The Detective Branch

by Andrew Pepper

  Briefly Pyke told them what had happened at the pawn shop, that three men including the owner had been shot and killed, then he outlined how the investigation was proceeding. Both men seemed happy enough with his account, but the fact that Wells had been invited to this meeting in the first place worried Pyke. The Detective Branch, with just five men, was a minor department, and although it answered directly to the office of the two commissioners, this autonomy was constantly under threat. Each of the divisions had its own area of jurisdiction and some superintendents resented the fact that crimes committed in their patch could be handed over to the Detective Branch. Some argued that the Detective Branch wasn’t strictly necessary and that crimes committed in their areas could be investigated just as well by their own men.

  When Pyke had finished talking, Mayne invited Wells to respond and the acting superintendent told them about some Irish ruffians who had been seen firing their pistols on waste ground near King’s Cross. Pyke’s thoughts immediately turned to the Raffertys, and when Wells added that these Irishmen had been spotted drinking in the King of Denmark on Long Acre, the place Villums had mentioned, he knew they were talking about the same men.

  Mayne turned his gaze towards Pyke. ‘In the last hour, and with my approval, Walter has dispatched a group of officers from the Executive Division to pay this establishment a visit and, I hope, apprehend the men in question.’ He looked across at Wells. ‘Do you have their names, Walter?’

  ‘No names, I’m afraid. Just descriptions.’

  ‘I see.’ Pyke took in this information, wondering whether any of the descriptions would match Conor Rafferty. ‘Does this mean I’m no longer in charge of the investigation?’

  ‘Not at all. But we both felt that, in the circumstances, time was of the essence. In view of the seriousness of the incident, I feel that the investigation would benefit from Walter’s expertise and experience.’

  Pyke glanced across at Wells. ‘And who would be in overall charge of the investigation?’

  ‘You would still run the day-to-day affairs.’ Mayne tapped his fingers on the desk. ‘This is about co-operation between departments. Anyway, you’ll be snowed under as it is. Another pair of hands can’t do any harm.’

  ‘You don’t seem especially convinced by the course of action we’ve taken,’ Wells commented, trying to smooth over the situation. ‘You’re a plain-speaking man by reputation. I’d like to hear what you’ve got to say.’

  Pyke shrugged. He considered telling them about the Rafferty brothers but decided this would only stoke Wells’s rash decision-making. ‘What evidence is there to indicate that these men were involved in the robbery?’ He waited. ‘Aside from the fact they’re Irish and were seen in a pub on Long Acre?’

  When neither of the men answered immediately, Pyke added, ‘And to date, our enquiries have led us to believe we’re looking for a single gunman, not a mob.’

  Mayne’s jaw hardened and he shook his head. ‘A single gunman couldn’t have fired all three shots.’

  Wells leaned back against his cushioned chair and extended his arms upwards. ‘Perhaps I might ask, Detective Inspector, what is your opinion of the Irish?’

  ‘The Irish?’ Pyke turned to look at him. ‘I know a few, rich and poor, and I couldn’t generalise.’

  ‘Perhaps you should spend more time in places like Saffron Hill or Little Dublin. Ten or fifteen to a room, fifty in every building. More arriving by the day and reproducing quicker than vermin.’

  ‘If we peddle that notion to the newspapers, I guarantee we’ll see Catholics hanging from gas-lamps by the end of the week. Is that what you want? Mobs of irate, self-righteous Englishmen burning people out of their homes?’

  Wells clenched his jaw but said nothing.

  ‘Enough of this,’ Mayne interrupted. ‘Personal views aside, we are following up on this line of enquiry because it is, or might be, pertinent to your investigation.’

  Pyke was surprised that the commissioner had again referred to it as his investigation and wondered to what extent this was true.

  ‘More to the point,’ Mayne added, ‘I want the two of you to cooperate with the new superintendent of Holborn Division.’

  ‘I thought that position hadn’t been filled,’ Pyke said. He’d heard that the old superintendent had retired but that a replacement still hadn’t been found.

  ‘It hadn’t,’ Mayne said carefully. ‘Until this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘In light of the events that have brought us all here I felt it was imperative to make an appointment. And as fortune would have it, there was a suitable man willing to put himself forward.’

  There was a knock on the door. ‘Come,’ Mayne barked, adding, ‘That should be him. I asked him to attend this meeting.’

  Benedict Pierce strode into the room and nodded politely at Wells. Ignoring Pyke, he said, ‘Sir Richard,’ and waited for Mayne to invite him to sit. He had the stiff demeanour of a military man but, unlike Wells, Pyke knew for a fact he had never seen, or been anywhere near, active service. All of the buttons on his frock-coat had been polished and there was a perfect crease running down the length of his trousers. Not a single hair on his head was out of place and his chin was smooth and clean shaven. He removed his stovepipe hat, sat down on the empty chair next to Wells and crossed his legs.

  Pyke considered his options. He could refuse to work with Pierce and see what transpired, or he could say nothing and find out what kind of game Pierce was playing.

  ‘You know Walter, of course. Pyke, too.’ For Pyke’s benefit, Mayne added, ‘I’m pleased to say that Superintendent Pierce has agreed to assume control of E Division with immediate effect. Any questions?’

