shook his head again. ‘They’re always on the move.’
‘They have their favourite places. And what about the station? And the barracks?’
‘Listen, Arrowood,’ said Napper, a flush coming to his forehead. His finger rose to the knob on his neck. ‘If I had twenty men and a month, perhaps I could’ve done all of those things. I’ve one officer and the murders were yesterday. So don’t take that tone with me.’
‘Three Africans in a mostly white city, Napper!’ exclaimed the guvnor. ‘Somebody’s seen them after they left St Martin’s Lane. We just have to find who.’
‘Why, thank you, Mr Holmes. I’d never have thought of that.’
‘Don’t compare me to that charlatan, Napper.’
‘Then don’t tell me my job, Arrowood.’
I took the guvnor’s arm, warning him to calm down. He had a habit of getting emotional when he dealt with coppers, and it never helped our work when he did. It was one of my jobs to keep the peace. ‘Don’t mind him, detective,’ I said to Napper. ‘Mr Arrowood gets too close, especially when someone’s been killed. Is there anything you want us to do tonight?’
‘How about you go and question the vagrants?’ said Napper a bit too quick, almost like he’d planned it.
‘That all right, sir?’ I asked the guvnor.
He nodded his potato head, his fleshy lips sealed tight.
‘Right,’ said Napper, then sealed his lips tight too. They looked at each other with a bitter curiosity. Whatever love was between them was fading fast.
Chapter Eleven
The streetlamps cast a hazy glow over the frozen fountains of Trafalgar Square. Black pigeons swarmed across the paving, drawn in by a couple of shuffling feeders wrapped in wool and canvas. Round the edge of the square queued buses heavy with Londoners and wagons stacked with barrels and Christmas trees, pulled by slave-horses in one or other stage of ruin. A few horseless carriages had appeared on the roads that year and, though they made an awful noise, I couldn’t help but think the sooner they replaced those poor beasts the better.
‘Why the hell did you sing that song this morning?’ I asked the guvnor as we waited for a chance to cross the road. ‘Aren’t things hard enough for Isabel without you blaming her for your marriage?’
‘I didn’t do it on purpose, Norman,’ he said, a twitch to his cheek. ‘I only wanted to soothe the children.’
‘You should have stopped.’
‘But I didn’t remember how it ended until I was singing that line asking the milkmaid if she’d be constant. I don’t think Isabel realized until then either.’
‘I think you wanted to give her a dig.’
He blew his nose. ‘It’s so very hard all of us living together. She tells me our marriage is over, but that’s all she’ll say, and I don’t know if she really means it. Oh, Norman, it’s unbearable. She sits across from me as my love eats away at my guts like a blooming worm. And the way she acts, sometimes I think I actually dislike her. But how can she think straight with those two babies? And Ettie leaves her to look after Mercy too often. It isn’t fair.’ His jowls drooped, his dark lips in a pout. He dragged his walking stick back and forth along the edge of the pavement. ‘I felt awful singing that last verse, but I thought it’d be worse if I stopped. It’d look as if I only chose the song to hurt her. I ought to have apologized, but I can’t bear to face it head on, damn it. My heart would break if she told me to leave. I love those children.’
‘She wouldn’t throw you out. She needs you to bring home the money at least.’
‘What if she gets the medical scholarship? And Ettie’s going to start working as a deaconess for the mission. She says Hebden will be ready to start paying her soon. They won’t need my money then.’
‘Ettie’d never forgive her if she made you leave.’
‘She might ask Ettie to leave as well. Isabel owns those rooms.’
I shook my head. He was facing the traffic but looking at me from the corner of his eye. ‘I know things are overheated at home, William, but you surely know your wife better than that. She’d never do it.’
‘I thought I knew her before she made love to a lawyer and set up home with him while we were still married.’
‘You made life impossible for her.’
‘I know, damn it!’ he barked. ‘You remind me of it often enough, for God’s sake. But she fell in love with that scoundrel. That’s what I can’t get over. She gave him love that was mine.’
‘Your marriage was over.’
‘Was it? Who’s to say that it wouldn’t have been revived in a year or two?’
‘I don’t know, William,’ I said, feeling tuckered out from thinking about it all.
He looked across the road at Nelson’s Column rising in the sky. ‘When this case is over I’m going to take her to the new show at the Polytechnic on Regent Street.’
‘The moving pictures?’
‘They say it’s like magic. We need to make some new memories.’
‘Heather, sir?’ said a little girl of ten years or so. She stopped by the guvnor’s side, holding out a little bunch. ‘Lucky heather?’
