The Detective Branch

by Andrew Pepper

  ‘Eventually. I put some things to him and he didn’t refute them.’

  ‘You accused him of Guppy’s murder?’

  Jakes loosened his collar and wiped his forehead. ‘He didn’t deny it but by way of explanation he showed me the accounts for the London Churches Fund. He explained that he and Johnny had stolen the ledger from the archdeacon’s safe earlier that year.

  ‘He said it had taken them two or three years of digging to get anywhere close to Wynter and that, in the end, someone from the archdeacon’s office had tipped them off. Anonymously, of course. Even to a layman, it was abundantly clear that enormous sums of money had been misappropriated from the Fund.’

  ‘What kind of sums?’

  ‘Hundreds of thousands, Detective Inspector.’

  ‘You’re saying the Fund was that rich?’

  ‘I’m saying, Detective Inspector, that the fund-raising campaign had been extraordinarily successful.’

  Pyke thought about what he had been told by the elderly man on Cheapside. ‘I suppose I’d already worked that out.’

  Jakes looked at him, his brow furrowed. ‘So you know what they did?’

  ‘I think so. The money went directly into the Fund’s coffers but the properties were annexed by a subsidiary company: City Holdings Consolidated. They were then sold to Palmer, Jones & Co., at significantly less than their market value, and were in turn sold on to the City Corporation for their full market value. The difference was pocketed by the directors of City Holdings Consolidated, who, I’m told, included Palmer, Hogarth and Guppy.’ He decided not to mention Wells’s name, at least not yet.

  Jakes seemed impressed by this assessment. ‘Luke also told me that Morris had been sacrificed in order to draw attention away from a potential scandal involving Guppy that had threatened to expose the whole operation.’

  Pyke stared up at the ceiling and then at the cross hanging above the table at the end of the nave. ‘So why didn’t you just come to us then and tell us what you’d found out?’

  ‘Us, meaning the police?’

  Pyke nodded.

  Jakes looked around them, to check they were alone, and whispered, ‘Because Luke had already told me that he suspected police involvement; that the fraud, and cover-up, had been perpetrated with the assistance of individuals within the Metropolitan Police.’

  ‘I assume you know that Gibb is a policeman himself.’

  ‘But in a rather lowly position, I understand. I think he was struggling to make any headway on the matter.’ Jakes dug his hands into his pockets and sighed. ‘That’s why your name came into our conversation, Detective Inspector.’

  ‘My name?’

  ‘He said you’d taken over as head of the Detective Branch and that, as someone who’d crossed swords with the authorities on numerous occasions, you might be sympathetic to the cause. Luke had reached a dead end and he still didn’t know who exactly was involved. I think he toyed with the idea of simply giving you the accounts he’d stolen from the archdeacon but he was afraid that, if word got out, they would come after you; and if that happened, he’d never find out which members of the police force were involved.’

  ‘And so you agreed to write this anonymous note, sending me to number twenty-eight Broad Street?’

  Jakes lowered his head, as if a little ashamed.

  ‘You planted Guppy’s surplice there, knowing I’d find it.’

  ‘Luke did. I just wrote the note.’

  ‘Why?’ Pyke could feel his anger gathering strength. ‘Did you actually want me to arrest Brendan Malloy for Guppy’s murder? To see another innocent man go to the scaffold?’

  ‘No . . . We wanted to lead you to Druitt, not Malloy. We hoped you would see Malloy for who he was - a broken man, incapable of inflicting harm on anyone but himself.’

  ‘But why to Druitt?’ Pyke asked, beginning to see the logic behind their machinations.

  ‘Because Druitt would help you make the connection to the old murders and the injustice done to Morris Keate.’

  In fact it was Frederick Shaw who had first brought the murder of the two boys to his attention - Druitt had merely toyed with him by suggesting the date.

  ‘You - a man of God - would employ someone like Ebenezer Druitt to do your bidding?’

  ‘It was Luke’s idea. He had met Druitt and realised they shared a dislike of the established Church.’

  ‘But did you ever meet the man?’

  ‘Once, last winter.’ Jakes hesitated. ‘I didn’t like him. I never felt comfortable in his presence. But Luke assured me he would be useful.’

  ‘So Luke had told Druitt about his plans?’

  ‘As much as he felt Druitt needed to know. But Druitt’s propensity for mischief nearly jeopardised the whole operation.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘For a start, he managed to convince Malloy that he’d foreseen Guppy’s death and then Malloy, who knew nothing about Luke’s plans, tried to warn Guppy. That alerted Guppy to the possibility that someone might be trying to right the wrong that had been done to Keate.’

  Pyke considered what Druitt had known about his private life: the book he was reading and the fact he kept pigs. Had Luke Gibb passed him this information too, and if so did this mean Gibb had broken into his home?

  ‘Did Luke Gibb actually visit Druitt at Pentonville or did he just find a way of passing messages to him?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’

  Pyke stared into the curate’s weathered face and tried not to think about the sense of betrayal he felt. ‘Doesn’t it concern you that, in effect, you’ve given your blessing to three murders?’

