The Detective Branch

by Andrew Pepper

  The following morning, Pyke walked into the offices of the Detective Branch to find Billy Gerrett devouring a meat pie for his breakfast. The whole spectacle turned Pyke’s stomach, and he was about to leave and shut himself away in his office when Gerrett said, to no one in particular, ‘Looks to me like Superintendent Wells has this one wrapped up.’ He glanced towards Pyke and forced the final chunk of pastry into his mouth. ‘Confirmed, beyond any doubt, that Hiley did it.’

  That stopped Pyke in his tracks. ‘Is that so?’

  Wells feigned modesty, although he was basking in Gerrett’s praise. ‘I was fortunate, that’s all.’

  ‘What exactly have you managed to do, Walter?’ Pyke asked, feeling a tightness in his chest. He looked around for Jack Whicher, but remembered at the last moment that he’d been dispatched to look into another matter: a burglary in Belgravia.

  ‘I took a group of men to Whitechapel High Street. We talked to shopkeepers, market vendors, crossing-sweepers, anyone we could find. Eventually we found a man, a costermonger in fact, who knows Hiley. He told me they often frequented the same establishment. Anyway, this fellow is prepared to testify under oath that he saw Hiley running like a madman along Whitechapel High Street at about eight o’clock on the night that Guppy was killed.’

  While Pyke digested this new piece of information, Gerrett offered Wells another slap on the back.

  ‘I’d say that just about settles it, wouldn’t you?’ Wells added, looking at Eddie Lockhart for affirmation.

  Lockhart shrugged but said nothing. For some reason, he didn’t seem persuaded by this new piece of evidence.

  Pyke looked at him, surprised he hadn’t fallen in behind Gerrett. ‘That was good work, Walter, but when you think about it, it only tells us what we already know: that Hiley was in the vicinity of the church yard at the time of the murder and fled as a result of what he saw. What it doesn’t tell us is whether Hiley actually killed Guppy.’ As he was talking, Pyke noticed Eddie Lockhart nodding in agreement.

  ‘But why would an innocent man run?’ Billy Gerrett said, looking at Lockhart rather than Pyke.

  Pyke waited. ‘Let’s assume for a moment that Hiley heard the attack, heard Guppy’s shouts. He would have rushed to find out what had happened. That could have been when the constable saw him and called out. In that moment, Hiley would have made a decision. Run or find the finger of guilt pointed at him. If I were a felon, I know what I would do.’

  ‘If?’ Gerrett arched his eyebrows.

  Pyke couldn’t tell for certain whether Gerrett’s remark had been a barbed reference to the time Pyke had spent in prison. If so, it was an unforgivable breach of discipline and, even worse, it indicated that the man was too stupid to fear him.

  ‘You’re quite right, of course,’ Wells said, choosing to ignore Gerrett’s comment. ‘Until we find Hiley and force a confession out of him, we can’t say for certain that he is the killer.’

  Pyke looked first at Lockhart and then at Wells. ‘So for the time being, it would seem prudent to explore other avenues of enquiry.’

  ‘Is that why you’re holding a papist priest in one of the cells?’ Wells asked.

  ‘I know you think we should focus all of our attention on finding Hiley, Walter. But the surplice Guppy wore on the night he was killed was found at number twenty-eight Broad Street in Soho. Malloy, the priest, used to live at this address. And Malloy paid Guppy a visit in late March, apparently to warn him that a fellow tenant had prophesied his death.’

  This last piece of information was new to all of them. ‘You’ve been to see this tenant, I assume - the one who made the threat?’ Lockhart said.

  ‘I plan to. His name’s Ebenezer Druitt and he’s currently serving a five-year sentence for manslaughter in Pentonville.’

  ‘But how can we be sure it’s the same surplice?’ Wells asked.

  It was a good question; all Pyke could do was explain what a distinctive garment it was.

