The Yard

by Alex Grecian

  “I’m not worried about it, Colin. I suspect I’d be a bad husband, anyway.”

  “Well, it’s true that you’d have to spend more time at home than you do now. A wife will want attention paid to her.”

  “Exactly right,” Hammersmith said. “And who has time for it when there’s so much work to be done?”

  Colin Pringle opened his mouth to reply, but before he could speak, a cry came from behind them.

  “Hoy! Coppers! Over this way!”

  A huge bearded man who looked as if he’d been left out in the sun too long strode across the road toward them. Up close, the man’s green eyes shone brilliantly through the surrounding dark hair. They twinkled with intelligence, belying the man’s thuggish appearance.

  “You bluebottles is hard to come on, ain’t you?”

  “Is there something we can do for you, sir?” Hammersmith asked.

  As the man drew closer, Pringle took a step back, no doubt concerned about his spotless uniform.

  “Can I show you a thing?” the man said.

  “What’s your name, sir?”

  “Blackleg.”

  Hammersmith smiled. The name was more likely the man’s job description. It meant that he was willing to cross picket lines for work during a union strike. Hammersmith suspected Blackleg had long since forgotten the name he was born with.

  “What have you got for us, Mr Blackleg?”

  “It’s this way. C’mon with me, then.”

  They waited for an omnibus to roll past, the horses chuffing and foaming at the mouth, then crossed the road and followed Blackleg to an alley halfway down the other side of the street. Pringle leaned close to Hammersmith and whispered.

  “Nevil, my shift’s long since over. And so’s yours. I’ve got an appointment. Where’s the man on the beat?”

  It was a good question. London was divided into fifteen-minute segments, meaning that every beat cop was within fifteen minutes’ run from every possible spot in the territory he patrolled. Hammersmith had found and kept one of the big wooden wheels that had once been used to measure distance and to determine the size of each beat within the sprawling city.

  “Did you encounter any constables before us, sir?” he said.

  “No, sir, an’ I looked, you believe me. You’re the first I seen.”

  “I can’t ignore him, Colin.”

  “Let him keep looking. He’ll find someone else.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Don’t change the fact we’re off duty.”

  Hammersmith grimaced. He was never off duty.

  “Tell you what, you go on and I’ll see what’s what. I’ll catch up to you soon enough.”

  “I wouldn’t feel right leaving you. What if this bloke decides to take you on?”

  They both looked at Blackleg, who stood patiently at the alley’s mouth, waiting for their conference to end. At rest, he still seemed coiled and ready to spring. Blackleg looked like he was no stranger to violence. And Hammersmith wondered what other shadowy work the man was involved in, besides crossing picket lines.

  “I believe I’d be up to the challenge,” he said.

  Pringle raised his eyebrows. “You’re sure?”

  “Go on, Colin.”

  “You’ll be right behind me?”

  “I imagine I’ll arrive at the tailor’s at the very moment you do, if you dawdle a bit along the way.”

  “Right, then. I’ll see you.”

  And Pringle was gone, hurrying back across the street to disappear in the maze of fruit vendors and fish peddlers that lined the walkway. Hammersmith chuckled and joined Blackleg at the alley.

  “What happened with him?”

  “He had a pressing engagement. Lead on.”

  Blackleg nodded and gestured for Hammersmith to follow. Hammersmith hesitated before plunging into the alley after Blackleg. He could make out shapes in the dark, but no details. He drew his nightstick from the loop on his belt and stepped into the shadows.

  Blackleg was far ahead, silhouetted against the light from the other end of the alley, but Hammersmith knew better than to chase blindly after him. He walked carefully, peering into every dark corner and skirting the crannies in the buildings on either side of him. There were people in here, sleeping away the daylight hours. Perhaps they would awaken at dusk to ply whatever unsavory trade they practiced. Or perhaps they wouldn’t ever wake up again. Hammersmith left them where they lay and moved forward.

