Gods of Gold

by Chris Nickson

  He’d been waiting almost half an hour when the door handle turned and she entered, dressed all in black, her widow’s weeds. She was surprisingly small, not even reaching to his shoulder, her hair grey and gathered in a bun. She stood in shadow, away from him, the details of her face hidden.

  ‘My condolences, Mrs Cromwell,’ he began. ‘I’m sorry to call on you, but I’m hoping you can help me.’

  ‘Help you?’ Her voice was fragile, a husk of a thing with no weight behind it. ‘I don’t understand, Inspector.’

  ‘The gentlemen who visited your husband last night. Did you see them at all?’

  She shook her head, a tiny gesture. She was gripping a handkerchief between her fingers, and turning her wedding ring.

  He tried again. ‘Did your husband talk about his business with you?’

  Mrs Cromwell looked at him with confused eyes that seemed unable to focus fully.

  ‘Business? She rolled the word around as if she’d never heard it before. Grief, and the sedative the doctor had given her, had left her distant, removed, he decided. ‘No. He never did. And I didn’t ask. That was Charles’s world.’

  Of course, he thought. Her domain would have been the four walls of the house, the servants and the social calls on friends and family. A different orbit altogether. For a moment he was tempted to tell her that her husband had been in trouble, that there might be nothing left for her, but what good would that do? She was already grieving. She didn’t need that fear on top of it all.

  ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you,’ he said, picking his hat off the chair. As he passed her she placed a hand on his arm, the touch so light he barely noticed it.

  ‘Inspector. Tell me.’ She cleared her throat with a cough. ‘Do you know why he …?’

  There were many things he could have told her, truth and lies. Instead, he replied, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t. Not yet.’

  The other servant, a sturdy lass named Beth who doubled as the cook, kept breaking into tears at every question. She’d been away in her room, had seen nothing and heard nothing until the shot tore her from sleep. She knew nothing of her employer’s affairs and preferred it that way: a woman who knew her role and was content with it.

  As he waited for the omnibus back into Leeds, he decided this had been a wasted trip. But if he hadn’t come, he’d never have known.

  Orphanages, Reed thought. Only two came to mind. One was out in Headingley, where the children could enjoy the clear air, and the other on Beckett Street. The Moral and Industrial Training School, they called it, but it was an orphanage by any other name. It was a part of the workhouse: a school to turn out dozens of factory hands and servant girls each year. Still children, but able to earn a wage.

  It was quicker to walk out there than wait for an omnibus. The streets were quiet, no gas to power machines yet, no work for so many. And after a week without labour and no pay packet to collect, plenty of folk would be seeking credit at the shops.

  He took the York Road, then up through Burmantofts. A woman donkey-stoning the doorstep of her back-to-back house looked up and winked at him as he passed. The municipal cemetery lay across the street from the workhouse. Headstones and marble monuments were dotted around acres of ground, men cutting the grass around them to keep it all neat. Respect for the dead, he thought, and that took him back to the comrades he’d lost in the army.

  Back then it had been simple. You killed the enemy. If he had information, you discovered what it was first. And when you fixed a bayonet and charged, a murderous rage could keep you alive. It was all different back in England. Things were nowhere near as easy and obvious.

  Inside, he was still shaking from everything Beaumont had said over at B Division. He was angry because the man had spoken no more than the truth. He had to learn to control his temper. He needed to cut down on his drinking. All last night he’d been looking forward to Sunday, to seeing the lass in Middleton again. Now it seemed like a bad idea. Elizabeth would be better off without someone like him, someone who couldn’t keep himself in check. If he didn’t arrive she’d be sad for a few minutes. Then life would pick her up and carry her along. She’d forget about him by tea time.

  The training school was an imposing building, but it was meant to be. Towers and turrets and columns stood behind a fence of metal railings. He climbed the steps to the front door and entered, his footsteps echoing and booming on the floor.

  A girl dashed out to him, almost tripping in the maid’s dress and starched apron that were too big for her. She couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, the same age as Martha Parkinson, he thought. She looked up at him with nervous eyes.

