Kith and Kin

by Jane A. Adams

  The names they had given were Frederick and Eddy Garth, Eddy being the boy. It was too much to hope that they were genuine and yet they seemed unusual enough to have the ring of authenticity.

  ‘Garth is hardly a common name,’ Henry mused. ‘If you make up a name, surely it would be easier to think of a Smith or a Jones or a Brown, so perhaps they know someone called Garth. And I would make a bet that they kept their own first names. The lie that’s hard to keep track of is the one most likely to be exposed.’

  He made a note of this in his journal, and then decided that he would try and sleep. He’d had eight nights now of not sleeping, of restless dreams and tossing and turning, but this particular anniversary was almost past now and he hoped he might be free for a little while and not dream of men shouting warnings, and the gas cloud coming, and others choking to death as their own blood filled their lungs.

  The following morning was surprisingly bright. The rain had cleared and a brisk wind was drying the streets. He’d remembered to brush his coat; it had taken considerable and vigorous application of the clothes brush to get rid of the river mud.

  The central office was buzzing with activity when he got there. A dozen arrests had been made, men and women had been brought in for questioning and interviews had already commenced. Mickey showed him the list and Henry recognized most of the names on it. ‘I think I’ll start with Thomas Boswell,’ he said. ‘Unless he’s already been taken through.’

  Mickey checked the interview list and shook his head. ‘No, he’s still in a holding cell. Any particular reason?’

  ‘Tommy Boswell and I have met before. I know him to be a nervous sort, more thoughtful than most too. It’s possible we may be able to apply some leverage.’

  Mickey nodded. ‘I’ve already spoken with Matilda Carthy. She is, as usual, busy saying she’s not going to speak to anyone and her brother, Ian, is listing all the things he didn’t do in the last six months, by which we might assume he was involved in every single one of them.’

  Henry smiled. They’d met both of the Carthys before, and their other siblings, and this was their normal reaction. The sister had served time for receiving stolen goods. Most of the brothers had housebreaking experience. Ian was the only one who had actually not been inside – not through want of trying, on the part of the police, but through want of solid evidence. The Carthys did odd jobs for Bailey but were not part of the inner circle.

  ‘See what shakes loose,’ he said. ‘In the past we’ve been known to pick up odds and sods of useful information from what Ian doesn’t tell us. I’ll go and see how things lie with Thomas Boswell. Any news on identification? The man and boy, or the other body?’

  Mickey shook his head. ‘Nothing so far. We’ve shown pictures to everyone we brought in and we’ve compared mug shots, but our second body still seems to be something of a mystery. If he has a record, then it’s not with us, though of course the Kent Constabulary might turn up something. As to the mysterious Garths, father and son or whatever they are, there’s been no word as yet.’

  Henry nodded. Descriptions and now photographs had been distributed but he expected no quick response, especially among a community that was both inherently mobile and inevitably close and protective.

  Henry was inclined to think that the Garths, or whatever their proper names might be, were the smaller part of this puzzle.

  ‘The post-mortem examinations have been scheduled for tomorrow morning,’ Mickey added. ‘They will begin promptly at nine.’

  ‘Good,’ Henry approved. ‘So, for now, we see what Mr Thomas Boswell has to say for himself.’

  Tommy Boswell was a small man. Five feet three and wiry rather than muscular. He was, according to his sheet, thirty-five years old but he looked older. Older, Henry thought, and world-weary.

  A pack of cigarettes and a book of matches lay on the rough wooden table and Tommy fiddled with them as he spoke, as though he’d like to light up but wasn’t sure if that was either allowed or advisable. Henry didn’t think that Tommy was particularly in awe of his surroundings or of his having been hauled in at the crack of dawn by a cohort of burly constables. Tommy Boswell was simply a cautious and wary man, a lesson in life learned early and observed ever since.

  He looked at the photographs Henry had set before him. Two dead men, dressed in sodden clothes and lying on saturated ground.

  ‘Recognize them?’ Henry asked.

