The Detective Branch pm-4

by Andrew Pepper

  ‘We need to find out why those men came looking for Keate’s mother — and who sent them,’ Pyke said, aware of both Whicher’s caution and the fact that he was siding with Eddie Lockhart.

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ Wells said, screwing up his face. ‘Why would someone want to rough up an old woman?’ It was the first time he’d spoken since the meeting had started.

  ‘Let’s assume, and this is still a very big assumption, that Keate didn’t do what he was found guilty of five years ago. Someone close to him finds out and sets about trying to right this particular wrong.’ Pyke hesitated and looked up at Wells, whose frown had deepened. ‘There are too many connections for us to ignore, Walter. If the Keate family are not involved in any of this, why did someone dispatch three or four men with knives and pistols to talk to the mother?’

  ‘So what do you suggest we actually do?’ Wells asked.

  ‘Keep looking for Keate’s mother, the two brothers and the sister.’ Pyke addressed Shaw and Lockhart. ‘Did any of the neighbours see the man and woman who came to collect Keate’s mother?’

  Lockhart shook his head. ‘Not a good look anyway. The woman was wearing a headscarf and the man a cloak.’

  ‘And the men who turned up with knives and pistols?’

  ‘As yet, no one’s been willing to offer us any descriptions,’ Lockhart stated. ‘I’d say they were afraid of retaliation.’

  ‘Then bring the neighbours in here and lock them up if needs be. If we can trace those men, perhaps we can find whoever dispatched them.’ Pyke looked around at his team. ‘Someone is worried enough about what’s happening to want to kidnap an old woman and make Hogarth’s body, the coroner and the porter miraculously disappear.’

  The meeting broke up and everyone, except Lockhart, who Pyke had asked to see, drifted out of the room.

  ‘I just wanted to thank you for staying with my son when he came here to find me,’ Pyke said once they were alone.

  ‘I just did what anyone would have done in the circumstances. I could see the lad was upset.’

  ‘He spoke highly of you, Detective Sergeant. It made me wonder whether I might’ve misjudged you.’

  Lockhart loosened his collar. ‘I… I have to…’ He took a deep breath and looked around the room. ‘I admit I was angry at you for not trying to save Gerrett’s position.’

  Pyke noticed he hadn’t accused him of deliberately trying to engineer it. ‘If I’d rated Gerrett’s abilities as a detective, I would’ve fought for him. I still might not have been able to save him, though.’

  Lockhart conceded this point with a curt nod. ‘I haven’t told anyone this. I wanted to talk to you first.’ He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Pyke. I do think you could have done more to help Gerrett. But what’s done is done. I also think you’re a good detective and I think you’re right about these murders. While you were away, I went to try and find the coroner. I didn’t succeed but I did manage to talk to one of the clerks who worked with him. I could see he knew something so I pushed him around, threatened him a bit. In the end he admitted he’d sneaked a look at Hogarth’s body.’ His face was now flushed with excitement. ‘Do you know what he told me?’

  ‘That Hogarth didn’t die of a heart seizure?’ Pyke hesitated, wondering how much he should say to Lockhart about what he’d seen in the mausoleum.

  Lockhart looked at him and nodded. ‘You know what you said, about Hogarth’s death and the boy’s, Stephen Clough’s, being linked?’

  Pyke nodded.

  ‘Well, this man told me he saw marks, holes bored into the hands and feet of Hogarth’s corpse.’ Lockhart wetted his lips. ‘He also told me the man’s stomach had been cut open.’

  Pyke stared at him for a moment, trying to comprehend the gift Lockhart had dropped into his lap. ‘You have this man’s name?’

  ‘Tom Challis.’

  ‘And he’s willing to say this in front of a judge?’

  Lockhart looked sheepish. ‘He’s afraid of what will happen to him if he does. He’s afraid of what I’ll do to him if he doesn’t.’

  ‘Bring him in, I’d like to talk to him.’ Pyke waited. ‘Do it quickly and quietly and don’t tell anyone else what he knows. If I’m not here, put him in my office and stay with him.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t need to tell you this is first-rate detective work. More than that, I can now take this to the commissioners.’ Pyke waited and added, ‘You said just now you hadn’t told anyone about this?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘No one in the Detective Branch and no one in the police as a whole?’

