On Copper Street

by Chris Nickson

  ‘An hour and forty minutes,’ she said. ‘And never underestimate the things a woman can do, Tom Harper. You ought to know better than that by now.’

  She had money, plenty of it. Her first husband had provided well for her and the Victoria brought in a pretty penny. The money from selling the bakeries was sitting in the bank. There was no reason for her not to splurge when the fancy took her. Annabelle picked up two of the bags.

  ‘Count yourself lucky I don’t make you take them all,’ she said with a grin and a wink. ‘Where are we going to celebrate, then?’

  A glass of brandy helped, as they sat waiting in the chop house. She watched him, saying nothing until he’d finished and replaced it on the table.

  ‘It’s not the best way, you know.’

  ‘What?’ He thought he’d hidden it well.

  ‘I’ve got eyes, Tom.’ She kept her voice at a low hiss, loud enough for him to hear, but no one else. ‘Look at you. You’ve got a palsy like an old man. And don’t tell me it’s nothing,’ she warned before he could speak. ‘There’s not a speck of colour in your cheeks, either.’

  He was ready to object, his pride stung. But he held his tongue. She was right, of course; it was pointless trying to keep anything from her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I remember,’ she began, then stopped for a few moments. ‘Well, it was something that happened a long time ago. I thought it hadn’t touched me, then the next day I couldn’t stop crying. Same thing as you. It was shock.’

  He listened to her, then asked, ‘What was it that happened to you?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she told him and looked away. ‘It was years back. History.’

  They ate and chattered about this and that. Very slowly, he felt the tension ebbing. When he glanced down as he ate his pudding, the shaking had stopped. He held up a hand.

  ‘Steady,’ he told her proudly.

  ‘That’s good.’ She put her hand over his. ‘Might take a little longer inside, though.’

  He’d expected to catch a hackney home from the stand on Briggate, but she steered him further up the street. It was evening, but still busy, men and women shopping after work, some out for the evening.

  Outside number seventy-six, a barker was shouting, trying to drum up business.

  ‘Roll up, roll up, ladies and gentlemen! See two thousand, seven hundred and sixty pictures a minute pass before your naked eye! Real moving pictures at five scenes for a shilling!’

  He’d heard about it; everybody had. The place had opened the month before, with crowds down to Duncan Street. Annabelle and Mary had been twice. He’d just never found the time, always caught up in work.

  The sign in the window, sitting in front of the curtain, was hand-written: Issott’s Kinetoscope Parlour. Inside, they sat on a bench, crowded up against ripe, sweating bodies. Harper remembered what the shop had been a few months before, a pork butcher. But all the thoughts vanished as the machine behind them started to whir.

  ‘You remember that chap a few years ago?’ she asked in the cab on the way home. ‘Le Prince?’

  He nodded. He recalled the disappearance and the fact that the man had made the first moving pictures, here in Leeds.

  ‘Who’d have thought what would happen from all that, eh? Weren’t those something, Tom?’

  He didn’t trust himself to speak. The films had just been short, but it didn’t matter. He’d been right there, in the barber’s shop, the razor so close he could still feel it on his cheeks, then in the public bar, ducking the blows from the brawl.

  It had taken his breath away. It was … better than life. And for a few minutes he’d forgotten about fear. Nothing else had existed apart from those films.

  ‘Now do you see why I was talking about them?’ she asked as the cab moved along North Street with the clop of hooves on the cobbles.

  ‘Yes.’ He smiled. ‘Next time I should go with you.’

  ‘You see? I knew you’d learn. There’s hope for you yet, Tom Harper.’

  Reed ate supper with the family, not really hearing all the talk and gossip going on around him. Once the meal was done, the girls helping Elizabeth clear everything away, he went up to the bedroom and changed into an old, heavy suit and tied the laces on a pair of worn boots. No collar or tie.

  ‘I’ll be back later,’ he shouted at the front door, hurrying along the street before she could say anything. She’d want to know what he was doing and he wasn’t entirely certain himself. Spend time in a few pubs. Talk, listen. There was a secret about the Crabtrees.

