Andrew Pepper - The Detective Branch

Pyke nodded for him to continue.

‘I saw one of the daily route-papers. It said a fence, Alfred Egan, had been arrested on suspicion of receiving stolen goods. I thought I should look into it.’

‘Egan? The man who was going to buy the Saviour’s Cross?’

‘It has to be the same person, doesn’t it?’

‘We had to let him go the last time…’

Whicher agreed but he seemed uncomfortable. Pyke knew he still felt responsible for the fact that Egan’s accomplice, Sharp, had hanged himself while in their custody.

‘Go and talk to the arresting officer, see what he says. What was the other thing?’

‘I’m afraid I’ve got what I suspect will be bad news.’ Whicher shifted awkwardly in his chair. ‘They let Brendan Malloy go.’

‘Who let him go?’

‘Wells. But I’m told that he had Mayne’s approval.’

‘Mayne sanctioned it?’

‘This morning.’ Whicher pressed his lips together. ‘I tried to argue otherwise but I was overruled.’

Pyke stood up and told Whicher to wait for him there in the office. He took the stairs three at a time and pushed his way past the clerks into the commissioners’ office. Mayne was sitting at his desk and was clearly annoyed at being interrupted.

‘Why did you sanction Brendan Malloy’s release without consulting me?’

Mayne peered at him through his spectacles. ‘I was told that some business had taken you out of town for a day or two.’

‘Malloy is still central to this investigation, sir.’

‘I disagree, Detective Inspector. I consulted the available evidence and decided he couldn’t possibly be brought before a magistrate.’ Mayne removed his spectacles and sighed. ‘From now on, the full resources of this institution are to be directed towards the capture and arrest of Francis Hiley. I have consulted widely on this issue. It is a decision that I have approved.’

‘Then how do you explain Guppy’s surplice? It went missing the night of his murder and turned up at an address in Soho: an address where Brendan Malloy — who’d been to see Guppy in the spring — lived at the time.’

‘As one of the commissioners, Detective Inspector, sometimes I have to make decisions, difficult decisions that are, in my opinion, in the best interests of the police.’ He looked around, picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and raised his voice. ‘We have an eyewitness account, from a police constable no less, that places Hiley at the scene of the crime; we have another account that confirms his flight from the aforementioned scene of crime.’

‘You didn’t answer my question.’

‘I see your point, Detective Inspector, but do you really believe it was this priest who killed Guppy?’

‘Honestly, I don’t know. But I do know that if we don’t keep this line of investigation open, we might end up looking very stupid, indeed. All of us, Sir Richard.’

‘Just find Hiley. Then this other business will fall into place.’

For a moment there was silence. ‘Malloy knows something. And now we might never find out what it is.’ Pyke wanted to say more but he realised he could not jeopardise his already precarious status further. ‘I’ve made my point. That’s all I can do.’

He continued to stand there. The commissioner looked up at him and sighed. ‘We’ll need to appoint a replacement for William Gerrett. I’ll draw up a list of candidates. That will be all, Detective Inspector,’ Mayne said, his gaze returning to the document on his desk.

Pyke could taste the bile at the back of his throat.

Whicher was still in his office when Pyke returned to the detective department. He told him about his argument with Mayne. ‘Wells is the one who advised him. Maybe he thinks that serving up Hiley’s head on a plate will get him the assistant commissioner’s position.’

‘I don’t know about that, but he took Shaw out with him first thing this morning. I think the idea was to look for Hiley in Bethnal Green.’

Pyke looked out of the window and thought about the hidden lines of division within his team. Wells was a more astute political animal than Pyke had given him credit for, and now he was trying to court Frederick Shaw.

‘Has Lockhart reported back yet?’

Whicher was puzzled. ‘I thought he was just sick?’

Pyke wondered what Lockhart would say when he heard the news about Billy Gerrett. Deciding to ignore Whicher’s question, he said, ‘Tell me. How did Shaw react to Gerrett’s dismissal?’

‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.’

‘And you?’

‘Gerrett made his bed…’ Whicher paused. ‘And you know what I thought about him as a detective.’

Later, Pyke found Frederick Shaw in the main office, picking mud from the soles of his boots. He wouldn’t meet Pyke’s eyes, at least not until Pyke had summoned him to his office and asked him directly whether anything was the matter.

‘No, nothing’s wrong,’ he said, still not looking directly at Pyke.

‘Once I’d found out that a debt collector had visited Billy here, at his place of work, I had no choice but to refer the matter to the acting superintendent.’

In fact, Pyke had been to see Clapp later and had paid off the debt in full. Although he didn’t like Gerrett and he didn’t want him to be part of the Detective Branch, especially if he was passing information back to Pierce, he knew what it was like to owe money and didn’t wish to exacerbate another man’s problems for the sake of it.

‘But that’s just it, isn’t it?’ Shaw’s expression was hot and tight. ‘I told you about Billy’s gambling in the first place, didn’t I?’

‘So?’

‘So I’m asking: was it just a coincidence that this debt collector came looking for Billy here?’

Pyke held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. ‘Gerrett brought this on himself. No one else is responsible but him.’ He put his hand in his pocket, retrieved a ten-pound note and slid it across the desk towards Shaw. ‘But I don’t want to see one of my men out of pocket. That’s for you. It’s not everything you lent Gerrett but it should help. If and when Gerrett repays you, you can pay me back. Until then, consider it a loan.’

Shaw looked at the banknote and then at Pyke. ‘I just don’t like to think I had anything to do with Billy’s dismissal.’

‘You didn’t, Frederick. I promise you.’ Pyke tried to smile. ‘But it does mean I’ll be relying on you and Jack even more than usual.’

Shaw reached out and took the note, as Pyke knew he would. ‘Actually, sir, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about …’

‘Call me Pyke, please.’

The young detective sergeant shuffled his chair closer to the desk. ‘I was thinking about the letter you received, the lines from the poem about the serpent.’

Pyke looked at him, intrigued.

‘The serpent is a symbol of the Devil, right?’

‘Some would see the serpent as the Devil himself.’ Pyke hesitated. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘A few years ago, before the Detective Branch was established, I was transferred from D Division to assist on a murder investigation. Perhaps you remember it? A boy from St Giles was beaten to death with what we thought at the time was a cudgel.’

‘This would have been about five years ago?’

‘I’d say so. I’d have to check the records, though.’

‘It sounds familiar, but I don’t recall the details.’ In fact, Pyke had no recollection of such an incident, but five years earlier he had been imprisoned in Marshalsea for not paying his debts.

‘That was the first boy. But a couple of weeks later, another boy was found. This one’s hands and feet had been nailed to a door.’

‘And that’s what made you think of Guppy?’