Skin Like Silver

by Chris Nickson

  ‘What the hell was she doing down here?’ he wondered.

  ‘Looks like there’s something for you, after all, Tom,’ Hill said grimly. He slung his jacket over his shoulder and shook his head. ‘I need to go, I’ve too much to do.’ He took two steps and paused to stare at the woman again. ‘Since it happened here I can let you have someone to help. How about Billy Reed?’

  The inspector stiffened. ‘He might not want to …’

  But Hill was insistent. ‘He’s worked your side of the fence and he knows fires by now. I don’t think there’s anyone better suited.’

  ‘Billy’s good,’ Harper agreed after a moment, keeping all the feeling out of his voice. ‘If he’s willing, I’ll have him.’ He couldn’t pull his gaze from the corpse with its silver skin. ‘We’re going to need someone else.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ Ash said as the firemen walked away, ‘going to be like old times, isn’t it? I’ll get this poor lass taken down to Hunslet.’

  Dr King, smoking a cigar to cover the fumes of carbolic and formaldehyde, waved them to the side of the room.

  Harper and Ash waited expectantly. Reed, dressed in plain clothes, stood beside them, sullen and quiet, as if he didn’t want to be there.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ King began. He was standing by the slab where a sheet covered the body. ‘I want to thank you. I can honestly say this is a first for me.’ He seemed to relish the experience.

  ‘Doctor,’ the inspector said. ‘We need to know what killed her.’

  He hoped King wouldn’t display the woman. It was something he never wanted to see again.

  ‘Oh, I can tell you that, Mr Harper,’ the man answered with pleasure. ‘It wasn’t the metal, although God knows that did enough damage to her. It wasn’t those tons of concrete that fell on her either, even if they broke almost every bone in her body. It wasn’t even the fire.’ He gave a conjurer’s smile. ‘She was dead before any of that happened.’

  ‘What?’ Harper glanced at Ash. ‘How? How can you tell?’

  ‘Because she was stabbed in the back. Since she was lying on it, that escaped most of the damage. The blow went right through to her heart. Instant. A long, thin blade.’

  Ash coughed. ‘Pardon me asking, sir, but how do you know that’s it? What was left of her seemed to have plenty of cuts, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  King eyed him sternly. ‘Because I’ve been doing my job for a long time, Constable, and I’m very good at it. Believe me, that is what killed this woman.’

  ‘What can you tell us about her?’ Harper asked quickly, trying to smooth the waters.

  King puffed on the cigar as he collected his thoughts, watching the smoke rise.

  ‘I’d say she’s probably in her early forties. There’s a tiny bit of hair at the back of the scalp that didn’t burn, and I found grey in that. What’s left of her palms look smooth enough and well cared for. But,’ he added with a flourish, ‘if I had to guess, she’s done work with them in the past. A small piece of her dress survived because it was stuck to her back. Good material, and that piece of boot you found is expensive leather. She had money.’ He gestured towards a corner. ‘Her things are in a bag over there. What little there is, anyway. Nothing to identify her.’

  ‘Anything else, Doctor?’ Harper asked.

  ‘I can probably tell you more when I’ve opened her up. But that should be enough to get you started.’

  They walked back quietly across Crown Point Bridge, sobered by what they’d seen and heard. On the river, barges moved along slowly, and vessels stood two and three deep at the wharves, swarms of men loading and removing goods, rolling barrels along flimsy gangplanks. Smoke rose from hundreds of factory chimneys, settling in a haze that blocked out the faint sunlight.

  ‘It’s good to have you back, Billy,’ Harper said finally, but the sergeant just grunted and lit a cigarette.

  ‘You heard what King said,’ Reed told him. ‘It’s a job for the detectives now, not the fire brigade.’

  ‘We’ll still need an extra pair of hands, if Dick Hill can spare you.’

  Reed stopped and pursed his lips. The inspector nodded for Ash to go ahead.

  ‘Sir—’ the sergeant began, but Harper cut him off.

