Kill-Devil and Water pm-3

by Andrew Pepper

  ‘What kind of a change?’ Saggers asked, staring mournfully at his depleted wineglass.

  Pyke could see that he’d already filled two or three sides of paper and it stood to reason he wouldn’t want to alter anything. Not unless it was in his financial interest to do so. ‘I want you to approach only one newspaper with this story, and when you do, I want to be there with you. And I want to negotiate directly with the editor; preferably one who cares more about sales than editorial content.’

  ‘These days, I’d say take your pick. No one cares about the craft of writing any more. Sadly I’m a man born out of his times.’ He gave an exaggerated shrug. ‘Would Hazlitt or Lamb be grubbing around as I have to if they were writing today? I think not.’

  Pyke decided to ignore his rhetorical flourish. ‘You have someone in mind?’

  ‘I’m an artist, sir, and I create according to my inner genius. If I permitted such base thoughts as sales and the market to enter my head, I would be ruined in a moment.’

  ‘I want you to approach an editor and set out the terms of the campaign we’re going to run.’

  ‘A campaign, eh?’ Saggers finished his claret and belched. ‘Like Napoleon marching on Moscow?’

  ‘You mean, will it be long and drawn out — and expensive for the newspaper?’

  Saggers grinned. ‘Truly, sir, you’re a man after my own heart. The more time I spend in your company, the more I like you.’ He held up his empty wineglass. ‘And should you deign to refill this humble vessel, my admiration for you would stretch even farther.’

  Pyke hailed a pot-boy and asked him to refill Saggers’ glass, but as soon as the full wineglass materialised, Pyke stood up. ‘Drink up. We’re off to find an editor.’

  ‘So you’re proposing we run a leader in tomorrow’s edition attacking the police for their failure to adopt sufficiently robust measures for detection in cases of murder and other violent crimes?’

  The office occupied by the bespectacled editor of the Morning Examiner stood at the top of a flight of creaking stairs in a building in a narrow courtyard just off Fleet Street. The editor, a man called Jeremiah Spratt, had his shirtsleeves rolled up and he wore an apron heavily stained with black ink. Around him were stacks of newspapers, books still waiting to be reviewed and, on the surface of his desk, waxy pools of dried ink.

  ‘In part, yes. The Times and the Morning Chronicle have made similar arguments.’

  ‘In case you haven’t noticed we are not The Times nor the Chronicle.’ But Spratt looked around his office without embarrassment. ‘You said, in part?’

  ‘One justice system for the rich, another for the poor. That’s what you lead with; that’s what’ll grab your readers’ interest. Two murders on the same day. A team of the New Police’s best detectives is instantly sent to find the killer of the aristocrat; meanwhile the corpse of the poor, mulatto woman is left to rot and, more than three days later, a team still hasn’t been assigned.’

  With his patrician air and his mop of slightly receding grey hair, Spratt looked more like an eccentric headmaster than the rapacious, sales-obsessed editor Pyke had been promised. Still, he hadn’t yet declared himself either way, regarding Pyke’s proposal, and as he pushed his spectacles farther up his nose, and glanced across at Saggers, who could barely contain himself, Pyke tried to work out what his concerns were.

  ‘How do you know all this?’ Spratt smiled awkwardly. ‘That’s to say, how do I know it’s all true?’

  ‘I know because I was approached by a senior figure in the Metropolitan Police to run the investigation.’ Pyke hesitated and thought about how the story he was trying to sell would affect Tilling. ‘Still, I don’t want that fact to appear anywhere in your newspaper.’

  ‘And now you’ve been relieved of your duties. Can I ask why?’

  Pyke looked across at Saggers. ‘That’s personal, I’m afraid.’ It was late in the afternoon and Pyke wondered what time they put the morning edition to bed.

  ‘Yet you expect me to take your word for all of this?’ Spratt ran his fingers through his thinning hair. ‘And in return you want me to lampoon the police and turn them into a laughing stock?’