  Pyke smiled, deciding to keep his thoughts to himself. ‘I’m pleased, for your sake, that you were able to fill the vacancy at such short notice.’

  There were many reasons why Pyke disliked Pierce. The fact that the man was punctilious, vain and self-regarding was almost beside the point. Pyke didn’t hold Pierce’s rampant ambition against him either, even if this meant he had risen with an almost obscene swiftness through the ranks of the New Police. What rankled most was that this success was not due to Pierce’s skills as an investigator or even an administrator but rather because he had always sought out the right connections. He belonged to the clubs that mattered and had even joined a Masonic lodge. Pyke had traded with men like Villums and the information he had bought and sold had secured his position in the New Police. But while he had turned a blind eye to some of Villums’s activities, he had never accepted a bribe to cover up someone’s involvement in a murder and had never allowed the rich and powerful to tell him how to do his job. Pyke suspected this wasn’t true of Pierce, but it was the man’s hypocrisy which galled him most of all; the fact that the new head of E Division could let a rich man who’d strangled his servant live out his days in peace and yet would make sure a poor man who had stolen in order to feed his starving family was sent to the scaffold.

  ‘Good.’ Mayne glanced at Wells and turned to Pierce: ‘I take it you’ve now had a chance to visit St Giles for yourself.’

  Pierce nodded. ‘I’m pleased to report that the crowds have diminished and that my men have secured the premises.’ Uncrossing his legs, he glanced across at Pyke and added, ‘In fact, I believe I’ve come across some information which may be of use to the investigation.’

  ‘Go on, Benedict.’

  ‘One of the victims, the pawnbroker, Cullen, was threatened only the other week by a couple of brutes with Munster brogues.’

  Pyke felt the muscles in his stomach tighten. ‘You must have talked to the wife.’ He paused, trying to gather his wits. ‘But it’s not your investigation.’

  ‘I was just trying to apprise myself of the situation.’ Pierce looked around the room and realised that this was new information. ‘And it’s lucky I did because it looks like Inspector Pyke has omitted to share this piece of news.’

  ‘A troublesome oversight, i
ndeed, especially in the light of Walter’s suspicions about the Irishmen who were seen firing their pistols.’ Mayne stared at Pyke and shook his head.

  Pierce asked Wells to elaborate, and when Wells had finished Pierce nodded then turned to Pyke. ‘Then it seems we have our men already.’

  ‘Except Pyke doesn’t seem to concur with this view,’ Mayne said.

  Pyke did his best to hide his anger but the sudden rush of blood to his neck must have given him away.

  ‘No? Already trying to do things your own way, Pyke?’ Pierce taunted him.

  Not for the first time it struck Pyke what an outsider he was in their company. Ostensibly, he dressed as they dressed and spoke as they spoke, but whereas Mayne and Wells had come from upstanding, landed families and Pierce had bought his way into the right clubs and associations, Pyke had grown up in the rookery and would never be accepted as their equal. Most of the time, Pyke was unconcerned by their efforts to disparage and exclude him, and the idea of ever wanting to join their clubs appalled him, but every now and again their high-handed manner rankled him. If he was honest, Pyke was most angered by the idea that someone in the Branch might be passing information back to Pierce. For how else would Pierce have known so quickly about the Irishmen who had been to Cullen’s shop? Pierce had been the head of the Detective Branch before him and still had contacts, perhaps even friends, among the detectives and the clerks. Pyke had been told that Eddie Lockhart had been Pierce’s favourite.

  ‘I’ll ask you again, Sir Richard,’ Pyke said. ‘Is this my investigation?’

  Mayne gave Pyke a cool stare and reiterated the importance of co-operation between divisions.

  ‘I asked a question, sir, and I’d appreciate an answer. Is this my investigation?’

  ‘Yes, for land’s sake, I told you it was . . .’

  Pyke stood up and straightened his frock-coat. ‘Then until I’m told differently, I’ll run it as I see fit.’ He didn’t take another breath until he was out of the room, and he waited until he was halfway along the corridor before he punched the wall.

  THREE

  While his men were gathering in the main office, Pyke was able to open a note from Ned Villums. It had been left for him by one of the clerks. The note simply said: Harry Dove went to shop to inspect a jewelled crucifix, very valuable. Pyke put the note in his pocket and turned this new information over in his mind. So Dove had gone to Cullen’s shop on business. For some reason, the mention of a jewelled crucifix seemed familiar and he made a note to check the daily route-papers detailing items that had been reported as stolen.

  As soon as Pyke stepped into the main office, the four sergeants looked up at him and their conversations ceased. It was always the way, and Pyke had increasingly been trying to interpret their reticence in his presence. Shaw, he felt, was afraid or in awe of him whereas Gerrett resented him in the way a stupid, lumbering dog resented its master. Whicher didn’t say much to the other men and had either excluded himself from their social circle or been excluded; Pyke didn’t know which. But it was Lockhart’s silence which Pyke found the hardest to read. Aside from Whicher, he was the most intelligent of the detectives and his work was thorough and imaginative, but Pyke couldn’t help feeling that Lockhart resented him in some way. Pyke recognised Lockhart’s indifference because he had once behaved in a similar manner with his superiors. As a Runner, Pyke had operated according to his own agenda and had had little time for the chief magistrates he’d served under. Now he was head of a department, he had to inspire men to do their best for him, and this meant making sure they either respected or feared him.

