The Gold Masters

by Norman Russell

  As the doctor picked his way carefully through the rubble and up to the main road, Sergeant Knollys appeared on the opposite side of the basin. Box watched him while he stood motionless, taking in the bizarre scene – the silent machines, the still taut mesh of cables, and the salvaged launch lying drunkenly on its side. Slowly Knollys walked round the rim of the basin, until he stood beside the corpse which lay, still uncovered, on the flags.

  ‘It’s PC Lane, Sergeant,’ said Box. ‘His neck was broken, and his body hidden in the launch. Then the launch was scuttled. The gold wasn’t in it.’

  ‘We should be out looking for Mahoney,’ said Knollys, looking down at the corpse. There was a smouldering anger in his voice that Box was quick to notice. Was Knollys about to start a personal vendetta? Any such notion needed to be nipped in the bud.

  ‘It was pointless to go looking for Mahoney at this juncture,’ said Box impatiently. ‘He’s gone to earth – him, and his accomplices, and the one million pounds in gold. Or so it would seem. We’ll hunt him down and bring him in when the time’s right.’

  A rumbling sound on the road above announced the arrival of the police hearse. Box plucked Knollys by the sleeve.

  ‘Come on, Sergeant,’ he said, ‘let’s make ourselves scarce. Inspector Saville will do the necessary for poor Lane. You and I have further work to do here in Corunna Lands.’

  ‘What can we do, sir? It’s as black as pitch.’

  ‘Is it? What about all those pinpoints of light among the acres of ruin? They’re fires, Sergeant, which means that there are people living here in this wilderness – tramps, for instance, and destitute men who collect firewood and scrap to eke out a living. I don’t like the smell of this bullion business, Jack. There’s something odd about it. So let you and me go and seek out those islands of light.’

  As Box and Knollys emerged from the Stygian blackness beyond Parr’s Basin and into the circle of orange light cast by the flames of a bonfire, an old man in tattered clothes rose to greet them. He smiled, and the smile revealed a mouthful of crooked and broken teeth. The old man motioned to some piles of broken timber and bales of rotting newspaper surrounding him.

  ‘Sit down and warm yourselves, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘You’re police, I expect? Yes, I thought so.’ His voice was roughened by a combination of drink and exposure to the elements, but there was a ghost of a chuckle behind his words. Box knew from experience what kind of man this was. He would once have held a respected position in society, but drink had reduced him to the status of vagrant. Box searched his pocket for some coins, making sure that the man could hear them clinking as he did so. The old man’s rheumy eyes brightened.

  ‘So how can I help you, Officers? Is it about the men from the launch? Bold as brass, they were – too bold, because they didn’t realize there were folk like me living rough in the Lands.’

  Box drew a couple of half-crowns from his pocket, and handed them to the man. He saw that he was wearing woollen mittens, the palms of which were full of holes.

  ‘Tell me what you saw, gaffer,’ said Box, as he and Knollys settled themselves as best they could on two hillocks of tied-up newspapers, part of the old man’s stock in trade.

  ‘It was daylight, gentlemen, when that boat was sunk in the old basin. From where I’m sitting now, you can see a steep path running up through the ruins towards Waterloo Road. I can’t say exactly when it was, but it was still afternoon. Ten men toiled up that path from the basin, dragging heavy square chests behind them, two men to a chest. In a moment or two another gang of ten men, muffled up in pea jackets and scarves, scrambled down from the main road, and helped the men from the launch. None of them had any idea that I was watching them.’

  ‘How many chests were there?’ asked Box.

  It’s hard to say. Twenty, perhaps, maybe twenty-five—’

  ‘There weren’t seventy-eight chests, by any chance?’

  The old man laughed, and waved an admonitory finger at Box.

  ‘Seventy-eight? ’Course there wasn’t! I can still count, you know. They’d still be there now if it had been seventy-eight. They were heavy, those chests, but two men apiece was enough to drag them up the slope and on to the road. Twenty or twenty-five. The men all worked as quietly as they could, with no talking to interrupt what they were doing. The whole business lasted about twenty minutes.’

