by A J Wright
‘What the bloody ’ell’s up wi’ thee?’ Jaggery asked. He was afraid of no man, but having a wide-eyed lunatic glaring at him wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences.
Pardew licked his lips then pressed them together, billowing his cheeks out as though he were desperately trying to whistle but no sound was forthcoming. He lifted both hands to his throat and his eyes bulged, giving every appearance of choking.
‘Bloody ’ell!’ Jaggery clambered towards the front of the ambulance and called up to the driver. ‘You’ll ’ave to pull in. Meladdo’s chokin’!’
The driver called back, ‘I can’t. I’ve a bloody big tram up me arse!’
Before Jaggery could offer a response, Pardew leaped up from the bed, spread both arms wide before a thoroughly alarmed constable and roared like a lion before hurling himself through the rear of the ambulance, evading both the front of the Wilkinson engine pulling the bogie car behind it and the curses of the tram driver whose arms were flailing as wildly and as violently as his language.
Jaggery followed and was met with the same response, this time augmented by the yelling of the conductor who referred to him as a ‘Mad fat bastard!’
But Jaggery, who under normal circumstances would have dragged the conductor from his platform and given him a thick ear, was more concerned with chasing the escaped prisoner, who had by now disappeared from view.
*
It was, Constable Jaggery admitted later, the worst moment of his time in the force. He’d scoured the streets for over an hour – Market Place, Standishgate, Wallgate, Crawford Street, all the alleys nearby, even checking the graveyard by the Municipal Offices in the hope that the damned lunatic might be crouched behind a headstone. But he found nothing. When he stopped people in the street and told them he was looking for a scruffily dressed idiot who might have run past them, they shook their heads and regarded him as if he were the idiot. One even suggested he try the workhouse in Frog Lane if he were that desperate.
Finally, he’d been forced to make the short trudge back down King Street and face the music.
Sergeant Brennan, he was relieved to discover from the desk sergeant, had left the station a few minutes after Jaggery had left in the ambulance.
‘We’d best let everybody know,’ said the sergeant after spending several minutes tearing into the forlorn constable for being, among other things, a bloody stupid waste of a uniform. He’d hastily gathered together as many duty constables as he could, urging them to spread the news about the escape but keep it among themselves for the time being.
‘If his bloody lordship upstairs finds out,’ he warned the small gathering in the canteen, ‘Constable Jaggery’s out on his arse. Let’s find the looney little sod before it gets to that, eh?’
They’d all patted Jaggery on the back as they left, commiserating with his predicament while at the same time silently acknowledging that there but for the grace of God…
*
Sergeant Brennan, meanwhile, oblivious of the gross error perpetrated by Jaggery, had made his way to The Squirrel in Upper Morris Street, Scholes. He knew full well that his quarry would be ensconced in the vault of the public house, his favourite watering hole where he and his cronies would meet, drink and discuss the possibilities for the night, which would be spent either drinking or thieving or a combination of the two.
Rat-Yed was less than happy to see him. It wasn’t something he liked the others to know about: the rare occasions he offered information to the detective sergeant never involved them or their nefarious activities, yet the very fact he was helping the police would have gone down very badly indeed.
Brennan, fully aware of the man’s feelings, approached the table where another two of his associates were sitting and spoke sternly, making it clear that Rat-Yed was under suspicion for a wholly imaginary theft from a shoe warehouse the previous night.
Once they were outside, Rat-Yed gave full vent to his feelings. ‘Not a fuckin’ good idea, Mickey, lad. Makes me look bad, that does.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Brennan replied. ‘I can give you a thick lip if you like, remove any suspicions they might have.’
Rat-Yed shrugged off the idea. ‘Anyroad, what dost want now?’
‘I want you to take a walk with me. Up to the Royal.’
‘Why? They’ll not let me anywhere near the place. I’m barred.’
‘I’ll unbar you. Temporarily. I just need you to identify someone, that’s all.’
‘Who?’