  Tommy’s gaze flicked from the photographs to Henry and then back again. His hands were still occupied with the cigarettes and book of matches. He smoked Player’s, Henry noted, a common enough brand, though he had half expected Tommy to have smoked roll-ups. The matchbook bore the name of a hotel, the Esplanade, that Henry didn’t recognize. He noted it down. It didn’t sound like London.

  ‘Recognize them?’ Henry asked again.

  ‘Billy Crane,’ Tommy dabbed a finger at the left-hand body.

  ‘And the other?’

  Tommy shrugged. ‘Hard to tell, his face is muddy, like. Could be anyone.’

  ‘One of Bailey’s men?’

  Tommy shrugged again. ‘How would I know?’

  ‘You work for Josiah Bailey. You worked for his father.’

  ‘You live where I live, who doesn’t, one way or another.’

  ‘And this man?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t recognize him.’ He paused, his hands becoming still, and leaned forward a little, studying Henry. ‘I’m just an errand boy. An odd job man. Bailey wants something done and there’s no one better, I do it for him. End of story. I’m no Billy Crane.’

  ‘Billy was close to Bailey.’

  Tommy leaned back in his chair and picked up the matchbook, twirled it between his fingers. ‘Billy was a favoured child,’ he said. ‘Bailey used him often enough. He’ll not be happy.’

  ‘Unless he was the one who ordered the killing?’

  Tommy looked up in what Henry could see was genuine surprise.

  ‘No? He’s done it before.’

  ‘So you say. He’s served no time for killing, has he? Never come close to feeling the rope, has he?’

  ‘But you don’t think this is his handiwork. You were shocked by the idea. Why is that, Tommy? Why would Bailey not arrange the death of Billy Crane?’

  ‘I told you, he was a favoured child.’

  ‘Bailey’s child.’

  Tommy shrugged. ‘How would I know that?’

  ‘Bailey’s known to have had relationships with a number of women.’

  ‘What man hasn’t? It’s a wise man that knows his own father, isn’t that what they say?’

  Henry paused and then changed tack. He slid another photograph across the table, that of the man and boy.

  Tommy looked at it and then shrugged his shoulders again. ‘Sailorman and a boy,’ he said. ‘What about them?’

  ‘How long have you known Billy Crane?’

  Tommy made as if to shrug again and then changed his mind and frowned instead. ‘Grew up together. We was more or less the same age, lived in the same street, knew one another for always. Like I said, you live where I live you work for the Baileys one way or another, even if you don’t know that’s what you’re doing. There’s not an errand boy in the next ten streets who doesn’t run an errand for the family, sooner or later, or a tradesman doesn’t pay dues, or a woman – well, you know. He doesn’t touch the married ones, though, you got to give him that.’

  Henry didn’t think he had to give Josiah Bailey anything. ‘And Bailey senior, I’ve heard he’s fading fast, that he has little to do with anything these days.’

  ‘Not seen the old man in a long time.’

  ‘You think he’s dead?’

  ‘I think they’ll have the funeral when it suits them,’ Tommy said. And then, as though he thought he’d said too much, clamped his lips tight and returned his gaze to the cigarette packet on the table.

  ‘And your relationship with Billy Crane?’

  ‘He was there, I was there, we did this a
nd that. We were not friends, if that’s what you mean. Just two people in the same place at the same time.’

  Henry said nothing and Tommy shifted restlessly in his seat. ‘Nothing I can tell you. Bailey won’t be pleased, though.’

  ‘Not pleased at losing his favoured child,’ Henry said. ‘But I wouldn’t have thought that would bother you, Tommy, seeing as how he’s no longer around. Seeing as how none of you seem to know where he is, seeing as how he’s been on the run since last autumn. Why would it bother you that Bailey might be displeased?’

  ‘I never said it did.’ He shifted restlessly again and this time opened the pack of cigarettes and removed one, tapped it on the carton but still hesitated about lighting up.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Henry told him. ‘You may smoke.’