  ‘For God’s sake, Billy,’ he hissed, eyes flashing, ‘it’s Tom. How long did we work together? How long were we friends?’ He paused, trying to let his temper settle. ‘Look, I know I was wrong in pressing you to say something you didn’t remember. I shouldn’t have done that. But he was guilty. You know that just as well as I do.’ When the sergeant didn’t reply, he said, ‘Well, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Reed answered reluctantly, staring out over the water. Just a single, squeezed word.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Harper continued. ‘I put you on the spot. If there’d been another way, I wouldn’t …’

  ‘It’s done.’ The sergeant cut him off and tossed the rest of the cigarette down into the river, eyes following its descent.

  ‘You’re a good detective. I liked working with you. I wasn’t sure when Dick offered your services, but this is going to need brains, and you have those.’ He extended a bandaged hand. ‘What do you say?’

  Reed looked at the hand for a long time, then eventually gave a quick, small nod. ‘All right.’

  ‘Welcome back,’ Harper. ‘It’s good to have you.’

  ‘It’s just for this case,’ the sergeant told him. ‘I’m still a fireman, remember that, sir.’

  ‘For this case is fine.’ It was a frosty beginning. But at least it was a start. He smiled. ‘Come on, Ash’ll be wondering if we’ve thrown each other off the bridge.’

  ‘The first thing is to discover who she was,’ Harper said, pulling the piece of dress from the bag. It was crumpled and burned at the edges and smeared in dirt, but inside the neck there was a dressmaker’s label. Gently the inspector rubbed away the soot. ‘Madeleine Harkness, dressmaker,’ he read and looked at the others. ‘Ring any bells?’

  ‘Basinghall Street,’ Ash answered without hesitation.

  ‘Right.’ The inspector handed him the cloth. ‘Go over there and see what she can tell you.’

  After the constable had gone, Reed asked, ‘What do you want me to do?’ A formal tone. None of the old friendliness.

  ‘Go back to the Arches. Now we know she was killed before the fire it’s worth a poke around. There might be something to find.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Maybe the murderer started the blaze to try to destroy her. What do you think?’

  ‘No,’ the sergeant said quickly. ‘If he’d wanted to do that, he’d have dragged her closer to it.’

  ‘You’re the expert. See if there’s anything.’

  Harper was sitting at his desk, thinking, when the superintendent came out of his office.

  ‘Like old times, having Reed back,’ Kendall said.

  ‘I hope it is,’ he answered doubtfully.

  An hour later Harper was sitting with a cup of tea when Ash returned.

  ‘I’ve got a name for you, sir,’ he said, easing himself on to a chair and taking out his notebook. ‘Catherine Carr, that’s what the dressmaker says. Bought the dress nearly two years ago.’ He glanced up. ‘Mrs Carr.’

  ‘Mrs?’ the inspector said with surprise. ‘I didn’t see a wedding ring.’

  ‘Nor did I, sir. I have an address, though. Out in Chapel Allerton.’

  ‘That fits with money,’ he said thoughtfully, tapping a thumbnail against his mouth. It was a village that had grown into a suburb after those with wealth moved away from Leeds for the fresher air.

  The constable eyed Harper’s cup. ‘I don’t suppose there’s time for a brew first, sir?’

  ‘When we get back.’ He gathered up his hat and waited by the door. ‘If the husband killed her, we’ll have it all wrapped up today.’

  Ash pursed his lips under his thick moustache and placed the bowler hat on his head.

  ‘Never that simple, though, is it, sir?’ he said with a weary sigh.


  They alighted at the terminus, outside the Mexborough Arms, and asked directions, walking up a small hill. An imposing stone house stood at the end of a gravel driveway.

  ‘Whoever Mr Carr is, he’s not short of a bob or two,’ Ash said.

  ‘Doesn’t mean a thing and you know it,’ Harper told him. The woman hadn’t been reported as missing; he’d checked before they left.

  ‘I don’t know, sir. They’re usually the ones who have most to lose.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him. You have a word with the staff, see what they say.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The maid who answered the door looked worried as the inspector announced himself, but led him through to a parlour at the back of the building, knocking on the door before entering.

  ‘A policeman to see you, Mr Carr.’

  The man was sitting in an armchair, staring out at the garden, a pair of walking sticks close by. He turned his head quickly.

  ‘A policeman?’ He had a deep bass voice that seemed to resonate around the room. Harper waited until the maid left, then said, ‘Detective Inspector Harper, sir. You have a wife named Catherine Carr?’