  Lockhart looked at him and nodded. ‘I’d say we need to take Pyke’s finding very seriously indeed.’

  Pyke didn’t bother to hide his surprise: Eddie Lockhart coming to his defence? If he’d trusted the man, he would have been gratified by the intervention.

  ‘A word, if I may?’ Pyke said later, calling Eddie Lockhart into his office and inviting him to sit in the chair opposite him.

  Closing the door, Pyke sat down behind his desk and took a moment to contemplate the man’s unease. ‘I have an important job I’d like you to do for me. There are seven curates attached to the parish of St Botolph’s. I’ve talked to one of them, the Reverend Martin Jakes of St Matthew’s, Bethnal Green. I’d like you to go and see the others, to build up a fuller picture of the victim and his dealings with the curates. Maybe some of them saw Guppy in Hiley’s company. They might have important details they aren’t even aware of.’ Pyke lowered his voice. ‘You’ll have to be sensitive, mind you. Any information will have to be coaxed from these curates.’

  Eddie Lockhart regarded him with a cool expression. ‘You don’t believe Hiley killed the rector, do you?’

  ‘To be honest, I don’t.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  Pyke nodded, surprised by the forcefulness of his statement. ‘Why don’t you believe it was Hiley?’

  ‘Intuition. And the evidence.’ Lockhart sighed.

  ‘We need to look more closely into Guppy’s affairs. Someone killed him for a reason,’ Pyke continued.

  Lockhart gave him a sceptical look. ‘I’ve read your report. As far as I can tell, everyone who knew Guppy loathed him.’

  ‘Then this is your chance to talk to the curates and find out what, in particular, they loathed about him.’

  Lockhart shrugged. He didn’t seem especially keen. ‘We need to look at the parish accounts too, you said so yourself. The man lived more like a prince than a priest.’

  Pyke nodded. ‘You think this might have something to do with money? The misappropriation of parish funds?’

  Lockhart sat there awkwardly, not knowing how to respond.

  ‘This task I’ve given you will be quite an undertaking,’ Pyke said, finally. ‘Given that all of the churches are in Bethnal Green, I wouldn’t expect you to travel to and from your boarding house each day.’ He licked his lips. ‘I’d envisage the job taking perhaps three days, if you start immediately. As such, I’ve taken the liberty of booking you into a lodging house in the City. You’ll find it comfortable: perhaps a good deal more comfortable than your current accommodation.’

  Lockhart acknowledged this with a curt nod.

  ‘You’ll do it, then?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  Pyke picked up a pen from his desk and fiddled with it. ‘Whether you believe it or not, Eddie, and whatever differences of opinion we might’ve had in the past, I do think you’re a good detective.’

  Lockhart stood up and waited for Pyke to dismiss him.

  ‘One more thing. I’d prefer it if you kept this assignment to yourself,’ Pyke added. ‘I wouldn’t want the others to think I was treating you any differently to them.’

  The Engineer public house was situated a few streets from the river at the end of a mean, yellow terrace, backing on to a burial ground and the prison. It was a grim, industrial district dominated by the brewery, a gin distillery, railway works and an old sawmill. Along the river itself, coal barges were moored at the various wharfs and on the other bank the bone-grinding factories of Lambeth billowed plumes of smoke into already grey skies. The pub attracted drinkers from the factories and the rows of tightly-packed terraces.

  Pyke didn’t introduce himself to the landlord, Gerald Tompkins, but asked for a private audience. Outside in the yard, the landlord lit his pipe. ‘So what can I do for you, sir?’ He was a bald, unattractive man with short arms and barely any neck.

  ‘You lent a man called William Gerrett twenty pounds. I’d like to buy that debt from you.’ Pyke pulled out a piece of paper. ‘I’ll give you twenty-five, if
you’ll sign this and agree never to speak a word of our conversation to Gerrett or anyone else.’

  Tompkins removed the pipe from his mouth and blew out a stream of tobacco smoke. ‘And why would you want to buy this man’s debt?’

