Two Bronze Pennies

by Chris Nickson

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed quickly.

  He waited, but the rabbi didn’t move, staring at something no one else could see.

  ‘You know, where I grew up, they murdered Jews for fun,’ he said after a few moments, his eyes wet with tears. ‘They did it for sport. So we ran, because running was the only way to stay alive. Then, when we came here, we wondered if we’d run far enough or fast enough, whether it would be the same again. We had children and we built lives. But always, we keep our eyes open and a bag close by.’ He turned his eyes on Harper, the tears shining on his cheeks. ‘Is this the way it is now? Do we have to run again?’

  ‘No, sir,’ he promised. ‘That’s something you’ll never have to do any more.’

  From time to time he’d heard people, talking in the pubs after a few pints loosened their tongues. Jew this and Jew that. Hatred and fear. But it had never been more than words. Until now.

  He watched Feldman shuffle away, exchanging a few solemn words here and there as he went. He stopped to talk to a young woman, and gently touched her shoulder as she put her hands over her face.

  ‘Did you hear all that?’ he asked. Reed nodded and lit a cigarette, smoke curling into the air. He looked down at the corpse.

  ‘It’s the position he was left in that worries me.’

  Harper agreed. A mockery of the crucifixion, out on the cobbles. ‘And the time. Christmas Eve.’

  ‘What do you think?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘I don’t know yet, Billy.’

  ‘The pennies?’ Reed asked. ‘What do you make of them?’

  Harper shook his head. It was a strange touch, a ritual from long ago. Money to pay the ferryman for the crossing into the afterlife. He’d read about it years before. But it seemed curious. A way to emphasize death? That connection some people seemed to make between Jews and money?

  ‘I’m not sure. It could be something or nothing.’

  ‘I’ll tell you another thing, too. Look around him. There’s hardly any blood. He wasn’t killed here.’

  Harper nodded; he’d noticed. What it all meant was anyone’s guess.

  ‘Talk to everyone in the houses round here and find out if they saw anything,’ he ordered. ‘Start the bobbies on that. One or two of them must speak Yiddish. And have a word with that girl over there.’ He pointed at her, surrounded now by others trying to give some comfort. ‘It looks like she knew Abraham Levy.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll speak English?’

  The inspector glanced at her. No more than sixteen. Probably born in Leeds. The place where her parents had lived would be no more than horror stories to her.

  ‘I’m sure she does,’ he said.

  ‘What about the body?’ Reed wondered. ‘Do you want me to send it over to Hunslet for Dr King?’

  ‘No,’ Harper said slowly. With Christmas, the police surgeon wouldn’t be there for the next two days. There was little he could tell them that they couldn’t see for themselves. He knew the Jewish way, burial before the next sunset. He could give them that, if nothing else. ‘They’ll have an undertaker along soon. And Billy …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Once they’ve all gone, take a look through his pockets. And have them start searching for the knife that killed him. It might be around somewhere. I’m going to Millgarth and write up the report.’

  THREE

  The women moved away like a wave as he approached. It was always that way, Reed thought. As if they didn’t want to be too close to a copper. As if they were all guilty of something.

  ‘Miss,’ he said, and the girl stared up at him. The first thing he noticed was her eyes, dark and deep, then the marks of tears on her cheeks. She had a headscarf knotted under her chin and a shawl gathered round her shoulders on top of a thin coat. The hem of a black dress trailed over the top of her button boots. ‘Miss,’ he repeated, ‘did you know Mr Levy?’

  She opened her mouth then just nodded.

  ‘How did you know him?’ Reed asked.

  ‘He … we … we’d been courting.’ She sounded hoarse, stunned, as if talking was an effort, but her accent was pure Yorkshire.

  ‘Do you know what might have happened?’

  Anger flashed across her face. ‘They killed him.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘You.’ She almost spat the word. ‘The English.’