  This time Lockhart’s eyes narrowed a little, as he sensed perhaps that his honesty was being questioned. ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘You did the right thing.’ Pyke reached forward and tapped him awkwardly on the arm. ‘And thank you, Eddie.’

  Later Wells came to offer Pyke his condolences; he had also sent a wreath to the house, which Pyke had already thanked him for. It felt strange, thinking about the funeral, the fact that Godfrey had died. At times, when he was occupied with other things, Pyke could almost forget about what had happened. It was the same for the first few moments when he woke up in the morning. Then the reality of the situation would sink in and Pyke would feel despair descending on him once more. Could it really be true that he’d never again see or have a conversation with his uncle?

  ‘I saw you talking to young Lockhart,’ Wells said. ‘I trust he wasn’t causing you any problems.’

  ‘No, no problems.’ Pyke could see that Wells wanted to know what they’d been talking about.

  ‘He seems to have buckled down, got on with things. Perhaps Gerrett’s dismissal will be good for him, good for all of us.’

  Pyke sat down in his chair and waited for Wells to do the same, but Wells opted to stand. ‘You didn’t say much in the meeting, Walter. I take it you don’t approve of the turn the investigation’s taken?’

  ‘I said I’d support whatever course you wished to steer.’

  ‘But you don’t think this is the best one?’ Pyke raised his eyebrows. ‘You still think Francis Hiley killed Guppy?’

  Wells’s eyes drifted to the small window behind Pyke. ‘We’ll find him eventually, and then we’ll know one way or another.’ His expression darkened. ‘But I’ve had to redeploy most of my men to another most disagreeable matter. You won’t have heard about it yet, I suppose.’

  ‘Heard about what?’

  ‘A man was shot dead yesterday. The body was found in the river near the Billingsgate stairs.’

  Pyke’s blood ran cold. ‘Who?’

  ‘One of the Rafferty brothers. Sean was his name, I believe.’

  The news took a few moments to sink in. ‘Do you have any idea who might have done it?’

  ‘Could be one of a hundred thousand, I’d say.’ Wells rubbed his hard, waxy skin. ‘You know as well as I that the Irish are prone to violence and a wildness of spirit that can be quite lethal, especially if they find themselves under a feebler police than they’re used to.’

  ‘And you think that’s what’s happened here? Sean Rafferty has been shot dead because we, as a police force, have become permissive?’

  Wells smiled. ‘Indeed, I’d forgotten that your attitudes vis-a-vis our Irish brethren are less hostile than mine. Nevertheless, this murder will have to be investigated with our characteristic thoroughness and the task of doing so has fallen to me. I don’t doubt it will be a nasty job; the list of names bearing brutes like the Raffertys a grudge is likely to be a long one and I can hardly expect assistance from the brothers.’

  ‘Except this time the Raffertys are the victims.’ Pyke thought back to the summer when Wells had been convinced of the Raffertys’ guilt on the pawn shop murder.

  Wells’s eyes shifted focus. ‘I might have leapt to the wrong conclusion about the Raffertys before but you can hardly blame me for doing so: they’re notorious for their thieving and general disregard for the law
.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, Walter,’ Pyke said, sighing, not wanting to further antagonise the man. ‘Actually, now that you’ve reminded me of the murders in the pawn shop, there was something I wanted to ask you,’ Pyke added.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You remember I mentioned that a constable in uniform had been seen in the vicinity of the pawnbroker’s just before the shooting?’

  Wells jaw tightened. ‘You said someone saw this man, a beggar or hawker.’

  ‘A crossing-sweeper.’

  Wells looked at him carefully. ‘What about it?’

  ‘He said the policeman in question had a limp. I met a sergeant matching that description a couple of weeks ago. Man by the name of Russell.’

  ‘Russell?’ Wells seemed to give the matter some thought. ‘No, I don’t think I’ve come across him.’

  ‘Part of Kensington Division.’

  ‘Still doesn’t ring a bell.’

  ‘I didn’t expect it would, but it struck me the other day that Pierce was in charge of that division before he moved to Holborn.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re implying, Pyke?’