  The family was chapel; they’d never set foot in a public house. But rumours passed around, and a pub was always a good place to hear them.

  An hour later he leaned against the bar in the Black Horse on Mabgate. He was no more than half a mile from home but it felt like a different world. All the workers off from their shift at the Hope foundry across the street, the smell of hot metal on their skin.

  Reed was talking to a man with a powerful thirst, downing pints of beer like they were water.

  ‘I’ve got a little lass meself,’ the man said. ‘Twelve year old. Working in the mill. I tell you, any man who tried anything with her, he’d not live to tell the tale.’

  Reed wasn’t even sure how the conversation had reached this point, but he let it carry him.

  ‘Is that what you’ve heard, about men doing that?’

  ‘About them as are supposed to believe in Jesus an’ that.’ The man stared at him, eyes not focusing even though his speech was clear enough. ‘It’s not right.’

  ‘Anyone in particular?’ Reed asked. He watched the man drain his glass. ‘Another?’

  ‘Aye, go on, then. Not heard no names, just people talking, you know.’ He shrugged. ‘No smoke without fire, though, is there. And they’re all funny, these Holy Joes. Wouldn’t put it past them.’

  No evidence. No names. He tried other pubs, a few minutes in the City of Mabgate, up to the Fountain Head and the Cemetery Tavern on Beckett Street. But he didn’t hear anything else. After two hours he’d had enough; time for home. Still, he had some food for thought. Something for tomorrow. With luck, he could give Ash what he needed to crack the case. That wouldn’t be a failure at all.

  SEVENTEEN

  Superintendent Harper felt his heart thudding as he approached Millgarth. It was stupid, he told himself. He’d come here thousands of times and nothing had ever happened.

  Now his palms were slick and his skin felt clammy. It was as if the pleasure of the films last night had never happened. At the door he hesitated, forcing himself to push down on the handle and enter. Tollman was behind the desk, large as life and twice as ugly. The gash and bruises stood out on his face.

  ‘Good morning, sir.’

  Harper exhaled slowly, letting himself return to normal, his pulse and his breathing slowing. There was still the reminder outside the detectives’ room, the shattered plaster, the broken wood. Another day or so and that would all be gone and a new door hung. Only the memory would remain. At least he hadn’t started shaking again. In a strange way, that had terrified him more than facing a shotgun.

  He saw the papers piled on his desk and his mood turned grey. He knew he had to deal with them, at least the urgent ones. Meanwhile, it promised to be a sunny day outside, the sky a sweet, pale blue, not a cloud to be seen.

  He was hard at work when Ash appeared with two cups of tea.

  ‘Thought you might be ready for one, sir.’

  He was, mouth as dry as if it was full of dust. But none of the palpitations and fear he’d experienced as he approached the station. Lost in the routine, he’d managed to forget them.

  ‘We need results on these murders.’ He sipped, letting the liquid swirl around his tongue. ‘There are two people dead, remember. It doesn’t matter that the world won’t miss them too much.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘We need to find this guard, Talbot. And we need to discover who the hell this J.D. is that White mentions in his writ
ing. Any thoughts?’

  Ash shook his head. ‘I wish I did, sir.’

  Harper sat, thinking, trying to see a way through this. But the more he looked, the murkier it became.

  ‘Go back and look at Henry White again,’ he suggested. ‘See if you can dig more out from that angle. I’ll set Conway on looking for Talbot. We’ve got links to White and Calder, but there’s something more; there has to be.’

  ‘I’ll tell him, sir. He had to give evidence in a case from D division this morning. And I’ll see if I can find that family in the acid case later.’

  Alone, Harper hurried through the papers. Most only needed a signature or initials. Two requests for reports that would take more of his time. But by eleven he’d finished, sitting back with a sigh of relief.

  Time to go out and be a real copper again.

  ‘You’re not serious, asking me that.’

  Cal Clough sat with a full pint of bitter on the table in front of him. The superintendent had brought it over and set it down before placing himself across from the man and saying, ‘How many times did you sell silver to Willie Calder?’