  ‘Please sir, can I help you sir?’

  ‘I’d like to see the master,’ he told her gently.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Not sure what to do, she bobbed a small curtsey and led him along a corridor with green and white tiles along the walls. Finally she knocked on a plain wooden door and backed away, not wanting to be seen.

  ‘Enter.’

  He turned the handle and walked into a spacious office, immaculately clean, all the wood polished. The man sat behind a large desk, peering through thick spectacles. His head seemed little more than skull, his features thin and pale, only a few strands of greasy hair clinging to the sides of his scalp. Long, bony fingers were laced together on his lap, resting on the black waistcoat.

  ‘Yes?’ he drawled, looking down his nose.

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Reed, sir.’ The man sat a little more upright, suddenly attentive. ‘You’re the master here?’

  ‘I am,’ the man agreed with a short nod. ‘Nathaniel Frith.’ He didn’t extend a hand. ‘How might I help you, Sergeant?’

  ‘Just a few questions, if you’d be so good, sir.’ He smiled genially.

  ‘Of course. It’s a duty to help the police. That’s what I tell the boys and girls here.’

  Reed noted the cane sitting prominently on the desk. He had no doubt the man told his pupils forcibly. He had the weak look of a bully.

  ‘How many children do you have here, sir?’

  ‘It varies,’ Frith answered slowly. ‘Between fifty and sixty.’

  ‘How many girls, sir?’

  ‘Usually about twenty-five,’ he said after some consideration. ‘Why?’

  ‘Do any abscond?’ Reed ignored the man’s question.

  ‘One or two.’ He raised spindly brows. ‘There are always recalcitrant children, Sergeant. A good beating and withholding meals can help them see their errors, I find.’ His eyes seemed to twinkle as he spoke.

  ‘How many girls haven’t come back, sir? Say in the last few months.’ He let the question hang in the air.

  ‘I’ll say again, Sergeant: why do you want to know?’

  ‘Inquiries, sir.’ He tried to make the words sound affable, but with a steel threat behind them.

  The man sighed, pulled off the spectacles and cleaned them with a handkerchief from his pocket. He held them up to the light then replaced them on his face and tucked the linen away before answering.

  ‘Two of them. My men couldn’t find them.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘Nine weeks on Sunday.’

  ‘Did you inform the police, sir?’

  ‘No,’ the man admitted quietly. Of course not, Reed thought. He’d already checked the records; no child had been reported missing from the place. It could have led to awkward questions into Frith’s methods and how many more had vanished during his time.

  ‘Their names, sir?’

  ‘Amelia Elizabeth Thornton and Cassie Osbourne,’ Frith said after a small hesitation.

  ‘And how old are they?’

  ‘Nine and eight.’ What colour had been in Frith’s face had vanished. Reed wanted to be the bad dream Firth experienced at night. The sergeant had expected more backbone from the man, more resistance, but he’d crumpled at the first question. Not that the truth would have been too difficult to discover. ‘Amelia was always a wayward child. Even beati
ngs couldn’t teach her.’

  ‘And the other girl, Cassie?’

  ‘A disciple of the other one.’ He shook his head. ‘Hopeless, the pair of them. And better off gone from here before they could influence the other girls.’

  ‘Why didn’t you report them missing, sir? There’s no knowing what might have happened to them.’ He paused for a moment. ‘It was your duty.’

  ‘Duty?’ Frith said. ‘My duty is to prepare these children for the world, Sergeant, to make them useful and productive and obedient. Some are beyond that.’

  ‘I’ll be informing the proper authorities, sir,’ Reed told him, and relished the words, watching them sting. ‘Now, you’re going to tell me more about the girls.’

  The matron at the Cliff Road orphanage was made of harder stuff. It took half an hour of questions, flattery and threats to persuade her to disclose that a girl had gone missing eight weeks before. A seven-year-old named Jane Grayson.