‘Remember the man you say spoke to the woman who was murdered? Argued with her in Market Place Tuesday night?’
‘Aye.’
‘Somebody I want you to look at. Tell me if it was him.’
‘I already told you. It were dark.’
‘You recognised her all right. Or at least your mate did, the one who saw her in Livesey’s Yard.’
‘No bloody choice then, have I?’
They both set off along Upper Morris Street, turned left into Greenhough Street and walked the short stretch to the Royal Hotel. Mr Eastoe, the manager, made a strong protest when he saw who Brennan’s companion was.
‘This creature devours vermin!’ he said, pointing a finger at Rat-Yed.
‘There tha wrong!’ declared the latter. ‘I don’t eat the buggers. I just bite their heads off. It’d be disgustin’, swallowin’ a rat’s head, now, wouldn’t it?’
After a few minutes’ negotiation, during which Brennan agreed to take his friend to the hotel’s rear entrance, Mr Eastoe went off to ask both Simeon Crosby and Ralph Batsford to join the detective and help him with his inquiries.
After what Brennan thought was an unconscionably long time, the manager opened the rear door and stepped out, his face ashen white.
‘What is it?’ Brennan asked, sensing immediately that something was wrong. ‘Where are Crosby and Batsford?’
Eastoe shook his head. ‘Mr Batsford is nowhere to be found, and Mr Crosby… I really have no idea how he got in.’
‘What? Who do you mean?’
Eastoe cleared his throat. ‘The man. Upstairs.’
‘Which man?’
‘I have no idea. But he’s with Simeon Crosby, and the door is locked, and I could hear someone singing a song about a headless corpse. Mr Crosby sounded quite alarmed. He said there was blood everywhere, and the man had something in his hand.’
Impossible! thought Brennan. It can’t be Pardew. I’d left him under the care of…
Jaggery!
‘Stay here!’ he said to Rat-Yed. ‘If you move, I’ll make sure you can’t bite the head off a dandelion, never mind a rat.’ He turned to Eastoe. ‘Come with me!’
Before the manager could object, Brennan had pushed past him and vanished into the dark interior of the hotel.
Barely half a minute later, both of them were standing outside Simeon Crosby’s room. When Brennan tried the door, he found it was still locked.
‘Mr Crosby?’ he called out. ‘It’s Detective Sergeant Brennan.’
‘Thank God!’ came the response from beyond the door.
‘Oscar? Is that you?’
Brennan, with Eastoe at his side, tugging nervously at his collar and looking around the landing in case he needed to offer some explanation to other guests, spoke in as friendly a tone as he could muster.
‘You stopped me last time!’ was Oscar’s response. His voice was strange, husky as if he’d been crying. ‘But you can’t stop me now!’
‘Why don’t you just unlock the door, Oscar, and you can tell me all about it?’
‘I made a promise to Dead Father!’ Oscar said with a sob. ‘And my sister. I told her what I wanted to do.’
‘And what was that?’
‘But he won’t! After I’ve come all this way, on the train and the march and even Dead Father’s frame. Smashed! And that youth kicking me at the station! All because I wanted to do what I’d promised to do.’
Brennan turned to Eastoe and whispered, ‘Do you have a passkey?’
‘Then please go and get it,’ he said urgently. ‘And be quick!’
Eastoe turned around and headed for the stairs.
There was a pause and then Simeon Crosby called out, ‘His hands, Sergeant! They’re dripping with blood!’
‘Oscar? Can you do something for me?’
‘What?’
‘Whatever weapon you have in your hand, just put it on the bed and then perhaps you won’t make Mr Crosby so nervous.’
When Pardew didn’t respond, it was Crosby who yelled out, ‘He doesn’t have a weapon, Sergeant Brennan. He has a photograph, and it’s covered in blood.’
When Eastoe arrived with the key, Brennan inserted it into the keyhole but found it wouldn’t turn. The other key was still in place.