  ‘Has something happened to her?’ There was urgency in his tone. Carr looked close to seventy, with a body that had shrunk and a wispy covering of white hair on his skull. But there was a quick, fiery intelligence in his eyes.

  ‘Yes, sir, I’m afraid something has.’ He paused for the briefest moment. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you she’s dead.’

  ‘I see.’ The man lowered his gaze, silent for a few moments. ‘How did it happen?’

  A strange reaction, Harper thought. Not what he’d expected. The man was sad but distant, as if the woman was a faint relative or acquaintance, not his wife.

  ‘She was murdered, sir. In the Arches, under the railway station. My condolences.’

  Carr closed his eyes and bowed his head.

  ‘Perhaps you’d better sit down, Inspector,’ he said finally.

  Her maiden name was Catherine Sugden, Robert Carr explained, and she’d been in service in the house for many years. After his first wife died, they’d grown close. She was almost thirty years younger than him, a woman with a good head on her shoulders who deserved more than drudgery for the rest of her life. He wanted a companion. They married.

  A little like Annabelle with her first husband, Harper recalled.

  ‘We were perfectly happy for five years,’ Carr said dolefully. ‘She was a good wife, dutiful, all I could have wanted. I retired and let my son take over the factory. It was time to pass it on.’

  A factory. That would explain the money.

  ‘What do you make, sir?’

  ‘Boots,’ Carr replied. ‘My father started it fifty years ago.’

  Of course. Carr and Sons, down on Meanwood Road, the sign painted in bright red and white on the chimney.

  ‘I gather something happened between you and your wife, sir?’ the inspector asked tactfully.

  The man sighed and reached for a crystal decanter of whisky on the small table next to his chair. He poured a glass then held it up, offering one. Harper shook his head.

  ‘She became a convert to all this suffragism and socialism.’ Carr spat the words with distaste. ‘I told her she didn’t need that bloody nonsense. I could give her everything she wanted and more. But it became an obsession with her.’ The inspector listened closely, hearing the bile and seeing the sorrow on the man’s face. ‘Then six months ago she told me she couldn’t live here any more.’ He looked around the room as if he couldn’t understand how she’d abandoned the place. ‘I pleaded with her. We argued. She left on the fifth of April, and that’s the last I saw or heard of her.’ He swallowed the whisky in a gulp and replaced the tumbler. ‘I’d have had her back if she’d wanted. She knew that before she left.’ Carr shook his head. ‘Do you know who killed her?’

  ‘Not yet, sir.’

  ‘If she hadn’t …’ he began, then faltered. Carr raised his eyes. ‘The suffragists and the socialists, Inspector. That’s where you need to look. They turned her head. They poisoned her. It was always Miss Ford said this, Miss Ford said that. You need to start with her.’

  Harper knew exactly who he meant. Isabella Ford. He’d heard Annabelle mention the name. A suffragist, a socialist. She lived out in Adel, a rich Quaker.

  He wasn’t sure how to puzzle out Carr’s reaction, the curious mix of fury and sadness that seemed to make no sense. Perhaps the man had no idea how he really felt.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I have to ask,’ the inspector said finally. ‘Do you know where your wife went when she left? What she was doing?’

  ‘No,’ Carr told him bluntly. ‘I looked. I even employed someone to search for her but he couldn’t find anything. She just vanished. And now you come and tell me someone’s murdered her.’ He raised clouded eyes. ‘What’s wrong with this world, Inspector? All these strange ideas. People killing people.’

  But it was nothing new, Harper thought. Things had always been that way. He gave Carr a few details, holding back far more. He didn’t need to know that his wife’s corpse had been burned by molten iron and crushed under tons of concrete.

  ‘What about her body?’ Carr asked.

  ‘Sir?’ He stiffened, wondering if he’d given away too much.

  ‘I’d like to bury her. She was still my wife, even if she didn’t want anything to do with me any more.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll make sure they write to you once they can release her.’ At the door he turned back and said again, ‘My condolences, sir.’

  Ash was already waiting at the end of the drive. As they strolled back to the Harrogate Road, Harper told the constable what he’d learned.

