A Burden Shared: The Dundee Murders

by Malcolm Archibald

  Mendick stood up. “We have just begun this campaign. We had a partial victory at Fish Street in closing off China’s store room. Our next step will be to find out where this whisky originates.” Mendick reached for his hat. Having used most of his spare money to buy the pepperpot revolver, he had clothed himself from the nearest pawnshop and his hat was a tall monstrosity with wax stains on the brim. “I think it is time for another visit to Mr Gilbride. When I return, we will concentrate on the source of the whisky.”

  The Waverley Whale Fishing Company operated from Whale Lane, at the east end of the Seagate and a seagull’s call from the poisonous aroma of the boiling yards. The offices occupied a central site in the lane, a freestanding two storey building amidst a jumble of unpretentious architecture. The name was etched on a polished brass plaque and a brass railing protected a brass-faced clerk who eventually ushered Mendick up the stairs to Gilbride’s office.

  “Good God! Sergeant Mendick, I heard you were dead!” Gilbride stood up with his hand outstretched. “My dear fellow, it is good to see you, good indeed. Do sit down, Sergeant. I do hope you are making progress with your enquiries over that unfortunate affair at the boiling yard?”

  “We are pursuing some definite ideas, sir,” Mendick said. He looked around the room; oak-panelled and spacious, it contained ship-builder’s half-models of the hull of Rose Flammock and Evelyn Berenger. “I see you have models of two of your vessels, sir.”

  “My whaling ships, Sergeant.” Gilbride stepped around his desk as he spoke, one hand on Mendick’s arm and the other pointing to the ships. “See how we have shaped the hulls, Sergeant? They are sharp, so when the ice nips them, they are lifted clear rather than crushed like eggshells.”

  “I do see, sir.” Despite himself Mendick was captured by Gilbride’s enthusiasm. “And did you have Rebecca designed the same way?” He watched Gilbride closely, hoping for a reaction.

  “Good Lord, no, Sergeant. What a strange question to ask. Rebecca is a coasting sloop, not a whaling ship. Not a ship at all, really. Why do you enquire after her, pray?” Gilbride stood up; his eyes, wide and quizzical.

  “You do own Rebecca, Mr Gilbride?” Mendick asked.

  “I am one of her owners, yes,” Gilbride confirmed at once.

  “So you will know what type of cargo she carries?”

  Gilbride shrugged. “I do not know that, Sergeant, she is chartered out.” He sat down at the desk, opened a drawer and pulled out a file. “Here we are. She is chartered to Robert Marmion of the Overgate.” He looked up. “A name after my own heart, Sergeant.”

  Mendick kept his face expressionless. “I am sure it is, sir. Do you have the full address?”

  “Of course, Sergeant.” Gilbride wrote it down and handed it over. “Would you stay for a cup of tea?”

  “Thank you, sir, but no. I must pursue my enquiries.” Mendick looked at the address: Doig’s Close, Overgate.

  Mendick stood up. “Thank you, Mr Gilbride. If you can be of any more help I will be in touch.”

  He took a deep breath. Another clue that just led in a circle. China Jim certainly knew how to cover his tracks in whatever he did, but at least he had ascertained a definite link between the mysterious Marmion and China Jim.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Mendick stood outside the Greenland Inn where Hitchins still begged in his ragged, once-scarlet jacket, and the same shifty clientele sidled in and out.

  “Evening, Hitchins. Remember me?”

  There were upwards of five hundred pubs, licensed grocers, shebeens and cheeping shops in Dundee and by the Tuesday of the following week Mendick and his team of officers had visited every one. Sometimes Mendick had taken Sturrock with him, sometimes Deuchars, and often he had gone alone, but always with the same objective in mind. Now he filled his pipe outside the Greenland Inn.

  The beggar peered at him through narrowed eyes. “Why, no, sir, I can’t say as I do. Are you the gentleman who gave me two shillings yesterday?”

  “No, Hitchins, I am the police sergeant who gave you the sore head some weeks ago.”