  ‘I did that one thing, Detective Inspector. I sent you that note. All I ever wanted was for you to find out the truth.’

  Pyke folded his arms. ‘And now I know the truth, what do you want me to do with it?’

  ‘I won’t insult you by assuming your faith in the institution you serve.’

  ‘You’re not answering my question.’

  Jakes’s smile vanished. ‘I want you to do as you see fit, Detective Inspector. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.’

  ‘To get my hands dirty so you don’t have to?’

  Jakes sighed. ‘I’m not naive enough to believe that God will forgive me for the sins I’ve committed.’

  ‘I’m not interested in God. I just want to find Luke Gibb and put a stop to this madness.’

  ‘And let those who have murdered to line their own pockets live out their days in peace?’

  ‘What’s Gibbs’s rank and division?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Really? Or is that just another lie?’ Pyke saw the pained expression on Martin Jakes’s face but he didn’t care.

  TWENTY-NINE

  A bitter wind, coming in off the river, rushed across the wide open space around Great Scotland Yard. A brittle silver frost still lingered and Pyke had to keep moving in order to stay warm as he positioned himself on the far side of the yard, across from the public entrance to the police building so that none of his fellow officers would see him and raise the alarm. There was a large clock on the wall overlooking the yard, and it gave the time as midday. Whicher had been inside the building for nearly two hours. In another corner of the yard, a constable in uniform emerged from the boarding house and hurried across the open space to the police headquarters. To kill some time, Pyke walked down to the river at a brisk pace and stood for a while at the top of the tide-washed stairs. Retracing his path back to Scotland Yard, he passed a constable coming the other way and kept his head bowed, the brim of his crushed billycock hat veiling his eyes.

  Whicher was waiting for him in the corner of the yard farthest from the police building. He glanced behind him, to make sure no one had followed him, and started to move off in the direction of Whitehall before Pyke caught up with him. ‘Well?’

  ‘Luke Gibb joined on the twenty-third of March three years ago. He was dismissed for drunken conduct on the fourth of June last year.’
r />   Stopping, Pyke turned to face Whicher. ‘That doesn’t sound like our man.’

  ‘It’s all they had. But I’ve got an address for him in Bermondsey, near the leather market.’ He held up a piece of paper.

  ‘What Gibb has done requires discipline, intelligence and planning . . . I can’t imagine him risking it all by getting drunk on the job.’

  ‘We need to go to Bermondsey to find out.’

  ‘Why don’t I go to Bermondsey? You could go to the Model Prison. I think Gibb might have visited Druitt. If so, there could be a record of it.’

  ‘It couldn’t do any harm, I suppose. Dividing up and going our separate ways,’ Whicher said, although he didn’t sound convinced.

  ‘Each time I visited the prison, I had to show my warrant badge and sign the visitors’ log. But I didn’t have to specify the prisoner I was there to see. You’ll just have to go through the log for the last few months. See if there are any names that stand out.’

  ‘Do you think Gibb might have solicited help from one of his former colleagues?’

  ‘It’s possible. I’m not sure what finding a name in the visitors’ book will tell us, but if I can’t find Gibb in Bermondsey, or anyone who knows him, it might give us something.’

  Whicher glanced up at the clock on the wall of the police building. ‘I’ll meet you back at my apartment at four.’

  There was no answer at the address Whicher had given him, and when Pyke forced the door it was apparent that no one had lived there for several months. When he asked the residents whether they knew a man called Luke Gibb and explained he’d once been a policeman, one or two remembered someone fitting that description and suggested that Pyke look for him in the taverns and ginneries of Bermondsey Street.

  The air was rotten and the stench produced by drying cow skins and the astringents used to clean them made his eyes water. Pyke made his way to the top of Bermondsey Street and entered the first place he came to, but neither the landlord nor any of the servers knew of a man called Gibb. Next door, the taproom was equally packed, and yet again no one admitted to knowing a Luke Gibb. On the street, refuse from nearby scum-boilers, tripe-scrapers and bladder-blowers collected in the gutters. A wagon with a cargo covered with a wet tarpaulin rattled past, followed by a wolfish dog trotting behind a man with a limp. Pyke walked past an eating house where a big-armed woman was stirring a large pot of tripe stew. Next door, he stepped into the Duke of Argyle and asked the landlord whether he knew Luke Gibb. The man shook his head, but when Pyke explained that Gibb had once been a policeman and that he’d been dismissed for drunkenness, the landlord seemed to perk up. ‘You could ask for him at the King’s Arms; the one with a blue door about three or four houses along.’

  At the zinc counter, Pyke asked one of the aproned pot-boys to fetch the landlord, and cast his gaze around the room. Unlike the other places he’d visited, this one was nearly empty, a few early afternoon drinkers huddled around the old wooden tables.