  ‘I don’t want you to turn them into a laughing stock. I just want you to draw attention to the different provisions made for the rich and the poor, call for the establishment of a new detective squad and lay down a challenge; in effect, that a dedicated team of your very best men — that’s to say, Saggers here and myself — will hunt down this woman’s murderer before the police do.’ Pyke took a moment to arrange his thoughts. ‘Think of it as an act of public service. If we’re successful, a murderer will be arrested, tried and punished. And if we’re not successful, the New Police will be forced to re-examine the way they privilege prevention of crime over detection. Who knows? Perhaps a new detective squad will arise from your campaign. And think of the additional newspapers you’ll sell. People always love a murder, but I promise you, they’ll love reading about the progress of your intrepid detectives even more, especially if we find the killer before the police do. Everyone likes to cheer for the underdog. If this thing catches on, people will be queuing at the news stands to read the latest instalment.’

  ‘Truly, it’s a monumental idea,’ Saggers said, oozing insincerity. ‘One of breathtaking originality that befits a great man such as yourself and a paper of this calibre.’

  Pyke glared at Saggers for his syrupy intervention; they were winning Spratt over already and didn’t need to resort to sycophancy.

  ‘You reckon a leader and a daily column ought to do it?’ Spratt asked, inspecting an ink stain on his fingers.

  ‘Perhaps not a daily column. But at least every other day, or when there’s something to report. And we can ask your readers to help us with our enquiries. We could ask anyone who might have known or seen Mary Edgar to contact us. A small reward could be made available.’

  ‘Rewards cost money and money’s something I don’t have.’

  ‘Then we’ll just appeal to the goodness of your readers’ hearts.’

  That drew an approving nod.

  ‘Of course, I’ll need some money for the investigation. Twenty pounds ought to do it to start off. And for the column itself, Saggers will want to be paid twopence a line rather than the usual one and a half.’

  ‘Twenty pounds, you say?’ Spratt sucked the air in through his teeth. ‘I might be able to raise such a sum but it’s not a bottomless well, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘You’ll do it, then?’ Pyke swapped a quick glance with Saggers, who looked as if he might explode with happiness.

  ‘Indeed I will,’ Spratt said, ‘but on one condition.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘To give the story credibility, I’ll need to include the name of this senior figure in the New Police who approached you to run the investigation.’

  Pyke felt a sudden tightness in his throat. ‘Why’s that?’

  Spratt shrugged. ‘His name corroborates the story.’

  ‘For what it’s worth, he’s a friend of mine.’

  ‘Then you have a difficult choice to make.’

  ‘It might seem odd to you but the idea of humiliating this person strikes me as wrong.’

  ‘Then you can find yourself another newspaper.’

  Pyke wetted his lips. ‘What if I told you he gave me the work as a favour, because he thought — rightly as it turned out — that I needed something to do?’

  ‘So you don’t want to hurt someone who’s given you a helping hand. That makes you a fine human being. Now take off your halo and see things from my perspective. Paying civilians from the public purse to do the work of the police is wrong.’

  ‘It’s your job to see things in terms of right and wrong. For the rest of us, fault isn’t so easy to apportion.’

  ‘Listen, Pyke, I don’t have time to debate the ethics of journalism. Either you agree to my condition or we shake hands and go our separate ways. Which is it to be?’

 
Pyke stole another glance at Saggers and briefly weighed up his debt to Tilling against his desire to find Mary Edgar’s murderer and vindicate himself in his son’s eyes. ‘His name’s Fitzroy Tilling.’ Pyke hesitated, still contemplating his betrayal. ‘He’s the deputy commissioner.’

  Outside Spratt’s office, Saggers turned to him and whispered, ‘For a moment I thought you were going to piss our deal up against the wall for the sake of, what, a friendship?’

  Pyke had to fight the urge to grab the fat man by his neck and squeeze it until he choked.

  Pyke sat at the counter in the smoky confines of Samuel’s taproom drinking rum and water. As the man had predicted, the atmosphere of the place was different. Perhaps it was the babble of different languages which made it so: Scandinavians drunkenly toasting each other and dark-skinned Italians smoking their pipes and cheroots. The rest of the faces belonged to Negro and Lascar sailors, each keeping to their own, the different nationalities and races in the cramped room rubbing shoulders with one another, but never mixing.

