Will Thomas: The Black Hand

“The ’ndrangheta,” Barker supplied. “The Mafia-”

“I’ve heard of the Mafia,” Poole said, looking up. “They’re the Sicilians, right? An inspector from Palermo is at the Yard this week. He spoke of the troubles they have down there.”

“This kind of trouble,” Barker said, tapping the barrel with the head of his stick.

“You think the Sicilians are behind this?” Dunham asked.

Barker shrugged. “They export olive oil in Sicily, and they use a lot of barrels. This sort of thing is common there.”

“Well, it ain’t here,” Dunham stated. “The only thing we store in barrels is good English ale, which is as it should be.”

“Any sign of how he died, Cyrus?” Poole asked.

Barker nodded. “Shotgun wounds, close up. One here in the right breast, you see, and the other in the back. It scorched the clothing, and the pellet pattern is very tight. I’d say the shooter got him in the back at point-blank range and, when he was down, administered the coup de grace.”

“I wonder how long he’s been in the river,” Poole said.

“A week or more, I’d say,” Dunham answered, being the expert on anything pertaining to the water. “They shot your boy here and bunged him in the barrel, then tossed it off a dock somewheres. The air in his lungs couldn’t counteract the weight of the barrel and the flesh and bone. It sank to the bottom, probably not more than ten or fifteen feet, and stayed there for several days, putrefying. Then the body filled with enough gases to lift the barrel off the bottom again. I reckon a fellow as big as this one coulda done that. The barrel eventually came to the surface and was spotted by pedestrians on London Bridge. Some fishermen tried to pull it in, but it was too heavy without a winch. We was called in, and don’t even ask me what it was like when we pried off the lid. Made me wonder how much pension I’d have if I resigned this morning.”

“Have you sent word to the Poplar Morgue?” my employer asked.

“We have,” Dunham said. “They are taking their time getting here with their barrow. So you think this is some sort of feud among the I-talians?”

“It would appear so. They have elevated opinions of honor and are often involved in acts of retribution such as this.”

“So this fat fellow was an assassin,” Poole said. “I’ve heard his name before but never actually laid eyes upon him. To tell the truth, for a professional killer, he doesn’t look like much.”

“Don’t let his girth fool you; he could move very quickly and shoot with unerring accuracy. On a dare, he once shot down the barrel of another rifle at fifty yards, bursting the shell in the chamber, or so I’ve heard.” Barker began pushing on one of the lower staves with his stick. It was not going to be an easy thing to get this huge, bloated body onto the barrow when it arrived.

“Sir,” I said, as a thought occurred to me. “What about Serafini’s wife? The two were inseparable.”

“Very good, lad,” Barker said. “You remembered.”

“It’s difficult to forget the first woman who throws a dagger at you.”

“Well,” Barker said, peering into the barrel with a sigh. “They are inseparable still. She’s here at the bottom. I’m afraid the morgue may need to send another barrow.”

There is nothing an east-ender likes to do more than gawk; and if the sight is gruesome, so much the better. The Thames constables, with the peculiar water-spider insignias on their uniforms, kept the crowd pressed behind a barrier; but still every man, woman, and child was afforded a clear view of the late Mr. and Mrs. Serafini being extracted from the barrel. One of the constables even set up a tripod and camera to record the victims in situ, but whether it was for official purposes or a personal souvenir I could not say.

Theoretically, we were gawking with the rest of them, though we had been given a closer view. So far our agency was without a client, though I was certain Victor Gigliotti would be interested in hiring our services. However, if I knew Cyrus Barker, he would refuse such an offer, since the Camorran would undoubtedly set his men loose upon Serafini’s killer like a pack of hounds. Beneath his rough-hewn exterior, the Guv’s scruples grind exceedingly fine.

We departed ahead of the barrow, bound for the Poplar Morgue, a ten-minute walk. Barker knew the way better than I, for I had not yet developed the mastery of London streets that he has, being content with a skeletal knowledge of the main thoroughfares and the use of the odd map. Barker’s method involved tacking an ordnance map to the wall at knee level, sitting on the floor cross-legged, memorizing street by street for an hour, as if the map were a Tibetan mandala. The position gives me leg cramp.

When we arrived, the coroner for the East End, Edward Vandeleur, was occupied with another postmortem. We cooled our heels in the main corridor, while the assistants, in gutta-percha aprons, brought in the bodies and washed them down with more carbolic. I sat and pondered the fact that there was at least one occupation worse than mine to be had in London.

One of the doors in the hall opened suddenly and Vandeleur appeared, his long laboratory coat heavily stained with gore. His appearance always reminded me of Franz Liszt, with his sharp features and shoulder-length white hair combed severely back. Vandeleur was a perfect choice for an East End coroner, having both a law and a medical degree, no small feat. The latter is not a requirement for the position, and most coroners depend on hired surgeons to do their postmortems for them, at two pounds apiece. By doing them himself, Vandeleur was not only saving the government two quid, but also was able to draw his own conclusions, which was far more important.

“Barker!” he said, when he’d noticed us sitting on the bench. “What are you doing here already?”

The Guv frowned. “I came to see about a postmortem.”

“I’ve just finished it. Come have a look.”

Confused, we stood and followed him into the room, to the spattered table where a corpse lay. I had reached that state in my experience as an enquiry agent where the sight of a body no longer made me ill. On the marble slab, its fluids draining into the troughs on the sides, was the body of a man in his early sixties. His nude form had been savaged by the examination process, and the top of his skull lay in a pan. The neatly trimmed gray beard and the state of the nails and hands informed me that this was no common East-ender but a man of substance, a merchant, perhaps, or a banker.

“What have we here?” Barker asked, looking at the corpse.

“Don’t you recognize him?” Vandeleur asked. “It’s Sir Alan Bledsoe.”

“Director of the East and West India Docks? He’s one of the most powerful men in the East End. What’s his body doing here?”

I concurred with my employer that the sight of a man so important to Her Majesty’s government lying here in the Poplar Mortuary was unexpected. Men like Bledsoe died in their Pall Mall clubs or their manors in Hampshire. This corpse was on the wrong side of town.

“His body was found yesterday afternoon in Victoria Park. He went there every day after lunch to read the newspaper. In fact, The Times was still open in his hands when he was found. All factors point to heart failure. He’d already had one a year ago, and was taking digitalis for it. Since the death occurred nearby, the body was brought here, but I’ve had a devil of a time getting permission to do the postmortem. The examination itself was rather routine until about fifteen minutes ago, when I discovered the actual cause of his death.”

“What caused you to doubt it was heart failure?” the Guv asked.