Andrew Pepper - The Detective Branch

‘But from what you’ve told me, he’s just as implicated as you.’

They stood for a moment or two, each contemplating the other, the damage that had been done. Pyke pursed his lips. He knew what the clever thing to do would be: keep Whicher close at hand and have him pass on false information to Pierce. But he felt so betrayed by the man, he couldn’t stand the thought of being in the same room as him. ‘I accept your explanation, Detective Sergeant, but I want you out of the Detective Branch immediately. You’ll go and see the acting superintendent in the morning and you’ll ask for an immediate transfer back to uniform. I’ll see that the request is approved. I’ll also make sure that nothing of what you told me ever comes to light.’

Whicher cast his head down and nodded. He had already accepted his fate. ‘You may not believe it, Pyke, but I’ve always liked you, as a detective and a man.’

Pyke kicked open the privy door and cleared a path for him. ‘Now get out of my sight. I never want to see you again.’

For most people, violence was an abstraction; it was something that happened in other parts of the city; a product of poverty and despair. It was what happened when the poorest of the poor were forced to live cheek by jowl and fight for the crumbs brushed off the rich man’s table, crumbs that meant the difference between life and death. The truth was that violence, the kind that came from the blackest place in the heart, couldn’t be explained in such simple terms.

Pyke was waiting for Benedict Pierce on the pavement outside the Bow Street station house. He made no effort to conceal his presence and Pierce saw him almost as soon as he’d stepped out of the building. But instead of standing there, Pyke darted into one of the alleyways that ran perpendicular to Bow Street. At first, he didn’t think that Pierce was going to follow him. He must have counted to thirty before he saw the superintendent’s silhouette in the dark mouth of the alleyway. In the end, hubris had got the better of him, as Pyke had been certain it would. Perhaps he was curious, too. He saw Pyke in the shadows and flashed a crooked smile. He didn’t see what was coming; Pyke waited until Pierce was almost next to him before he made his move.

Afterwards, Pyke wasn’t sure whether he’d ever intended to try to talk to Pierce. It wasn’t until he drove his fist deep into the upper reaches of Pierce’s stomach that he realised how deeply Whicher’s betrayal, and Pierce’s part in it, had wounded him. Pyke saw Pierce’s mouth flop open. He swung his fist again and landed a blow on Pierce’s chin and felt it shatter, then another to the side of Pierce’s head, an arch of blood splattering the sleeve of his coat. Pierce coughed, trying to catch his breath as a spool of saliva dribbled from his mouth. He tried to back away but Pyke caught his head in an armlock and punched him in the nose with his other hand. It was as though a gale were blowing in Pyke’s ears and everything he saw had a red hue. Swinging Pierce around, Pyke smashed his skull into the brick wall and then stepped back and lifted him up off his feet with a combination of punches. Too far gone to stop, he allowed Pierce to slither on to the wet ground and kicked him so hard in the stomach that the man vomited blood. Benedict Pierce was no longer moving, a near-silent groan from his face-down body the only indication that he was, in fact, alive. And suddenly Pyke was sickened by what he’d just done.

The first gin barely touched the sides of his throat. He stood at the counter and ordered two more, and then two more again. In the yard he had run cold water over his hands, washing the blood from his knuckles. Later, around midnight, when he could no longer talk without slurring or walk in a straight line, the landlord threw him out and he wandered aimlessly for another hour, the wind and the rain sobering him up a little. He’d taken his first drink in the Green Dragon on the Strand. At two o’clock in the morning, he found himself standing on the street in Soho where Sarah Scott had taken a room, not even sure how he’d managed to find his way there. When he banged on her door, it took her a few minutes to answer it and she did so only after he’d identified himself. She had been sleeping; her hair was unkempt and she could barely open her eyes.

‘You’d better come in,’ she said, assessing him coolly, perhaps smelling the gin on his breath.

The room was as Pyke remembered it: small, frugal, unfurnished. There were no chairs, just a flock mattress that took up most of the floor space. Sarah had already seen his bruised knuckles. Pyke went to embrace her but she pushed him away. The room started to spin.

‘Who did you fight?’ Sarah asked, gesturing at his fists.

‘A superintendent. I did most of the fighting.’

She gave him a quizzical stare. ‘Won’t that get you into trouble?’

Pyke hadn’t really thought about the consequences of his actions, but he didn’t believe that Pierce would come at him through official channels. It struck him then that he should have finished the man off. Now he was injured and humiliated, Pierce was an even more dangerous adversary.

‘What did he do to you?’

‘It’s a long story.’ Pyke looked around the small room. ‘Have you got any gin?’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’ Sarah rubbed her eyes and yawned. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t offer you a thing.’

‘How was the inquest?’

‘Short and to the point. Brendan died by his own hand — an overdose of Prussian acid. It’s the funeral that’s proving to be a problem. The Catholic Church doesn’t want to have anything to do with him.’

‘I tried to see Druitt today. He’d been moved to a secret location by order of the Home Office.’

Pyke wanted to assess her reaction but all the gin he’d drunk had blurred his vision and he couldn’t tell whether Sarah was concerned or upset by this news. She just folded her arms and said, ‘Is that what you came here at two in the morning to tell me?’

‘Someone else thinks Druitt knows who’s been killing these men. They’re going to try and force the information out of him.’

‘And am I supposed to feel sorry for him?’

Pyke’s mouth felt as if all of the moisture had been leached from it. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned him. I’m sorry.’

Sarah cupped Pyke’s face in her hands. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way but I think you should go…’

Up close he could smell the perfume on her skin. He wanted to tell her that he needed to be with someone, that he needed to be with her, that he wanted to fall asleep next to her, feeling her warmth on his skin.

She tilted her head upwards and pecked him on the cheek ‘… before one of us says something we might regret in the morning.’

The following day was a Sunday and Pyke staggered from his bed, reached blindly for the commode and emptied the contents of his stomach into the bowl. He splashed his face with cold water and dressed quickly, trying to ignore his shaking fingers and the foul taste in his mouth. Downstairs, Felix had made his own breakfast — Mrs Booth had Sundays off — and was eating it in the living room.

‘Have you arrested Palmer yet?’ Felix looked up hopefully from the bowl of porridge on his lap.

‘I don’t even know for sure if he’s done anything wrong.’

‘Then why did you tell me I’d broken the investigation wide open?’

Pyke put his hand to his temple. ‘Not now, please. Let me make myself some coffee.’

‘I just thought that since we…’

‘ Not now, all right,’ Pyke snapped.

Felix shovelled a spoonful of porridge into his mouth and looked out of the window. ‘I’m going to St Matthew’s today. I was there yesterday and the day before. Not that you would know. I heard you come in last night about three. The night before that you didn’t come home at all.’