On Copper Street

by Chris Nickson

  Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Chris Nickson from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Afterword

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Chris Nickson from Severn House

  The Inspector Tom Harper Mysteries

  GODS OF GOLD

  TWO BRONZE PENNIES

  SKIN LIKE SILVER

  THE IRON WATER

  ON COPPER STREET

  The Richard Nottingham Mysteries

  COLD CRUEL WINTER

  THE CONSTANT LOVERS

  COME THE FEAR

  AT THE DYING OF THE YEAR

  FAIR AND TENDER LADIES

  ON COPPER STREET

  A Tom Harper Mystery

  Chris Nickson

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  This eBook edition first published in 2017 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD

  Copyright © 2017 by Chris Nickson.

  The right of Chris Nickson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8696-5 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-805-7 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-869-8 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  To Tom Maguire (1865–1895)

  And my great-great grandparents, William (1823–1883) and

  Charlotte Nickson (1827–1889)

  All buried at Beckett Street Cemetery

  Maguire quite justifiably has a headstone.

  My great-grandparents share a common grave with many others.

  May this be their memorial.

  Oh! the wide outlook was dreary,

  And my eyes were tired and weary,

  For my hopes were burnt to ashes cold and white;

  My heart was sick and faint,

  And I felt the deadly taint,

  Of the dull despair that hovers round the watches of the night.

  But she’s coming, coming,

  I hear the fife and drumming,

  Heralding the happy way

  Turning night to light and day;

  She’s coming, coming;

  The air around is humming

  With the music of the silvery feet

  Of Socialism Coming.

  The Watches of the Night – Tom Maguire

  ONE

  Leeds, Friday March 8, 1895

  The brittle iron smell of the foundry. The noise of the hammers ringing in the air and the dark grinding of machinery, the blacksmiths of the industrial age. Even with his bad right ear it was impossible for Detective Inspector Harper not to hear the metallic music as he walked out along Wheeler Street, Sergeant Ash beside him, glancing around, eyes always curious.

  The sound of their boots caught the factory rhythm, hobnails sparking on the pavement. A cold March morning with a hard wind: the month had come in like a lion. A boy in a shirt and a ragged pair of trousers ran along the other side of the road, a piece of paper clutched tight in his hand. On the way to the corner shop for his mam. Friday: the woman would settle her account later, once her husband was paid.

  This was the Bank. He could feel eyes watching them from inside the houses, behind grubby curtains of cheap net. Suspicious of strangers, hostile to the police. Beyond Lower Cross Street, Upper Cross Street, and the houses grew even poorer, the bricks on the buildings all black from years of soot.

  On the far side of Richmond Road the sounds faded into mild thuds. At the corner they paused for a moment, not saying a word, then turned down Copper Street. Boards papered over with advertisements covered a gap where a house had once stood. They passed a privy, the stench so strong it made them gag.

  ‘Number thirteen,’ Harper said.

  It stood at the end of the terrace, identical to every other house round here. A back-to-back, two up and two down. Windows covered in grime. A front step that hadn’t seen a donkey stone in too long. But then the owner had been in jail for the last six months; sentenced for receiving stolen items, thirty pounds’ worth of silver in the suitcase he’d been carrying when he was arrested. However much they questioned him, the man had refused to say who’d given it to him.

  The inspector had been waiting outside Armley Jail when Henry White was released the morning before. Out, free, the man looked fretful and scared.

  ‘I said I’d give him twenty-four hours of freedom before I came calling,’ Harper explained to the sergeant. ‘And this time he was going to tell me everything.’

  He bunched his fist and brought it down on the front door. It opened under his hand.

  ‘Henry,’ he shouted. Cautiously, he entered. Nobody in the front room. Someone had lit a fire, but it had burned down to ashes in the hearth. The room was cold, heavy with the smell of neglect.

  He heard the sigh of the old wood as Ash climbed the stairs.

  No one in the kitchen. A mug on the table with half an inch of cold, milky tea at the bottom. Part of a loaf on a cutting board, a wedge of cheese next to it.

  Something was wrong here.

  ‘Sir,’ Ash shouted. ‘He’s up here.’ A heartbeat’s pause. ‘He’s dead.’

  Henry White lay in his bed, under a blanket that was dark and stiff with his own blood. At least he seemed peaceful, Harper thought, all yesterday’s strain and terror vanished from his face.

  ‘It must have been quick,’ Ash said. ‘Doesn’t even look like he put up a fight.’

