Peter Lovesey - Abracadaver

‘Ten years ago we were told this performance could stop,’ reflected Cribb. ‘Prevention of Crime Act, 1871. Photography, they said! That’s the way to spot your felon. Put every blasted criminal there is in a studio like a maharajah and immortalise him in half-profile. Bravo for science! And what happened?’

‘It cost too much,’ said Thackeray.

‘Dear me, yes. In his enthusiasm the Home Secretary hadn’t done his arithmetic. In no time at all the photographing was restricted to convicts and habitual criminals, and now you need a special application to the Governor to take a camera anywhere near an old lag. Progress, Thackeray! So three times a week the gentlemen of Clerkenwell and Newgate still show their precious monikers to the Law, and the Law scratches its head and goes through its inventory of eyes and mouths and noses and tries to spot its old acquaintances. Sounds like a parlour-game and ain’t so far from being one.’

Another door was unlocked by a bored turnkey and they emerged blinking into daylight, and crossed a deserted exercise yard, where a circular track of polished pavement had been worn by generations of shuffling boots. The walls bordering the yard looked massive and impossible to scale, but as a precaution iron spikes projected inwards from the top.

The warders approached the building at the top end of the yard, mounted its stone steps and knocked at the entrance. Before joining them, Cribb drew Thackeray’s attention to the gigantic drumlike contraption built on to the top of the block. ‘Revolving fan,’ he explained. ‘Put there by Mr Howard, the reformer. Ventilates the whole interior of the jail.’ His eyes travelled slowly up the full height of the building. ‘Not many windows, you see.’

The unlocking and unbarring completed, they mounted narrow stone stairs and were greeted unexpectedly at the top with, ‘Damn my eyes, it’s Sergeant Cribb!’ from a uniformed warder with a style and presence that wanted only a row of medals and a yard of gold braid to be worthy of the doorman at the Cafe Royal.

‘Cyril Blade!’ responded Cribb. ‘Now where was it last? Don’t speak.’ His fingers snapped. ‘Got it! Holloway, the year before last.’ He turned to Thackeray. ‘If you think Irving’s got a voice, listen to this. What did they inscribe on the foundation-stone at Holloway, Cyril?’

Mr Blade drew a deep breath. ‘May God preserve the City of London, and make this place a terror to evil doers.’

‘Carries conviction, eh?’ said Cribb, savouring the performance. ‘No treadmill here, though, Cyril. Your vocal powers are wasted.’

Mr Blade disagreed. ‘I carry the sound of that blasted shin-scraper in me head to this day, Sergeant. Uncommon cruel, subjecting a man’s ears to that racket twelve hours a day. I asked for a move to the oakum-shed in the end, but they sent me here instead. And the shock I got, Sergeant!’

‘Not so harsh as Holloway?’ suggested Cribb.

Mr Blade clenched his fist eloquently. ‘This is a better home than my old mother made for me, Sergeant. They’re in clover here, I tell you. In clover.’

‘They should be, Cyril. They’re not convicted yet. Are they lined up?’

‘Like a guard of honour!’

‘Good. We’ll see who you’ve got, then.’

Mr Blade ushered them through an open door into a whitewashed room the size and shape of a hospital ward. The difference was clear in the positioning of the beds: sets of bunks in tiers of five were ranged head to foot along the length of the wall facing them. A row of well-scrubbed deal tables and benches had been pushed against the parallel wall to make room for the inspection.

Thackeray realised with misgivings that the hundred and twenty prisoners parading before them in three motionless ranks must have heard everything that was said. They were sized and spaced with military precision, but the effect was spoiled by the uniform: each wore the clothes in which he had been brought to Newgate, so a shooting-coat stood between a greasy spencer and a fustian jacket, and well-shod highlows lined up with clogs and naked feet. Yet there was a uniformity in the eyes of the prisoners, a glassy indifference, a torpor that had brutalised all but a handful.

‘All yours, Sergeant,’ said Cyril expansively. ‘Nobbiest parade in London after the Lord Mayor’s. Cracksmen, sharpers, screevers, macers, murderers and a few doubtful parties that might just be honest gentlemen, or might be as bent as bicycle-wheels. Take a long squint at ’em, and if you can’t find two or three you know, why Lord bless you.’ As Cribb started along the line, Mr Blade added confidentially to Thackeray. ‘-’E’s a very knowing card, is Sergeant Cribb.’

Thackeray followed a yard or two behind Cribb, conscious that the inspection was not the main purpose of the visit. The sergeant stopped briefly three times, putting questions to men he knew well enough to name. Satisfied, he completed the formality and thanked Mr Blade, adding in an undertone, ‘The red-haired customer in the last row wants watching. What does he call himself?’

‘The tall ’un? That’s Percy Crichton-Jones. Arrived this morning.’

‘Is it now? I’ll lay a guinea to a shilling it’s Albert Figg and if it is he’ll be working the three-card trick before the gas goes out tonight. There’s not a smarter broadsman in London. Anyone else arrive this week?’

Mr Blade reviewed his platoon in a parade-ground voice. ‘Them two in the front row came in together: pickpocket and his stall. Him in the second row, four along, is the Bethnal Green killer. That one moving his head—stand up there!—is a blooming magician, if you please. We have to watch him real sharp in the exercise yard in case the bugger flies over the wall.’

‘Magician? What’s the name—Woolston?’

‘I believe it is, Sergeant, though what he calls himself on the stage—’

‘I want to talk with him.’

‘You do?’ Mr Blade quite superfluously raised his voice. ‘Woolston! Two steps forward, march!’

‘In private,’ said Cribb.

‘You shall have a cell to yourselves, Sergeant. Woolston! Step out here at once and fall in behind me. And if anyone else stirs a sinew . . .’

Cribb fell in smartly behind Woolston, and Thackeray behind Cribb, leaving Warders Rose and Whittle facing the ranks. The quartet marched the length of the ward and into a narrow passage flanked by the open doors of a dozen small cells.

‘This one,’ indicated Mr Blade. ‘Sit yourself there, Sergeant. I’ll fetch another chair for your companion.’ When Thackeray was seated, the warder gave Woolston a threatening look, and added, ‘I’ll leave you with him, gentlemen. If he gives trouble, I’m within call.’

The potential source of trouble stood before them in a once-white tie and dusty tails, an expression of mild bewilderment on his face. A slight man in every sense, he was impossible to imagine working miracles at the Royal, in spite of his conjurer’s costume. Possibly the witchery of limelight might have transformed him, but in the harsh illumination of a whitewashed cell he was pallid, pinch-cheeked and about as mysterious as the asphalt floor.

‘On your feet, Thackeray,’ ordered Cribb. ‘Mr Woolston needs the chair more than you.’

The prisoner thanked Thackeray in a thin voice and sat facing Cribb across a small hinged table, supported in drawbridge fashion by two chains attached to the wall. The impedimenta of prison life—Bible, prayer-book and hymnbook, gas-pipe, basin and mug, tin panikin and wooden spoon—were ranged on shelves around them. With some difficulty Thackeray edged into a comfortable standing position at the cell’s end.

‘Mind your elbow!’ cautioned Cribb. ‘If that bedding’s disturbed, Mr Woolston will have the job of folding it all again.’