The Clockmaker

by Jane A. Adams

  Sergeant Todd noticed this too and pressed the advantage. ‘You do know that this gentleman is from London?’ he said, leaning almost confidentially across the table. ‘That he’s a murder detective? That like as not he’ll see you end up dancing on the end of a rope?’

  Just to reinforce the point, Sergeant Todd mimed the action; sticking out his tongue and making choking noises while his hand pulled on an imaginary rope.

  Fred Welton paled and shifted his chair back with a loud scrape. ‘I didn’t do nuffin’!’ His voice rose in pitch, arms flailing to emphasize the point. ‘I just helped Gus move the body. All I did! On me mother’s life, that’s all I did.’

  ‘You never had a mother,’ Todd growled. ‘She must ha’ taken one good look at you and left you for the bloody gypsies.’

  Henry shifted position and Todd glanced his way, wondering if he’d gone too far, but Henry had no objection to the pantomime; it seemed to be getting the desired result. He found, though, that he did have an objection to the reference to gypsies. Not one he would have had a few months before, but that had changed after close acquaintance with Malina Cooper, now ensconced in his sister’s house, and her wider family.

  Sergeant Todd, understanding that the inspector was not going to interfere, carried on. ‘Move the body, did you? Hide it so that poor young man’s family went through agony, not knowing if he was alive or dead?’

  ‘What did you do with the body?’ Henry’s voice, calm and controlled, seemed at odds with the sergeant’s tone, but that appeared to upset Fred even more.

  ‘There’s a yard at the back of the station – bit of a dumping ground, it looks like. We hid him there, covered him with a tarp that was lying around and weighted it with bricks. Came back when it was dusk and took him out of town and dumped him in a field.’

  Henry recalled the place. It was on the opposite side of the station to the wall that he and Mickey had speculated was the source of the improvised weapon, but it made sense. Low lying and close to the river, it was likely that it had been subject to the same flooding that had made the field inaccessible and delayed the finding of Joseph’s body. He doubted there’d be much evidence worth searching for by now.

  ‘And I suppose you were nowhere near when that poor young man was killed?’ Todd picked up the questioning again. Reluctantly, Welton turned his attention from Henry.

  ‘No, I weren’t. Gus just wanted to talk to him. Get his dues, but the stupid fool wouldn’t play ball. Gus and Addie took him outside the station so they could have a chat, like. I stood watch just in case anyone else took an interest. Next thing I know, Addie comes racing back, saying he’s done for. I think she means Gus at first, like the kike might have had a knife or summat, but when I get there, I realize he’s dead and I see Gus wiping off his blade on the grass and there’s a bloody great hole in the back of the lad’s skull.’

  ‘And Joseph Levy was definitely dead.’

  Fred looked surprised, as though it had never occurred to him that he could be otherwise. ‘Well, if he weren’t, then he were soon enough,’ he said pragmatically. ‘We lifted him and moved him over a bit of a wall. Then Gus took Addie off somewhere. He came back and I reckoned he dropped her at the Nag’s Head or maybe the Railway Hotel – I don’t remember.’

  Henry nodded, knowing that to be true.

  ‘Then we scooped up the body and hid it, just temp’ry, and then when it started to get dark, we took it across the field. Gus reckoned we didn’t know how long it would be before someone spotted it in the yard. He wanted to make sure it was a while before it were found.’

  ‘And you didn’t wonder about that? You both took a big risk, hanging round until later and then moving the body that far across open ground.’

  Fred’s expression told Henry that he had not. Gus had wanted this done and so Fred had done it.

  ‘And where was the girl while you were hanging around waiting to move a corpse?’ Todd asked.

  It would have been Henry’s next question, but he decided Todd had asked it better.

  ‘Gus brought her from the pub and put her on a train. Told her to get off home.’

  ‘And she did as she was told?’

  Fred Welton nodded. ‘She was there, asleep in bed, when we arrived. Sleeping like the dead.’

