Andrew Pepper - The Detective Branch

‘But they were both your boys.’

‘So what?’ Culpepper’s eyes were hard and small. ‘You think I’m attached to any of my boys? That I can afford to be sentimental?’

‘Sharp was one of your men, too, wasn’t he?’

‘He was a good boy but he was always a little too quick to reach for his pistol. I only used him when I had to.’

‘You sent him to Cullen’s pawn shop, to recover some goods that Walter Wells wanted back? The Saviour’s Cross, for a start.’

Culpepper shook his head. ‘Wells was never interested in that cross. He just wanted some ledger book. I could see he was desperate. For good measure, he arranged for one of his men to patrol the street outside the shop. A Peeler.’

This had been the man the crossing-sweeper had seen. Sergeant Mark Russell. Part of Kensington Division but formerly of A Division. Wells’s division.

‘Go on.’

‘Sharp had his orders but one of the culls in the pawnbroker’s went for his pistol and all hell broke loose. My lad had just got a new Darby, could fire five times without having to reload. Next thing, all of them culls were dead and Sharp scarpered out the back. He didn’t get the ledger; but he took the cross and a few things from the safe which was already open.’

This fitted with what Pyke had already worked out. Luke and Johnny Gibb must have suspected, or known, from the beginning that their half-brother, Morris, was innocent of the crimes he’d been accused of committing. Maybe they also suspected that someone had deliberately picked him out to shoulder the blame. Perhaps, over the subsequent years, they had followed a trail of evidence that led back to Guppy and Wynter, although at the time Wells’s identity must have remained obscure; maybe it was simply the case that someone had tipped them off about the Churches Fund. In any case, it now seemed likely that, having been alerted to the Church’s collusion in the matter of their brother’s execution, Johnny and Luke Gibb had broken into Wynter’s safe and taken the cross along with the genuine copy of the Churches Fund’s accounts ledger. The accounts, Pyke guessed, would have told them all they needed to know about the embezzling of funds and who’d been involved; the cross had just been an added bonus and Johnny had gone to see Cullen to arrange a quick sale. Cullen, in turn, had contacted Harry Dove as a potential buyer and all three men had met that morning in Cullen’s pawn shop on Shorts Gardens. Somehow Wells must have found out about the rendezvous. Doubtless he had been frantically scouring the city in the aftermath of the robbery, desperate to recover a set of accounts that set out, clearly and unequivocally, not only his own guilt but also that of Palmer, Guppy, Hogarth and maybe others. Pyke didn’t yet know whether Sharp or Sergeant Russell had been able to recover the accounts ledger, but Sharp had certainly made it his business to retrieve the Saviour’s Cross before he shot and killed Johnny Gibb, Harry Dove and Samuel Cullen.

‘And when Wells wanted someone to find and perhaps frighten Keate’s elderly mother and his family, he came to you again.’

‘Look, I didn’t ask questions or demand reasons. I just did what I was told. In return, Wells was supposed to step on the Raffertys for me. I suppose he did a good enough job on one of the brothers.’

‘That was Wells?’ Pyke didn’t bother to hide his surprise.

Culpepper laughed, in spite of his predicament. ‘You have no idea how deep this thing goes, do you? How many of your mob are involved.’

Pyke went over to the window and peered outside into the late afternoon gloom.

‘Untie me, Pyke. I’ll walk away and I promise you’ll never see me again. I’ll pay you five thousand.’

Pyke turned around and surveyed Culpepper’s naked form sprawled on the bed. It was a grotesque spectacle.

‘I asked folk about you. I was told you’re not opposed to wetting your own beak from time to time.’ Culpepper stared at him and licked his lips. ‘Ten thousand.’

Pyke walked slowly towards the door but he stopped just before it, his fingers resting on the handle. ‘You know I said I’d put you out of your misery quickly, if you talked to me. Well, I’m afraid I lied.’ He turned the handle and opened the door. ‘There’s a man waiting outside who wants to make your acquaintance. His name is Conor Rafferty.’

‘Untie me, you fucking coward!’ Culpepper suddenly bellowed, yanking on his bindings. ‘Do you know who I am?’

Outside on the landing Conor Rafferty was waiting. Pyke looked him in the eye. ‘So we’re clear now, you and I.’

Rafferty nodded, walked into the room and closed the door behind him.

When Pyke returned to the building where Sarah Scott lodged, he found that her room, such as it was, had been cleared out. The landlord told him that she had departed the previous afternoon and hadn’t left a forwarding address.

From there, Pyke took a hackney carriage to Whicher’s address in Camberwell. Whicher lived in a stout, red-brick terraced house belonging to a retired navy captain and his wife. They had been told to expect Pyke and escorted him up the stairs to the top floor, all of which, they explained, belonged to the detective sergeant. Having offered him tea, which Pyke politely declined, the couple left him in what passed as a living room and told him that Whicher was expected by seven at the latest.

In fact, it was after eight when Pyke finally heard a carriage stop on the street outside and the front door open. By that time, Pyke had given all of the rooms on the top floor a quick inspection; there were few books, no papers, no personal touches, nothing to suggest that the occupant spent any time there at all. The bedroom contained a bed and a wardrobe, the living room a sofa and a chair. As he contemplated these living arrangements, Pyke thought about the death of Whicher’s child and his wife’s illness and wondered whether the emptiness of the rooms spoke of the man’s inner life; and whether this, in turn, mirrored his own situation.

Whicher mounted the stairs three at a time and Pyke could see straight away that he had made a discovery.

‘Luke Gibb left the regiment three years ago.’ Whicher’s eyes were gleaming with energy. ‘Guess what. He joined the Metropolitan Police.’

‘Gibb is a policeman?’

Nodding, Whicher said, ‘First thing on Monday morning, I’ll go to Accounts. They have records of everyone who’s ever joined the force.’

‘We’re talking about a lot of men,’ Pyke said, aware that his heart was beating faster.

‘The man I spoke to in the Fourteenth remembered Gibb. He said he was a quiet, competent, articulate soldier. He also gave me the approximate date of Gibb’s inauguration as a policeman. March 1842.’

‘That should make it easier.’

‘I know, but I’ll still have to go through the names of fifteen divisions, with a couple of hundred men in each.’ Whicher removed his greatcoat and put it on the back of the chair. ‘Have you been here long?’

‘Not long.’

‘I’m sorry; the train leaving Cambridge was delayed.’ Whicher looked around the room. ‘There’s not a lot to entertain you, I’m afraid.’

Pyke shrugged. ‘Late last night I went to see Wynter. Someone, maybe Luke Gibb, had just beaten me to it. I found the archdeacon lying on the floor of his room: he’d been stabbed a dozen times in the chest and stomach. I gave chase to a man I saw leaving the place but I lost him in the lanes just to the north of Holborn.’

‘So you think it was Gibb who killed the archdeacon?’

‘Seems likely, doesn’t it?’ Pyke nodded.

Gibb had both the motive and opportunity. And it was certainly true that if he had the accounts in his possession, he would know who had been culpable of embezzling the church funds: the men who had, implicitly or otherwise, sanctioned Keate’s arrest and execution.