  A part-time dock labourer called Johnny — a man in his forties with blue-black skin and forearms as thick as sapling trees corded with veins — recognised Mary Edgar from the charcoal drawing. He told Pyke he’d seen her in the window of a gentleman’s carriage on Commercial Road about two or three weeks earlier, coming from the direction of the West India Docks. He didn’t recognise anyone resembling Arthur Sobers’ description but told Pyke that a ship from Jamaica called the Island Queen had docked there around the same time.

  But that wasn’t the end of Pyke’s good fortune. Samuel directed him towards a woman in her sixties with dark, wrinkled skin who was sitting on her own at a table in the corner of the room. He showed her the drawing and told her the woman had been killed. That provoked very little reaction, but when he suggested that her body might have been embalmed with rum, a glimmer passed across her hooded eyes.

  She picked up a glass and swallowed the drink he’d bought her in a single gulp. ‘We call it kill-devil. These days I like it with a little water.’

  ‘Is it a practice you’re familiar with?’

  ‘Not since I been living in this country.’

  ‘But you have heard of it?’

  Her glance drifted over his shoulder and her eyes glazed over. ‘Folk reckoned it could ward off the duppies.’

  ‘Duppies?’

  ‘Ghosts. Evil spirits.’

  ‘As in witchcraft?’ Pyke waited to catch the old woman’s eyes and thought about Mary Edgar’s mutilated face.

  ‘Obeah.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Some black folk reckon Obeah men and women can commune with the dead; they have the power to curse and cause harm, as well as cure and uplift.’

  ‘And rum is part of what they do?’

  ‘Where I grew up, rum’s a part of what everyone does. It’s what kept us going, made the hard times feel better.’ For the first time, she scrutinised Pyke’s expression carefully and added, ‘You sure this girl was embalmed with rum?’

  ‘I think so. A bottle of rum had been left by the body and even though it was muddy, the body was spotless, as though it had been washed.’

  ‘With rum?’

  Pyke nodded.

  ‘And this would have been after she was killed?’

  ‘Does it make a difference?’

  As the woman looked away, the light left her eyes, as if someone had blown out a candle. ‘You kill someone, maybe you want to find a way of appeasing their spirit…’

  Pyke waited for a moment, wondering whether he should say anything about Mary Edgar’s facial mutilation or not. ‘What if someone had cut out her eyeball?’ he whispered. ‘What might that mean?’

  She looked up at him, unable to hide her interest. ‘The whole eyeball, you say?’

  It was dark when Pyke took Copper for a walk around Smithfield, though in fairness to the mastiff, Copper didn’t need Pyke’s sanction, or company, to enjoy the attractions of the field. It had always amazed Pyke how well the animal had adjusted to the loss of one of his legs and how nimble he was in spite of his injury. It had also surprised him how gentle Copper was around Felix — especially since he’d been trained to kill other animals. The field was almost deserted but Copper wasn’t interested in traversing it, preferring instead to forage for scraps around the perimeter. While he did so, Pyke stepped into the Queen’s Head on the south side of the field and ordered a gin. He drank this and then another, watching the tables of revellers without envy or self-pity. At one of the tables, he joined a game of Primero and on the third hand dealt he drew two sixes, so he decided to bet the rest of the money from Tilling’s purse and what he’d been given by Spratt. A lawyer’s clerk and a butcher matched his bets and when they all turned over their cards, Pyke’s two sixes beat the lawyer’s sevens and the butcher’s aces. That earned him between fifty and sixty pounds, enough to cover his expenses in the coming weeks. To the chagrin of his opponents, Pyke excused himself before he could give them the chance to win their money back.

  At his garret, he found Copper waiting for him on the steps, gnawing a bone. The mastiff barely looked up from his prize but managed to wag his tail. Inside the door was a bottle of claret with a note attached to it — ‘No hard feelings. Fitzroy’. He picked up the bottle and followed Copper up the narrow staircase, wondering why friends were so hard to make yet so easy to lose.

