Gods of Gold

by Chris Nickson

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Chris Nickson

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Leeds, June 1890

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Afterword

  A selection of recent titles by Chris Nickson

  The Richard Nottingham Mysteries

  THE BROKEN TOKEN

  COLD CRUEL WINTER *

  THE CONSTANT LOVERS *

  COME THE FEAR *

  AT THE DYING OF THE YEAR *

  FAIR AND TENDER LADIES *

  The Inspector Tom Harper Mysteries

  GODS OF GOLD *

  * available from Severn House

  GODS OF GOLD

  An Inspector Tom Harper Novel

  Chris Nickson

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2014

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2015 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2014 by Chris Nickson.

  The right of Chris Nickson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Nickson, Chris author.

  Gods of gold.

  1. Missing children–Fiction. 2. Murder–Investigation–

  Fiction. 3. Strikes and lockouts–Gas industry–England–

  Leeds–Fiction. 4. Great Britain–Social conditions–

  19th century–Fiction. 5. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title

  823.9’2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8428-2 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-537-7 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-582-6 (ebook)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  To Leeds. It’s good to be home.

  Sing a song of England,

  Shuddering with cold,

  Doomed to slow starvation,

  By the gods of gold,

  See her famished children,

  Hunger-marked, and mean,

  Isn’t that a dainty dish,

  To lay before the Queen?

  Mammon in the counting house,

  Counting out the money,

  His lady in the parlour,

  Eating bread and honey.

  The worker on the highway,

  Short of food and clothes –

  God bless happy England!

  And save her from her foes.

  From, A New Nursery Rhyme, by Tom Maguire

  Published in The Labour Champion, November 11, 1893

  And all the Arts of Life they changed into the Arts of Death in Albion

  William Blake, Jerusalem, Chapter 3

  LEEDS, JUNE 1890

  ONE

  Tom Harper pounded down Briggate, the hobnails from his boots scattering sparks behind him. He pushed between people, not even hearing their complaints as he ran on, eyes fixed on the man he was pursuing, leaping over a small dog that tried to snap at his ankles.

  ‘Police!’ he yelled. ‘Stop him!’

  They didn’t, of course they didn’t, but at least they parted to let him through. At Duncan Street, under the Yorkshire Relish sign, he slid between a cart and a tram that was turning the corner. His foot slipped on a pile of horse dung and he drew in his breath sharply, the moment hanging. The sole gripped and he was running again.

  Harper ducked in front of a hackney carriage, steadying himself with a hand on the horse’s neck. He felt its breath hot against his cheek for a second, then plunged on. He was fast but the man in front was even faster, stretching the distance between them.

  His lungs were burning. Without even thinking, he glanced across at the clock on the Ball-Dyson building. Half past eleven. He forced his feet down harder, arms pumping like a harrier.

  As they reached Leeds Bridge the man leapt into the road, weaving between the traffic. Harper followed him, squeezing sideways between a pair of omnibuses, seeing the passengers stare down at him in astonishment through the window. Then he was free again, rushing past the row of small shops and watching the man disappear round the corner on to Dock Street.

  By the time he arrived the street was empty. He stood, panting heavily, holding on to the gas lamp on the corner, unable to believe his eyes. The man had simply vanished. There was nothing, not even the sound of footsteps. Off to his left, a cluster of warehouses ran down to the river. Across the road the chimneys of the paper mill belched their stink into the air. Where had the bugger gone?

  Harper had been up at Hope Brothers on Briggate, barely listening as the manager described a shoplifter. The man’s mouth frowned prissily as he talked and rearranged a display of bonnets on a table. Outside, the shop boy was lowering the canvas awning against the June sun.

  Harper scribbled a word or two in his notebook. It should be the beat bobby doing this, he thought. He was a detective inspector; his time was more valuable than this. But one of the Hopes lived next door to the new chief constable. A word or two and the superintendent had sent him down here with an apologetic shrug of his shoulders.

  Then Harper heard the shout. He dashed out eagerly, the bell tinkling gently as he threw the door wide. Further up the street a man gestured and yelled, ‘He stole my wallet!’

  That was all he needed. Inspector Harper began to run.

  He tipped the hat back and wiped the sweat off his forehead. The air was sultry, hot with the start of summer. Where was the sod? He could be hiding just a few yards away or already off beyond a wall and clear away in Hunslet. One thing was certain: Harper wasn’t going to find him. He straightened his jacket and turned around. What a bloody waste of a morning.