So, to Mr Eastoe’s consternation, Brennan kicked the door down.
21.
‘I only wanted to shake his hand,’ said Oscar Pardew as Brennan placed him under the charge of the two constables he’d sent for.
When he broke into the room, he saw Simeon Crosby standing with his back against the window, staring at Pardew’s hands with some trepidation. It was apparent that he’d reopened the jagged wounds when he made his escape from the horse ambulance – a fact he proudly admitted, adding that he could never forgive himself if the man who hanged his father’s killer left the town without him shaking his hand. The offer of an outstretched hand, dripping with blood, had been enough to render Simeon Crosby fearful for his life.
‘I thought it was Batsford returning,’ he told Brennan when Pardew had left the room. ‘So I just opened the door without thinking.’
‘Where is Mr Batsford?’ Brennan asked, wondering if Rat-Yed was still at the hotel’s rear entrance. It had been some thirty minutes now since he’d left him there.
‘We talked about Miss Woodruff, Sergeant. His estranged wife. It seems Batsford and myself share some malignant fate, with both of our wives lying cold in a mortuary, the victims of some madman.’ He gave a curt nod in the direction of the door now hanging loosely from its hinges, through which Pardew had not long been taken. ‘He told me he would go to see his wife. She is at the infirmary mortuary. He should be back any time now, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘You decided not to go with him? To see your own wife who lies up there?’
Crosby shook his head. ‘I’ve no desire to see a mere shell, Sergeant. I’ve seen enough dead bodies to know that whatever is left is mere dead flesh and stagnant blood. It will never flow again.’
Brennan looked at him curiously. It was a strange, detached thing to say. Here was a man unwilling to view the remains of his late wife, and there was Oscar Pardew, who carried around with him a bizarre photograph of his late father, eyes forced open and holding his daughter’s hand. And now Batsford had gone to see his own wife, from whom he was separated and who spoke so harshly about him when Brennan last saw her.
‘My brother went to the station earlier. Is he still there?’ Crosby asked, deftly changing the subject.
‘He is.’
‘Still silent on his whereabouts on Monday and Tuesday?’
‘Yes, unfortunately.’
‘You know he doesn’t wish to incriminate himself?’
Brennan frowned. The hangman had said it calmly, without any rancour.
‘What exactly do you mean? Incriminate himself? If you think he had anything to do with your wife’s—’
‘—Oh no, Sergeant. Nothing of the sort. Gilbert wouldn’t dream of harming poor Violet. They got on so well.’
‘That isn’t quite true, though, is it?’
Brennan recalled what Batsford had told him when they spoke to him in Wigan Market Hall, how Violet Crosby had urged her husband not to settle his brother’s fines anymore, which resulted in him going to prison and suffering a violent attack, with the vicious scar on his face the outcome. That might indeed give him some sort of motive for revenge. Murder even. But what of Miss Woodruff? What had she done to deserve her fate?
Still, if Simeon Crosby wasn’t referring to the murder of his wife, what exactly was he referring to when he said his brother had no wish to incriminate himself? Of what? Paying to visit a prostitute? Was the wish to avoid a petty fine stronger than providing himself with an alibi, someone who could vouch for his whereabouts on the night of the murder?
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Crosby spoke sharply. ‘Now I’m feeling rather exhausted, Sergeant. I haven’t been sleeping, and the horror and the sadness of the last few days have weakened me more than I can say. If you don’t mind?’
‘Remember the inquest tomorrow evening, Mr Crosby. Another ordeal to go through.’
‘Of course.’
As Brennan was taking his leave, two workmen suddenly appeared at the door, armed with a bag of tools and scratching their heads at the damage recently done to the door.
‘Whoever done this wants stringin’ up,’ said one of them.
‘Have they never heard of knockin’?’ said the other.
It was that final comment that caused Brennan’s heart to flutter.
I wonder, he thought. I bloody well wonder.