  He emerged unscathed at the other end of the alley, blinking in the sudden light. Ahead of him, Blackleg impatiently beckoned Hammersmith forward.

  The East End was a prosperous neighborhood, but had fallen on hard times over the past decade. Once-handsome architecture was no longer maintained or repaired, and the London poor—the working class, the beggars, the pickpockets, grifters, and drunkards—had all begun to claim it for themselves. There were oases of elegance to be found among the homes, and the nearby medical college still brought doctors to the area, but fewer doctors lived here now. Dignified old houses endured an uneasy proximity to some of the seediest pubs and opium dens in the city, and students who couldn’t afford homes in the suburbs were being edged out by vendors and streetwalkers.

  Blackleg led Hammersmith to a row of tall brownstones skirted by a black wrought-iron fence. The slate-grey building was dotted helter-skelter with small windows, and there was a garden area below street level, sunken behind the fence.

  Blackleg pointed down at the garden. It was accessible by a series of stone steps that were partially hidden by potted plants on the walk.

  “I was settlin’ in for a doze down there, right?”

  Hammersmith squinted at the other man and pursed his lips. It was a credible lie and Blackleg sold it well, but Hammersmith didn’t believe for a moment that he slept on the street or in sunken gardens. No, in all likelihood, Blackleg was an area diver, a criminal who broke into homes through their below-ground-level servants’ entrances and burgled the lower rooms. There was little doubt Blackleg had been casing the townhouse to make sure nobody was home.

  Blackleg didn’t miss the accusation in Hammersmith’s expression.

  “God’s truth, yer honor. Any rate, I was down there and I happened to spy a thing through the window that’s unsettled me some’at.”

  “Looking through the window, were you?”

  “Just glanced, is all. I’m not a peep. Just had a little glance as I rolled over on me side to get a good sleep.”

  “Of course. Go on.”

  “Well, look for yerself. Me, I don’t quite know what to make of it.”

  Hammersmith kept his eye on Blackleg as he descended the steps to the sunken area. It was an ideal spot for the criminal to mug him, but if Blackleg intended to harm him, Hammersmith suspected the attack would have come in the alley.

  He squatted on a bed of cedar mulch and peered into the room beyond the window. Within the semi-gloom he could make out the distinct shapes of furniture: three chairs, a small table, a sofa, all covered in heavy white cloths. The wall to the left was dominated by an enormous fireplace with a marble hearth that jutted into the first third of the room. Above the mantel and dotting the other walls was a collection of recent Impressionist paintings that looked valuable to Hammersmith’s untrained eye. A Turkish rug was rolled up in the far corner, unfurled at the end so that the deep blues and reds of the carpet’s pattern gleamed in a shaft of sunlight that shot past Hammersmith’s shoulder. He turned and Blackleg was standing by his side, watching the policeman anxiously.

  “It appears uncommonly well appointed for a servant’s room, if that’s what it is,” Hammersmith said. “But that’s hardly cause for concern.”

  “Look harder, sir. Look over there.”

  Hammersmith frowned and looked again at the massive fireplace. The grate was folded to one side and a set of fireplace tools stood neatly against the stones. Hammersmith counted a bellows, tongs, a poker and shovel. A selection of ladles and spoons hung from an
iron bar bolted to the bricks, and a toaster, its rectangular slots rusted and black with soot, rested by itself on the right-hand side of the hearth. Something worked at the periphery of Hammersmith’s vision, and he turned his gaze to the black maw of the fireplace itself. There. He drew back and looked up at Blackleg, who nodded.

  “Now you see it.”

  “What is it?”

  “’Fraid it’s a chavy, sir. Too small to be aught else.”

  “Why did you go for the police? Why not sod off and leave it be?”

  “Told you, sir. I’m right sure it’s a chavy. That ain’t proper.”

  Hammersmith nodded and pushed at the pane of glass in front of him. It gave way. The window was unlocked. He felt along the edge of it for damage and ran his fingers over splintered wood. It confirmed for him that Blackleg had broken into the house, but Hammersmith kept that knowledge to himself. There was no sense in scaring the criminal away. Blackleg might still prove to be a useful witness.