  ‘Weren’t you afraid that they’d see you?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t afraid. I was quite hidden from their sight. And in any case, I thought perhaps that they were on police business of some sort, because they were led by a giant of a man in policeman’s uniform. But they weren’t police, were they?’

  ‘No, gaffer, they weren’t. They were robbers, and the one who looked like a policeman is a murderer several times over.’

  Box took one of his official cards from his pocket, and scribbled some words on it by the light of the old man’s fire.

  ‘What’s your name, gaffer?’

  ‘Thomas Edwards, aged seventy. Fallen clerk.’

  ‘Well, Thomas Edwards, if you present this card to Mr Field at the Southwark Board of Guardians, he’ll arrange for you to get some outdoor relief. Come on, Sergeant. It’s nearly ten o’clock, and we were due off at nine. It’s time for you and me to sign out and go home for the night.’

  11

  All That Glisters….

  When Box came into 4 King James’s Rents at eight o’clock the next morning, he found that everyone was talking about the murder of PC Lane. He pushed open the swing doors of his office, and stood by the fire, looking into the big, fly-blown mirror above the mantelpiece. He saw that there were dark shadows under his eyes, and his usually perky face looked drawn. He felt worn out and tired.

  Two fresh notes had been pasted on the mirror among the clutter of ancient visiting cards and dead messages that both Knollys and he had agreed to clean up some time. One note, scrawled in green ink, read: ‘There’s no Cedarville Road in Harpenden.’ Why had he wanted to know that? The second note, written in capital letters, told him that Paul Lombardo was watching a house in Melbourne Avenue, Belsize Park. Lombardo? Well, well – that was very interesting. If he got a moment, he’d track Lombardo down to one of his haunts, and have a little chat with him.

  There was a stir in the tunnel-like passage joining the office to the drill hall, and in a moment a burly uniformed police sergeant, an impressive figure with a flowing spade beard, came into the room. He was carrying an enamel mug of steaming hot tea, which he placed on the table. He regarded Box with a look compounded of respectful affection and concern.

  ‘Sergeant Kenwright!’ said Box, sinking into his accustomed chair at the big table. ‘So you’re back from Brighton. I was away from the Rents all day yesterday, so I didn’t see you when you returned. How are things here, this morning?’

  ‘Well, sir, there’s a lot of bad feeling about, as you can imagine. Poor young Lane had been going through a bad patch, and everyone across the cobbles was sorry for him. Now his wife’s left to bring up three young children alone. He died in the course of duty—’

  ‘Yes, he did, Sergeant, so there’ll be a pension of sorts to help out. And there’ll be enough collected for a decent funeral and a private grave, like we did for PC Daniels last year. Do you remember him?’

  ‘I do indeed, sir. Choked on his false teeth while helping another constable to arrest a thief. I went to his funeral. It was a simple affair, but there was a proper glass hearse with two black horses between the shafts, and six uniformed constables as bearers. Yes, there’s a lot of ill-feeling about this morning.’

  Box had finished his tea, and Kenwright had just retrieved his mug when Sergeant Knollys came through the tunnel from the drill hall. At the same time, Box heard the shrill scraping sound of the big double gates to the rear yard being pulled open.

  ‘Sir,’ said Knollys without preamble, ‘Inspector Saville’s here. He’s come straight from Corunna Lands in a police van. He’s found the rifled bullion chests
, and he’s brought some of them along with him. I met the van as I was coming down Aberdeen Lane, and arranged for the big gates to be opened for him.’

  At that moment Inspector Saville of Thames Division came through the tunnel. He looked as mild and cheerful as ever, despite his long night’s labours. Sergeant Kenwright saluted, and the inspector rather absentmindedly returned his salute.

  ‘Sit down, Mr Saville,’ said Box. ‘So you’ve found the bullion chests? Don’t go, Sergeant Kenwright. You’d better hear what Inspector Saville’s got to tell us.’

  Saville sat down at the table, and took out a notebook from one of the pockets of his uniform frock coat. Knollys and Kenwright remained standing near the fireplace, while the inspector told his story.