  It took him half an hour to learn it all as they stood and shivered. Someone brought out hot, sweet tea, and Reed cupped his hands gratefully around the mug. Her name was Rachel Wasserman. She’d grown up in Nile Street, just three doors from Abraham Levy. From the very first there’d been an understanding between the families that the two of them would marry once they were old enough. It seemed a fair bargain. He’d give her a good life and in exchange she’d be a loyal wife. But a year before he’d started attending meetings and coming home with ideas. About Jews. About a homeland in Palestine. Their birthright. The land promised to them in the Bible. Ideas that caught fire in both of them.

  ‘Did he want to go and live there?’ Reed asked.

  Rachel shook her head. ‘Not us,’ she told him. ‘We couldn’t, not with our parents here. But our children.’ She turned silent for a few moments at the thought of those who would never be born now. ‘A place they’d never have to leave. What Abraham wanted was for us to be treated properly.’ She stared at him defiantly. ‘That’s why they killed him.’

  ‘Properly?’ He didn’t understand.

  Three others had moved close, all of them under twenty. Two boys and a girl.

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be Jewish here,’ the young woman told him.

  ‘No,’ Reed admitted. He’d never even given it a thought.

  ‘In a shop they’ll serve everyone before me,’ she continued. ‘They’ll make me put my money on the counter so they don’t have to touch my hand.’

  ‘They spit at us in the street,’ one young man said.

  ‘They don’t want us here,’ the other boy told him, his voice bitter. ‘But we were born here, we’re as English as they are.’

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like not to be wanted somewhere,’ Rachel Wasserman told him. ‘Abraham did. We all do.’

  But he did. When he’d been a soldier with the West Yorkshires he’d spent two years fighting in Afghanistan. He’d seen the looks of hatred all over the country, known the natives only tolerated him because he carried a rifle. And he’d seen what they did to those they caught.

  ‘What did Abraham do?’ he asked.

  ‘He made sure people treated us like everyone else.’ Rachel held her head up with pride.

  ‘Did he belong to any organizations?’

  ‘Why?’ one of the young men asked angrily. ‘What good do they do? All they do is talk. Words.’ He spat.

  ‘Where did he go tonight?’ Reed asked, looking around the faces. ‘Do any of you know?’

  ‘Abraham liked to walk,’ the other girl said. ‘All over Leeds.’

  ‘And you’ve no idea where he was for the last few hours?’

  Rachel Wasserman shook her head and began to cry again.

  Harper wrote up his report. Not that there was much. The wounds on the body, the fact that he’d been killed somewhere else. The bobbies on the house-to-house had nothing to add when they returned. If anyone had heard anything, they’d believed it was someone going to the outhouse. No one had looked. No one had paid attention. They’d been in their homes, simply trying to keep warm.

  Reed came into the office, tossed his hat on the desk and stood by the fire, holding out his hands to the flames.

  ‘Did the girl tell you anything?’

  ‘Seems our Abraham was a bit of a firebrand.’

  ‘Firebrand?’ the inspector sat back. ‘How do you mean?’

  The sergeant explained.

  ‘None of them knew where he’d gone,’ he finished in exasperation. ‘It could have happened any bloody where, Tom.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Harper shook his head
. ‘No one’s going to carry a body far. Never mind the weather. Someone would see them. Was there anything in his pockets?’

  ‘Just a handkerchief, a packet of Senior Service and some matches. Nothing to help. We don’t have much to go on, do we?’

  Not a thing, Harper thought. Just a corpse and plenty of questions.

  ‘I’ll talk to his parents tomorrow. Maybe they’ll know more.’

  ‘I suppose leave is cancelled?’ Reed asked warily.

  ‘You can still take Boxing Day,’ the inspector told him. ‘I’ll square it with the super.’

  He wanted Billy to spend time with the widow in Middleton he’d been seeing since July. She was good for him. He was drinking less now, and his temper didn’t flare or flicker so often. He was a good man, an excellent copper. But he was haunted; until Elizabeth, he’d kept people at bay. Somehow, almost effortlessly, she’d found a way through to him.

  It was past four when he unlocked the door at the Victoria and eased his way into bed. Annabelle stirred and turned towards him.

  ‘Bad?’ Her voice was heavy with sleep.

