Andrew Pepper - The Detective Branch

‘Good.’ Mayne glanced at Wells and turned to Pierce: ‘I take it you’ve now had a chance to visit St Giles for yourself.’

Pierce nodded. ‘I’m pleased to report that the crowds have diminished and that my men have secured the premises.’ Uncrossing his legs, he glanced across at Pyke and added, ‘In fact, I believe I’ve come across some information which may be of use to the investigation.’

‘Go on, Benedict.’

‘One of the victims, the pawnbroker, Cullen, was threatened only the other week by a couple of brutes with Munster brogues.’

Pyke felt the muscles in his stomach tighten. ‘You must have talked to the wife.’ He paused, trying to gather his wits. ‘But it’s not your investigation.’

‘I was just trying to apprise myself of the situation.’ Pierce looked around the room and realised that this was new information. ‘And it’s lucky I did because it looks like Inspector Pyke has omitted to share this piece of news.’

‘A troublesome oversight, indeed, especially in the light of Walter’s suspicions about the Irishmen who were seen firing their pistols.’ Mayne stared at Pyke and shook his head.

Pierce asked Wells to elaborate, and when Wells had finished Pierce nodded then turned to Pyke. ‘Then it seems we have our men already.’

‘Except Pyke doesn’t seem to concur with this view,’ Mayne said.

Pyke did his best to hide his anger but the sudden rush of blood to his neck must have given him away.

‘No? Already trying to do things your own way, Pyke?’ Pierce taunted him.

Not for the first time it struck Pyke what an outsider he was in their company. Ostensibly, he dressed as they dressed and spoke as they spoke, but whereas Mayne and Wells had come from upstanding, landed families and Pierce had bought his way into the right clubs and associations, Pyke had grown up in the rookery and would never be accepted as their equal. Most of the time, Pyke was unconcerned by their efforts to disparage and exclude him, and the idea of ever wanting to join their clubs appalled him, but every now and again their high-handed manner rankled him. If he was honest, Pyke was most angered by the idea that someone in the Branch might be passing information back to Pierce. For how else would Pierce have known so quickly about the Irishmen who had been to Cullen’s shop? Pierce had been the head of the Detective Branch before him and still had contacts, perhaps even friends, among the detectives and the clerks. Pyke had been told that Eddie Lockhart had been Pierce’s favourite.

‘I’ll ask you again, Sir Richard,’ Pyke said. ‘Is this my investigation?’

Mayne gave Pyke a cool stare and reiterated the importance of co-operation between divisions.

‘I asked a question, sir, and I’d appreciate an answer. Is this my investigation?’

‘Yes, for land’s sake, I told you it was…’

Pyke stood up and straightened his frock-coat. ‘Then until I’m told differently, I’ll run it as I see fit.’ He didn’t take another breath until he was out of the room, and he waited until he was halfway along the corridor before he punched the wall.

While his men were gathering in the main office, Pyke was able to open a note from Ned Villums. It had been left for him by one of the clerks. The note simply said: Harry Dove went to shop to inspect a jewelled crucifix, very valuable. Pyke put the note in his pocket and turned this new information over in his mind. So Dove had gone to Cullen’s shop on business. For some reason, the mention of a jewelled crucifix seemed familiar and he made a note to check the daily route-papers detailing items that had been reported as stolen.

As soon as Pyke stepped into the main office, the four sergeants looked up at him and their conversations ceased. It was always the way, and Pyke had increasingly been trying to interpret their reticence in his presence. Shaw, he felt, was afraid or in awe of him whereas Gerrett resented him in the way a stupid, lumbering dog resented its master. Whicher didn’t say much to the other men and had either excluded himself from their social circle or been excluded; Pyke didn’t know which. But it was Lockhart’s silence which Pyke found the hardest to read. Aside from Whicher, he was the most intelligent of the detectives and his work was thorough and imaginative, but Pyke couldn’t help feeling that Lockhart resented him in some way. Pyke recognised Lockhart’s indifference because he had once behaved in a similar manner with his superiors. As a Runner, Pyke had operated according to his own agenda and had had little time for the chief magistrates he’d served under. Now he was head of a department, he had to inspire men to do their best for him, and this meant making sure they either respected or feared him.

Pyke’s detectives had come from working-class backgrounds and, like most working lads made good, they were used to taking their orders from men like Mayne or even Benedict Pierce, who had been able to reinvent himself as a blue-blooded defender of Church, Crown and Empire. But Pyke had no idea what they made of him, whether they saw him as an establishment figure or an outsider. They would have heard a little about his past, of course, because it had been openly aired at the time of his appointment; they would know, for example, that he had once been convicted of murder and that he had been sentenced to hang before escaping from Newgate and earning a pardon. Or that more recently he’d served nine months in Marshalsea prison for not paying his debts.

Two days earlier, following an arrest that Gerrett had made, a shoemaker and a father of four from Shoreditch had been convicted at Bow Street for stealing a gentleman’s greatcoat. The man’s pleas for clemency had fallen on deaf ears and the magistrate had sentenced him to serve eight years in the House of Correction for the County of Middlesex, otherwise known as Coldbath Fields. Gerrett had gone around the room seeking the acclaim of the other men. When he’d come to Pyke, he had stood there like a schoolboy waiting to be praised. Pyke had congratulated him on a job well done and then reminded him that a poor man with four children had been sent to prison for eight years for stealing a coat. He had also mentioned the case of a stockbroker who’d defrauded investors of thousands of pounds and who had walked out of the courtroom without incurring a fine. Only Jack Whicher had seemed to have understood what he’d meant.

Pyke invited the men into his office and waited for them to file into the small room and take their place in a semicircle around his desk. He started by telling them about the suspicions regarding the Raffertys; the fact that they had visited Cullen’s shop a few weeks earlier and pressed the pawnbroker to receive stolen goods and that some men, possibly the Raffertys, had been seen firing their pistols on wasteland behind King’s Cross. He also described his encounter with Conor Rafferty and said that a roomful of people were willing to swear the Raffertys had been drinking in the Blue Dog on Castle Street at the time of the shooting. For the time being, he decided not to say anything about the crucifix.

He turned to Shaw. ‘Tell us how you fared at Bow Street. Was Cullen’s wife telling the truth when she intimated Cullen had never been convicted of a crime?’

Shaw took out his notepad and wiped his nose. ‘Cullen’s served two prison sentences. One as a debtor, six months in the Fleet. The other for receiving stolen goods. Two and a half years in Coldbath Fields.’

There was a murmur of approval from the others.

‘When was that?’ Pyke asked.

‘About four years ago.’

Pyke digested this information. It didn’t change much — in fact, it only confirmed what he’d already suspected: that Cullen was a disreputable but insignificant figure, a man on the fringes of the city’s underworld.