  Henry, Mickey Hitchens and Sergeant Todd convened for lunch at the Angel. It was not market day, so the bar was quiet and the food was simple, but Mickey wolfed his sandwiches and then went to ask for more. Todd was a little more circumspect, given the company, but he still put on a good show and downed a pint or three.

  Henry, slower as usual, was thoughtful. He wanted to hear how Mickey had dealt with Gus Dickson.

  ‘Loud mouth, doesn’t say very much with it,’ Mickey told him. ‘But he’s shaken, I can see that. Keeps insisting he didn’t do the murder but admits to moving the body. Dumped the poor bugger in a yard, covered him up and then came back with Fred Welton and moved him later.’

  ‘And does he accuse Welton of doing the killing?’

  Mickey shook his head. ‘No, that’s the interesting thing. Keeps insisting it wasn’t him, but he’s not naming names. By now they’re usually wriggling like maggots and persuading us to catch the other fish.’

  ‘Welton reckons he was keeping watch. That he helped dispose of the body but that was the limit of his involvement.’

  ‘And you believe him?’ Mickey asked.

  Henry took a bite of his sandwich and nodded. He chewed slowly, thinking. ‘I am inclined to,’ he said.

  ‘But there were two injuries,’ Mickey began cautiously, suddenly seeing where his boss was headed.

  ‘And Welton said he saw Dickson wiping his knife blade on the grass,’ Todd put in. He stared at Henry. ‘No,’ he said, shocked as he realized where this was heading.

  ‘I think Adelaide struck the killing blow,’ Henry confirmed. ‘She has the height, she is heavier than Welton and she was angrier than either of them. Joseph had made promises to her and she believed them broken – it doesn’t matter that she betrayed him; all she can see is that he let her down.’

  ‘So she crowns him,’ Todd said. ‘Never underestimate an enraged female,’ he added with such feeling that Mickey had to hide a smile. ‘Think you can make it stick?’ Todd added.

  ‘You want a go at Gus this afternoon?’ Mickey queried.

  ‘No, you keep with him, but face him with the idea that Adelaide Hay confessed – see where it gets us.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  ‘You beat seven shades out of one of mine, cut him up real bad. I’d be entitled to do the same to you.’

  Clem Atkins resisted the impulse to scream. His men were on the other side of the door, but he knew her reputation and knew that he would only get caught in the middle of the fight.

  Instead, he turned and faced the woman sitting quite comfortably in the chair next to his bed. ‘Annie,’ he said. ‘What a surprise. But your boy was on my patch – what happened to him was his own damned fault.’

  ‘Lucky for you, I agree. But that don’t make it right and I will have blood for blood – you know that. It’s just a matter of when. You’d do the same in my position.’

  She stood. As tall as Clem and as broad, carefully and fashionably dressed, the diamonds on her fingers gleaming.

  ‘Just so we understand one another,’ she said. ‘Only we’ve been hearing stories about you. About you mixing with young tykes that should know better. That reckon they can revive what’s been smashed. The story is you’re giving them a hand.’

  ‘The stories are wrong, Annie.’

  ‘Damned right they are. As of now. I’m willing to let bygones be bygones.’

  She opened his bedroom door and stepped out on to the landing. Her sudden appearance caused consternation. Weapons were drawn.

  ‘Tell your boys to back off.’

  ‘Back off,’ Clem said. ‘Annie was just visiting.’

  He watched as she made her way downstairs and held back his men when they wa
nted to rush her. He could see the questions.

  ‘She had something I wanted,’ he said and grinned broadly, letting them draw any conclusion they damn well wanted. The roars and the laughter told him they’d decided exactly which one they wanted – despite the fact he’d been in the room for only minutes.

  He went back inside and watched from his bedroom window as Annie got into a car and was driven away. ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve,’ he said softly. But then he’d always known that. Annie, Queen of the Forty Elephants.

