by David Field
‘I need to check on the family background of that Sergeant Cameron from “E” Division. He doesn’t quite add up. I interviewed him at the storehouse in Holborn from which the police wagon and uniforms disappeared before they were used in the Hatton Garden jewel robbery, and he did a fair impersonation of a total moron who should never have been promoted, and who wasn’t capable of counting the fingers on one hand. But when I interviewed his superior officer, and the man who promoted him to sergeant — a solid looking bloke called Inspector Greaves — I was given a totally different picture of a man with a spotless record who’d made just one or two serious lapses of judgment at a time when he was distracted by family issues.’
‘What family issues, exactly?’
‘A sick son in need of special medical care, which suggests a need for money, and a potential for being corrupted.’
‘Did you enquire further?’
‘Of course. I went to his home address, but never got beyond the front door. The man’s wife fobbed me off with the explanation that the boy was with neighbours, but that was just a ruse. While I was waiting for her to come back upstairs after checking on the boy, I distinctly heard what sounded like him calling from inside the rooms they were living in; then she came back upstairs with two no-nonsense blokes who assured me that the boy was being well cared for and invited me to bugger off.’
‘And did you?’
‘Do I strike you as a stupid hero? Of course I made myself scarce, but what makes me suspicious is that one of the blokes seemed to know all about the Met widows’ pension scheme, while claiming to be the boy’s uncle — the mother’s brother. I’ll be checking that out first thing tomorrow. Now, remind me about Inspector Ingram.’
‘Inspector Ingram?’ Jack responded, just as Beattie Enright poked her head round the door and advised them that tea was almost ready.
‘What do you plan to poison us with this evening?’ Percy asked genially, and his wife snorted.
‘One of these days, Percy Enright, I really will poison you, and the only reason I haven’t done so far is the fact that there’d be an obvious suspect.’
‘I’ll speak up for you, Aunt Beattie,’ Jack said, to which Percy replied, ‘You’re just looking for a way to be excused her deadly dumplings, or her lethal lentil soup.’
‘Five minutes,’ Beattie advised them. ‘Just long enough for me to sign the divorce papers.’
‘Inspector Ingram?’ Jack repeated. ‘And keep it brief, because I’m hungry enough to eat even whatever Aunt Beattie’s cooked.’
‘It’s pretty obvious, if you step back and look at the overall picture,’ Percy pointed out. ‘Ingram was a sergeant at Stepney when they found that cache of firearms in a local house. The man who occupied that house was released from custody a few days later for no apparent reason, and the weapons themselves went missing from a special store at the Yard shortly after that. Then Ingram gets promoted to Inspector at Leman Street, just in time to arrange the change in shift rosters that allowed the arson of Bartrams to take place right under our noses. Do I have to draw you a diagram?’
‘So Ingram’s corrupt,’ Jack agreed, ‘but someone else higher than him must have organised his promotion — his “reward”, if you like.’
‘And someone inside the Yard must have made it possible for those guns to be spirited out of the store at the Yard,’ Percy added. ‘You know how well guarded and supervised that is, so I have this horrible feeling that the corruption goes much higher than we had initially thought or hoped.’
‘So where do we go from here?’ Jack enquired.
‘First of all, into the kitchen for an appointment with the Hackney Poisoner,’ Percy grimaced. ‘Then tomorrow, assuming I survive, I’ll be making a pain of myself in certain quarters. I seem to have acquired a sudden taste for suicide.’
Jack dodged what looked suspiciously like an inflated pig’s bladder that a group of ragged urchins were fighting for possession of as he ducked quickly into the gloomy entrance of a tenement yard in Lowder Street, Wapping. On his way up Raymond Street he’d passed the grim fortress-like outer wall of the local Workhouse, and he reminded himself that for families like the one he was about to visit, destitution and despair were only a missed week’s wages away. Stepping carefully over the prostrate boots and stockings of a female drunk who’d clearly not quite made it up to her lodgings on her way back from the gin palace, he climbed one flight of stairs, then checked the room number that he’d written down hastily in his notebook the previous afternoon. He knocked on the door, and, as experience had taught him to do, he took a deep breath when he heard it about to open.
‘Mrs Black?’
‘That’s me — Lizzie Black,’ the exhausted looking drab confirmed as she gazed back out at him through eyes deprived of sleep. ‘’Ave yer found Mickey? Only I can’t keep lyin’ ter the kids about where ’e is fer much longer.’
‘How did you know I was a police officer?’ Jack asked.
Lizzie Black nodded towards his feet. ‘Yer boots is clean, an’ yer don’t smell, so yer can’t be from round these parts. Anyway, yer’ll be the third this week.’
‘You mean that other police officers have been enquiring about your husband?’
‘Don’t know who they was exactly, but yeah — suddenly every bastard in the world wants ter know where the lousy bugger’s got to, but yer’d think ’e’d’ve told ’is own wife what ’e were about, wouldn’t yer? Well, yer’d best come inside.’