*
When Brennan reached the rear entrance of the Royal Hotel, he was somewhat surprised to find Rat-Yed still standing there, shivering and blowing into his hands to keep them warm.
‘Bloody ’ell fire, Mickey!’ was his greeting as Brennan appeared. ‘I’m freezin’ me bollocks off out ’ere. What’ve you been doin’? Havin’ a three-course meal?’
‘Good of you to wait,’ said Brennan, ignoring the sarcasm. ‘Now, if we move quickly, we might just manage what I brought you here for.’
‘But that bugger won’t let me in, will ’e?’ Rat-Yed gave a curt nod towards the interior of the hotel.
Brennan grabbed his arm and began to pull him along the street towards the front of the hotel. ‘We don’t need to go in. From what I’ve just been told, the one I want you to look at is even now on his way back from the mortuary.’
Rat-Yed stopped. ‘He’s not a bloody ghost, is ’e? I draw the line at ghosts.’
‘Don’t be stupid! Now come on. He should be back any minute.’
With a gloomy shake of the head, he allowed himself to be escorted round the corner towards the steps that marked the entrance to the Royal.
They stood there for no longer than five minutes, during which time Rat-Yed had tried to explain for the umpteenth time that the entertainment he provided for the public house regulars the length and breadth of Wigan was, above all, a public service, for who else in the town took such active steps to rid the place of the vermin that infested every alleyway and ginnel?
‘You deserve a medal,’ said Brennan, whose eyes were fixed on the lower part of Standishgate. That would be the direction Batsford would come from if he were travelling from the infirmary.
Sure enough, a hansom cab trundled its way up the incline and stopped outside the Royal, Batsford clambering down and paying the cab driver. He seemed out of sorts, his eyes downcast, and for a moment, he stood on the pavement, staring at his feet as if he were in some doubt as to which direction he wanted them to go.
Brennan nudged his companion and nodded at Batsford. ‘That him?’
Before Rat-Yed could reply, the object of their interest seemed to have made up his mind, for he climbed the steps of the hotel with almost funereal slowness.
‘Oh aye, Mickey. That’s the bugger. Him an’ that lass were ’avin’ a right go at each other. That’s the one right enough.’
Brennan gave him a shilling and told him he was free to go. He then stood there, looking at the now closed doors of the hotel entrance, and tried to put his thoughts into some sort of order.
People have been lying, he told himself.
Slowly, he was beginning to see.
It was still obscured, just like the world outside a bedroom window when the frost was on the inside of the glass. Yo
u scrub away until the ice begins to fragment, giving you just a glimpse of the scene beyond. But you have to scrub and scrub at that window, breathe on it and spit on it until all the ice has gone and you can see clearly for the first time.
Why did Batsford lie to him? Why did he tell him he hadn’t spoken to or seen Maria Woodruff while she was here, in Wigan?
Why is Gilbert Crosby so steadfast in his refusal to say where he was on the night of the murders? Is it because he has no alibi? Or is the alibi itself incriminating?
More incriminating than a murder charge?
There’s another lie needs nailing down, too, thought Brennan.
He turned to his left and headed across town and back to the station. But first, he would call in at the Post Office, aware that they’d be regarding him as something of a regular now. He needed to send another telegram. This time, to a friend of his.
*
Constable Jaggery was nowhere to be seen when Brennan got back to the station, where he was told of the circumstances of Pardew’s escape. His absence was hardly surprising since there were some hard words to be said. He would take no pleasure in giving the big man the mightiest of reprimands: somewhere deep inside him, he had a soft spot for Freddie Jaggery, whose sheer brute strength had on occasion more than compensated for his limited (some might say stunted) intelligence, and he knew that there had been some sadness in his life, something he had found out only recently when Jaggery had confided in him about losing his young daughter years ago. Still, to allow a prisoner under escort to escape from a horse ambulance – in full view of a tram full and a pavement full of Wiganers – a bloody lunatic as well! That wasn’t to be borne.
He shuddered to think what Captain Bell would make of it all.