  Pyke eyed Wells carefully, not sure himself what he was suggesting, whether the matter was worth looking into or not. Perhaps it would turn out to be a dead end. Perhaps it was just the case that Sharp, the tall man they believed had shot the victims in the Shorts Gardens robbery, had acted on his own volition and had taken the secret of the cross’s whereabouts to his grave. But that didn’t explain how Sharp had come by the cross in the first place, nor why a policeman in uniform had failed to respond to the sound of three loud blasts of a pistol.

  ‘Sergeant Russell?’ Pyke waited to see whether the man would recognise him or not. He had presented himself at the desk in the police building on the King’s Road and asked whether Russell was available. The man had kept him waiting for a little more than five minutes.

  Russell was heavier than Pyke remembered and, without his stovepipe hat, his hair was bushier and more unkempt. He had the same ferret-face, with small, quick eyes, thin lips and a pinched nose. It took the man a few moments to recognise Pyke and when he did, he stiffened slightly.

  ‘Detective Inspector…’ Russell paused and grimaced. ‘Trout?’

  ‘Pyke.’ He held the man’s stare. ‘With a “y”.’

  Russell nodded. ‘What brings you to Kensington?’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about an incident that took place in the summer. I was looking back at our records and I saw that, for some reason, you were the first policeman on the scene after a robbery at a pawnbroker’s on Shorts Gardens, just off Drury Lane.’

  Russell’s expression gave nothing away. ‘I’m sorry, Detective Inspector, but you must be mistaken. You say I was first at the scene of a robbery in St Giles? That can’t be right. It must have been someone else.’

  ‘Are you quite sure?’ Pyke made a point of checking something in his notepad. He reeled off Russell’s rank and badge number.

  ‘That’s me, but I wasn’t in the centre of the city that day and I didn’t see or report a robbery.’ Russell’s manner wasn’t aggressive; he just sounded irritated.

  Pyke glanced down at his notepad one final time and snapped it shut. ‘Then I believe I owe you an apology. Please excuse me. I didn’t mean to waste your time.’

  ‘No harm done.’

  Russell had said the same thing to him outside Helen Hogarth’s mansion on the King’s Road.

  Pyke held out his hand and waited for Russell to shake it. The sergeant did so, but grudgingly. As he gripped the other man’s calloused hand, Pyke stared into his eyes, and looked for any sign that he might have been lying.

  Later that afternoon, Pyke went looking for Edmund Saggers in the Green Dragon on Fleet Street and then the Cole Hole, Coach and Horses and Edinburgh Castle, on the Strand. From there, he tried the parlour at Clunn’s Hotel in Covent Garden, and eventually found the journalist holding court at the Shakespeare on Wynch Street. In fact, Saggers wasn’t talking but eating. As he later told Pyke, he’d wagered a pound with a fellow journalist that he could put away ten steak and kidney puddings in one sitting. By the time Pyke found him, Saggers had managed to consume eight and the strain was beginning to show on his face. A vast man with an even vaster appetite, he was sitting alone at the table, a napkin tucked into his collar. The ninth steak and kidney pudding was pushed towards him and, with a sly glance at the man he’d made the bet with, Saggers took his fork and devoured it in a few mouthfuls. Looking up, he asked for the tenth pudding in a manner that suggested he was still hungry. A sheen of perspiration clung to his rotund cheeks. After a few moments’ delay it was brought to him by a harassed pot-boy. Barely allowing it cool, Saggers opened his mouth and shovelled it in, and when he had finished, he washed it down with a glassful of wine.

  Once the crowd who’d gathered around Saggers’s table to watch him eat had ebbed away and the man he’d made the bet with had paid up, Pyke sat down opposite him. ‘Can I buy you lunch?’

  ‘Very droll, I’m sure.’ To alleviate his discomfort, the garrulous journalist opened his mouth and let rip with a belch that filled the room.