The branches were dried and dead, with no flowers on them. You couldn’t even say for sure it was heather. The guvnor g
ot out a farthing and took the bits of stick. The girl scampered off into the evening as I felt the lump on my head. It was starting to crust over. I got out my box of Black Drop and swallowed another couple.
‘We’ve only been paid for one more night,’ I said. ‘What are we going to do after that?’
‘We’re going to find the killer,’ he said firmly. ‘I promised Musa and I won’t let him down. I just wish Napper was more thorough.’
‘Don’t make an enemy of him. He’s only got one man to help him.’
He tapped his stick on his boot, pondering.
‘This traffic seems to get worse every year,’ he said at last, throwing the heather sticks into the gutter.
Finally, there was a space and we hurried across to the paved square. Dark bundles lay here and there in the corners and on the benches, poor souls trying to steal a little kip before the next copper came to move them along. By the nearest sleeper lay a bull mastiff, who looked up as we approached. The guvnor pushed me forward.
‘Evening, mate,’ I said.
The dark figure on the bench moved a bit. All that poked out from the rough blanket was a pair of old boots.
I gave it a prod.
‘Mate. Can we have a quick word?’
The lump made a twist and a face appeared.
‘What is it?’ The woman was somewhere between forty and sixty, I’d guess, her face grubby and lined. It wasn’t easy to see in the dim light.
‘We’re looking for some Africans, missus. Might have come this way yesterday around midday. You see anything?’
‘I wasn’t here,’ she said, then pulled the blanket down over her face.
We had no luck with the next one, nor the next, and on it went round the square. Thirteen unlucky buggers sleeping out on that freezing December night. As we walked towards St Martin-in-the-Fields, the pigeons scattered then immediately fell back to earth to peck at the wash of bread thrown by the feeders. Moments later a group of soldiers marched across the square on their way to Soho, sending the birds up in the air again.
We crossed Charing Cross Road to the church, where a few more homeless souls lay on the steps beneath posters for the carol services they were having over the weekend. The first we reached was a young woman with two little kids clutched to her breast, the three of them wrapped in what looked like a bit of a barge sail. All of them were awake, both kiddies whimpering.
‘Good evening, madam,’ said the guvnor. ‘Could I ask you a question?’
‘D’you have any money so I can buy food for my children, sir?’ she asked, her voice soft and well-spoke.
‘Of course,’ answered the guvnor, fetching his purse from his waistcoat and handing her a tuppence. ‘How long have you been sleeping here, if I may ask?’
‘Too long, thank you, sir,’ she said, taking the coin.
‘Don’t you have anyone who could help you?’
‘No, sir. We’ve nobody.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘I’m sure you are, sir.’
‘You sound vexed with me, madam. I don’t know why.’
‘I’m vexed with everyone except these two,’ said the woman, her voice softening. ‘But I know my situation isn’t your fault.’
‘You wouldn’t consider the workhouse?’
‘Would you?’
He shook his head and smiled at her. ‘Tell me, were you here yesterday about midday?’
She nodded. ‘But it wasn’t me. There’s another young mother who I’ve seen around. I think that’s who you’re looking for.’
‘No, no. I’m not looking for a woman. I’m looking for two or three Africans who ran down from that road yesterday afternoon. I’m trying to find them.’
‘A man and a woman?’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘What d’you want with them?’
‘We’re private agents,’ said the guvnor. ‘They hired us to protect them, but something happened when we were away. We need to find them. Are you sure it was only two?’
‘I think so, but it was busy. There was a fire up there.’
‘Could you describe them?’
‘The man was quite broad, like you, sir,’ she said, nodding at me. ‘Dark suit. No beard.’
‘Young or old?’ asked the guvnor.
‘Thirty or forty. The woman was short. She had a brown coat.’
‘Did you see a young lad?’
She shook her head.
‘Which way did they go?’
The infant in her left arm groaned and coughed. She drew back to see its face. ‘Kingsley? What’s wrong, love?’
She gazed at him for a few moments, until he took hold of her shawl with his little fists and buried his head in her neck.
‘We watched them.’ She squeezed the older child in her right arm. The girl was about three or four. ‘Ivy’d never seen an African. She was beside herself.’ And despite all her misfortune the mother smiled at the memory. ‘They ran down Duncannon Street.’
‘Was there a white woman with them?’
‘I didn’t see one, but it was so busy.’