  Hitchins cringed. “Oh! Sergeant Mendick! I didn’t recognise you sir, it’s my eyes, you see.”

  “You see as well as I do, and that’s damnably near to perfect.” Mendick pulled Hitchins close. “Robert was telling me I should be kind to you.”

  “Indeed sir, that is very kind of Robert. He is a good man, indeed.” The beggar bowed and shuffled.

  “You know Robert of course?” Mendick opened the flap of his Chesterfield and allowed the head of his staff to show, “or should I remind you? Robert Marmion?”

  Hitchins looked around, but there was no pretence in his trembling. “For God’s sake, Sergeant! You’ll get me killed stone dead!”

  “Who is he? Obviously you know full well.” Mendick pulled his staff out to half its length, but Hitchins was looking in every direction save at him.

  “Marmion’s China Jim’s man, Sergeant. Now go away, for God’s own sake. China will skin me and feed me to the dogs if he knows I told you.” Hitchins crouched against the wall as a group of seamen lurched past.

  “I promise I will never tell him,” Mendick said. “Now. You know this corner better than anybody, Hitchins. Who supplies the spirits for this establishment?”

  Hitchins stared, “What sort of question is that? How the devil should I know who supplies the spirits?”

  “Try,” Mendick had no cane to aid him so he relied on a soft smile as he ground the heel of his boot into Hitchin’s toes.

  “I don’t know!” Hitchins wailed, “I honestly don’t know!” His voice dropped to a whisper as he realised he was attracting attention. “I don’t know, Sergeant. Ask the landlord. It comes in a cart, that’s all I know.”

  “Don’t go away,” Mendick said. “I might need you later.” He pushed open the door of the pub and walked in.

  The sounds and scents and scenes were utterly familiar to Mendick. Apart from the preponderance of Dundee accents he could be in any dockside pub in any town in Britain. There were the same raucous seamen, tanned, fit and three sheets to the wind. They spent weeks and months in unremitting hardship to earn their wages and now they wasted them in a careless debauch. In his time Mendick had done the same. He recognised the behaviour as well as he recognised the same over-dressed women clinging to the arms of the men, pretending undying love as they transformed the wages of their catch into something liquid to pour down their throats. There were the same clamouring children, the same false, good humour from the landlord and the same perfume of beer and whisky.

  “Whisky,” Mendick ordered. He spun a silver threepence onto the counter and looked around. The tables were crowded, but he squeezed onto a bench near the counter where a large man stared into a near-empty glass and a done old man clawed at his stomach and muttered to himself.

  “He’s coming out,” the old man said, and looked up. “They do that you know, they come back to get you. He’s got two so far and I’m next.”

  “I’m sure they do.” Mendick looked closely, there was something vaguely familiar about the man’s features. He grunted. He had been in the same place and intoned the same words on Mendick’s last visit to this pub. Having no desire to share his time with a meandering drunkard, Mendick looked for another seat, but the pub was just about full.

  “I’m Andy,” the drunk slurred. He looked at Mendick with shadowed eyes. “I was Andrew Cleghorn once, but now everyone calls me Old Andy.” He began to sing, his voice surprisingly melodious.

  “The captain has gone to the topmast high,

  with a spy-glass in his hand,

  a whale, a whale, a whale, cries he,

  and she blows at every span, brave boys,

  And she blows at every span.”

  Mendick did not know the words but the tune was familiar, from where he could not say.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” The large man nudged his neighbour with a ready elbow. “Shut your mouth, you drunken old bastard. You only did t
he one bloody voyage anyway.”

  “I did one more than you, you little dog, so shut your teeth.” For a second Andy’s voice altered and the benign old face altered to something intrinsically unpleasant.

  “You little dog.” It was the combination of that unique expression and the new, hard voice that Mendick recognised. The surge of fear was instinctive, a memory from long ago, and he fought the urge to cringe and raise his hands to protect himself.

  “Get up there, you little dog, and get it swept.”

  The voice echoed in the choking darkness, distorted by the surrounding brickwork but still containing enough menace to make Jamie shiver. He looked upward to where the flue ascended forever, the sides black and slippery with soot and the exit a tiny circle of light diminished by distance.