  It was a blunt opening. But it could work.

  ‘Cal, we both know you’ll steal anything that isn’t nailed down,’ Harper said. ‘It’s hardly a secret. I’m not going to nick you for it, I just want an answer.’

  Clough eyed him warily. He saw a small, feral man, whip-scrawny, his face all sharp angles and suspicion. There was a world of doubt in his eyes.

  ‘You mean it? No charges?’

  ‘None. I promise.’

  Cal scratched the back of his neck and adjusted his cap. Little gestures, buying time as he made his decision.

  ‘Four or five times,’ he said. ‘No more than that.’

  ‘Why so few?’

  ‘Willie only bought silver. And it had to be summat good. He’d just send you away otherwise. If he bought, he paid a decent price.’

  ‘You know he’s dead, don’t you?’

  Clough gave him a withering look. ‘Of course I bloody do. God rest him. I read the papers, don’t I?’

  ‘I want his killer.’

  ‘Good luck to you, then. But I can’t help you with that.’

  ‘You don’t know what I need yet, Cal.’

  ‘I can guess.’ He picked up the beer and drank the top inch, smacking his lips at the taste. ‘You want names.’

  ‘I want someone called J.D.’ The initials hadn’t been mentioned in any of the newspapers; it was the one secret the police had.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘J.D.,’ he repeated. ‘Who do you know with those initials?’

  ‘No one. Well, there was Joshua Dalton, but he died two years ago.’

  Could Dawson have been the man? Harper thought back over the diary, the notes, whatever they were meant to be. No dates on them, but they seemed more recent. And Dalton …

  ‘He never stole silver, did he?’

  ‘Only if it was there,’ Clough said. ‘He was a cash man, really.’

  He remembered now. Dawson would break into a house and prowl silently, stealing anything he could find, especially cash, even from the bedrooms while the owners slept. No, he wasn’t the J.D. that White had written about.

  The superintendent placed the price of another pint on the table.

  ‘If it comes to you, let me know. And ask around, Cal. I want this man. There might be a bob or two in it for someone.’

  Another avenue that ended up at a brick wall. Every way they turned it was the same. But J.D. existed. Someone had murdered Henry White. And Harper found it hard to believe that Talbot the guard had killed Willie Calder off his own bat. Someone was behind it all, pulling the strings. J.D. It had to be.

  As soon as he walked into Millgarth, he felt it. The crackle in the air. Tollman was talking to a constable but jerked his head up and sent the bobby on his way.

  ‘There’s a body, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Who? Where?’

  ‘Over in Holbeck. The cut that runs behind Marshall’s Mill. That new sergeant is there.’

  ‘Conway?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  Harper calculated for a moment. He should stay in the office, be there to deal with any emergency. But a body … that tempted the detective in him. He wanted to see it.

  ‘Is there anything important waiting?’

  Tollman pursed his lips. ‘Not that I know, sir.’ A slow grin spread across his face. ‘Going over there?’

  The superintendent winked. ‘Just for a little while. Hold the fort.’

  It was a chance to stretch his legs. Down by the railway station, through the arches, all rebuilt after the fire a few years before. Marshall’s Mill, Temple Mill and all the others just beyond, the air heavy with the damp smell of wool and flax. Chimneys sending smoke pouring into the air. Leeds. Industry. Business.

  They were gathered on a patch of scrub ground, the tall brick bulk of the mill behind them. Four men in uniform, Conway next to them, talking to John Calder. That made sense; Holbeck was Calder’s patch.

  Two more bobbies were at the bottom of the bank, the water over their boots, trying to haul out the body.

  ‘Who is it?’ Harper asked.

  ‘Talbot,’ Conway replied, his face grim.

  The superintendent stared at the corpse. He’d been at Armley. He’d probably seen the guard, but he didn’t remember him. The man down there didn’t ring any bells.

  ‘This was in his pocket, sir,’ Calder said. He held up a letter with Talbot’s name and address.