  ‘From the look of it, he was asleep,’ Harper said. ‘Someone came in and killed him before he could wake up.’ He tugged back the bla
nket. White was fully dressed, only the boots gone from his feet. Two patches bloomed on the dull white of his shirt. ‘Stabbed him twice.’

  White had never been a large man, but time inside had left him thinner. Bony wrists poked out of his frayed cuffs like sticks. The jail scent still clung to him, a fragrance of pain and hopelessness, and his skin had the pallor of the cell. He’d always been shabby, the type to fade into the shadows, to cower away from a look. Now he’d never be able to hide again.

  All his life White had skirted the fringes of the law, jobs that nudged the edges of legality, mixed with housebreaking and theft. Then someone made him carry that case filled with silver from a robbery. Someone scared him into not saying a word and giving up six months of his life.

  And someone had come and murdered him in the night.

  ‘God damn it.’ Harper slammed his hand down on the iron bed frame.

  It was his fault. He should have pressed Henry yesterday, outside the jail. Pushed hard and seen what happened.

  Instead he had to be cocky. Powerful. To give White that taste of freedom, then pounce. Too bloody arrogant by half. Now he was staring at a corpse.

  Harper looked around the room. Bare boards on the floor, only a single faded rag rug providing any colour. A table with a jug and basin. A shirt hung from a nail pounded into the wall. Harper glanced back at the body; White hadn’t even enjoyed his full day out of prison.

  Poor bloody Henry, he thought. Life’s given you short shrift.

  He left Ash to search the house and start talking to the neighbours, and began the trek back to Millgarth. Maybe that would calm him a little. He needed to get the corpse over to the mortuary in Hunslet, not that a post-mortem would tell him much he didn’t already know. Get some bobbies out in the neighbourhood, hoping people might have seen something. Even more, that they might be willing to tell the police. But this was the Bank; many round here would rather let a murderer walk free than give a name to the rozzers.

  ‘How long had he been dead?’ Superintendent Kendall asked.

  ‘Hard to tell.’ There’d been some stiffness in White’s arm when he lifted it. Rigor mortis. ‘At least four hours. But it could have been eight.’

  ‘Dr King should be able to tell us. I’ll organize it.’

  ‘I should have made him answer when I saw him outside the jail.’ He needed to say it, like flaying himself.

  ‘You couldn’t know. You’re not a fortune teller.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts,’ Kendall ordered. ‘Find out who did it and make them pay.’ He stared out of the window for a moment, then back. ‘I had word about something while you were gone.’

  ‘What?’ From his expression, it couldn’t be anything good.

  ‘Tom Maguire. They found him dead at home. You knew him quite well, didn’t you?’

  Knew him and liked him. Maguire had organized the unions. He’d helped them win their strikes, and he’d been there at the birth of the Independent Labour Party two years before. All that and not even thirty yet. But politics never paid the bills; he’d earned his money as the assistant to a photographer up on New Briggate.

  ‘How?’ The word came out as a hoarse croak. Surely no one would hurt him …

  ‘Natural causes,’ the superintendent said. ‘The doctor’s there now. I said we’d send someone over.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Harper said.

  ‘A couple of friends called to see him this morning. Nobody had heard from him in a few days. The door was unlocked. They walked in and he was there …’

  He knew Maguire had a room on Quarry Hill, no more than two minutes’ walk away from Millgarth, but Harper had never been in the place before; they’d always met in cafés and pubs and union offices. It was up two flights of rickety, dangerous stairs in a house that reeked of overcooked cabbage, sweat, and the stink from the privy next door. How many others lived in the building, Harper wondered? How many were packed into the rooms? How many more had lost their hope and will in a place like this?

  The door to the room was open wide. The table was piled with books and magazines and notebooks. Politics, poetry, all manner of things. A few had slid off, scattered across the bare wooden floor. No sink, just a cheap cracked pitcher with a blue band and a bowl. A razor and leather strop, shaving brush and soap. A good, dark wool suit hung on one nail, a clean shirt on another.

  That was the sum total of the man’s life.

  The doctor was finishing his examination, wiping his hands on a grubby piece of linen. The inspector tried to recollect his name. Smith? That seemed right. An older man. Not uncaring, but hardened by the years. They’d met a few times before, always in situations like this.

  ‘He’s not one to trouble the police, Inspector.’ Dr Smith closed his bag. ‘Pneumonia. Sad at his age but nothing suspicious.’ He said good day, and the sound of his footsteps on the stair slowly faded away.

  Harper could feel the cold all the way to his bones, as if there’d been no heat in here for weeks. The hearth was empty, carefully cleaned, but not a speck of coal in the scuttle. He opened a cupboard. The only thing on the shelf was a twist of paper that held some tea. No food. Nothing at all to eat.