  By the time he’d uncovered the information the matron was in tears, begging him not to report it, pleading that she’d lose her position for a lack of diligence and never find another. He pressed her, and got a description and more. Jane had always insisted that her mother was still alive. She’d run off to find her before, but on every previous occasion she’d been found and returned.

  Christ, he thought as he came out blinking into the hot sun, how many others had gone from here and vanished without word, with people either not missing them or too afraid to report a disappearance? He walked back down to Woodhouse Moor and caught the tram back into Leeds, a horizon of chimneys touching the sky ahead of him. But no smoke filling the air. Not yet. On Monday it would all be business as usual. The fires and factories would be open. Men would be grateful to be earning a wage again. They’d have money to spend and profits would roll back into the bank accounts of the wealthy. He might never agree with Tom Harper’s politics, but he had to concede that the man had a point. It was the workers who laboured and then had to fight for every right.

  ‘Well?’ the inspector asked as soon as Reed entered the room.

  ‘Three girls gone in the last three months. Two from Beckett Street, one from the orphanage.’

  ‘Not reported?’

  ‘No.’

  Harper frowned. ‘We’ll deal with that part later. How old were they?’

  The sergeant laid out what he’d learned. Harper listened closely, scribbling notes on a sheet of paper.

  ‘All long before Martha,’ he said finally. ‘But these other girls have disappeared, too.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean—’ Reed began, but the inspector waved him down.

  ‘I know. They could have left Leeds or be begging or anything. I know that. And we haven’t found any bodies. But come on, Billy, you know how easy it is to hide a corpse. Especially a small one.’

  ‘There’s still one thing, though.’ Harper looked at him, waiting. ‘Why would Tosh Walker take young girls? We looked into him very thoroughly. We both questioned him when we had him in before. And we never saw any sign of that, did we?’

  ‘No,’ Harper agreed slowly. ‘But we weren’t looking in that direction.’ They’d been concerned with putting him in the dock for forcing a man out of his own business. One case. They’d looked into Walker’s affairs, the accounts he had with the Yorkshire Penny Bank and Beckett’s. They’d talked to everyone they knew, bent and straight, and never heard a hint or a whisper about children. But their interest had been elsewhere. ‘Perhaps it’s time we did,’ he said.

  ‘We don’t even have a real connection, Tom. Maybe the boxer and his friend took Martha for themselves. Have you thought about that?’

  He had. It was possible. But deep in his gut he didn’t believe it. Call it instinct, call it anything, but he was certain there was something more behind it all. He didn’t know if Martha was still alive, but he was going to find out what had happened to her. He owed Betty Parkinson that much. Stuck in Armley Jail, helpless, hopeless, her husband dead and her daughter gone, the least he could give her was an explanation. And if he could, he’d bring Martha home.

  ‘Time to start asking questions again,’ Harper said.

  NINETEEN

  Bridge End felt like a desperate place. Even in the sunshine, with fresh cobbles on the street and the afternoon traffic passing, it seemed dark and empty, as if all the people inside were dead. Large posters pasted on the sides of the houses advertised an auction of materials used to refinish the roads. The doors on the buildings were all closed, windows grimy. Close by, the stench from the river rose in the heat as the water moved by sluggishly. Barges and boats lay moored, masts rising, the chatter of the men there a constant noise in the background.

  The shop he wanted stood right on the corner. The glass in one dirty window was cracked, just as it had been for the last five years. Light filtered in through the cobwebs that covered the windows. The bell over the door rang as he entered, and a man emerged silently from the back room. He wore an old shirt with a soft collar, a thin black tie and waistcoat. A grubby apron was tied around his waist.

  John Call needed a haircut and a shave. The stubble had grown dark across his cheeks, blending into the heavy moustache over his top lip. His fingernails were always bitten to the quick, his skin rimed with dirt. He stood behind the counter, arms folded.

  ‘Something I can help you with, Mr Harper?’