  Tommy scowled and put the cigarette away, then moved both hands clear of the packet, as though the temptation might be too much. Instead, he tapped the fingers of both hands in a broken rhythm on the cracked top of the wooden table, pausing only to pick at splinters with the tip of a broken and dirty nail.

  Henry watched him, saying nothing and letting the silence lengthen, allowing Tommy’s nerves to do his work for him. Eventually he asked, ‘I don’t suppose you have any views on where Bailey might have gone to.’ It was not really a question, simply a statement of the fact that Tommy was in the know but would not talk, and Henry voiced it only because it was expected of him.

  Henry got up, paced the room. Less than six steps long each way. He moved behind Tommy and the man flinched as though expecting an attack, but Henry merely passed him and then returned to his seat. ‘Both men were stabbed,’ he said. ‘No doubt you will be reporting back to someone, if not to Bailey himself, so you can tell whoever you plan to tell that both men were stabbed. At close quarters, facing their assailants at the time of their deaths, but it’s likely that their hands were bound and they were unable to defend themselves. It’s also likely that there were two assailants; the weapons were different.’ Henry was guessing here, but he watched Tommy’s reaction closely. Tommy Boswell’s face was guarded and closed, that wariness very evident now.

  ‘Then they were dumped in water, left for a day or two before being dragged ashore by the boatman and his boy. We don’t know what part, if any, they had to play, apart from bringing the bodies in and summoning help, so they’d be noticed and found. Someone certainly wanted them found. It would have been easy to have made them disappear, don’t you think, Tommy? So it seems to me that perhaps, Billy Crane being this favoured child and all that, someone is sending a message to Josiah Bailey, telling him perhaps that his days are numbered? Or would you read it differently?’

  He had Tommy Boswell’s attention now. His eyes were still focused on Henry’s face.

  ‘It seemed like a strange place to find the bodies,’ Henry said. ‘Isolated, in the middle of nowhere. Odd, don’t you think?’

  Tommy clearly didn’t want to ask the next question, but he couldn’t help himself, and that intrigued Henry. ‘Where was they found?’

  ‘A place called Otterham Creek, near the village of Upchurch. Do you know it?’

  Tommy Boswell shook his head, but Henry could see that his face had paled and his lips were tight. One hand now gripped the cigarette packet and the other was clenched into a fist.

  ‘You look upset, Tommy,’ Henry said. ‘Perhaps you were closer to Billy Crane than you let on. Perhaps he was a friend of yours, after all. Or perhaps you both had business near that village of Upchurch?’

  ‘Never been there.’ Tommy shook his head vehemently.

  ‘It seems a little off the beaten track, I suppose. But we’ve heard that Josiah Bailey’s family have connections in the area. That they have family thereabouts. Have you heard that, Tommy?’

  Tommy Boswell had relaxed, just a little, Henry noticed. So this wasn’t about Bailey’s family; so Henry’s strikes were wide of the mark, as yet.

  ‘Billy Crane upset someone from down there? Stabbing is a personal thing: up close, you get to look into the eyes of the man you are killing. Takes a certain nerve, a certain steel, don’t you think?’

  Tommy had lost interest now, Henry could see that. But there had been a reaction. Something Henry had said had briefly upset the man he’d been questioning. He was right: there was history here, but how far back?

  ‘You both served, you and Crane. You were at the Front.’

  ‘We did our bit. You suggesting that we didn’t? Bailey senior demanded it anyhow, said we were fighting for King and country, all his men did their bit.’

  ‘Not that there was much option,’ Henry reminded him. ‘I don’t expect you volunteered until conscription was in …’

  He paused, noting the look of anger and frustration cross the other man’s face, and Henry waited to be told that he was wrong. That Thomas Boswell had been proud to sign up, right from the start, though he must have waited until late in 1914, Henry thought, before the height restrictions were dropped from five feet six back to five feet three. Tommy would only just have made that height.

  Unless he’d joined one of the bantam regiments, of course …

  Henry allowed his mind to play with the problem for a moment, waiting for Tommy to speak. But Tommy said nothing.