  The bed was cheap, pushed into the corner. A thin, stained mattress. Maguire lay under a grubby sheet and a threadbare woollen blanket. On top of that lay a heavy overcoat to give more warmth.

  Two bodies in their beds. So different, he thought with sorrow, but the ending was just the same. The doctor had covered the man’s face, trying to offer a little decency against the brutality of death. Harper pulled it gently away. The policeman inside needed to see for himself. Maguire’s skin was so pale it barely seemed to be there. His eyes were closed. No lustre in the ruddy hair.

  A gust of wind rattled the window. Tom Maguire dead. No heat, no food. And no one to really care. Maguire had been ill; Harper had heard that. But this? How could he have died with nothing and no one around him?

  Harper laid the sheet back in place. He’d liked the man. He was honest, he had principles and convictions that didn’t bend with the wind or the chance to line his pockets. He’d believed in the working man. He’d believed in the power to change things.

  Very quietly, as if a loud sound might cause the corpse to wake, Harper pulled the door to. He started the walk out to the Victoria public house in Sheepscar. He needed to tell Annabelle.

  ‘Did you see him?’ she asked. ‘His body?’ He nodded.

  When he entered she’d been standing by the window in the rooms above the pub she owned, gazing down at Roundhay Road. At first she didn’t even turn to face him and he knew. The word must have spread like ripples across Leeds: Tom Maguire was dead.

  His eyes searched around for their daughter, Mary.

  ‘I asked Ellen to take her out for a little while,’ Annabelle said.

  He put his hands on his wife’s shoulders. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He tried to pull her close but she didn’t stir.

  ‘I knew he was poorly. I should have gone down to see what I could do.’ Her voice was tight and hard. Blaming herself, as if she could have kept him alive. ‘I could have done something.’

  What could he tell her? She’d known Maguire all her life. They’d grown up a few streets apart on the Bank, Annabelle a few years older. Life had taken them in different directions, then politics had brought them together again after she began speaking for the Suffragist Society.

  Annabelle began to move away, ready to gather up her hat and shawl. ‘I can go over there now. I’ll see what I can do.’

  Harper shook his head. ‘Don’t. There’s nothing. Honestly.’ If she saw how Maguire had lived and the way he died, then she’d never forgive herself. He put his arms around her, trying to find some words. But they wouldn’t come, just thoughts of a barren, bitter room.

  He stayed as long as he could. But Henry White’s murder meant he had too much to do. And he knew her way by now; Annabelle’s grief would be a private thing. She’d speak when she was ready, and
she’d cry when the tears needed to come. At the moment she was blaming herself for not visiting Maguire. For not keeping him alive. Taking the weight of the world on her shoulders.

  He thought back over things he’d heard in the last few months. Word was that the new Labour Party was pushing Maguire away, that he was the past, not the future. He’d been seen out drinking a fair few times, so far gone that people had to help him home. That wasn’t the man he’d known, not the one he’d want to remember. It certainly wasn’t the one he’d watched who inspired hundreds of labourers with a speech on Vicar’s Croft and helped win them a cut in working hours. Not the man who led the gas strike like a general and beat the council. And definitely not the shyly humorous man he talked to in the café by the market. That was the Maguire who’d remain in his memory.

  There was no need to return to the station. He cut through the back streets, across St Peter’s graveyard, along the road with the ripe, wet smell of the paper mill in his nostrils. By the Malthouse, then beyond the factory at Bank Top until he was on Copper Street again.

  A pair of uniforms were knocking on the doors and finding nothing from their frustrated expressions. Harper walked straight into White’s house. He could just make out a murmur of voices from the scullery and followed the sound.

  Ash must have found some coal. The range was pumping out heat, a kettle steaming on the hob. The sergeant sat at the table, and across from him was a woman. She had a pinched face, hair put up in a twist to show a creased, wattled neck, a heavy paisley shawl drawn around her shoulders. Forty, Harper judged, but it was impossible to be certain. The dress that covered her from throat to ankle was wool, good quality once but with its best days in the past. Scuffed button boots.

  Not Henry’s wife, he knew that; the man had never married.

  ‘This is Rose Thorp, sir,’ Ash said. ‘Mrs Thorp. She’s Mr White’s sister. Lives just round the corner on Brass Street.’

  He looked at her again, trying to pick out the resemblance but seeing nothing. Not even much sign of grief. Just a thin, pale mouth and sad brown eyes.