  Pyke’s detectives had come from working-class backgrounds and, like most working lads made good, they were used to taking their orders from men like Mayne or even Benedict Pierce, who had been able to reinvent himself as a blue-blooded defender of Church, Crown and Empire. But Pyke had no idea what they made of him, whether they saw him as an establishment figure or an outsider. They would have heard a little about his past, of course, because it had been openly aired at the time of his appointment; they would know, for example, that he had once been convicted of murder and that he had been sentenced to hang before escaping from Newgate and earning a pardon. Or that more recently he’d served nine months in Marshalsea prison for not paying his debts.

  Two days earlier, following an arrest that Gerrett had made, a shoemaker and a father of four from Shoreditch had been convicted at Bow Street for stealing a gentleman’s greatcoat. The man’s pleas for clemency had fallen on deaf ears and the magistrate had sentenced him to serve eight years in the House of Correction for the County of Middlesex, otherwise known as Coldbath Fields. Gerrett had gone around the room seeking the acclaim of the other men. When he’d come to Pyke, he had stood there like a schoolboy waiting to be praised. Pyke had congratulated him on a job well done and then reminded him that a poor man with four children had been sent to prison for eight years for stealing a coat. He had also mentioned the case of a stockbroker who’d defrauded investors of thousands of pounds and who had walked out of the courtroom without incurring a fine. Only Jack Whicher had seemed to have understood what he’d meant.

  Pyke invited the men into his office and waited for them to file into the small room and take their place in a semicircle around his desk. He started by telling them about the suspicions regarding the Raffertys; the fact that they had visited Cullen’s shop a few weeks earlier and pressed the pawnbroker to receive stolen goods and that some men, possibly the Raffertys, had been seen firing their pistols on wasteland behind King’s Cross. He also described his encounter with Conor Rafferty and said that a roomful of people were willing to swear the Raffertys had been drinking in the Blue Dog on Castle Street at the time of the shooting. For the time being, he decided not to say anything about the crucifix.

  He turned to Shaw. ‘Tell us how you fared at Bow Street. Was Cullen’s wife telling the truth when she intimated Cullen had never been convicted of a crime?’

  Shaw took out his notepad and wiped his nose. ‘Cullen’s served two prison sentences. One as a debtor, six months in the Fleet. The other for receiving stolen goods. Two and a half years in Coldbath Fields.’

  There was a murmur of approval from the others.

  ‘When was that?’ Pyke asked.

  ‘About four years ago.’

  Pyke digested this information. It didn’t change much - in fact, it only confirmed what he’d already suspected: that Cullen was a disreputable but insignificant figure, a man on the fringes of the city’s underworld.

  ‘Good work, Frederick.’ The others congratulated him, too. Shaw stammered that he’d been lucky.

  Turning to Gerrett, Pyke tried not to pay too much attention to the disgusting mound of wobbling flesh around the man’s neck. ‘What news from the inquest?’

  ‘The jury ruled the deaths to be wilful murder committed by a person or persons unknown.’

  ‘And are the bodies still at the Queen’s Head?’

  ‘In the upstairs room.’ Gerrett shot a sideways glance at Lockhart. Most of the time, he didn’t breathe without Lockhart’s approval. ‘The landlord said the bodies can stay where they are; he’s happy to let people traipse upstairs to see them, thinks they’ll stop for a drink after. He didn’t need any convincing it would be good for business.’

  ‘Anything else from the inquest?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Gerrett said, his hands in his pockets.

  ‘I’m presuming it didn’t shed light on the identity of the other two victims?’

  ‘You presume right.’ Gerrett folded his arms and sniffed.

  Pyke chose to ignore the big man’s attempt to needle him. ‘Well, someone will recognise them soon enough, at least the one who was shot in the back rather than the face.’ Pyke made sure he didn’t meet Jack Whicher’s stare.

  ‘There’s already a queue outside the Queen’s Head stretching back as far as the Theatre Royal,’ Gerrett added.

  ‘I want you there as soon as the
landlord opens his doors.’ Pyke paused, wondering whether he should assign Shaw to help. ‘Some of those waiting in the queue will be desperate to convince you the dead are their friends or loved ones. Don’t ask me why, because there’s no financial advantage in it, but people like to be associated with something like this. Your job is to sort out the wheat from the chaff. So don’t be afraid to ask difficult questions and, remember, to make a positive identification, you’ll need corroboration from two independent witnesses.’

  Pyke turned to Whicher, who didn’t seem particularly enthused by his discoveries. ‘Your turn, Detective.’ He didn’t like to call him ‘Jack’ in the company of the others, because this singled Whicher out as his favourite.

  ‘The wife’s disorganised so the books are in a real mess,’ Whicher said, looking at Pyke. ‘I’d say it’s a small operation; it doesn’t seem to make more than a few pounds a month, barely enough to pay the rent.’