  The same goods seemed to have been on the shelves and under the glass on the counters forever. Jars of hair tonic, restorative pills, liquorice root in a jar, bottles of liquids in greens and reds and blues with thick layers of sediment at the bottom, all of it covered with a layer of dust. But no one bought what was on display. People came here to sell the property they’d stolen.

  Call had spent time in jail for fencing. He’d never made much money; he only dealt with petty thieves. Now he’d become a good source of information for Harper. It was easier than taking him in and charging him again and again, and he’d led them to quite a few arrests.

  ‘Tosh Walker,’ the inspector said.

  Call shook his head. ‘I’m saying nowt.’

  ‘You’ll say plenty.’

  ‘Not Tosh.’ Call kept his voice firm. ‘You asked me last time and then he walked.’

  ‘And you said nothing last time, either.’

  ‘I like to stay alive. Nowt wrong with that.’

  ‘This is different, John.’

  ‘Oh aye?’ the man said doubtfully. He hawked tobacco into a spittoon behind the counter. ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Young girls.’

  ‘Tosh?’ He laughed in disbelief. ‘Get on with you. I’ve never seen him with a woman, let alone a young girl. Or a fella either, if that’s what you’re going to ask.’

  ‘What about him employing a boxer and another man?’

  Call shook his head. He knew the way to stay safe and living – you didn’t say anything about Tosh Walker.

  ‘Who’d be willing to talk?’ Harper asked.

  ‘No one with an ounce of sense.’

  ‘Who?’ he pressed.

  ‘Mebbe try Jem Arkroyd. But don’t say I sent you.’

  ‘I won’t.’ You kept your narks safe and protected. That was the way it worked. It had taken time to bring Call around, to make him into something useful. There were years of secrets left in him yet. Harper wasn’t about to waste that.

  ‘He’s not afraid of Tosh. Daft bugger.’ He spat again.

  Harper knew Jem, a big man with ropes of muscle in his arms and his neck. He’d been a stevedore once, carrying hundredweight sacks of this and that on and off the barges on the river. Back then he’d thieved from the cargos, and was big and violent enough that no one was going to stop him.

  It had grown from there into a small empire along the waterfront. If someone wanted to be employed loading barges, they went through Jem. He kept things in order, made his agreements with the boat owners and the warehouses. On the surface it was legal enough, and Harper had never tested the depths. So
on enough the union would come. That would be a real battle for Arkroyd to fight.

  Not his first, though. Tosh Walker had tried to take over his racket and been sent packing. When he’d sent tough lads in, Jem had beaten them with his own hands. No charges had ever been pressed but hatred had stood between them ever since.

  The man’s office was a ramshackle shed on the riverbank, the door open wide. Workers were busy, a bustle of activity, men stripped to the waist and sweating in the heat as they laboured, picking up the heavy sacks as if they weighed nothing. The lack of gas made no difference to the work out here.

  Arkroyd was sitting in his hut, sipping from a cup of tea and sucking on a pipe, boots up on a chair. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to show powerful forearms covered in faded tattoos, and a kerchief was knotted around his throat. He’d be out there himself, bending his back and leading by example if there weren’t enough workers or the men were moving too slowly. He weighed half as much again as Harper and all of it was muscle.

  Jem was clean-shaven, his head cropped short, his broken nose set at an angle. He was the only man the inspector knew who never wore a hat. He looked dangerous and he was.

  ‘How do,’ he said.

  ‘Mr Arkroyd.’

  ‘And you’re that copper. Harris, is it?’

  ‘Harper. Detective Inspector.’ Arkroyd knew his name; this was just his way of showing he was in charge. The river was his manor and Harper was a guest; that was how Arkroyd would see it. The inspector knew better; any problem and he’d bring down the law quickly enough. Nowhere in Leeds was going to be off-limits to the police.

  ‘Well, everything’s above board here. Your lot come down often enough to make sure of it. You have any questions you can talk to my lawyer.’

  ‘And who’s that?’ he asked, although he could guess.

  ‘Mr Desmond in Park Square.’

  Harper smiled. ‘I’m not here about any irregularities.’