Alex Grecian - The Yard

A piece of paper, disturbed by the breeze he was creating, fluttered at the edge of his vision as he passed by the door to his bedroom. A note was tacked to the wall there and he pulled it down, leaving the tack where it was. He read it and tossed it into the fire. He rubbed the back of his neck and forced his thoughts to return to the case at hand.

He was startled from his reverie by irregular footsteps in the hall, and a moment later, Pringle staggered into the flat and tossed his hat on the well-worn chair by the door.

“Hullo, old boy.”

Pringle’s face was red, and Hammersmith could see a smudge on the knee of his flatmate’s trousers. A sober Pringle would never be seen in soiled clothes.

“How’s Maggie?” Hammersmith said.

“Oh, my dear Mr Hammersmith, Maggie’s fine, all right. Quite fine, indeed.”

“Good to hear.”

“And what are you doing awake and prowling about at this beastly hour?”

“I’ve made tea.”

“Thank you. I’ll have some.”

“Good.”

Hammersmith strained the tea into two cups and set them on the small table under the window. The curtains were drawn back, and outside on the street, sweepers were already hard at work, shoveling horseshit into their foul carts, trying to get a head start on the coming day’s traffic.

“There’s no milk.”

“Did we drink it all?”

“It was spoilt.”

“You threw it out?”

“Should I have kept spoilt milk?”

“Well, I suppose we’ll have more in the morning.”

“Not long now. Still, there’s no milk.”

Pringle shrugged and burnt his tongue on the tea.

“Let it sit,” Hammersmith said.

“Easy for you to say. I’ve already burnt myself. Say, did you get the note I left? There was a message sent over from a doctor at St Thomas’ this evening. Dr Brindle, I think his name was.”

Hammersmith blew across the surface of the tea and took a sip. He could taste the sharp tang of copper and wished again that they could afford to spring for fresh tea.

“I got it,” he said.

“You ought to visit him. Sounds like the old man’s not long for this world.”

“There’s no sense in it, Colin. He doesn’t know me anymore.”

“It might do you some good to say your piece to him. Whether he knows you or not.”

“If I get the time.”

Pringle nodded and tested his tea with a finger. Hammersmith was grateful that his flatmate didn’t press the issue. He hadn’t visited his father in months. The last time he’d been to St Thomas’ Hospital, his father had called him a stranger and cursed at him, the stream of invective finally halted by a spasm of coughing and a spray of blood across the dirty white sheets in the consumptive ward. Hammersmith wanted to remember his father as a tall, strong man with a ready smile and quick hands, not as the shrunken, angry old man who had to be tied to a bed so that he wouldn’t bite the nurses who fed him.

“It’s not just him eating at you, is it?” Pringle said. “I can see by that faraway dreamy look on your face that there’s a case boiling away inside your skull.” He sat forward in his armchair and scowled at Hammersmith. “Was there something in that thug’s story, then?”

Hammersmith nodded, glad to put his father out of his mind for the moment.

“A child,” he said. “A dead boy in one of the homes along the row there.”

“Damn it all, I should have gone with you.”

“Nothing you could have done to change things. The boy was long since dead and stuffed up a chimney.”

“Stuffed up?” Pringle gazed into his tea for a moment before looking up. “Stuffing a body up a chimney’s no easy feat. Could the boy have been dead in advance and stiff? If he was rigorous stiff, it might make it easier to push him upward.”

“I may have misspoke. Stuffed isn’t the right word for it. It appears the boy crawled up the flue of his own accord. Got stuck and was left there.”

“Oh, so it was a climber.” Pringle sat back again and took another sip of tea.

“Yes, I think the boy was a climber,” Hammersmith said. “But climbers shouldn’t be abandoned in chimneys.”

“Of course not. But the job does come with risks, and it follows that croaking in a chimney is one of them risks.”

“No five-year-old should be made to face those risks. What five-year-old would even understand that kind of risk, let alone agree to it?”

“Whoa,” Pringle said. He waved his arm at Hammersmith and tea sloshed out of his cup, dotting his shirtfront. “Oh, damn.”

He stood and Hammersmith handed him a cloth from the table. Pringle dabbed at his shirt, shaking his head.

“Too much drink, I think.”

“It’ll come out.”

“I’m sure. Never mind the shirt.”

“Never mind the shirt? Who am I talking to? What’s happened to Colin Pringle?”

Hammersmith smiled weakly and Pringle shook his head again.

“No, look, I’ve given the impression that I don’t care about a dead child.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“I do. I really do. Every death is a tragedy, but I don’t understand what makes this one so special.”

Hammersmith looked down at his shoes. Hammersmith’s own shoes were old and worn and cracked. They had never been polished. He looked over at Pringle’s shoes, which reflected the room’s ambient lamplight. He and Pringle shared mutual respect, but had nothing in common. They had been thrown together simply because they’d started as constables on the same day at the same station. Pringle cared deeply about the trappings of life. Being a policeman allowed him access to material privileges and opportunities that Hammersmith cared nothing about. The job mattered to Hammersmith. The job and the people who needed him to do that job properly. He had never been able to make Pringle understand.

“It’s not…” he said. “It was a child, Colin. He was used and discarded.”

Pringle nodded, but said nothing. He waited for Hammersmith to continue.

“It’s true, we do see bodies often enough. This was different.”

“They’ll put a detective on it.”

“No. They won’t.”

Pringle was silent for a moment. When he spoke, he kept his eyes on the floor.

“Did they tell you to let it go?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to let it go?”

Hammersmith took another sip of tea. It was cold now.

“No.”

Pringle nodded at the floor.

“I’m going round to Kingsley’s,” Hammersmith said, “to see if he has any more information about the body yet.”

“Nevil, no. It’s the middle of the night. He’s a family man. Probably as sound asleep as we should be.”

“He might be awake.”

“He might be, but he won’t want to see our ugly mugs. Let ’im be till morning.”

“I feel restless. I need to act.”

“Well, Kingsley won’t have cut on the body yet, anyway. And besides, what’ll he tell you that you don’t know?”

“You’re right. I know how the boy died.”

“And you know there’s nobody to bring in on this. Nobody killed him. He died of natural causes.”

“Not natural causes.”

“He stopped breathing of his own accord. Nobody held a pillow over his face. There’s nowhere to go with this.”

“And the people he trusted? The ones who abandoned him?”

“What can you do? They’ve broken no law.”

Hammersmith ran a hand over his chin. He needed a shave.

“I can scare them.”

“You’re scaring me right now, Nevil.”

“I need to do something about this. You needn’t involve yourself, but if I sit on my hands here it will eat away at me until there’s nothing left.”

“You could lose your commission. You might as well toss your entire career with the Met on the rubbish pile. You’ll be shoveling horse manure in the street.”