  They hadn’t seen one another since Godfrey’s funeral, and Saggers asked how Felix and he were faring. Pyke shrugged, not sure what to say. The fact was that he had spent the past week trying not to think about the death and the hole it had left in both his and Felix’s life. He was aware that this was not necessarily the best way of dealing with the situation. He was also aware that he and Felix hadn’t talked about Godfrey’s death for a number of days and the closeness they’d shared around the time of the funeral had already started to fade. Instead of answering Saggers’s question directly, Pyke said, ‘Actually I wanted to pick your brains about something.’

  A few months earlier Saggers had written a piece for the London Illustrated News about the detective department in which he’d described the figure of the detective as a secular priest for the modern era. It had been a gauche piece, little more than an advertisement for the department. Pyke had sanctioned it not because he needed the publicity but because Saggers wanted to write the story and he valued his association with the journalist. Then, as now, there was little that happened in the city that escaped Saggers’s ears and eyes.

  Briefly Pyke told him everything he already knew about Morris Keate and the murders five year earlier. Saggers said he remembered them, though not particularly well.

  ‘So what do you want to know?’ he asked, when Pyke had finished.

  ‘Does that sound like a fair summary of what happened?’

  Saggers took a swig of wine. ‘From what I remember, the two boys did work as part of the same mob.’

  ‘Do you know which one?’

  ‘Not as such, but I can say with some certainty that any dipper who worked the theatre crowds around that time would have handed a part of their take to a mobsman called Horace Flint.’

  ‘Flint?’ For some reason the name seemed familiar. ‘Didn’t someone stick a knife into his belly?’

  Saggers nodded briskly. ‘That would have been about three or four years ago. I’m assured that anyone who answered to Flint now answers to a fence called Culpepper.’

  ‘Georgie Culpepper?’

  ‘You know him?’

  Pyke laughed. ‘I used to; if he’s the same man I’m thinking of. We grew up on the same street.’ This would have been before his father died, before he’d spent a year in the orphanage, before Godfrey had rescued him.

  ‘Well, if he is the same one, I’d tread very carefully. I’m told he’s ambitious and he has a nasty bite.’

  Even after Pyke had moved away from the rookery, he’d heard stories of Georgie Culpepper’s exploits, and he knew the man was active in the city’s underworld.

  ‘Do you know where I can find him?’

  ‘You could try the Coach and Horses on Duke Street, or the Rat’s Castle. Someone there will know where to find him.’

 
Standing up, Pyke surveyed the detritus of Saggers’s eating marathon and smiled. ‘You could try looking into the affairs of a City alderman called Charles Hogarth, if you felt so inclined.’

  ‘And why would I want to do that?’

  ‘He died about ten days ago. The coroner described the cause of death as heart seizure. I think he was murdered. The body was stolen from the family mausoleum and both the porter who found the body and the coroner are now missing, too.’

  Saggers’s interest was clearly kindled, as Pyke had known it would be.

  Pyke found Conor Rafferty in the same place as before, the Blue Dog in St Giles, but this time the back room was closed to the public and Pyke was told to leave his knife and pistol at the counter. A tall, muscular man with a gaol-cropped head took him along a damp, narrow passageway and through two sets of doors that had to be unbolted from the other side. Conor Rafferty was sitting alone at one of the tables, a half-empty bottle of whisky for company. Pyke could see that his eyes were tired and bloodshot, the lids heavy and bloated.

  ‘Come to tell me who killed our brother, Detective Inspector? Or to promise me you’ll have the gunman behind bars before the end of the week?’

  ‘I didn’t think you had such faith in the police.’

  Even though he had agreed to let Wells run the investigation into Sean Rafferty’s murder, Pyke wanted to talk to Conor, to reassure himself there was no link to the ongoing search for the Saviour’s Cross. He also didn’t sufficiently trust Wells to look into the matter with fairness and impartiality.

  Rafferty smiled thinly. ‘I’m pleased to see that a man of the law can spot irony when he hears it.’

  ‘Can I sit down?’

  Rafferty shrugged and pushed the whisky bottle towards him. ‘You can have a drink, too.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who might have killed your brother?’ Rafferty’s eyes were as cold as ice. ‘We can bury our own and we can take care of our own problems too.’ The Irishman groped for the whisky and, realising it wasn’t in front of him, he laughed and shook his head. ‘At home, anyone who blabs to a Peeler ends up at the bottom of a well.’