Andrew Pepper - The Detective Branch

‘The archdeacon is a good friend of mine. Is it any wonder he should prefer me to the barbarian currently commanding the Detective Branch?’

The idea of Pierce kneeling before the robed Wynter awaiting his communion made Pyke feel physically ill.

‘I’m curious as to why you decided to take up this position, Pierce. I would have thought you had your eyes set on greater things.’

This time Pierce did look up at him, something bordering on concern or interest etched on his face. ‘Such as?’

‘I heard a rumour that the assistant commissioner’s position is soon to be filled.’

Pierce controlled his reaction. ‘But can you trust what people tell you? That’s the question. For example, I was told recently that your search for the pawnbroker’s killer has narrowed considerably. A man of about six feet with dark hair and wearing a gentleman’s cloak.’

Pyke did his best to hide it, but Pierce seemed to know at once that he’d won this little exchange. As he left Pierce’s office, Pyke was determined to find out the source of Pierce’s information.

Pyke waited at the mouth of the street, the buildings on either side towering above him. Sometimes it felt as if the city might open its jaws and consume him whole. Especially in this part of the city, around Saffron Hill and Field Lane, where the buildings seemed to have been constructed almost on top of one another, endless tracts of soot-blackened brick and plaster. It was where the poor came to live and die; where swell mobs planned their next robberies, coiners oxidised their metal, pickpockets and mashers waited in the shadows. The police rarely entered such places, for obvious reasons. It was almost impossible to apprehend a fleeing suspect, and it was dangerous, too: the police weren’t popular with the poor.

The city elders often talked about demolishing the rookeries and replacing them with wide avenues and stout, respectable terraces where the middling classes could venture without fearing for their lives. New roads that would cut directly through the worst slums had been planned for St Giles, Spitalfields and Devil’s Acre, behind Westminster Abbey. Still, in spite of these grandiose visions not much had changed in this part of the city for decades; if anything, the houses were a little more slipshod, the area a little more dangerous, the rats a little larger. And Wells was right: all of this had been made worse by the never-ending flood of men and women from the countryside and abroad, trains arriving at Euston, Paddington, London Bridge and Shoreditch spewing thousands of people into the maw of the city, a bloated sponge absorbing everything into its midst.

Villums appeared from the shadows; he was swaying slightly and his breath smelled of whisky. ‘Let’s walk,’ he muttered.

‘Someone identified Harry’s body,’ Pyke said. ‘He’s now part of the investigation, Ned. There’s nothing I can do about it.’

They walked for a few yards in silence. ‘But you can stop it getting any closer to me, can’t you?’

Pyke shrugged, unsure what kind of assurance he could give. ‘Harry was careful, wasn’t he? Didn’t draw attention to himself, kept his circle of acquaintances small.’

‘Clearly he wasn’t careful enough,’ Villums replied.

‘I’ll do what I can, Ned. That’s the best I can promise.’

Villums stopped and turned to face Pyke. ‘And what about the animals who did this to my boy?’

‘If I find them, I’ll make sure they’re punished to the full extent of the law.’

‘Is that it?’

Pyke looked into his face. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘You forget, Pyke, I know what you’re capable of.’

It was true that Pyke had killed men, but not gratuitously and never because he’d been paid to do so. ‘I’m a police detective now, Ned.’

The disappointment was tangible in Villums’s eyes. ‘I said I’d do what I could to help you and I’m a man of my word.’

‘You have more information for me?’

‘I’m reliably informed that a fence by the name of Alfred Egan is due to meet a man, I don’t know who, regarding this cross.’

‘When? Tonight?’

Villums nodded. ‘Early evening. The Red Lion Inn, Field Lane.’ Pyke knew better than to ask for more information. Instead he patted Villums on the arm and left him to contemplate the scene on the other side of the street, a blind man trying to hit a stray dog with his walking stick.

The odour of putrefied flesh wafted on the stiff breeze. Smithfield, with its twice-weekly sheep and cattle market, was near by, as were numerous fat-boilers, tripe-scrapers, dog-skinners and underground slaughterhouses, all contributing to the rank unpleasantness of the air. Rain lashed the cobblestones outside the Red Lion Inn, and women in flounced crinoline skirts tried in vain to lift their hems up out of the mud. Inside, drove-boys rubbed shoulders with butchers, market inspectors and animal traders, and everywhere you looked there were people, heads glistening under the flare of gas-lamps. The Red Lion was a veritable rabbit warren, which was perhaps why Egan had chosen it as a meeting place. In one nook, a fiddle-player was cutting loose while drunken revellers cavorted with one another, their arms linked as they moved in dizzying circles. In another, dead-eyed men were playing cards, winning — and more often losing — a week’s wages on the turn of a single card. The walls and ceilings were as black as tar, stained by pipe tobacco and cheap tallow, while the wooden floors were covered with clumps of wet butcher’s sawdust and discarded oyster shells. There was a smell, too, that Pyke couldn’t quite put his finger on until he saw the prostitutes leading swaying men outside into the alley.

At the counter, Pyke ordered and paid for two gins, pushing one of the glasses towards Whicher. The others — Shaw, Gerrett and Lockhart — were outside, watching the various doors into the tavern. An awkward silence followed as Whicher took the glass and placed it in front of him without taking a sip.

‘To working boys made good,’ Pyke said, holding up his glass, before tipping the spirit down his throat.

Whicher looked at him with evident surprise. Clearly he hadn’t imagined Pyke as a working boy.

‘What?’ Pyke laughed. ‘You think I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth?’

Whicher was bemused. ‘I heard a rumour that you married into the aristocracy, that’s all.’

This much was true. Emily’s father had been related, by marriage rather than blood, to the first duke of Norfolk. But Pyke had never been comfortable in that environment and in the legal wrangling that followed Emily’s death, a Chancery judge had eventually ruled in favour of Emily’s male cousin. Pyke had never been back to her family’s seat — Hambledon Hall — fifteen miles north-east of the capital.

‘For the first few years of my life, I lived in St Giles,’ Pyke said, by way of explanation. Whicher would know well enough what this meant.

‘I was born and grew up in Camberwell.’

Pyke nodded. ‘So what made you want to be a policeman?’

‘Sometimes I wonder.’ Whicher’s laugh was defensive rather than humorous.

‘How so?’

‘A man is killed and every effort is made to apprehend the murderer. But hundreds, thousands, die each year, from starvation, disease and poverty, and we act as if it doesn’t matter.’

It was unusual to hear a policeman articulate such a notion, and it reminded Pyke about the other detectives’ reaction to the fate of the shoemaker who had stolen the gentleman’s coat.

Pyke looked around the crowded room. ‘This man we’re expecting. He’s a crafty operator. One sniff of danger and he’ll be off. He knows me by sight. That’s why I want you to approach him, make an arrest if you have to. I’ll go after the person he’s here to meet.’