  One time he’d watched her walk into a big department store, Annie and her girls, dressed to the nines, looking for all the world like an exclusive group of Bright Young Things off on a spree. They’d walked out with furs, bolts of silk, jewellery … looking a little heavier than when they’d walked in. As time went on and the threats of violence were proved to be more than threats, it was rumoured that staff saw them coming and quietly disappeared until they’d shopped and gone.

  Annie never fenced what she stole in the capital. Couriers took the small stuff to out-of-town fences; larger items were simply packed into trunks, labelled with legitimate addresses and sent off on the railway with ‘for collection’ labels affixed, to be collected at the station by more of Annie’s out-of-town associates.

  Annie was queen of organization, if nothing else – and she was definitely a hell of a lot else.

  Clem smiled grimly. He opened the bedroom door again and told his men he was turning in for the night. Two would sleep in the room opposite, but he’d not be disturbed again. There was something he had not noticed until Annie had left and that was a brown envelope lying on the middle of his bed. At some point it had been posted and the address on the front crossed out and another applied. One of Atkins’ men had taken it off the boy that they’d beaten up, and although they’d not got much out of him, the boy had confessed he was taking the envelope to Abraham. It had puzzled Clem at the time, but he’d held off doing anything about it while he worked out how he could use this to his best advantage.

  Annie was letting him know that she’d been through his room – that she knew he had this and had laid it out on the bed for him to see just so he’d get the message.

  The trouble, Clem Atkins thought, was that he wasn’t quite sure what message he was supposed to be receiving. One part of it was clear: Annie reckoned she could get to him any time she liked, but that for now he wasn’t important enough for her to bother with. The other was that she knew what the kid had and probably where it came from. But was she warning him off, informing him, asking for a cut? No doubt she would let him know that part soon enough.

  He waited until all was quiet and then crept back down the stairs. The only problem with all the security he had surrounded himself with, Clem thought, was that it also imprisoned him, and if Annie could get in the way she had that evening, it meant there was a leak somewhere. Time for a bit of a purge, maybe. He moved rapidly through the bar, knowing his home turf well enough that he needed no light, and went out the back way. Five minutes later Abraham Levy was opening his back door to a midnight visitor.

  Addie lay on the narrow bunk, staring at the ceiling. She had expected to be called back into the interview room, had heard Gus being brought back and deposited in the other police cell, but no one had come for her.

  A constable brought food and she was allowed out to empty her bucket, but no one spoke to her beyond necessary instructions and no one answered even the simplest of her questions.

  Addie felt herself adrift in some other world, one that had no connection to reality and that she could no longer believe she had ever been a part of.

  She knew it was dark outside. The tiny ventilation grill had let in thin slivers of light but they had gradually faded completely. She supposed they would all be transferred to Lincoln at some point; they couldn’t keep them in police cells indefinitely.

  Addie turned on her side and tried to remember what it had been like when Joseph was asleep beside her, his breathing soft and steady, almost like a child. But even he had lied to her, and that was something she had been unable to forgive.

  Henry knew the effectiveness of silence and the power of time, and after further discussion over lunch it had been decided to make use of both assets.

  ‘Arrange for Fred Welton to be taken to Lincoln today,’ he instructed. ‘If we want him, we can access him there, but I see him as the least use to us, and your accommodation is already stretched. Leave the girl and Dickson in their cells and give orders that they are not to be spoken to, over and above what is necessary. We will continue with our interviews tomorrow morning, and in the meantime I’d like to visit the boarding house where they stayed.’

  ‘And I wouldn’t mind a look around,’ Mickey said. ‘Looks like a pleasant little town. I spotted a bloody great church tower as we came in.’

  ‘Boston Stump,’ Todd told him. ‘Time was they had a light up on top of it that could be seen out in the estuary. Ships used it as a marker. It’s dedicated to Saint Botolph.’

  ‘You seem to go in for biggish churches in these parts,’ Mickey observed.

  ‘From the days when wool was king and rich men wanted to do something to save their souls.’

  They could have shared it with the poor, Henry thought, aware that such thoughts might be judged Bolshevik.