  ‘No other papers?’ He held his breath, hoping against hope that the man had been carrying Calder’s diary, the papers so important that they needed to be locked away in a bank deposit box.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Right, get him out and take him over to King’s Kingdom.’ He looked at Sergeant Calder. ‘A word, if I might?’

  They walked away, staring across at the strange Italian chimneys of Tower Works. Even this far away, the clatter of their pin-making machinery was loud.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘I know this is your patch.’

  ‘It is, sir, and I know it well.’

  The man was establishing his rights and putting up his defences.

  ‘You do, and you have an excellent record. But please remember, this is more than a random murder. Claude Talbot is the man who killed your brother.’

  ‘All the more reason to go after whoever killed him, sir.’ Calder stood a little straighter. ‘With all due respect, sir—’

  ‘Which always means with no respect at all.’ Harper took the barb from his words with a smile. He knew how it worked; he’d done it often enough himself. ‘I need your knowledge on this. You’re very good at your job. But I’m going to bring Inspector Ash in to run things, and you and Sergeant Conway will work under him. They’ve been involved from the start.’

  ‘Gladly, sir,’ he agreed after a moment.

  It was a very fair compromise. This way Calder remained involved, his pride intact.

  The superintendent turned as he heard the shout; they’d managed to drag the corpse up from the bank. Harper watched the constables dig through the man’s clothes, searching for anything else. A cheap clay pipe, tobacco in a pouch. A few coppers, two silver coins. A pocket watch in the waistcoat. A handkerchief. Conway was right: no more paper.

  ‘Turn him over,’ Harper ordered. The wound was there, at the back of his head. Deep, rounded. A blow like that would have killed him instantly. His skull was shattered, an ooze of brains glistening in the light.

  No bruises on the face. Probably killed right there and tossed down the bank. Harper looked around. The spot was well hidden, behind a stone building, out of sight of the mill. He turned his head. There was another building to the west, faces crowding at the windows.

  ‘Look at that,’ he said to Conway.

  The sergeant picked up the idea quickly. ‘I’ll go and ask if they saw anything.’

  ‘They probably didn’t
, especially if it happened at night. But it’s worth a try. Who found him, anyway?’

  ‘Two lads skiving off school.’ He grinned. ‘So scared they ran home and told their mams.’

  Calder was staring down at the corpse. ‘Are you sure he killed my brother, sir?’

  ‘As much as I can be. Why?’

  ‘I just wanted to know.’ He couldn’t take his eyes off Talbot.

  Harper clapped a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Now we have to find who killed him. Are you with us?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ There was bitterness in his voice. ‘It’s my case, too. Besides, when we find the killer, I can shake his hand.’

  There was nothing more he could do here. Conway was bright, Calder was good. Once Ash arrived and imposed his order on everything the investigation would move smoothly. Before he left, though, he squatted and opened the dead man’s coat, feeling inside the cheap, shiny lining. It was a common hiding place; worth trying for the moment it would take him.

  There. A soft, pliable lump. Harper pulled out his pocket knife and slashed the material. He reached in and pulled out a small wad of papers. The same ones he’d taken from Henry White’s deposit box; he recognized the writing. Not all of them, the tied packet wasn’t thick enough for that. But it was a start. He’d look at them properly in the office.

  The fire brigade had been called out to a warehouse a hundred yards downriver from Leeds Bridge. Not too much damage done, nobody hurt, the engine and men sent back to Park Row.

  Reed stood in the small building that had caught the force of the fire. Charred wood, steaming puddles on the floor. It must have started over in the corner, he decided, where the bricks were burned and buckled. But it didn’t feel like arson; nothing seemed deliberate. He pointed.

  ‘What do you keep over there?’ he asked.

  The man beside him, the red-faced owner, said, ‘Paraffin.’

  ‘And there?’ He indicated a section of the wall which had completely gone.

  ‘Paper, card,’ the man answered. ‘Why?’

  God almighty. Next to each other like that? He might as well have put in an order for a fire. Reed explained, not sure if the owner was really listening or if it went in one ear and out of the other. The man only seemed to care about his insurance claim and how long before he was back in business.