  Hammersmith swung his legs over the windowsill and dropped down into the room. Dust swam aimlessly through the solitary beam of sunlight. Hammersmith was sure that Blackleg had rolled up the rug in the corner of the room, planning to cart it away, before he made his lurid discovery.

  “Hello?” Hammersmith said.

  He raised his voice and hollered again, louder this time.

  “Hello? Is anybody home? Police.”

  Silence answered him. The brownstone had the feel of a long-abandoned place. No homeowner was within earshot.

  Behind him, Hammersmith heard Blackleg drop to the floor. He turned and Blackleg nodded at him. The two men walked to the fireplace, and Hammersmith knelt on the hearth. He reached out toward the shoe that dangled from the chimney and prodded it with his nightstick. There was clearly a foot in it. A body was stuck up inside the chimney.

  Hammersmith paused and glanced back again at Blackleg. The other man’s expression mirrored his own. The shoe hanging down below the top edge of the fireplace’s mouth was small enough to fit in the palm of Hammersmith’s hand. They were looking at the foot of a chavy: a dead child.

  Hammersmith grabbed the child’s ankle in both hands and pulled. Nothing happened. The body was wedged in tight. He braced himself and pulled again. He felt something shift above him.

  “Come here and help.”

  Blackleg squatted on the marble slab next to Hammersmith and the two men pulled together. The child’s trouser leg ripped and the shoe thumped into the ashes below. Both men fell backward on their rumps and coughed as a cloud of ash and dust billowed out at them. A rasping sound echoed through the room, and a moment later the entire body dropped from the chimney and tumbled out onto the hearth.

  Hammersmith pulled his shirt over his mouth and nose, shielding himself from the swirling ash, and scrambled forward until he was leaning over the body. He wiped soot away from the blackened face and stared heavily down at the face of a boy who could not have been a day over five years old.

  INTERLUDE 1

  COLLIER, WALES, EIGHTEEN YEARS EARLIER.

  Nevil Hammersmith was the smallest boy in the village of Collier. With a piece of coal, he had marked his height on the doorpost of the room he shared with his three sisters, and each morning he stood against it. He held his palm flat against the top of his head and moved carefully away to see whether his hand had risen higher than the black smudge on the wood behind him. Each morning his hand was even with the mark. He was almost five years old and he had not grown since his fourth birthday.

  His morning ritual of measurement was a hasty thing. His father shook him quietly awake before dawn, six days a week, and Nevil was expected to stumble into his clothes (generally left in a heap on the floor the previous night) and sneak out of the room without waking his sisters. They had housework and chores to tend to on the small farm, but he let them sleep.

  Nevil and his father left by the front door. The back door was for the girls. The pigs were corralled behind the main house, and it was bad luck to see a pig before the day began. Nevil’s father hung an arm over his shoulder as they walked and Nevil felt proud, grown-up. He pushed away thoughts of the day ahead and focused, instead, on the moment, basking in his father’s easy camaraderie.

  At the mine, they lit candle stubs and entered the huge main chamber. The overman wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and Nevil was glad for that. The last time he’d seen the overman, it was for a whipping with the yard wand.

  Nevil’s father checked in for them both and then left the chamber without looking back, headed for the tunnel he’d been working the day before. When he had gone out of sight, Nevil turned and scampered into his own tunnel.

  The tunnel was hard-packed dirt, shored up on both sides by thick wooden beams hammered into the walls at regular intervals. Side tunnels branched out every few yards, and ponies trotted past Nevil pulling coal carts from deep in the mountain. As Nevil hurried forward, the ceiling of the shaft ahead of him grew lower and the walls gradually pushed inward until there was no room left for a pony to travel. He blew out his short candle. There was always the danger of gas pockets down here, and the candle wouldn’t last long, anyway. He moved forward in the dark, feeling for trapdoors ahead of him, closing them behind him before crawling on to each new door. Soon the ceiling was too low for a grown man to stand upright and, as Nevil neared his post, even he had to crouch and then crawl forward. The walls narrowed until there was barely room for a coal cart in the tunnel.