  He’d wanted to be a policeman as long as he could remember. When he was a nipper, no more than a toddler, he’d often follow Constable Hardwick, the beat bobby, down their street in the
Leylands, just north of the city centre, imitating the man’s waddling walk and nods at the women gathered on their doorsteps. To him, the decision to join the force was made there and then. He didn’t need to think about it again. But that certainty shattered when he was nine. Suddenly his schooldays had ended, like every other boy and girl he knew. His father found him work at Brunswick’s brewery, rolling barrels, full and empty, twelve hours a day and Saturday mornings, his pay going straight to his mam. Each evening he’d trudge home, so tired he could barely stay awake for supper. It took two years for his ambition to rekindle. He’d been sent on an errand that took him past Millgarth police station, and saw two bobbies escorting a prisoner in handcuffs. The desire all came back then, stronger than ever, the thought that he could do something more than use his muscles for the rest of his life. He joined the public library, wary at first in case they wouldn’t let someone like him borrow books. From there he spent his free hours reading; novels, politics, history, he’d roared through them all. Books took him away and showed him the world beyond the end of the road. The only pity was that he didn’t have time for books any longer. He’d laboured at his penmanship, practising over and over until he could manage a fair, legible hand. Then, the day he turned nineteen, he’d applied to join the force, certain they wouldn’t turn him down.

  They’d accepted him. The proudest day of his life had been putting on the blue uniform and adjusting the cap. His mother had lived to see it, surprised and happy that he’d managed it. His father had taken him to the public house, put a drink in his hand and shouted a toast – ‘My son, the rozzer.’

  He’d been proud then; he’d loved walking the beat, each part of the job. He learned every day. But he was happier still when he was finally able to move into plain clothes. That was real policing, he’d concluded. He’d done well, too, climbing from detective constable to sergeant and then to inspector before he was thirty.

  And now he was chasing bloody pickpockets down Briggate. He might as well be back in uniform.

  He paused on the bridge to light a Woodbine and look down at the river. Barges stood three deep against the wharves, and men moved quickly and surely along the gangplanks, their backs bent under heavy loads. It looked like a hard way to earn a day’s pay, but what wasn’t?

  On either side of the Aire the factories were busy, thick smoke rising to cloud the sun. A deep blue slick floated on the water from the indigo works upstream, bright against the dull grey. The bloated corpse of a dead dog sailed past, carried by the current. He watched until it passed from sight.

  Briggate was busy with couples, in from the suburbs and parading in their best clothes. The men were shaved so close their cheeks looked pink and shiny, and their shirt collars stood high and stiff around their necks, Their wives showed off their bright summer dresses in the latest fashions, fresh from the seamstress. Hems swept against the pavements as they walked, parasols spread, eyeing other women they passed or glancing at the goods displayed in the shop windows. The best part of four hundred thousand people lived in Leeds now, rich and poor alike; a sunny Saturday and most of those with brass were out in town to display themselves, he thought.

  He wasn’t in a mood to see any more smug faces this morning. Instead he cut through Queen’s Court, ducking between washing that was strung out to dry between the crumbling old houses, hopeful of a glint of sunlight. A barefoot boy threw a ball against the wall, concentrating furiously on catching it. It slipped from his hand and rolled towards Harper. He picked it up and tossed it back, and the boy grinned as he pulled it out of the air.

  He cut through a ginnel where someone was singing a song beyond a door, and came out by the Corn Exchange, then strode quickly across the market with a wave and a wink to the girls working behind the stall at Mr Marks’s Penny Bazaar and across to Millgarth police station.

  ‘Had a productive morning, sir?’ the desk sergeant smirked. For a moment Harper was tempted to reply, then shut his mouth. Whatever he said, George Tollman would have heard it scores of times before. The man had stood behind that counter since God was a lad. He’d been there twelve years earlier when Harper had nervously reported for his first day as a young constable and he’d likely remain until they carried him out in a coffin. Instead the inspector just shook his head and pushed his way through to the office. He tossed his hat on to the desk and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes for a moment.

  ‘Bad day?’