  ‘Bad enough.’ He kissed her forehead tenderly. ‘I’ll worry about it in the morning. Happy Christmas, Mrs Harper.’

  FOUR

  By eight he was back at Millgarth police station.

  He’d given Annabelle her present before he left, the jet and silver pendant that had belonged to his mother. She let out a small cry of pleasure as she opened the wrapping, dashed off to the mirror to hold it against herself, admiring it as if it was the best gift she’d ever received, kissed him, put it on and kissed him again, leaving the kettle to boil and boil, filling the kitchen with steam.

  ‘Do you know when you’ll be home?’ she asked as he pulled on his heavy gloves.

  ‘No.’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry. It’s …’

  ‘It’s your job, Tom. I knew that when I married you. Dinner’s at two if you can be here. Even for an hour, love …’ There was hope in her eyes.

  ‘I’ll try,’ he told her. ‘I promise.’

  The cold was bone-bitter as he stepped outside. No trams on Christmas Day, he thought grimly, just the frozen walk into town.

  Superintendent Kendall was already at his desk, freshly shaved, his dark suit pressed, moustache waxed to pointed ends. A murder was enough to drag him into the station on a holiday. He let out a long sigh.

  ‘I saw the report. Happy Christmas, eh, Tom?’

  ‘I’m seeing the parents this morning. The boy was Rabbi Feldman’s nephew.’

  ‘I heard. We’d better clear this one up very quickly. We don’t need him breathing down our necks.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The superintendent tapped the papers on front of him. ‘So what’s not in here?’

  ‘Billy Reed talked to Levy’s friends. The lad was quite political.’

  Kendall’s eyes narrowed. ‘Political how?’

  ‘He thought Jews should be treated the same as everyone else. Quite outspoken about it, by all accounts. Talking about a Jewish homeland in Palestine.’ He shrugged.

  Kendall stroked his moustache. ‘Outspoken enough to get him killed?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Harper answered carefully. ‘I don’t really know yet.’ All the way into town he’d been weighing the possibilities.

  ‘What does your gut tell you, Tom?’

  ‘I think it was that way. That’s how it feels at the moment.’

  Harper remembered the way people treated the Jews when he was young. At first everyone had been wary of the outsiders with their dark eyes and strange language. But a year or two on and they’d become part of the neighbourhood, just a little different, with their odd ways and Saturday Sabbath.

  Yet there were always a few who wouldn’t accept them. The Andersons had been the worst. The wife was a shrunken shrew with a tongue as sharp as her teeth, never a kind word for anyone. And there was Joe, leering after the girls while he talked about dirty kikes. His son Jack had been as bad. He’d been in the same year at school as Harper. A natural bully, he’d deliberately pick fights with the skinny little Jewish lads just to punch them until they bled. Then more Jews arrived, a family or two at first, soon four or five a month, until it seemed as if they were coming on every tide. The Andersons moved away, flitting in the night with their rent unpaid.

  ‘We can’t afford to let this build,’ Kendall said. ‘The last thing we need is something simmering here. Find whoever did it and let’s nip any trouble in the bud.’

  ‘Yes, sir. One thing, though. He definitely wasn’t murdered where we found him. We need men to look for the killing ground. It can’t have been far away.’

  ‘With Christmas, I can’t spare any bobbies until tomorrow.’ The inspector was just turning the doorknob when Kendall added, ‘You haven’t forgotten about the twenty-eighth, have you?’

  ‘Twenty-eighth?’ His mind was a blank.

  ‘That French policeman’s coming to look into the Le Prince disappearance. I told you last week.’

  ‘But—’

  The Superintendent took off his spectacles and polished them on his handkerchief.

  ‘You’re the same rank as him, Tom. It’s protocol. Chief Constable’s orders. You don’t have to do anything, just help if he needs it. At least he’s supposed to speak good English.’ He searched for a crumpled note. ‘He’s arriving on the ten past twelve from London. You’d better meet him at the station.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  Kendall squinted, trying to make out the handwriting.