  ‘At first light, Mr Box,’ Saville began, ‘my constables and I climbed up out of all that ruin and on to Waterloo Road. Not a hundred yards along, just near the opening to Roupell Street, one of my men discovered a long, open gully, part of a blocked waterway beside the footings of a demolished workshop. There were twenty-five bullion chests lying smashed in the gully. The hasps on most of them had been forced with jemmies, though one or two had evidently been attacked with axes. Of course, they were all empty. As I suspected when we were still down at Parr’s Basin, there must have been plain vans waiting for the villains, to which they transferred the bullion.’

  ‘Did anyone see any vans? Did you ask around?’

  ‘Oh, yes, we asked a good number of people living in the area. No one saw any vans, but that’s the only way in which they could have conveyed that great amount of gold away. You don’t need me to tell you that most people don’t notice anything.’

  ‘According to my arithmetic,’ said Box, ‘there are fifty-three chests unaccounted for. What happened to them?’

  ‘I think the gang started to open the chests when they reached that gully — the whole location must have been chosen beforehand. But as the minutes passed, they began to take fright, and loaded the remaining fifty-three chests directly on to their vans.’

  ‘Why did they want to empty the chests in the gully in the first place? Why not load the whole lot on to the vans at once?’

  ‘I reckon they’d have thought the combined weight of the gold and the heavy mahogany chests would be too much for the horses. In the event, though, they had to take that risk. And evidently it paid off.’

  A little silence fell on the room when Saville had stopped speaking. They could all hear the asthmatic hissing of the old gas mantle suspended from the soot-stained ceiling, and the crackling of the coal in the grate. An angel’s passing over, thought Box, wryly.

  ‘An angel’s passing over, Mr Box,’ said Saville. ‘Maybe he’s gone, now. I’ve brought the wreckage of all those chests along for you to see. I’m not quite sure why, but there’s something about the whole business that seems odd, and I think it needs detectives to examine some of the evidence.’

  Inspector Saville turned to look at the impassive, bearded figure of Sergeant Kenwright, whose eyes, he noted, had gleamed when he’d mentioned the bullion chests.

  ‘I’ve heard all about you, Kenwright,’ he said, ‘and the skilled work that you did in that business of Sir William Porteous’s coach, and then in assembling the fragments of the Hansa Protocol. I thought you’d like to take a close look at those chests.’

  Sergeant Kenwright blushed with pleasure. Fancy being remembered by busy senior officers like Mr Saville! Kenwright had spent most of his working life as a beat constable, but a year ago he had nearly died of rheumatic fever, and had been transferred to King James’s Rents to aid his recovery. He had taken to the dilapidated place immediately, and had been able to exercise his skills in such a way that he had been promoted to sergeant. He hoped desperately that he would not be sent back to the divisions. It was lovely at the Rents.

  Inspector Saville rose, and carefully replaced his uniform cap, glancing in the mirror to do so. It was time to go in pursuit of the villains along Waterloo Road. He took his leave of Box, and followed the eager Sergeant Kenwright through the tunnel.

  ‘I don’t believe a word of it, Jack,’ said Box. ‘This is a gang who carry out a daring robbery, seizing a launch – what’s happened to its original crew, and why has nobody reported them missing? What was I saying? They seize a launch, and take it across the river in full daylight, and then stop on a derelict site to break open the chests. They could have been seen at any time. Robbers on this scale don’t behave like little grab-and-snatchers, stopping to shake money out of a purse before throwing it away. What was the point of stopping in that gully?’

  ‘You say you don’t believe a word of it, sir,’ said Knollys. ‘Nor do I. That old man we met in Corunna Lands counted twenty-five chests being hauled up on to the road. Mr Saville’s brought twenty-five chests here for Sergeant Kenwright to examine. Where are the other fifty-three?’

  Both men were silent for a moment, listening to the noise of activity in the drill hall as the broken chests were brought in across the yard from Aberdeen Lane. They could hear Sergeant Kenwright unfolding the trestle tables, and dragging chairs about.

  ‘There’s only one place they can be, Jack, but it just doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘No, sir, it doesn’t – unless—’

  ‘Let’s leave it for the moment, Sergeant. Evidently we think alike, but we’d better wait until friend Kenwright has examined those chests before we develop a theory. Meanwhile, it’s time for us to pay a visit to Mr Milton Fisher, one of whose gang, that so-called footman Snobby Quayle, is still languishing in Inspector Price’s gaol at Croydon. Fisher owns a billiard saloon at the Tottenham Court Road end of Oxford Street. He’ll be there now.’

