Andrew Pepper - The Detective Branch

‘So?’

‘So, it stands to reason that Guppy’s murderer took the surplice to your old address. And at the moment you’re the only person I can think of who lived at number twenty-eight and had met Guppy. Now, do you see the trouble you’re in?’

But Malloy seemed far away. ‘I always knew he could still get to me…’

‘Druitt? But he’s locked away in Pentonville?’

Malloy held his breath, as if weighing up what Pyke had just said. ‘You still don’t understand, do you? I thought I’d be safe; I’d be out of his reach.’ Malloy started to rock back and forth, his arms clamped tightly around his knees.

‘Has Druitt been sending you letters from prison?’

Malloy buried his face in his hands and began to sob. It was a while before he was able to speak. ‘When you fall from grace, when you cut yourself off from God, there’s nowhere left to hide.’ Without warning, Malloy sprung forward and grabbed Pyke’s coat sleeve. ‘Don’t you see what I’ve been trying to tell you? Druitt isn’t just a dangerous creature. He’s not just a man. He’s the Devil. Druitt is Satan himself.’

For a long while afterwards, Pyke would remember the tortured look in the former priest’s eyes.

Pyke turned up the collar of his coat and walked into the wind; it was gusting so hard it felt as if he might even be lifted off his feet. On the other side of Scotland Yard, past the fishmongers and the lodging house where the unattached policemen billeted, was the river. At the wharf stairs, he stopped and looked into the dark choppy water. It was the immenseness of it he liked: up close, the river was merely a heave of scum and sludge, but when you looked at the horizon it was a vast, slow-moving mass of water eddying its way through the largest city on earth. He stood there and thought about Brendan Malloy. It seemed unlikely, to say the least, that the former priest could have carried out such a vicious physical attack on Guppy. But at the same time Malloy somehow seemed to be implicated in the events leading up to the murder. What was clear was that someone had wanted Pyke to find the surplice and make a connection between Guppy’s murder and the former occupants of those rooms. But why? He stood for a while under the hissing gas-lamp before turning around and heading back towards Scotland Yard.

The temperature dropped below freezing as the wind continued to gust from the north and by the time Pyke arrived home he was shivering.

‘He seemed all right earlier, but he fell asleep at about four and I didn’t like to wake him, even though his dinner has gone cold,’ Felix said, gesturing at the bowl of soup on the bedside table.

Pyke looked at his uncle’s pale, cadaverous face and at the hot coals burning in the grate. At least the room was warm, he thought, as the furious wind rattled the windows. ‘Has he eaten anything today?’

‘He had some bread and cheese for lunch,’ Felix replied.

‘Well, that’s something, isn’t it?’ Pyke looked at his son’s drawn expression. ‘Perhaps you should get some rest, let me stay with Godfrey for a while.’

They were sitting on either side of Godfrey’s bed. Neither of them spoke for a few moments. ‘This is it, isn’t it? He’s dying,’ Felix said in a whisper.

‘We don’t know that. Godfrey’s as strong as an ox, always has been. He’s probably just tired.’ Pyke tried to keep his tone upbeat. He hadn’t told Felix that the doctor had said it was now only a matter of time. When he’d been told this, Pyke hadn’t wanted to believe it. His uncle had lived his three score years and ten and was lucky to have done so; and his life had been much fuller than most. But this didn’t help to lessen the sharp, stabbing pain Pyke felt in his stomach whenever he realised that some time soon Godfrey would no longer be there, even though in his job he had to confront death almost daily.

‘And when he’s no longer able to fight?’

‘When the time comes, he’ll be ready. We’ll all be ready.’ Pyke felt guilty about pretending he’d already adjusted to the idea of Godfrey passing.

Just then, Godfrey opened his eyes and yawned. ‘Listen to you, a pair of old fishwives. I’m not dead yet.’ Felix helped him to sit up. Godfrey looked around the room and smiled. ‘Who said I’m not able to fight?’ That made Felix blush and giggle and suddenly he seemed younger than his fourteen years.

Pyke went to collect the soup bowl and said he’d go downstairs to warm it through, but on the landing, hearing Felix and Godfrey happily chatting, he took a diversion to Felix’s bedroom. The Bible was hidden under a pile of books on the table next to the bed. There was no inscription in it. Carefully he put it back where he’d found it and headed downstairs to the kitchen. When Pyke returned to Godfrey’s room five minutes later, he handed his uncle the bowl of soup and a spoon, then said to Felix, ‘I visited a church today, St Matthew’s in Bethnal Green. I’d like you to meet the vicar there. I think you’d like him.’

‘Why?’ Felix asked, only half interested.

‘He’s clearly a man of God but he wears it lightly. And while others do nothing but talk, he actually helps people.’

‘Careful, dear boy. You’re starting to sound like a convert,’ Godfrey said, a dribble of soup running down his chin. ‘We already have one God-botherer in the house as it is.’

If Pyke had said this, Felix would have been offended, but since it was Godfrey, Felix hit him playfully on the arm and smiled. Suddenly uncomfortable, Pyke excused himself, saying he should look in on the pigs.

At the bottom of the garden, Pyke found — to his relief — that his three pigs were huddled together in the sty. There was a small, screened area where they could take refuge from the rain and wind but it wasn’t really large enough for all three of them. Either he would have to build a larger sty or one of them would have to be sacrificed. But which one? A farmer would make such a decision on a pragmatic basis: which one would yield the most meat? As such, Alice would be first in the queue, but Pyke liked her best: she was the greediest and most stubborn of the three animals. Pyke fetched another sack of corn from the shed and emptied it into the trough, but none of the pigs stirred from their shelter. He looked up at the row of houses and thought about his uncle. When Pyke had been Felix’s age, Godfrey had always known what to do; what to stand firm on, what to let go. Pyke had tried to do likewise with Felix but, in recent years, he hadn’t got it right. The boy loved Godfrey, it was so clear, but could the same be said of him? Did Felix love him in quite the same way? A sharp gust of wind tore a branch off a nearby tree and in the distance Pyke heard Copper bark. He hurried back to the house, hoping to get to the mastiff before it set off the neighbour’s dog.

The following morning, Pyke walked into the offices of the Detective Branch to find Billy Gerrett devouring a meat pie for his breakfast. The whole spectacle turned Pyke’s stomach, and he was about to leave and shut himself away in his office when Gerrett said, to no one in particular, ‘Looks to me like Superintendent Wells has this one wrapped up.’ He glanced towards Pyke and forced the final chunk of pastry into his mouth. ‘Confirmed, beyond any doubt, that Hiley did it.’

That stopped Pyke in his tracks. ‘Is that so?’

Wells feigned modesty, although he was basking in Gerrett’s praise. ‘I was fortunate, that’s all.’

‘What exactly have you managed to do, Walter?’ Pyke asked, feeling a tightness in his chest. He looked around for Jack Whicher, but remembered at the last moment that he’d been dispatched to look into another matter: a burglary in Belgravia.

‘I took a group of men to Whitechapel High Street. We talked to shopkeepers, market vendors, crossing-sweepers, anyone we could find. Eventually we found a man, a costermonger in fact, who knows Hiley. He told me they often frequented the same establishment. Anyway, this fellow is prepared to testify under oath that he saw Hiley running like a madman along Whitechapel High Street at about eight o’clock on the night that Guppy was killed.’