  ‘One of those when you wonder why you even bother,’ he replied in disgust, glancing up at the man leaning against the wall. Billy Reed had only been a detective sergeant for six months. He was in his early forties, a good ten years older than the inspector. Reed had joined the force after fifteen years in the West Yorkshire Regiment. Harper had been the one to encourage him into plain clothes and then recommended him for sergeant. Reed had celebrated the promotion by going out to Hepworth’s and buying a new suit to replace his old, fraying jacket and trousers, the only civilian clothes he seemed to own. He had his problems, a temper that occasionally flared into violence; at times the black dog would take him over, the pictures of what he’d seen out in Afghanistan with the army rattling around his head. He’d turn quiet then, sullen, filling his nights with drink, trying to forget. But he was as good a copper as Harper had known, loyal and dogged. ‘First the case against Tosh Walker falls apart and now I can’t even run down a pickpocket.’

  They’d been trying to prosecute Walker for all six of the years Harper had been a detective. He’d started out as a minor criminal, no more than a nuisance, but he had an eye for the main chance and a ruthless streak as wide as Briggate. It had made him rich. He offered loans to businessmen who were going through hard times, then forced them out, sometimes for pennies on the pound, more often for nothing. Half a year before, the inspector believed he’d finally cornered the man. He spent months preparing the case. He had three witnesses all willing to testify. Then, just four days before the court case was due to begin, two of those who’d been ready to speak out left Leeds and the third changed his mind. Everything had fallen into tatters, leaving Harper raging and frustrated. Endless weeks of work had crumbled to nothing.

  ‘Never mind,’ Reed told him, ‘it’ll be busy soon enough now the gas workers are on strike.’

  ‘They didn’t have much choice, did they?’ Harper observed. ‘First the council sacks half the stokers at the works, then they lock out the rest and say they’re going to pay them less and take one of their holidays. For God’s sake, Billy, what would you do?’

  ‘You’d better not say that when the chief’s around,’ the sergeant warned. ‘You’ll give the old man an apoplexy. By the way, one of the constables was in here earlier asking for you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ash.’

  He wondered what the man needed. Ash covered the beat that had once been his, the poor area in the heart of Leeds, between the Headrow and Boar Lane, running west from Briggate and across to Lands Lane. Tucked out of sight behind the shops, it was full of the old, squalid yards and courts, a part of town that had barely changed in a century or more, where folk counted themselves rich if they had threepence left come payday. That was where he’d walked every day for six years. He’d known the faces there, the people, all the crime and the promises that end up as nothing. He’d carried men home to their wives on a Saturday night after they’d drunk away their money, tended wounds, and laid a sheet over the old who’d died of hunger.

  Ash was still new, just a year on the force, but he seemed thoughtful and conscientious. If he had something it might be worth hearing. He stood and picked up his hat.

  ‘I’ll go and find him.’

  TWO

  Reed caught sight of himself in the shop window and ran a hand over his beard. Time for a trim soon, he thought. Keep it neat, not straggling on to his chest like an old man. He straightened his back and marched along Boar Lane to the Post Office. It was a grand, imposing building, always bustling with voices and people scuttling f
rom counter to office, a symphony of footsteps on the heavy tiled floor.

  He’d taken his time writing the letter, copying it over and over in his room until he was satisfied. He waited in the queue, then handed over his tuppence and watched the harried clerk toss it on to a pile.

  He exhaled slowly. With luck he’d hear back in a few days. He had the rank and the experience now; it was time to enquire about positions elsewhere. Whitby. That was where he wanted to be.

  He’d visited the place after he left the army. As soon as the regiment returned from Afghanistan he’d turned in his papers. There was plenty of pay in his account, enough to take a month off and walk around Yorkshire, going wherever his feet carried him. It had been an attempt to clear the pictures from his head. He needed to try to forget all the things he’d seen and done out there. But they’d still come back to visit him every night – until he reached Whitby. He’d loved the streets that rose steeply from the harbour, climbed the steps that led to the ruined abbey above the town, and sat there, looking out to sea. In the end he’d spent a week in the place, lodging with a fishing family. He’d passed his evenings in the small alehouses and for once not needed to lose himself in alcohol. His sleep had been deep and dreamless while his days had been filled with wandering. Each morning he’d felt his spirit lighten.

  And then he’d had to leave. But he still ached to return, to find that peace again. It had left him once he’d come back to Leeds, seeing old pals from the service. Some of them were fine, others as troubled as he was, with thoughts behind their eyes that few others could ever understand.