  ‘I’m looking for an ex-Peeler, name of Gibb, likes to wet his throat,’ he said to the landlord when the man appeared behind the counter.

  The landlord gestured to a man sitting on his own, a forlorn pot of ale in front of him. He was younger than Pyke but his skin was rough and his face overgrown with whiskers. Up close, Pyke could smell the beer on his clothes and his breath.

  ‘Is your name Gibb?’

  ‘I ain’t been called that since the summer.’ The man grinned, revealing a gap in his front teeth large enough to put your thumb through. ‘I’d say you must be a Peeler, cock. That right? One of ’em Jacks, don’t ’ave to wear a uniform?’

  ‘Why would you assume that?’

  ‘Gibb was my name when I was a Peeler.’

  Puzzled, Pyke asked, ‘Luke Gibb?’

  ‘Aye, that was it.’ The man stretched his arms above his head. ‘I never liked the name Luke, mind.’

  ‘And what name are you calling yourself nowadays?’

  ‘You ain’t lookin’ for me. You’re looking for the other cully.’

  ‘And which other cully would that be?’

  ‘The one I swapped my name with. Met on the day we signed up and he paid me well for it, too. What did I care what folk called me? I was new in the city and I didn’t know a soul.’

  Pyke tried to appear uninterested. ‘You don’t want to tell me what your real name is?’

  ‘I could do but you’re gonna ’ave to let me wet my beak first.’ Pyke dug into his pocket, retrieved a five-shilling coin and put it on the table. ‘Your name?’

  The former constable took one look at the coin and grinned. ‘May as well give me a kick in the teeth while you’re about it.’

  Pyke had checked his pocket watch before he’d entered the taproom and it was already three. He didn’t have time for this, so he produced a sovereign. He let the man see its colour, see the gold, but kept it in his hand. ‘That’s the carrot. I want the name. But if you try to draw this out, I won’t think twice about showing you the stick.’

  ‘Tough sort, eh? Let’s say you make it a couple of ’em megs, we might just ’ave a deal, cock.’

  Pyke flicked the sovereign into his lap. ‘I’ll give you the other one when you’ve told me the name.’

  The man picked up the sovereign, bit it with his teeth and finally started to smile.

  Whicher was in his apartment, pacing up and down the living room as he waited for Pyke.

  ‘I checked the visitors’ book.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The name said Gibb but the division and number didn’t match the one I saw in his file this morning.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘A25,’ Whicher said.

  ‘Do you recognise it?’

  Whicher looked nervous. ‘Do you?’

  Pyke nodded. He told Whicher what he’d found out from the man in Bermondsey, whose real name was Eddie Lockhart. ‘I didn’t suspect him for a minute.’

  ‘Neither did I.’

  ‘But then I remembered Shaw telling me that Lockhart had tried to bury the identity of Johnny Gibb during the Shorts Gardens investigation. And there was the time he came to my rescue, over the confusion surrounding Hogarth’s death. It’s obvious now: he needed me; needed me to keep digging. And he would occasionally do something to push me, us, in the right direction. Shaw came to me with the suggestion I look into the murder of the two boys but he gave Lockhart some of the credit.’

  Whicher still seemed in shock.

  Pyke gave what he’d just said a little more thought. Lockhart could have tried to bring Guppy and Hogarth before the law but had instead chosen to exercise an older form of justice. He’d tried to steer their investigation in a particular direction, not to expose the various perpetrators to the strictures of the law, but rather to try to smoke out the parties he couldn’t identify. Men like Wells and Russell. In doing so he’d risked his own freedom.

  ‘He was always very private, never said a word about his family, where he came from, what he did before,’ Whicher said.

  Lockhart must have been the one who gave Druitt the information about him keeping pigs, and he could easily have gained entry to Pyke’s home. But why? All he could think of was that Druitt had somehow put him to it; that Druitt had been able to convince Lockhart that provoking and unsettling Pyke would produce results.

  ‘So what do we do about Gibb? Or should I say Lockhart?’

  Pyke said, ‘We go to the Guildhall and we try to find him.’

  ‘And then?’

  Pyke looked down at Whicher’s old police uniform, already laid out on the table for him. ‘Did you manage to lay your hands on a pistol?’

  Wordlessly Whicher went across to a cupboard and pulled out a wooden case. Placing it on the table next to the uniform, he unsnapped the fasteners and opened the lid. Inside was a flintlock pistol with a smooth walnut butt.

  ‘Do you really think you’ll just be allowed to walk in there with this gun, no questions asked?’

  ‘Inspect
ors are permitted to carry pistols. I’m an inspector, or I was until about a month ago.’ Pyke picked up the weapon. ‘No one will be looking out for a policeman in uniform. I’ll be as good as invisible.’

  A moment passed between them. ‘Pyke?’

  ‘What is it, Jack?’

  ‘I know my betrayal hurt you and I’ve done my best to make amends . . .’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But I want no part of whatever you’re planning to do tonight.’