Andrew Pepper - The Detective Branch

‘I saw you talking to young Lockhart,’ Wells said. ‘I trust he wasn’t causing you any problems.’

‘No, no problems.’ Pyke could see that Wells wanted to know what they’d been talking about.

‘He seems to have buckled down, got on with things. Perhaps Gerrett’s dismissal will be good for him, good for all of us.’

Pyke sat down in his chair and waited for Wells to do the same, but Wells opted to stand. ‘You didn’t say much in the meeting, Walter. I take it you don’t approve of the turn the investigation’s taken?’

‘I said I’d support whatever course you wished to steer.’

‘But you don’t think this is the best one?’ Pyke raised his eyebrows. ‘You still think Francis Hiley killed Guppy?’

Wells’s eyes drifted to the small window behind Pyke. ‘We’ll find him eventually, and then we’ll know one way or another.’ His expression darkened. ‘But I’ve had to redeploy most of my men to another most disagreeable matter. You won’t have heard about it yet, I suppose.’

‘Heard about what?’

‘A man was shot dead yesterday. The body was found in the river near the Billingsgate stairs.’

Pyke’s blood ran cold. ‘Who?’

‘One of the Rafferty brothers. Sean was his name, I believe.’

The news took a few moments to sink in. ‘Do you have any idea who might have done it?’

‘Could be one of a hundred thousand, I’d say.’ Wells rubbed his hard, waxy skin. ‘You know as well as I that the Irish are prone to violence and a wildness of spirit that can be quite lethal, especially if they find themselves under a feebler police than they’re used to.’

‘And you think that’s what’s happened here? Sean Rafferty has been shot dead because we, as a police force, have become permissive?’

Wells smiled. ‘Indeed, I’d forgotten that your attitudes vis-a-vis our Irish brethren are less hostile than mine. Nevertheless, this murder will have to be investigated with our characteristic thoroughness and the task of doing so has fallen to me. I don’t doubt it will be a nasty job; the list of names bearing brutes like the Raffertys a grudge is likely to be a long one and I can hardly expect assistance from the brothers.’

‘Except this time the Raffertys are the victims.’ Pyke thought back to the summer when Wells had been convinced of the Raffertys’ guilt on the pawn shop murder.

Wells’s eyes shifted focus. ‘I might have leapt to the wrong conclusion about the Raffertys before but you can hardly blame me for doing so: they’re notorious for their thieving and general disregard for the law.’

‘I’m sure you’re right, Walter,’ Pyke said, sighing, not wanting to further antagonise the man. ‘Actually, now that you’ve reminded me of the murders in the pawn shop, there was something I wanted to ask you,’ Pyke added.

‘Oh?’

‘You remember I mentioned that a constable in uniform had been seen in the vicinity of the pawnbroker’s just before the shooting?’

Wells jaw tightened. ‘You said someone saw this man, a beggar or hawker.’

‘A crossing-sweeper.’

Wells looked at him carefully. ‘What about it?’

‘He said the policeman in question had a limp. I met a sergeant matching that description a couple of weeks ago. Man by the name of Russell.’

‘Russell?’ Wells seemed to give the matter some thought. ‘No, I don’t think I’ve come across him.’

‘Part of Kensington Division.’

‘Still doesn’t ring a bell.’

‘I didn’t expect it would, but it struck me the other day that Pierce was in charge of that division before he moved to Holborn.’

‘I’m not sure what you’re implying, Pyke?’

Pyke eyed Wells carefully, not sure himself what he was suggesting, whether the matter was worth looking into or not. Perhaps it would turn out to be a dead end. Perhaps it was just the case that Sharp, the tall man they believed had shot the victims in the Shorts Gardens robbery, had acted on his own volition and had taken the secret of the cross’s whereabouts to his grave. But that didn’t explain how Sharp had come by the cross in the first place, nor why a policeman in uniform had failed to respond to the sound of three loud blasts of a pistol.

‘Sergeant Russell?’ Pyke waited to see whether the man would recognise him or not. He had presented himself at the desk in the police building on the King’s Road and asked whether Russell was available. The man had kept him waiting for a little more than five minutes.

Russell was heavier than Pyke remembered and, without his stovepipe hat, his hair was bushier and more unkempt. He had the same ferret-face, with small, quick eyes, thin lips and a pinched nose. It took the man a few moments to recognise Pyke and when he did, he stiffened slightly.

‘Detective Inspector…’ Russell paused and grimaced. ‘Trout?’

‘Pyke.’ He held the man’s stare. ‘With a “y”.’

Russell nodded. ‘What brings you to Kensington?’

‘I wanted to talk to you about an incident that took place in the summer. I was looking back at our records and I saw that, for some reason, you were the first policeman on the scene after a robbery at a pawnbroker’s on Shorts Gardens, just off Drury Lane.’

Russell’s expression gave nothing away. ‘I’m sorry, Detective Inspector, but you must be mistaken. You say I was first at the scene of a robbery in St Giles? That can’t be right. It must have been someone else.’

‘Are you quite sure?’ Pyke made a point of checking something in his notepad. He reeled off Russell’s rank and badge number.

‘That’s me, but I wasn’t in the centre of the city that day and I didn’t see or report a robbery.’ Russell’s manner wasn’t aggressive; he just sounded irritated.

Pyke glanced down at his notepad one final time and snapped it shut. ‘Then I believe I owe you an apology. Please excuse me. I didn’t mean to waste your time.’

‘No harm done.’

Russell had said the same thing to him outside Helen Hogarth’s mansion on the King’s Road.

Pyke held out his hand and waited for Russell to shake it. The sergeant did so, but grudgingly. As he gripped the other man’s calloused hand, Pyke stared into his eyes, and looked for any sign that he might have been lying.

Later that afternoon, Pyke went looking for Edmund Saggers in the Green Dragon on Fleet Street and then the Cole Hole, Coach and Horses and Edinburgh Castle, on the Strand. From there, he tried the parlour at Clunn’s Hotel in Covent Garden, and eventually found the journalist holding court at the Shakespeare on Wynch Street. In fact, Saggers wasn’t talking but eating. As he later told Pyke, he’d wagered a pound with a fellow journalist that he could put away ten steak and kidney puddings in one sitting. By the time Pyke found him, Saggers had managed to consume eight and the strain was beginning to show on his face. A vast man with an even vaster appetite, he was sitting alone at the table, a napkin tucked into his collar. The ninth steak and kidney pudding was pushed towards him and, with a sly glance at the man he’d made the bet with, Saggers took his fork and devoured it in a few mouthfuls. Looking up, he asked for the tenth pudding in a manner that suggested he was still hungry. A sheen of perspiration clung to his rotund cheeks. After a few moments’ delay it was brought to him by a harassed pot-boy. Barely allowing it cool, Saggers opened his mouth and shovelled it in, and when he had finished, he washed it down with a glassful of wine.

Once the crowd who’d gathered around Saggers’s table to watch him eat had ebbed away and the man he’d made the bet with had paid up, Pyke sat down opposite him. ‘Can I buy you lunch?’

‘Very droll, I’m sure.’ To alleviate his discomfort, the garrulous journalist opened his mouth and let rip with a belch that filled the room.