‘When did he first go missing?’ Jack asked as he tactfully removed a child’s wooden toy from the only available chair, while Lizzie Black perched her scrawny frame on the end of the unmade bed that occupied the centre of the only room that the tenement seemed to possess.
‘Can’t really tell yer, since ’e were sometimes missin’ fer days at a time,’ Lizzie told him. ‘But it were a week or two back now, after ’e’d fallen in wi’ that soldier.’
‘What soldier would that be?’
‘I weren’t told that, was I? ’E never told me about ’is card-playin’ friends, like ’e never told me ’ow much ’e were losin’.’
‘He lost money heavily at cards?’
‘’Owdyer think we come ter finish up in a shit’ole like this? We ’ad proper rooms at one time, down in Shadwell. Then Mickey took ter the gamblin’, a’ it were like it took ’old of ’is ’ole life. We ’ad ’eaps o’ rows about it, an’ ’e kept promisin’ ter give it all away, but ’e never did. Then ’e come ’ome a few weeks since lookin’ proper scared, an’ eventually ’e got around ter admittin’ that ’e’d bin playin’ cards wiv a soldier bloke, an’ ’ow ’e owed ’im lotsa money, an’ ’e’d ’ave ter go inter ’idin’ fer a while.’
‘Is that when he disappeared?’
‘Not quite. ’E come back a few nights later, wiv all this money, an’ tried ter tell me ’is luck ’ad suddenly changed, an’ that ’e’d be gone fer a while, but there wuz enough money ter keep me an’ the kids fed fer a month. Well the month’s bin an’ gone, an’ if ’e don’t come back soon we’ll all be in the Poor’ouse. Either that, or I’ll ’ave ter sell me body, like some o’ me neighbours. But who’d want a scrawny thing like me?’
‘These other people who came enquiring after Mickey — are you sure they were police?’ Jack asked.
‘They said they was, although one’ve ’em looked too small an’ skinny fer that. They was askin’ why Mickey ’adn’t turned up fer duty, an’ I told ’em I didn’t know. They asked me if I knew where ’e were ’idin’ out, an’ I told ’em I didn’t know that neither, which were the truth. Then they went away, but another lot come only yesterday. Different blokes, but askin’ the same questions. An’ while I were down the street yesterday, I spotted one’ve ’em keepin’ watch on the buildin’, like ’e were waitin’ fer Mickey ter come back.’
‘If you feel threatened in any way, by these men who keep calling, or anyone else for that matter, you’re to contact me at Scotland Yard. My name’s Jack Enright — Detective Sergea
nt Jack Enright — can you remember that? And whatever you do, don’t rely on anyone at the local police station where Mickey used to work — Leman Street, in Whitechapel.’
‘Why not?’
‘I can’t tell you, but now I must be going,’ Jack insisted as he got up from the chair. Just then the sound of a child crying became audible from what Jack had taken to be a cupboard of some sort. With an apologetic smile Lizzie rose from the edge of the bed.
‘It’s little Charlie — ’e’s needin’ a feed. Can yer show yerself out?’
Assuring her that he could, Jack made his way towards the doorway, then turned to make sure that she wasn’t looking as he reached into his trouser pocket, extracted a couple of shillings and placed them carefully on the ledge near the door as he made his way back out onto the landing, and decided that he could resume breathing in at his normal rate.
There was a considerable contrast between the squalid room in which he’d spoken with Lizzie Black and the smart lodging house in Cable Street that advertised on its front window that it had ‘clean rooms available for respectable business gentlemen’, but that like many of its kind it was not prepared to open its doors to anyone who was Irish. Jack did the necessary with the heavy black knocker on the front door, and after a minute or so a comfortably padded middle-aged lady opened it with a broad smile.
‘Good morning, sir,’ she breezed. ‘Looking for accommodation, are we?’
‘No,’ Jack replied as he raised his police badge high in the air, ‘we’re looking for Edward Ainsworth.’
‘Haven’t seen him for some time,’ the lady replied. ‘He’s paid up a month in advance, so it’s none of my business anyway. I’m Hilda Morton, by the way.’
‘Detective Sergeant Jack Enright, Scotland Yard. I take it that he hasn’t been gone a month, else you’d be re-letting his room, which I’d like to examine if I may.’
‘Of course,’ Hilda Morton replied as she stood back from the doorway to grant admission to Jack. ‘He’s the first floor back — number 5.’
Jack followed her as she led the way up the staircase to the first-floor room, which she opened with a key at her belt, and flung the door open.
‘It’s a bit musty after this while,’ she advised him almost apologetically, ‘but I’ll leave you to it.’
‘No, please stay,’ Jack requested, ‘since I need to ask you about your lodger. His personal habits, friends, tastes in food — anything you can tell me, really. Plus, I don’t want there to be any suggestion afterwards that I stole anything from this room or planted something in it that doesn’t belong.’
‘As you wish,’ she agreed. ‘He was a very respectable gentleman, on the whole, and very punctual. But you’d know that, if you worked with him. He was a police officer himself, but I suspect that’s why you’re here. He’s not been at work lately, has he?’
‘And what makes you think that?’
