Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the New World

‘Do you know if he’s out on a case?’ Meade enquired.

The sergeant shook his head a second time.

Blackstone leant forward, with both his hands resting on the desk. ‘Do you know a cure for grazed knuckles?’ he asked politely.

The desk sergeant glanced down at his hands. ‘Your knuckles ain’t grazed,’ he pointed out.

‘No, at the moment, they’re not,’ Blackstone said. ‘But they might be soon, about thirty seconds from now.’

The desk sergeant quickly pushed his chair backwards. ‘Is that a threat?’ he asked, worriedly.

‘Why should I threaten you, of all people?’ Blackstone wondered. ‘After all, ever since this morning we’ve been like old pals, haven’t we?’

‘Look, I don’t know where Saddler is,’ the desk sergeant said. ‘I’d tell you if I did. But just ’cos I ain’t seen him don’t mean he ain’t come in, so why don’t you look in his office?’

‘Thank you very much, Sergeant,’ Blackstone said. ‘You really have been most helpful.’

The office that Inspector O’Brien and Sergeant Saddler had shared was at the opposite end of the basement from the cells.

‘Is the whole of the Detective Bureau down here?’ Blackstone asked Meade, as they walked down the steps.

‘Nope, just Patrick’s room,’ Meade replied. ‘The rest of the Bureau wanted to keep him as far away from them as possible, and he always said that was all to the good — because when they began to feel comfortable in his presence, he’d really start to worry.’

They had reached the door. Meade knocked, and, when there was no answer after a few seconds, he knocked again.

‘I don’t think he’s in there,’ Blackstone said.

‘I don’t think he is, either,’ Meade agreed.

He reached down, and grasped the doorknob. When it turned, he quickly released it again.

‘Is there something wrong?’ Blackstone asked, and realized that he himself must think there was, since he was whispering.

‘Saddler would never leave the door unlocked,’ Meade hissed back.

‘Do you think there’s someone else in there?’

Meade drew his.32 revolver from its holster. ‘I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell going to find out.’

He grasped the revolver in both hands, and signalled with his eyes that the inspector should turn the knob again and push the door slightly.

For a moment Blackstone hesitated, and even thought of counselling caution. But, when all was said and done, Meade was a man — and men made their own decisions.

Blackstone grasped the knob, turned it, and gave it a slight shove.

Meade kicked the door wide open and rushed into the room, his hands swinging his weapon in a wide arc, in search of a target.

But there was no one in the office who needed shooting. In fact, there was no one in the office at all.

Blackstone stepped over the threshold behind Meade. The office furniture consisted of two desks and a filing cabinet, he quickly noted. There was a plain calendar on the wall with all the previous days in the month firmly crossed off. In the corner of the room, there was a large blackboard — resting on an easel — which had been wiped clean of chalk. It was all very practical and very utilitarian — the working space of a serious-minded crusader like O’Brien.

There was one jarring note, however — a framed poster from the Grand Theatre, Broadway, which proclaimed that Henry Mortimer and Mary Brookes would be appearing in a new production of Macbeth. The picture below the legend showed the two of them, Macbeth-Mortimer and Lady Macbeth-Brookes, gazing nobly and tragically into the near distance.

‘Was O’Brien a theatregoer?’ Blackstone wondered.

But Meade had his mind on other — more pressing — matters. He had gone straight to the filing cabinet and opened the top drawer — and now he was staring mournfully into it.

‘Empty!’ he cried. ‘Completely empty.’

He slid open the second — lower — drawer, and found the same.

He tried the drawers in both desks, and when he got the same result, he sat down into what had probably been Inspector O’Brien’s chair and buried his head in his hands.

‘How could I have been so damn stupid ?’ he moaned. ‘I should have known that this would happen. I should have come here the moment that I heard about Patrick’s death.’

‘Perhaps his sergeant has removed the files for safe-keeping,’ Blackstone suggested.

Meade shook his head despairingly. ‘If Sergeant Saddler had done it himself, he’d only have removed the files that really mattered. But these thieving bastards didn’t know which of the files mattered and which of them didn’t — and that’s why they took everything .’

He was right, Blackstone thought. Like burglars — which was, in fact, exactly what they were — they hadn’t dared waste time sifting through the documents, so they had simply taken the lot.

‘So now we have no way of finding out what case Patrick was working on when he was killed,’ Meade said. ‘And since we don’t know that, a second thing we don’t know is who had the strongest motive to have him murdered by the Five Points Gang.’ He paused. ‘You do believe I’m right, now, don’t you, Sam? You do believe that it was a policeman who ordered his execution?’

Blackstone nodded. He didn’t want to think that any policeman would have a comrade murdered, but the further they got into the investigation, the more likely it seemed that that was the only possible explanation.

‘Sergeant Saddler will know what cases Inspector O’Brien was working on,’ he said, in an effort to cheer Meade up. ‘If he’s anything like me, all the files will be in his head.’

‘Yes, they will, won’t they?’ Meade agreed bleakly. ‘And you can’t take files out of a head like you can take them out of a filing cabinet, can you? When they’re in a man’s head, the only thing you can do is kill him.’

‘You think he’s dead?’

‘I don’t know. But isn’t it likely that he is? They didn’t hesitate to kill an inspector. Why would they even think twice about doing the same thing to his sergeant?’

Why indeed? Blackstone agreed silently.

‘Wait a minute!’ Meade said. ‘There’s one other person who may have known about the case Patrick was working on. And they won’t have dared to kill her, however desperate they were to shut her up — because even sons-of-bitches like them have some standards — even they would baulk at killing a lady.’

‘Who are you talking about?’

‘Have you ever discussed any of your cases with a woman, Sam?’ Meade asked.

‘Yes, I have,’ Blackstone said, as the memories — most of them painful — came flooding back to him.

He’d discussed his cases with all three women who’d become an important part of his life — Hannah, Agnes and Ellie Carr — and each time it had been a mistake.

‘I’d certainly discuss my cases with Clarissa — if I had the opportunity,’ Meade said, a little wistfully. ‘Do you see what I’m getting at here?’

‘You think that Inspector O’Brien might have discussed his cases with his wife?’

‘I do!’ Meade replied, his natural enthusiasm breaking through to the surface again.

‘Then it might be a good idea to go and see her,’ Blackstone suggested.

‘Just what I was thinking,’ Meade said.

Pleasant brownstone houses lined the quiet, leafy street. The houses had probably originally been built as private dwellings for single families, Blackstone thought. But that was clearly not the case now — the number of bell-pushes he had observed by every front door suggested to him that while this might still be seen as a desirable area, it was not quite as desirable as it had once been.