  That night, Pyke lay in his garret, thinking about Felix, Jo and the murdered woman, though not necessarily in that order. A couple of tallow candles burned on the mantelpiece and, at his feet, Copper dozed contentedly. Unable to sleep, he took his copy of Hobbes’ Leviathan and began to read it from the beginning. It relaxed him and helped to turn his thoughts from the events of the past few days. Even Hobbes’ grim portrait of nature failed to disturb him unduly. In fact, he found himself agreeing with its sentiments; that men were engaged in a desperate struggle of all against all, and that life, as Hobbes had so aptly put it, was ‘nasty, brutish and short’. So it had been for the dead woman.

  SEVEN

  The next morning Pyke asked for Saggers in the Cole Hole, the Turk’s Head and the Crown and Anchor. He eventually found the penny-a-liner in the Back Kitchen; the morning edition of the Examiner was spread out on the table, together with an empty flagon of claret and a plateful of chop bones. The room was deserted, except for a few snoring drunkards, and it smelled of unwashed bodies and fried food. Saggers picked up the newspaper and showed Pyke the leading article and the column he’d penned about Mary Edgar’s murder. Pyke read it and told Saggers he’d done a thorough job.

  In fact, it was difficult to see how Saggers and Spratt might have done a better job. The tone of the leader was just right; a delicate mixture of concern, mockery and indignation: ‘Prevention of crime is no longer sufficient on its own to safeguard the interests of the citizens of this great metropolis.’ Or, even better, ‘The sheer incompetence of the Metropolitan Police beggars belief.’ Best of all, ‘We have no doubt that a special team of committed, hardworking journalists will find the killer, or killers, of this poor black woman before the bumbling fools of the police.’ Pyke noticed a brief reference to Fitzroy Tilling and passed over it.

  ‘A veritable masterpiece, even if I say so myself,’ Saggers said, delivering his verdict.

  ‘Any repercussions?’

  ‘Any repercussions, the man asks?’ Saggers appealed to a drunkard sitting next to them. ‘Well, sir, it would seem that Sir Richard Mayne came to see Spratt in person this morning, after he’d seen the newspaper. I’m reliably informed that he was incandescent with rage. He ranted and raved and made all kinds of threats. I’m only sorry I didn’t see it with my own eyes.’

  ‘Mayne? In person?’ Pyke hadn’t expected the riposte to come from the commissioner himself. ‘And did Spratt manage to hold his ground?’

  Saggers’ grin widened. ‘Spratt was delighted he’d managed to rile a man as important as Mayne. Told him there was no way he was
going to abandon the campaign and said that if Mayne wanted him to print a retraction, he’d have to bloody well find the woman’s killer before we did.’

  ‘He said that?’ Pyke had witnessed Spratt’s ruthless side, but now he was impressed by the man’s integrity.

  ‘Spratt might not look the part but when he gets behind something, he’s won’t give any ground unless he absolutely has to.’

  ‘I’d like you to try to dig up some information about the West India Dock Company,’ Pyke said, then explained that Mary Edgar had been seen leaving the docks in a gentleman’s carriage.

  Saggers rubbed his chin. ‘What makes you think the company’s involved?’

  ‘I don’t, at least not yet. But I think one of their clerks lied to me about not knowing Mary Edgar, which makes me suspicious.’

  ‘In which case, sir, I will be suspicious on your behalf.’ Saggers grinned at Pyke, then belched.

  Nathaniel Rowbottom returned to his office, carrying a ledger in one hand and a quill and fresh ink in the other. Pyke waited until he had closed the heavy, panelled door and had deposited the items on his desk before making his move. The knife was already in Pyke’s hand and the terrified clerk didn’t have time even to blink, let alone shout for help, before Pyke had twisted his arm, and pressed the blade into his throat. A few spots of blood appeared on his neck where the serrated edge had penetrated the skin. Rowbottom had lied to Pyke and would continue to lie to him unless he thought that his life was in danger.

  ‘If you don’t answer me truthfully, I’ll slit your throat and leave you to bleed to death like a slaughtered pig. I’ve killed men before and I’ll do it again. Nod once, very slowly, if you understand.’ Pyke was standing over him, whispering in his ear, the knife still pressed against his throat.

  For a moment Rowbottom was too terrified to do anything, but eventually it came, a slight tilt of his head.

  ‘Mary Edgar docked here a little over two weeks ago, on one of the ships that arrived from the West Indies. I want two names, that’s all; the ship she disembarked from and the man who met her.’