  ‘I’m not sure what to make of him. I don’t know which was more real, the sorrow or the anger.’

  ‘Maybe both, sir.’

  The inspector turned to look at him. Maybe he was right.

  ‘The servants didn’t want to say too much,’ the constable reported. ‘You can’t blame them, I suppose, he’s their employer. But there was one lass who looked like she was bursting to tell me something. I got her on her own. Turns out she’d been Mrs Carr’s maid.’

  ‘And?’

  Ash pursed his lips under the thick moustache. ‘Your Mr Carr isn’t all he’d have you believe, sir. He liked a drink or two. After that he’d take to insulting his wife, then beating her. That’s what the maid claims, any road.’

  ‘I see.’ It fitted. The burst of anger followed by regret. He’d seen it often enough. Perhaps it was no surprise she’d left in the end, or that he blamed someone else. ‘Often?’

  ‘Often enough, every month or so. Sometimes more. A lot of raised voices after she started getting all political, the maid said. He told her she had to give it up. Either that or get out.’ He glanced at the house.

  ‘And she chose to go.’

  ‘Looks that way, sir. But they’re all agreed it’s six months since she left. They all remember that. Not a word since then.’

  ‘That’s what Carr said, too. April.’

  ‘Do you think he could have done it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Not himself, Harper thought. Not if he walked with sticks. But he had wealth, and that could buy a great deal. Death wasn’t an expensive commodity. Carr was certainly a possibility. He sighed. ‘Come on, let’s get back and see if Billy found anything at the Arches.’

  FOUR

  But it had been a waste of time.

  ‘With all that debris around, there’s no chance of finding anything.’ Reed didn’t try to hide his frustration. ‘I wouldn’t even like to guess if she was killed there.’ He brushed some of the dust off his suit. ‘It’s a bloody mess. You know they’ve already started plans for rebuilding?’

  How? Harper wondered. He’d seen the destruction. How would they even clear it all away, let alone put it up again? He hadn’t held out hope of the sergeant finding much, but they had to try.

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘we know she le
ft in April. Where’s she been since then? She needed a job to support herself.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Dr King said her hands were still smooth, so it wasn’t domestic work. Any ideas?’

  ‘Shopgirl,’ Reed said quickly and the inspector nodded.

  ‘Hundreds of shops in Leeds, though,’ Ash pointed out. ‘We don’t even know where to start. She might not even have been using her real name.’

  ‘We’re going to need to talk to Miss Ford,’ Harper said. ‘Maybe she can tell us more about Catherine Carr.’

  ‘Who’s she?’ Billy asked.

  ‘Isabella Ford,’ Harper explained. ‘She’s a suffragist. You know, votes for women. A socialist, too. Organizes a lot of meetings, things like that.’ He stood and glanced at Ash. ‘You start on the shops. I know it’s thankless,’ he said as the man groaned a little, ‘but it has to be done. Begin in town. You come with me, Billy.’

  They set off through the market. Two o’clock and the traders in the square were gratefully packing up for the day; they’d been there since before dawn. Noise came from the hall, a burble of voices as business continued. They crossed Kirkgate and entered the small union office. Paint was peeling on the window frames and door, and the glass needed a good polish. Inside, there were piles of papers and books on the desks and shelves, scrawled notes scattered around. And a red-headed young man in an old checked suit sitting in one of the chairs, thinking.

  ‘Well, Inspector,’ he said with a grin that took five years off his age, ‘I haven’t had the pleasure of your company in a while. And an associate, too. Am I so dangerous it takes two of you to visit me now?’

  Tom Maguire had grown up in a poor Irish family in Leeds, no more than a few streets from Annabelle. He was still only in his middle twenties, but he’d earned every bit of his reputation as a fiery speaker and leader. He’d organized the labourers and the gas workers and guided them to victory when they went on strike.

  ‘I’m looking for some help,’ Harper told him. ‘This is Sergeant Reed. He’s with the fire brigade.’

  ‘A grand and dangerous job you do, too, Sergeant,’ Maguire told him with an approving nod. ‘My hat’s off to you men. I was very saddened to learn about your colleague.’ He turned to look at the inspector. ‘What kind of information would I have for the police?’