  ‘Bertrand Muyrère.’ He struggled with the word, then passed the paper to Harper. ‘Something like that, anyway. See he finds a decent hotel. He’s paying, mind. We’re not picking up the bill.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And it’s just a cooperation job, remember that.’ He frowned. ‘Odd case, though.’

  It was. He’d read about it, front pages in the newspapers. Louis Le Prince was a Frenchman, an inventor, famous as the man who made pictures that moved. Harper had talked to a few who’d seen them; they’d scarcely been able to believe their eyes.

  Le Prince had come over to Leeds, married his boss’s daughter and dreamed up the camera; he’d filmed images in his father-in-law’s garden and on Leeds Bridge. During the summer he’d gone back to see his family in France, taking the camera with him, before heading off to America to patent the device. But on the way he’d simply vanished. Boarded the train from Dijon to Paris and that was the last anyone had seen of him, as if the air itself had taken him.

  ‘Yes, sir. I don’t think he’ll find his culprit here, though.’

  ‘Nor do I, but we’ll show willing. Look after him.’

  ‘Anything more during the night?’ Harper asked.

  Reed shook his head wearily. ‘Not a thing. No one’s come forward. I have someone going back round the houses on Trafalgar Street. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Come along with me. I want to take a look at the place in the light.’

  ‘After that?’

  ‘We’ll see. And happy bloody Christmas, Billy.’

  There wasn’t much to discover. Wind whipped along the road, swirling in eddies between the blocks of houses. The inspector kept his hands in his pockets, huddled tight against the cold. He stared at the ground and the outhouses. Here and there a woman’s face gazed down at him, half-hidden in an upstairs window. Down the street he could hear the sound of a sweatshop, men crammed together in a single room making clothing. The sewing machines hummed at the edge of his hearing. No Christmas in the Jewish calendar.

  He spotted something that might have been a bloodstain on the stones. He crouched, running a hand over it, fingertips checking the spaces between the cobbles. It was nothing.

  ‘Did you look at his hands?’ Harper wondered.

  ‘No cuts or scratches,’ Reed answered. So Abraham Levy hadn’t put up a struggle. From the sound of him, that seemed unlikely unless the knife had taken him by surprise.

  In hi
s bones he was sure that no one from the Leylands had done this. But he’d been in the job long enough to keep an open mind. It was murder; anything was possible. He stood, thinking, then fumbled in his coat and took out his pocket watch.

  ‘Time to talk to the parents,’ he said.

  He could have found his way around the house in a blindfold. The rooms were exactly the same as the home where he’d grown up, as every other place around here. They sat cramped around a table in the kitchen. The father, his eyes locked and uncomprehending in his pain. The mother, small and dumpy, all in black from the scarf around her head to the stockings that poked out from her long dress, kneading a handkerchief between stubby fingers. The rabbi, his back straight, his hand over his sister’s. Three children, all boys, the oldest maybe fourteen. And Harper. Reed stood, his back against a wall.

  The room was warm, the black range giving off enough heat for Harper to remove his overcoat. He’d asked his questions and received the answers, everything translated by Feldman from the rush of Yiddish.

  ‘You didn’t tell me your nephew was political,’ he finally said to the rabbi.

  ‘He was young, Inspector. Impatient. He didn’t understand that changes takes time. He wanted everything now. Weren’t you like that at seventeen?’

  ‘I was rolling barrels all day at Brunswick brewery.’

  ‘And reading at night.’ He gave a quick smile at the surprise on Harper’s face. ‘I’ve been asking. There are people around here who still remember you.’

  ‘Moishe Cohen?’

  ‘And others,’ Feldman said with a small nod. ‘From what they tell me, you’re quite political yourself.’

  ‘I’m a policeman,’ Harper answered.

  ‘There’s the policeman and there’s the man,’ the rabbi explained slowly. ‘The head and the heart.’

  ‘And there’s a killer to catch. Every piece of information is important.’

  Feldman stared at him. ‘What do you want me to say, Inspector?’ he asked slowly. ‘Abraham wanted what we all want. He thought he should have that because he was a person like everyone else. He hasn’t lived through worse. Most of us have.’