  ‘Of course,’ Henry proceeded, ‘Bailey would have been less worried that someone might come muscling in on his territories with the hard men of all colours being called away. Boys and old men can only do so much when they are all that is left behind. Did you and Crane serve together?’

  Tommy nodded. ‘East Surreys. Same division.’

  ‘Which would have brought you closer, I would imagine?’

  Again, that physical reaction. That tightening of hands and mouth. ‘Not closer, then. Perhaps it had the opposite effect. Perhaps you saw Crane as he was and didn’t like what you saw.’

  ‘What does that have to do with anything?’

  ‘Perhaps you’re not sorry to see Billy Crane dead. Perhaps the only thing you’re sorry for is that you were not the man holding the knife.’

  ‘And how do you know it wasn’t me?’ Tommy laughed shortly. ‘You think I don’t have the stomach for it, is that it? We all killed in the war.’

  ‘War is different,’ Henry said sharply. ‘Well, did you do it?’ He waited. ‘No, I thought not.’

  Henry got to his feet again and leaned across the table and Tommy, reflecting the movement, leaned back in his chair and looked up into Henry’s face.

  ‘I have a hunch,’ Henry said, ‘that whoever did this will not be satisfied with just Billy Crane and whoever this other man might be. Bailey has left a vacuum, simply by not being in his usual place, by not ruling his usual streets. So who is moving in, Tommy? Who is looking to take over from Josiah Bailey and his family? And how many are they likely to kill in getting there?’

  There was no reaction. This time, no physical tell or tic, so this was not something that worried Thomas Boswell, even if it was possibly true. Tommy was just an errand boy, as he said; a random foot soldier who could just as soon serve one man as another, who was adapted to life in the same place, whoever happened to be in temporary charge. So what was bothering him? Henry wondered. He was annoyed by the fact that he’d obviously touched a nerve on several occasions, and yet he’d not been able to push that advantage forward.

  He straightened up, instinct and experience telling him that he was going to gain nothing more from continuing the interview, that more was likely to be gained by letting Tommy Boswell go and, if possible, having him observed – though men like Boswell were slippery as eels and disappeared as quickly in the streets of London as eels did in the reed beds. He knew that Tommy Boswell would go straight to Josiah Bailey with his report, or would report to someone who would then pass his words on, and he fervently wished that he could observe Bailey’s reaction when they were delivered.

  Without another word Henry turned and went out, deliberately leaving the photographs on the table. He would give orders that Tommy B
oswell was to be kept there for half an hour or so and then told he could go, and in the meantime Henry put what observation he could in place, ready for his release.

  It was late in the afternoon by the time the interviews were completed and all but a handful of those brought in had been sent on their way. There had been a number of almost by-blow confessions made during the course of the day; for some, less experienced and less self-assured, the simple fact of being woken before dawn and dragged into a police cell, then interviewed by a couple of burly detectives, had been enough to elicit a confession – in a couple of cases to crimes the police didn’t even have on their books.

  But nothing pertinent to their current inquiry had emerged. Henry was relatively unperturbed by this. In part, the actions of the day had been designed to send shockwaves in Bailey’s direction; it would have been too much to expect that it would bring a solution.

  Henry sat down at his accustomed desk in the central office and shuffled through his notes. The place was quiet now, a handful of detectives, similarly employed. He glanced up at the ‘board’ and noticed that, as he and Mickey were currently logged for an investigation, their names had been moved down. Chief Inspector Savage was currently first on the board, on immediate call, should a murder shout come in. Bag packed and he and his sergeant ready to respond.

  It was largely due to a high-profile investigation that Savage had headed up that detectives now had their ‘murder bag’. A pack of essential items for the observation and collection of evidence, including pairs of rubber gloves (the previous practice had been to handle bodies without any such basic protection). It was after the pathologist, Bernard Spilsbury, had arrived at a crime scene in Pevensey Bay and found Savage and his men handling putrefying flesh with their bare hands that he and senior officers had decided something should be done.