‘Was anybody chasing them?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. Oh, perhaps. There was a policeman running that way.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘He was running. I don’t know if he was chasing them. I just saw him run past.’ As she spoke, the baby Kingsley started to make the most unholy noise, a terrible bubbling cough that turned into a shriek.
‘Oh darling,’ whispered the mother, stroking the boy’s hair, which was knotted and oily. ‘He started making this noise yesterday. I don’t know what it is.’
The baby kept making the noise, jerking back and forth against her breast. Then all of a sudden he let out a dull gasp and a big clog of mucus oozed out of his mouth.
The child’s heavy head tipped and fell forward like he’d gone to sleep.
The mother cried out, pulling his head up again, but the boy made no response.
‘What is it, darling?’ she asked. ‘What is it? What is it, darling?’
The guvnor got to his knees, feeling for the baby’s pulse as the mother moaned and pulled both kids tight to her chest. Eventually he looked up at me and shook his head.
The little girl now began to wail.
The guvnor put his hand on the mother’s shoulder. ‘My dear,’ he said as they cried. ‘My dear.’
He looked back at me, his eyes asking me what he should do.
‘The Woman’s Hospital?’ I suggested.
He stood and hailed a cab. I gave the driver the instructions as he helped the mother up. She said nothing. When she was seated, the little girl aside her and the baby’s body still wrapped to her breast, I folded her sheet of canvas and put it at her feet.
‘I’ll make sure she gets there safely,’ said the guvnor, climbing up the steps with a groan. He fell heavily on the seat beside her. ‘Talk to these other people and meet me in the Lamb and Flag in an hour.’
When the cab was gone, I spoke to the other folk huddled on the church steps, but nobody’d seen the Africans. From there I walked down Duncannon Street. I talked to a coffee man, a girl selling Christmas baubles, a coster and his son with a cart of oranges, but still nothing. I had more luck with a fellow hawking ginger cake.
‘Yesterday? I seen them,’ he said, scratching his balls. He was a young fellow, maybe twenty years old, a loose grin on his face. His talk was slow, the words rolling around his mouth. A laudanum addict, I supposed. He pointed towards Charing Cross. ‘Turned down there to the station, mate, two or three… or four of them. Quite a sight, they were.’
‘How many, mate? Two, three or four?’
He screwed up his nose and looked at the sky. ‘I just couldn’t say.’
‘Any women?’
‘Oh, yeah. There was a woman too. They had black faces and so on.’
‘Give us a bit of that cake, will you?’ I said, offering him a penny.
‘Oh,’ he said slowly, like h
e’d only just noticed the tray was around his neck. ‘Help yourself.’
I took the biggest bit and had a bite. ‘Eh, that’s good. That’s nice cake.’
‘Good, ain’t it?’ he said, the idiot smile coming back to his face. ‘I had three bits already, since lunchtime.’ He patted his belly. ‘Can’t seem to help myself.’
‘That’s ’cos you’re an addict.’
‘Eh?’
‘Listen, mate. This is important. I need to find those Africans. Did they look like they were being chased?’
He seemed confused. ‘Well,’ he said. He looked up towards the church, his eyeballs following the route they’d have come till they were level with us. ‘Now, they were in a hurry, I know that.’
‘Anybody around them?’
‘It’s always busy here.’
‘Anybody behind them? Following them?’
‘Well, I just don’t know.’ He laughed. ‘Quite a sight they were, you know. You should’ve seen them! And all the pigeons flying about.’
I knew I’d get nothing clearer out of him, so I moved on. I asked a few more folk selling on the street, but had no more luck.
The guvnor was an hour late reaching the pub. He had a quick brandy and we walked down to Charing Cross Station, asking anyone else we could find: guards, ticket sellers, hawkers, porters. Finally, one of the sweepers outside the station said:
‘Yeah, I seen them. Got in a four-wheeler out front there.’ He pulled a tobacco pouch from his overalls and started to roll a smoke.
‘How many of them?’ asked the guvnor.
‘Two. A bloke and a lady.’
‘And a white woman?’
‘All darkies.’
‘Were they being chased?’
‘Don’t know about that, sir.’
‘Did they look afraid?’
‘Couldn’t say. Don’t look like us, do they?’
‘Can you describe the man?’
‘Solid bloke, with that hair that sticks up. You know, like some of them got.’
‘Was there a thin lad with them?’ asked the guvnor. ‘About fourteen?’
The sweeper shook his head.
‘D’you know where the carriage went?’
He shook his head and lit his fag. ‘Went off that way,’ he said, pointing up towards Blackfriars.