  Box got up from the table, and began to struggle into his smart overcoat.

  ‘And on Monday, Sergeant, we’ll go and make a few enquiries in Bait’s Lane, near Bevis Marks.’

  ‘You want to talk to PC Lane’s widow? That’s very kind of you, sir—’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with kindness, Jack. PC Lane was supposed to have been got out of the way when the bullion robbery occurred, and I’ve a shrewd idea how it was going to be done. Why he turned up at Carmelite Pavement anyway is another matter, which can keep for the moment. You see, I’ve not forgotten Mrs Pennymint and her merry band of fortune-tellers. They’re tied up somehow with this robbery, and I want to find out how they worked that business of poor little Catherine Mary.’

  Fisher’s billiard saloon was a tawdry affair, its walls, once green, faded to a drab grey. Three heavy billiard tables occupied the smoky room above a stationer’s shop in Oxford Street, and at one of them Mr Milton Fisher was playing a solitary game of billiards. Box looked round the bare-boarded room with distaste.

  ‘I don’t know how you can bear to stay cooped up in this filthy den all day, Fisher,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you go out on a job occasionally, with one of your high-class villains? A breath of air would do you the world of good.’

  Milton Fisher, a stout and perspiring man whose acne-scarred face was badly in need of a shave, wore a loud check suit that was too tight for him, so that his fat wrists protruded from the sleeves. He continued his lonely game, pausing only to glance balefully at Box, and to notice the presence of Knollys, who stood, arms folded, with his back to the door.

  ‘What do you want, Box? What gives you the right to swagger in here, making accusations?’ The cue clicked, the billiard balls rolled, and Fisher continued to avoid any direct eye contact with his visitors. Knollys looked at him with growing animosity. Fat parasites of Fisher’s kind held no appeal for him.

  ‘I suppose you know,’ Box continued, ‘that your man Snobby Quayle was involved in the robbery at Lord Jocelyn Peto’s house at Croydon? It was too bad for him, Fisher, that I was called out on the case.’

  ‘Yes, I heard that you’d nabbed him. Is that why you’ve come here today? To tell me that poor Snobby’s in choky? Well, I knew that already. Snobby won’t mind. It’s the luck of the draw. Good mo
rning.’

  ‘I want to know how you became involved in that Croydon robbery, Fisher. Who employed you? What’s your connection with Francis Xavier Mahoney? I’ve no time to be bandying words with you. I’m investigating this bullion robbery at Carmelite Pavement, which involves the murder of a policeman, PC Lane.’

  Milton Fisher moved round the table, his eyes fixed on the green baize. He stooped down and squinted along his cue. There was just a trace of a smile on his face.

  ‘Lane? Well, I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve no doubt he was a fine, upstanding—’

  Sergeant Knollys suddenly hurled himself at Fisher and pinned him against the wall with a massive forearm across his throat. The colour drained from the gang-leader’s face. His cue clattered on the floor.

  ‘Listen, scum.’

  Knollys’ voice came low and terrifying, with the sibilance of a deadly snake fascinating its victim before the venomous strike.

  ‘Your friend Quayle was present in a house where murder was done, the murderer being Basher Mahoney. Just hours ago, Mahoney murdered our colleague PC Lane, who’s worth more than all you scum put together. So we’re talking murder, see? We’re talking about you and your pals taking the eight o’clock drop one fine morning. You, and Quayle, and Mahoney. So unless you want a billiard ball rammed down your throat, you’d better tell us a few things that we want to know. And you can keep a civil tongue in your head while you do it.’

  ‘Get him off me, Box, do you hear?’ croaked Fisher. ‘Snobby Quayle was working on his own. That robbery had nothing to do with me and my boys. I don’t know who found out about Snobby’s talents, but it wasn’t through me.’

  ‘Did you employ Mahoney to help in the Croydon robbery? Was it your boys who shifted the bullion up from Corunna Lands and on to Waterloo Road?’