  ‘That’s none of your business. You’ll make five pounds from the transaction. That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘And Gerrett?’

  ‘He’ll owe me instead of owing you.’

  Tompkins looked at Pyke and shrugged. ‘As long as I get my money, I don’t care who’s paying me. Let’s go inside.’

  In an upstairs room, Pyke watched as the landlord signed the document he’d prepared earlier and counted the twenty-five pounds. As Tompkins put down his pen, Pyke took out his pistol from his holster and pointed the barrel at the landlord’s face. ‘Just so we’re sure. If you tell a living soul about this arrangement, I’ll come back here and shoot you through the heart. I need you to know that I’m serious. Nod if you understand.’

  The landlord looked at the pistol and nodded.

  Pyke found Septimus Clapp where he could be found most afternoons; the taproom of the Cheese tavern on Fleet Street. Clapp occupied a table at the back of the room and no one dared venture anywhere near him. This was partly because he stank - of stale tobacco and sweat - and partly because people were terrified of him. Clapp was one of the most successful and ruthless moneylenders in the city. For each day a payment was late, Clapp instructed his men to snap one of the debtor’s fingers. He was also no respecter of age or gender; women and the elderly were just as likely to have their fingers broken as young men.

  ‘I’d like to sell you a debt.’ Pyke removed the document Tompkins had signed from his coat pocket and slid it across the table. ‘The debt’s for twenty pounds. I’m willing to sell it to you for ten.’

  ‘And why would you want to do something like that, Detective Inspector?’ Clapp cast his eyes across the piece of paper in front of him.

  ‘You don’t need to know. I just want you to treat this debt as you would any other.’

  Clapp seemed amused by this proposition. Staring down at the name on the document, he said, ‘And where does this Mr William Gerrett reside?’

  ‘You can visit him at his place of work.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Scotland Yard.’

  The moneylender clapped his hands together in evident delight. ‘So he’s a policeman, is he?’

  ‘A detective sergeant.’

  Clapp folded up the document and tucked it into his pocket. ‘Usually I wouldn’t bother with such a trifling sum but the nature of this enterprise appeals to me.’

  ‘Do what you do, Clapp, but keep my name out of it.’

  Clapp grinned, revealing bloodied gums and two good teeth. ‘You’re a worse man than you look, sir. And I mean that as a compliment.’

  When Gerrett finally showed up for work the following morning, Pyke could still smell gin on his breath. He said nothing to Pyke about his financial predicament and sat morosely at his desk. Pyke had been out when Clapp and two of his collectors had come to the office the previous day but he’d heard about it later from Shaw. Gerrett had been unable to settle the debt on the spot and had begged Clapp for a week to do so. Clapp had given him until the following evening. Gerrett came to see Pyke and broke down. Pyke told him he would look into the matter and passed it on to Wells, who dealt with all disciplinary issues. At the end of the day, Gerrett was summoned to Wells’s office and dismissed, as Pyke knew he would be.

  ‘I didn’t have a choice,’ Wells said to Pyke afterwards. ‘He knew the rules, he’d read the code of behaviour.’

  ‘You did what you had to.’

  Wells looked at him astutely. ‘Of course, if you’d wanted to protect him, you could have kept the information to yourself.’

  Pyke held his stare but said nothing.

  ‘The man in question made what I considered to be an unfortunate remark yesterday. I hope it didn’t have any bearing on your decision.’

  Pyke was in Wells’s office and he went over to the shelves, which were lined with books he didn’t believe Wells had ever read. ‘It’s true I didn’t fight for him, as I would have done for Whicher or Shaw.’

  ‘And Gerrett’s leaving means that Eddie Lockhart is now isolated in the department,’ Wells commented.

  Pyke was surprised Wells had been able to work it out. ‘Yes, I suppose you could say that.’

  ‘And that’s good for you because Lockhart may find it harder to pass information back to Pierce.’