  So the afternoon was spent inspecting the two rooms – bedroom-cum-living room and tiny kitchen – the three had occupied in the boarding house overlooking the tidal river. It seemed that Fred Welton wasn’t supposed to be there; the landlady, who lived two streets away, was outraged. The tenants in the downstairs rooms pleaded ignorance.

  They also spent a pleasant hour at leisure, exploring the mix of medieval, Georgian and Victorian, wandering back and forth across the bridges that linked the two sides of the divided settlement, this town built on ‘havens’, little creeks in the salt marsh that had brought the early settlers to habitable land.

  But the following morning it was all business again. Adelaide Hay and Gus Dickson were brought up from the cells straight after an early breakfast and seated opposite their interrogators. Welton now absent, Sergeant Todd elected to join his opposite number, and he and Mickey now faced the young man. Mickey had a wolfish smile on his face.

  ‘You’ve been telling us porky pies,’ he said. ‘And my mother raised me not to be fond of liars.’

  ‘I told you the truth. I never killed him; I just helped dump the body.’

  ‘And in part I believe you,’ Mickey assured him. ‘You didn’t strike the killing blow, although it was your knife that made the slit beneath his ribs and that you wiped on the grass after. But it was Adelaide who dealt the killing blow, was it not? Came up behind the poor unfortunate and whacked him over the head with half a brick. And a hell of a whack she dealt him, too. Laid his skull open so you could see the brains.’

  Gus Dickson swallowed hard. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘So you’d rather hang for her, would you?’

  On cue, Todd went through his pantomime again. Dickson wasn’t quite as impressed as Fred had been.

  ‘Adelaide whacked him over the head. You stabbed him in the ribs – and it’s pure luck you didn’t strike as well as you might have done. Our pathologist tells us he could have recovered from the knife wound – it bounced off a rib and went in shallow. So you might be equally lucky and the judge might not don his little black cap for you. But the girl? She’s as dead as poor Joseph Levy. There’s not a judge or jury in the country that won’t convict her of murder. Because that’s what it was. Hard and cold-blooded. She killed someone who loved her enough to give up his fiancée and his family and his security, and that’s how she repaid him.’

  Gus Dickson actually laughed. ‘Come off it,’ he said. ‘The Jew boy just had his fun with her. You think someone like him would end up with someone like Addie? He just strung her along, promised her the world. But what sort of world can you buy with empty pockets?’

  ‘You stole what
he had.’

  ‘I stole a watch and a chain. I hid them for a bit and thought to keep them. I always wanted a pretty watch. Then I took it out one day, thinking I might as well make use, and when I opened it up, there was this inscription in the back.’

  He sounded so deeply put out that Mickey laughed at him. ‘Sad for you,’ he said.

  ‘So I got rid – sent Addie to pawn it. She came back with sweet Fanny Adams, so it looks like I’m not the only crook. Thirty bob for a watch like that. Then I found out she’d kept the chain. Like I say, you can’t trust no one.’

  Morning found Abraham on his way to his brother’s house for the first time since Joseph’s funeral. He was furiously angry now and more than a little frightened. Clem Atkins’ midnight visit had crystalized his thinking and confirmed what he had suspected but had not been able to define.

  The time it took for him to travel to his brother’s home did nothing to diminish his anger; nor did the news that his brother was not home but spending the day at one of his shops.

  Abraham paused outside the shop, gathering himself for the storm. This was an Orthodox street. He stood out as a stranger here, despite being of the same faith. Those who had been following him since he left home stood out even more. Abraham cast a glance in their direction, just to let them know he was aware, and then turned his back and went inside. The doorbell jangled. Benjamin looked up. He had been counting stock, checking against a list that a young woman read out. He paused, as did she, finger on the list to mark where they had got to.

  ‘Abraham? What brings you here?’

  Since the funeral Ben had continued to send watches for repair, requests for orders, engraving to be done, but the brothers had not spoken directly.

  Abraham looked pointedly at the assistant. ‘I would like a private word with you.’