  Nevil hated the dark and hated the cramped tunnels, but he felt pride knowing that his job was important and that nobody else could do it. No adult in the village could fit in these tunnels when a cart rolled through. And, as the smallest four-year-old (almost five) in Collier, Nevil could squeeze into the smallest spaces of anybody. There wasn’t much value in being small. This would have to do.

  He reached his post behind a trapdoor and whispered, “Hello?”

  “Is it you, Nevil?”

  “It’s me.”

  “The night’s done, then?”

  “It’s nearly dawn.”

  “Did you hear?”

  “About the South Drift?”

  “Yes. I thought maybe you hadn’t heard yet.”

  “I heard.”

  Nevil’s father had broken the news carefully over supper. Three children from the village, barely older than Nevil, had died in a shaft collapse the day before. Nevil hadn’t known them well, and death was not yet a concept he completely understood, but he had gone to bed shaken and the trio of ashen children had haunted his dreams.

  “Have a good day then, Nevil,” Alice said.

  He scrunched against the wall as she passed him. Alice was six and would soon be moving to a bigger tunnel. When she was gone, he searched for the warm spot where she had been sitting, but the floor was cold everywhere in the small chamber, and so he found a spot of his own and settled in.

  It took a few moments for his body heat to warm the damp wall enough that he didn’t notice the cold anymore. He could feel, rather than hear, the rumble of carts rolling through distant shafts, and he listened for one of the carts to move toward his own tunnel. If a cart came through this tunnel, Nevil would have to quickly open and shut the trap so that the tunnel would remain properly ventilated. That was the entirety of the job: twelve hours of opening and closing this trapdoor, six days a week, for two cents a day. As he grew, he knew he would move on to larger tunnels. By the time he hit puberty, he would be on his hands and knees pushing coal through these same tunnels every day, and smaller children would have taken his place behind the doors, listening for his cart.

  But he knew that he would never take his father’s place in the newer shafts, pounding out the black nuggets and loading them into empty carts to be rolled away down the tunnels by someone else’s children. Nevil had no idea how he would escape the mine, but he had no intention of spending his entire life there the way that his grandfather had and the way that his father would. Nevil could see the cycle of life and d
eath that took place down in the dark behind the village, and he was determined to break it. It could be done. His uncle George had run off to London and joined the navy when he was sixteen. Nevil had never met him, but George had become a family legend, a whisper passed around among the children. Someday Nevil would go to the city himself, and he would find a job he could be good at, and he would never return to Collier.

  And when he had children of his own, they would spend their days in the sun.

  He listened to the dark. Water dripped from the ceiling, plonking onto the dirt beside him. Rats scurried somewhere to his left, coming closer, then scuttling away whenever he moved his legs. He closed his eyes (there was no point in keeping them open), but he was careful not to fall asleep. If the mine’s deputy caught him sleeping, it would mean ten lashes from the overman’s yard wand again.

  When his stomach began to rumble, he opened his pack and felt for the jam sandwich he’d brought with him. One of the braver rats crawled up his leg, attracted by the jam scent, and Nevil dropped a few sandwich crumbs onto his lap. The rat was warm and Nevil didn’t mind its little claws. He ate slowly, aware that the sound of his own chewing could drown out the noise of an approaching cart and cause him to miss his cue.

  When the sandwich was gone, the rat left him and Nevil went back to listening. Listening and waiting. The day ground forward and Nevil opened his trapdoor four times, closed it again each time, and returned to his thoughts until he heard a voice on the other side of the door.

  “Nevil?”

  “Alice, is that you?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Is the sun still up?”

  “It’s already gone down. I’m late, Nevil. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Have a good night, Alice.”