  ‘I don’t know for sure that Lockhart is Pierce’s spy.’

  Wells nodded easily. ‘Perhaps it was Gerrett.’ This thought made him smile.

  ‘At bottom, he was a poor detective, Walter. That’s all we need to be worried about here.’

  ELEVEN

  The train to Colchester left the Eastern Counties terminus at Shoreditch at 12.30 precisely, the carriages lurching forward, porters and hawkers on the platform trying to keep up with them. Steam from the engine hung in the air like cannon-smoke, then they were moving through the same tenements where they’d chased a man, possibly Francis Hiley, a week earlier. From inside the train, the buildings seemed even smaller and dirtier than they had done previously. Relaxing into his cushioned seat, Pyke let his gaze drift out of the window. Soon they’d passed the worst of the slums and the landscape opened out, brick kilns and allotments replacing row upon row of terraced housing. This was not the first time Pyke had travelled on a train, but he had not used the railways as much as he could have done. Maybe it was because he associated them with his wife’s death; in the end, she’d been killed because of her efforts to unionise navvies building the London-to-Birmingham line. Pyke shut his eyes and wondered how his life would have turned out if Emily had lived, how different it would’ve been.

  Soon the city was behind them and they were moving through farmland and green fields. The sky was blue and hard, and the frost on the ground sparkled like tiny diamonds. The view, and the motion of the carriage, soon put Pyke to sleep.

  By the time he had caught the stagecoach from Colchester to Ipswich and persuaded a hackney carriage to take him to the colony a few miles outside Stratford St Mary, the light was starting to fade. The land was barren and oppressively flat, mile upon mile of cornfields lying fallow for the winter, broken by the occasional tree or windmill with crows hovering menacingly in the air. It was an empty landscape, sparsely populated, and unwelcoming to the outsider. It put Pyke in mind of marshes and ancient Druids, low clouds rolling in off the North Sea so you could hardly tell the land and the sky apart.

  The vegetarian colony was located at the end of a muddy track and it was a more orderly and, indeed, permanent community than he’d been expecting. There were tents erected on the grassland closest to the river but there was also a series of mud-and-stone shacks on the slightly higher ground. From the gate, Pyke counted twenty men and women still hoeing the fields. He stopped a woman and asked her where he could find Sarah Scott. The woman said she didn’t think that Sarah had returned from London but directed him to one of the larger mud-and-stone cottages. He peered into the interior and saw someone with their back to him. It took him a few moments to realise the woman was standing at an easel, a paintbrush in her hand. The room was lit by candles and a wood fire smouldered in the brick grate, smoke drifting upwards towards a hole in the roof.

  ‘I’m looking for Sarah Scott,’ he said, waiting for her to turn around.

  ‘You’ve found her.’ She took a step towards him, brush still in hand. Her cheeks were smudged with paint. ‘And who, may I ask, are you?’

  ‘Pyke.’ He waited. ‘Detective Inspector Pyke of Scotland Yard.’

  She stepped to one side and said, ‘You had better come in, then.’

  There were two simple wooden chairs arranged around the fire. She invited him to take one of them and waited until he was seated before doing likewise.

  She wasn’t beautiful by the standards of g
enteel society; she was too petite for a start, no more than five feet tall. Her skin was smooth but dark, suggesting she spent too much time outdoors, and her hips were straight and almost boyish. It was her hair which marked her as different, though. Rather than scraped back off her face or arranged in loose curls, her ink-black hair cascaded in every direction, a tangled, unruly mess, untamed by a comb or even a bonnet. It put him in mind of Medusa. Clearly she didn’t dress her hair for anyone apart from herself. In spite of her height, she didn’t seem overawed by Pyke’s presence and held his gaze for so long that he had to look away first. When she smiled, laughter lines appeared at the edges of her face, her curious, intelligent eyes taking everything in without giving away what she was thinking.