  “Move you bugger! Or it will be the worse for you!”

  Mendick looked closer into the face of old Andy and rolled back the years. In place of the wrinkled, broken old man he saw the beery brutality of the man he had only known as Master; in place of the whines he heard the barked orders given in all their guttural obscenity.

  “You used to be a Master Sweep,” Mendick found it hard to control the tremor in his voice.

  Old Andy glowered across the width of the table before lowering his eyes. “I might have been,” he said.

  “You don’t remember me at all, do you?” Mendick asked. He reached across the table, grabbed Andy’s chin and forced the man’s head up. Andy’s glare returned momentarily before fear replaced it.

  “He’s coming out,” Andy said, and scratched at his stomach.

  “I asked if you remember me.” When Andy tried to pull his head away Mendick held him tight and ignored the protests from the large man. Andy closed his eyes. Mendick leaned forward, pinched one wrinkled old eyelid and pulled the eye open.

  “Hey, there! Enough of that!” The large man said.

  Mendick’s look froze him into silence.

  Andy pushed himself as far back into his seat as he could. “Why should I remember you?”

  “I was your climbing boy once,” Mendick said softly. He released Andy’s eyelid and watched the old eyes open wide. For a long moment, Mendick was tempted. The desire to stand up and break this man almost overwhelmed him. The years of pain returned in all their horror; the frustration of being trapped in a never-ending cycle of misery; the constant fear; the pain; the hunger and cold.

  He looked at Andy and slowly drew back his fist. But this was 1849, not 1827. He had been looking for a burly man in his thirties. Perhaps his Master had only been large when seen through the eyes of a child. Instead Mendick saw Old Andy as he was now: a shrivelled, broken old man with fear in his eyes and deep lines of poverty in his face. He saw a man ravaged by drink and time so that he trembled where he sat and the only thing left was a broken mind, the failing strength of middle-age and a liking for drink.

  At that moment Mendick glimpsed his own reflection in the window of the pub. He saw a man in the prime of life, a man of position and authority, a man with twenty years of life experience over half the world and a man with a responsible duty to perform. He had walked a dark road from his childhood and if he followed his instincts and hammered this man to a pulp, all his efforts would have been in vain. The police would discard him, his reputation would be destroyed forever and he would be lucky to find any other work. Andrew Cleghorn would have destroyed his adult life as he had destroyed his childhood.

  “No,” Mendick shook his head as the gibbering black ghosts of the past dissipated. “No. I was mistaken, I don’t know you. I thought you were someone important but now I see you are a . . .” He searched for a word to reveal his contempt for Old Andy but there was none. Instead, he shook his head. “You are nothing,” he finished. He stood up. “You are nothing,” he repeated. When he stalked to the counter, Old Andy was rubbing at his stomach and still mumbling to himself.

  “He’s coming out.” Old Andy said and began his song once more.

  “Excellent whisky.” Mendick placed his glass on the counter. “Not like the usual rot-gut rubbish. In fact, I will buy you one myself.” He passed over a silver three-penny piece, which the barman accepted without hesitation.

  “Very kind of you, sir.” He bit into the coin and put it in his fob pocket while pouring himself a generous measure of whisky. “It’s always easy to recognise a genuine gentleman when one graces my establishment.”

  “Indeed, sir,” Mendick sipped at his own glass, “a compliment like that deserves another dram any day of the week.” He flipped a second threepence onto the counter and smiled. “You really must tell me the name of your supplier.” He had followed the same routine in pub after pub throughout Dundee, sometimes rejected by laughter or threats of violence, often given the name of a perfectly legitimate distiller, but this time the barman looked at him shrewdly.

  “Are you in the trade?” He asked, once the coin had been safely deposited beside its companion in his fob pocket.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Mendick leaned across the counter and lowered his voice. “I’m not in competition with you. I was getting peat reek from the Glens but my man withdrew his supply. He said he was advised to stop.”

