Andrew Pepper - The Detective Branch

‘One thing’s for certain,’ Whicher said. ‘With Wynter dead, Guppy’s murder can’t now be treated as an isolated incident.’

‘What Wynter’s murder also means is that anyone else involved will be scuttling for their holes. Palmer among them.’

Whicher considered this for a while. ‘Usually I’d say you were right.’

‘But?’

‘I’m told he still plans to attend this event on Monday evening at the Guildhall. They’re giving him the freedom of the city. It’s the highest honour a man of his rank can expect.’

All of a sudden, Pyke felt exhausted. ‘Palmer’s barely ventured out of his house in the past month. This is too good a chance for someone to pass up.’

‘Someone like Gibb?’

‘In his uniform, it’ll be easy for him to slip through the police lines without being noticed.’ Pyke waited a moment, debating whether to tell Whicher what he’d just found out. ‘Wells is implicated, too.’

Whicher listened while Pyke outlined what he’d discovered about Wells’s likely involvement with Guppy, Hogarth, Palmer and the rest of them. When he’d finished, Whicher sat down in the chair and stared wordlessly at the fire.

Pyke could understand Whicher’s reaction; he had been taken in by Wells, too. He had written him off as a man used to following orders, not giving them. In fact, Wells had played a careful double game, quietly conspiring with Pierce to engineer Pyke’s downfall and allowing Pyke to think he was sympathetic and that Pierce had orchestrated the arrest from the beginning. Whether Pierce was wholly innocent of everything Pyke had believed him guilty of remained to be seen.

‘So all along he’s been trying to divert attention away from the activities of the Churches Fund?’ Whicher said eventually.

‘If Guppy died with forty thousand in his account, I don’t doubt Wells has accrued as much if not more. In the end, this has been about money and greed, simple as that.’

‘So what do we do now?’

‘You mean about Wells? If it was just him, it might be simpler.’

‘There are others?’

Pyke thought about the slum clearance that Wells had overseen. Maybe some of these officers had been used on other details; maybe some had even killed on Wells’s command.

‘It looks that way.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Whicher’s face had turned a pale grey. ‘I assume you haven’t got any proof of this.’

‘Not at the moment.’ But Pyke suspected that Luke Gibb still had the Churches Fund’s secret accounts or knew where to lay his hands on the ledger.

‘Which means you can’t go to Mayne.’

Pyke nodded. ‘Assuming Mayne’s not involved, too.’

‘No, that’s impossible, Pyke, and you know it. One thing I’d swear to. Mayne’s as straight as they come.’

‘So is Peel but he’s on the Fund’s executive board. I was told by his private secretary — who also happens to be a friend of mine — that the prime minister won’t allow the Fund to be mired in suspicion.’

Whicher stood and paced to the other side of the room. ‘Wells will be there on Monday night, as well as Palmer.’

‘And don’t forget the prime minister,’ Pyke added. ‘It could make for an interesting night.’

‘Wells has no idea Gibb is a policeman?’

‘I don’t know. We found out, so it’s possible he has, too.’

‘Wells has personally liaised with a superintendent in the City of London police to oversee the security arrangements.’

‘I want to be there too,’ Pyke said, firmly.

‘There’s no way you’ll get past the ring of officers posted around the Guildhall.’

‘Not if I dress like this. But I had a quick look in your wardrobe earlier. I hope you don’t mind. I found your old uniform and tried it on. The trousers are a little short but otherwise the fit is quite good. I’ll take off the buttons giving your old division and number. No one will ever trace it back to you.’

Whicher folded his arms and scrutinised Pyke’s face. ‘What do you hope to achieve by going to the Guildhall? I mean… you must have some sympathy for Gibb, for his position.’ Whicher hesitated. ‘I know I do.’

‘I’m a policeman, Jack. I’ve sworn an oath to uphold the law.’

‘And when you come face to face with Wells?’

‘I don’t know.’ Pyke hesitated. ‘For a while now, I’ve been trying to work out why someone wrote me that note directing me to the address on Broad Street.’

‘And?’

‘I think whoever it was was hoping I’d talk to Druitt and dig a little, find out what really happened to the boys. That man clearly knows something.’

Whicher looked at Pyke waiting for him to elaborate but Pyke had nothing left to say.

The following morning, Pyke woke early but lay on his mattress in the tiny room he’d rented, savouring the quiet. It was a Sunday and the street beneath was almost deserted, just the occasional carriage or cart disturbing the silence. Because he had nothing to read, Pyke reached for the tatty prayer book Felix had given him and started to thumb through it, the words utterly alien to him. Flicking to the first page of the book, he noticed an inscription — Kitty’s name in her own handwriting: Kitty Jones. He froze. Big, looped letters. He recognised the handwriting. It was the same hand that had penned the note sent to him in December, with an epitaph from Blake. Kitty Jones. Kitty? Another name for Kate? The words of the tub-man echoed in his head: Good looking. Strange visions.

Pyke dressed in a matter of seconds. Five minutes later, having run the entire way, he arrived at the cab-stand on Charing Cross Road to find there were no people waiting and no carriages. He tore across Trafalgar Square to the Strand, where eventually he managed to flag down a carriage. Just as long as Felix was safe, he kept repeating to himself. The streets outside passed in a blur as the traffic was light, and the journey from the Strand to Bethnal Green took less than half an hour.

Pyke went first to the vicarage, and when he was convinced that no one was watching the house, he slipped around the back and banged on the door. It was answered by one of the servants, who told him that Jakes was at church and that Kitty and the boy had gone out earlier, perhaps to attend the morning service as well. Pyke was not sure whether or not he was relieved.

St Matthew’s was much fuller than Pyke had been expecting; every pew was packed with bodies, and there was standing room only left at the back of the church. If the building had seemed gloomy when it had been empty, it was now utterly transformed. Almost immediately Pyke could feel the sense of outrage that Martin Jakes, who was standing up in the pulpit wearing neither gown nor robe, was doing his best to stir up.

‘If you were to listen to our Church fathers,’ he was saying, his arms raised before him, ‘you would come away thinking that the single most pressing issue of our times is whether to side with Newman’s Tractarians and pay a higher regard for the sacrament, whether to light a candle on the altar and put a cross and flowers alongside it. Meanwhile, I say to you, and I say it because you know it to be true, thousands of men, women and children are perishing in our city every day either from starvation or disease or a general hopelessness borne of poverty and inequality.’ There was a loud murmur of approval. ‘Our Church fathers are wrangling among themselves about issues that are, at best, trifling, while honest folk can’t afford to put bread on their own tables. Of course, these same men have worked to ensure that churches like this one have been built and for this we must be grateful. But if they also want me to stand up here and tell you not to be concerned about this life, to trust and love God and wait for your reward in the next life, I will not do it. If all we do is endure our suffering, if we are passive in the face of the ills of the world, then nothing will ever change. For if we accept and endure, then those who exploit us for profit, those who feed off our misery like leeches, grow fat off our travails. Should I tell you to endure? Will God listen to your prayers and put food on your table? This I cannot say. But if Jesus did exist as flesh and blood, and if the gospels are even partly true, we can say that he did not passively accept his lot. He railed against the established Church and he threw the moneychangers out of the temple. He made it clear that the hypocrisy and sometimes even corruption of our supposed betters cannot and should not be tolerated.’