Andrew Pepper - The Detective Branch

Godfrey sat down in one of the armchairs and groaned. He had lost a lot of weight in recent months and his once lustrous mane of white hair had thinned considerably. Earlier in the summer, he had taken Pyke to a place called Bunhill Fields and explained that he had bought one of the plots there. It was, he’d said, the only non-denominational burial ground in the city; a place that housed the graves of men such as Blake and Defoe. Godfrey had made Pyke promise not to give him a Christian funeral when he died. Pyke had assured him that he needn’t worry about being accepted into heaven.

‘Felix, dear boy. Will you be so kind as to fetch your favourite uncle another glass of claret?’ He poured the rest of the wine into his mouth and held up his empty glass.

Almost at once Felix rose to his feet and took the glass from Godfrey’s hand. He didn’t think to offer a glass to Pyke.

If Godfrey saw the hurt in Pyke’s expression, he didn’t mention it. Instead he sat forward and whispered, ‘Actually, I wanted to talk to you about the boy… something he said to me.’

Pyke’s expression remained opaque because he didn’t want the old man to see that he was envious of the easy manner that Godfrey had with his son.

‘He’s tried to initiate a few conversations with me over the past month or two about Christianity; whether I have any faith, what I think about the crucifixion, the resurrection.’

Pyke assimilated this piece of information. Eventually he said, ‘You think it’s been on his mind.’

‘I’d say so.’

‘Did he say anything else?’

‘In what sense?’

‘Where this interest has come from, for example?’

That drew a sharp frown. ‘He’s fourteen. He’s old enough to have his own questions.’

Pyke wondered whether someone at the school had been encouraging his son, but then dismissed the thought. One of the reasons Pyke had chosen the school in the first place was its non-denominational status and the fact it offered no religious instruction.

They heard Felix’s footsteps returning and Godfrey whispered, ‘I don’t want you to say anything to the lad just yet…’

They both looked up at the same time. Felix, who was almost as tall as Pyke and the spitting image of his mother, cocked his head and said, ‘Were you talking about me?’

Godfrey held out his hand to receive the glass of claret. ‘I was just asking your father about the Drury Lane murders. The three men shot dead in the pawnbroker’s.’

‘Oh.’ Felix thought about this for a moment. ‘It looked like you were talking about me, that’s all.’

‘Well, I was just asking your father whether you’d expressed an interest in the case,’ Godfrey added.

Pyke would have liked Felix to have been more interested in what he did for a living but the lad seemed to regard his work as vulgar. Long gone were the days when Felix had devoured the tales of the Newgate Calendar. Now, he was far more likely to have Plato’s Republic or a book about Florentine art on his bedside table.

‘Why on earth would I be interested in the exploits of criminals?’

‘You’d prefer it if such actions went unpunished? That men be permitted to kill each other with impunity?’ Pyke tried — and failed — to keep the irritation from his voice.

‘Maybe you’re right, Pyke, but the world can be such a beautiful place.’ Felix had taken to calling him Pyke in recent months, just like everyone else. He had also adopted an affected way of speaking and, on occasions, Pyke had come close to slapping him.

‘Beautiful for those who can afford beautiful things. For those who can’t grub together enough to live, it’s a different story.’

Felix shrugged. ‘Does the sunset cost anything? Or the view from the top of Primrose Hill?’

‘I don’t suppose someone living in the middle of Spitalfields has ever heard of Primrose Hill.’

Felix looked at him and glared. He was now caught in an argument he couldn’t win.

Later Pyke wondered whether he might have pressed his point too hard because Felix stood up suddenly and left the room without saying another word.

‘It’s just a phase, dear boy,’ Godfrey said gently.

‘I hope so.’ Pyke looked at his uncle and shook his head. ‘For the lad’s sake as much as mine.’

That night, Pyke lay in bed thinking about Felix and how different his life was to the one Pyke had known as a boy. He often wondered what his own childhood had really been like, whether it had been as good or as bad as he remembered. It was true that prior to his father’s death they had been poor, but he wouldn’t have known it at the time. Felix took so much for granted because for the most part he’d always been comfortable, well provided for. Pyke remembered sleeping under hessian sacks that scratched his skin; he remembered roaming the streets with other children, stealing his first apple; he remembered the hunger pains in his stomach when he had to go to bed without a meal and the smell of the Macassar oil that his father used to put in his hair before going to the tavern. It was funny what you remembered as you got older, things that you thought were lost for ever. When Felix was born, Pyke had never known a joy like it, and when his son was a young boy, Felix’s adoration had carried him through many a dark hour. Now all of that was gone, and though he wanted to be a better father he didn’t know how.

Lying there in the dark, his thoughts turned to Godfrey and how different life would be without him; mostly how different it would be between him and Felix. With Godfrey gone, it would just be the two of them, no one to mediate between them as the old man had done for as long as Felix had been able to talk. Why was it, Pyke wondered, that he didn’t know what to say to his son, how to talk to him? And why did he always feel he wasn’t doing enough for the lad? That he’d always somehow let Felix down? Or that he was a disappointment or an embarrassment to him? Still unable to sleep, Pyke turned his thoughts finally to the robbery. He imagined the first shot being fired, the gunman waiting for the smoke to clear, then firing again and again, until the room was silent. He thought about Walter Wells and his desire to cast the Irish as villains; about Pierce and his apparently ‘magnanimous’ decision to take up the vacant position as the head of Holborn Division; and finally about the detectives under his own command. But the last face he saw before he drifted off to sleep was Harry Dove’s: it was pressed against a dirty pane of glass, twisted and contorted, mouthing something that Pyke couldn’t quite fathom.

The sky was the colour of dishwater, the air still damp from the rain that had swept in from the west, accompanied by a vicious wind that had torn lead slates from the roofs. It was no longer raining; a faint drizzle, almost a mist, had succumbed to the mild glow of the sun rising in the east, and the pavements and cobblestones were just beginning to dry.

The first wagon stopped at one end of Buckeridge Street and six police constables in uniform — long-tailed coats and top hats — alighted; a few minutes later, a second wagon pulled up behind it and then a third, just short of twenty hand-picked men assembling on the corner of Buckeridge and Church Streets, trying not to make a noise or draw attention to themselves. From within the rookery — a dense jumble of decrepit tenements, alleyways and courts that extended as far north as the British Museum — a cockerel crowed and a dog barked. The men conversed in whispers, glancing nervously up and down the narrow street as a shaft of watery sunlight cut through the surrounding rooftops. Finally a fourth wagon arrived and Walter Wells alighted. The acting superintendent stepped over the water pooled in the gutter and strode out in front of the other officers, the military man in his element, inspecting his troops before battle. Wells inhaled a pinch of snuff and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his coat. The men had breakfasted well, Wells had seen to that; as a soldier, he knew that any army marched and fought on its stomach. Everything seemed to be in order.