  “Muscled out, was he?” The barman finished his drink in a single swallow. “There’s some rough play going on up north just now. My supply comes regularly, though. The carrier never gives the name, but we all know who it is.” He winked and withdrew.

  Mendick slapped a crown piece on the counter but kept his hand on top of it with his fingers splayed open. “Perhaps he could supply me as well?”

  The barman looked at the glint of the silver coin between Mendick’s fingers. “I am due a delivery tomorrow night, a barrel of the finest.” His hand hovered above Mendick’s. “Give me your name and I can have a word with the boys.”

  Mendick slid the coin back into his pocket. “I will speak to them in person,” he said. “It will be a local man, I expect?”

  The barman looked pointedly at Mendick’s pocket and shrugged. “Maybe so,” he said.

  Mendick replaced the crown piece where it was. It shone bright against the scarred wood of the counter. The barman slammed his hand over it in case Mendick changed his mind. “The whisky comes from one of the towns in Strathmore.” He hesitated, “It might be Blairgowrie.”

  “Thank you,” Mendick placed his hand on top of the landlord’s, “and the supplier’s name?”

  “China Jim,” the barman whispered and looked up sharply in case he had been overheard, even in that noisy bar.

  When Mendick left the pub Old Andy was still clawing at his stomach and warbling his song.

  “Our mate stood on the quarter-deck,

  And a quick little man was he.

  Overhaul, overhaul, let the boat-tackle fall,

  And we launched them into the sea, brave boys,

  And we launched them into the sea.”

  Mendick did not look back. Old Andy was not important. His link to China Jim certainly was.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Mackay appeared even more ascetic than normal as he looked over his men. The hectic colouring of his face around high cheekbones was more pronounced under the hissing gas light, his nose even sharper and his full dress uniform, complete with the long curved sword in its scabbard, was faintly ridiculous. But any sense of ridicule ended as he began to speak.

  “Settle down, lads, and take note! We have ascertained that China Jim is involved with the supply of whisky to Dundee and we think he operates a distillery, or a number of small stills, in the Blairgowrie area.” Mackay smiled at the ripple of comments. “I have contacted the County force and they are looking into that situation.”

  Mendick shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Can we not go after the distillery ourselves, sir?”

  “We have enough to do in here, Sergeant,” Mackay said. “Now, pay attention. We have spoken to every publican in Dundee, both respectable and unlicensed, and we know there is a shipment of whisky coming t
o Dundee tonight. We know of at least five different pubs who are expecting supplies, so that speaks of more than a couple of pack horses. I think we can fairly say there will be a wagon-load.”

  Mendick watched his colleagues stir restlessly at this intelligence. There was a slight murmur of approval, a stamping of booted feet and touching of hands on the shafts of staffs.

  Mackay continued, speaking slowly. “Now, remember. Although we are hunting for whisky today, we are still on a murder hunt. This man we only know as China Jim has butchered and,” he lowered his voice, “actually eaten parts of three men. He also tried to murder Sergeant Mendick here.”

  Some of the men turned around to stare at Mendick as if they had never seen him before until Mackay rapped his knuckles on the desk for attention. “We know the whisky wagon is coming from one of the towns in Strathmore, which means it must go through the Sidlaw Hills. And that is where we will stop it.”

  Mendick spoke again. “The Sidlaws are quite extensive, sir. How do we know which way they will come?”

  Mackay held up a map and used a length of stick as a pointer.

  “There are three main routes suitable for a wagon,” he said. “The western route by the Coupar Angus Road that passes Tullybaccart, the central route through the Glack of Newtyle or the eastern route from Glamis.” He paused, “We do not know which route China Jim will take so we will cover all three. I will take six men and an Excise officer to Tullybaccart and inspect all traffic there, Lieutenant Cameron will do the same on the Glamis route and Sergeant Mendick will guard the Glack of Newtyle.” He folded the map. “I have arranged for a mounted man to call on every party in turn so as soon as we find the whisky, the others will be alerted. That will be all, gentlemen. Remember to do your duty; this man must be removed from Dundee.”