Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street

The dog showed no interest.

‘Stick!’ Timmy said, in case, for some reason, the dog had failed to recognize this particular piece of wood for what it was.

He feigned throwing the stick, an action which would usually heighten the dog’s excitement, but that had no effect, and when he finally released it, Skipper could not have cared less.

‘What’s the matter with you, Skipper, boy?’ Timmy asked. ‘Are you feeling ill?’

The dog barked vigorously, which his owner took to indicate that this was one of stupidest questions he had ever heard.

‘Then if it’s not that , I honestly don’t know what it is,’ the boy confessed helplessly.

The dog looked quizzical for a moment, then — apparently deciding that his owner would never get the point without a practical demonstration — began to dig up the ground with his paws.

Now Timmy understood!

In his mind’s eye, he saw a bunch of olden-day pirates, rowing away from their ship.

They moor in the shallows close to Ocean Heights — although, of course, there is no Ocean Heights there at that time — and wade ashore carrying a large wooden chest. The head pirate — who has a big black beard and a patch over one eye — looks around him, and points a hooked hand towards the woods. The buccaneers carry the chest into the woods, dig a hole, and put the chest into it. They intend to come back for it later — but they never do!

The dog was still digging furiously.

‘Good boy!’ Timmy said.

There would be all kinds of wonderful things in that chest!

Gold coins and bracelets!

Ancient pistols and bottles of rum!

Once he had uncovered the chest, he would go home and tell his parents all about it. And they would laugh at him, his father saying it was time he grew up, his mother cooing that he was still such a sweet little thing. But they wouldn’t laugh when he put his hand in his pocket and laid some pieces of eight on the table, would they? No, they wouldn’t be laughing then!

Skipper was still determinedly digging.

‘Let me give you a hand, boy,’ Timmy suggested.

The Labrador did not seem particularly enthused by the idea, but he knew his place in the hierarchy of things, and when Timmy knelt down beside him and edged him out of the way, he withdrew gracefully.

It was much easier to scoop out the hole than Timmy had thought it would be, and it did occur to him, as he worked, that any soil hiding a hundred-year-old treasure chest should have been more tightly packed.

It also occurred to him, when his fingers brushed against something solid which was definitely not earth, that the pirates had made a pretty sloppy job of things, and should really have buried their treasure much deeper.

And it was at that point that he cleared a little more of the earth away and saw a pair of dead eyes staring blankly up at him.

Blackstone lay on his bed, in his ratty hotel room, watching the El railway thunder past his window as it carried people with some purpose in their lives towards their destination.

He lit a cigarette, and reviewed his own situation. His fate was in the hands of Assistant Commissioner Todd, and until Todd decided what that fate would be, he was still officially on secondment to the NYPD. So there was nothing — in theory — to stop him going to the Mulberry Street police headquarters that morning.

Nothing in theory !

But in practice , what was the point?

‘The point is that young Alex will be there,’ he said softly, answering his own question.

Meade would be there — because Meade was ever the conscientious policeman — and when the news came through that Holt’s body had been found, and his own career was in ashes, he would need the support of a good friend.

Hauling himself reluctantly off the bed, Blackstone accepted that he would have to play at being a policeman for just a while longer.

Despite her excitement at being in New York, Ellie Carr had slept like a log during the first few nights of her stay there, but the previous night — after her meal with Blackstone — had proved to be an exception to the rule.

She had tossed and turned for hours, and had woken up once in a hot sweat and once in a cold one. It was probably a fever, she thought, as she dropped off into an uneasy doze, but when she woke up and took her temperature, everything appeared to be normal.

‘So it must be that I’m concerned about Sam,’ she told herself, as she dressed. ‘Yes, that’s who’s knocking me off balance — bloody Sam Blackstone!’

She was not even sure she had any right to be worried about him, she argued, as she made her way down to the street — and certainly proud, independent Sam wouldn’t thank her for worrying. But there it was — this unsought worry — quite clearly at the centre of her being, so she supposed she was stuck with it.

She reached the City Morgue at half past eight and presented her credentials, and ten minutes later she already had the post-mortem file which she’d requested in her hand.

The office he shared with Meade was empty, though Meade’s straw boater on the hat stand was proof that the detective sergeant was somewhere in the building.

Blackstone sat down at his desk, and waited.

The phone rang.

‘We got a woman on the line called Mary Turner who wants to talk to you,’ the operator said. ‘You want me to put her through?’

He really didn’t need someone informing him about the overwhelming goodness of Almighty God, Blackstone thought.

‘No, tell her I’m out,’ he said.

And, almost immediately, he felt ashamed of himself.

The woman had lost her husband, and if it brought her some comfort to talk about eternal certainties to some almost-stranger who believed in no such thing, then who was he to deny her the opportunity?

‘Are you still there?’ he asked the switchboard operator.

‘Sure.’

‘I’ve changed my mind. Put her through.’

The phone clicked, and then a new voice — which he recognized as belonging to Mary Turner — said, ‘Inspector Blackstone? I have some very important information for you.’

‘Go ahead,’ he said, waiting to be told that salvation was his for the taking, if only he would abandon his sinful ways.

‘Have you heard of a place called the Blue Light Club?’

‘I can’t say that I have.’

‘It is a wicked, sinful place, and you must close it down immediately.’

Blackstone sighed. ‘I really don’t have the power to do that, Mrs Turner.’

‘Then talk to someone who does,’ the woman urged him. ‘For it is an abhorrent place — a modern Sodom — and it must be destroyed.’

‘How do you even know about this club?’ Blackstone wondered.

‘I learned of it from my dear husband’s journal. It is this Blue Light Club — I can barely force myself to utter the name — which took Joseph to the city, and it was his dearest wish that it should be obliterated from the face of the earth.’

The wheels began to turn in Blackstone’s head. Joseph Turner had been on duty the night one of the prostitutes had visited Holt in his bunker, he recalled. And that had had such an effect on Turner that he had abandoned his work with the whores of Coney Island, and devoted himself to this new mission.

‘Tell me more,’ he said.

The style and nature of a post-mortem report could often tell the experienced reader almost as much about the writer as the subject he was writing about, Ellie Carr thought, as she studied the report on Arthur Rudge.

In this case, she guessed, it had been written by an eager young doctor who had not yet had the time or experience to develop the cavalier attitude so often displayed by more hardened professionals. He had been careful. He had been thorough. And he had produced a very credible report, considering the material he had had to work with.