Mrs Morton seemed somewhat offended by the question. ‘As a landlady I make it my business to observe the comings and goings of my tenants, and I can tell you that “Teddy”, as he invited me to call him, was normally very punctilious in his habits. Left for work every day an hour before he was due on, and always came home for meals when his shift hours permitted. He was staying “half board”, which entitled him to two meals a day. He never once came home the worse for drink, although I know he liked to party.’
‘“Party” in what way, exactly?’
‘Well, young ladies, if you take my meaning. He was always eager to tell me about social gatherings that he went to, and the young ladies that he met at them. There was one in particular he often referred to — “Betsy” I think her name was. A publican’s daughter, not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. I believe that he and she walked out a few times, and the last time I saw him was just down the road there, under the railway arch. He met up with this lovely looking young lady, all bonnet and feathers, if you get the picture, and she took his arm and steered him down towards St Katherine Dock way.’
‘That was the last time you saw him, you say?’ Jack took out his notebook in anticipation, and she nodded.
‘Yes, that’s right. That would be the day after that fire in that warehouse. I meant to ask him about that, since I think he was on duty somewhere near there. But he must have been late in after his night shift finished — no doubt held back by that dreadful fire — and he didn’t come back for the breakfast he knew I’d cooked for him. Anyway, it was later that day that I saw him with the young lady I just mentioned.’
‘I’d better set about examining the room, but don’t go away.’
There wasn’t much to examine, Jack soon realised. The bed was in the centre of the room, with a washstand and basin in one corner. The wardrobe revealed only a relatively clean and new-looking police uniform, a grey suit, various socks and undergarments, and two pairs of boots that clearly belonged to someone with large feet. This just left a set of drawers on the other side of the room, the top drawer of which was firmly locked.
Jack looked back across at Mrs Morton in the doorway. ‘I don’t suppose you have a key to this drawer?’
She looked slightly embarrassed for a moment, then nodded and reached inside her bodice to extract a key, which she brought over to him without refastening her top buttons.
‘You understand that I respect the privacy of my tenants at all times, and that this key’s just a duplicate for emergencies?’
‘Yes, of course,’ he reassured her as he opened the drawer, then stepped back sharply, as if he’d unearthed a live snake. He moved back cautiously and made a rough calculation of the bank notes to one side of the open drawer, arriving at a mental total of some two hundred pounds. Then he reached inside and lifted out the envelope that contained what proved to be a collection of postcards. Very specific types of postcards, all of which featured nubile ladies in their undergarments. And one at the very bottom without anything to cover her shame.
‘My, my!’ Mrs Morton cooed as she looked over Jack’s shoulder. ‘I knew he was a bit of a lad, but it seems that I underestimated him. If he comes back for these, I’ll give him a red face and no mistake!’
Chapter Eight
Percy Enright gave a triumphant grin as he placed the selected records face up in front of him and confirmed a suspicion that had begun to form itself the previous day.
Sarah Cameron had been born “Sarah Mount” in Bow in 1854. Her parents had lived at the same address for some time, to judge by the census records compiled every ten years, and while she had two sisters younger than her, there was no brother, older or younger. The man who had warned him away from the staircase in Plough Court, whoever he might be, clearly had a reason other than a family one for ensuring that Sarah Cameron and her sickly child were not subjected to further scrutiny.
That reason might well be that Hector Cameron had been bribed in order to look the other way when police uniforms, and the wagon that went with them, had disappeared from his store. Bribed with either money or a promise that their sick child would be adequately provided for. Percy was in the process of mentally condemning Cameron for his weakness, and his betrayal of the law and order that he had been sworn in to uphold, when he thought of Jack, the nephew who had become like a son to him. What would he have done had he been in Cameron’s place, and the sick child had been Jack? ‘Walk a mile in my shoes’, as he’d once heard somebody say, so perhaps he should go easy on Hector Cameron until he knew all the facts.
Of more concern was the admission by Inspector Greaves that he’d covered up Cameron’s lapses. It could have been simply a matter of loyal sympathy for the unfortunate family circumstances in which a fellow officer with a previously unblemished record now found himself, or it could be something more sinister. An Inspector in any police station was in a perfect position to organise cover-ups, and indeed to instigate corrupt practices of his own. But insofar as Percy could judge from his own extensive experience of fellow officers, Greaves was a straight character �
�� a bit on the weak side, perhaps, but straight. Which is probably more than could be said for George Ingram, the Inspector who’d thrown Jack out of Whitechapel police station when he began getting too close to what might prove to be an embarrassing set of truths regarding the inexplicable change of night duty allocations on the occasion of the Wapping warehouse fire.
Thoughts regarding Ingram’s almost certain involvement in corrupt practices sent Percy in search of the man’s service record, held centrally by the Yard ostensibly as a convenient means of centralising all manpower records, but in reality designed to give them an overview of the performance and efficiency of every man in the Met. Fifteen minutes later Percy was examining what to all intents and purposes was a splendid service record. George Ingram had been recruited as a constable in 1884 after a brief spell as an infantryman in the Rifle Corps during the First Sudan Campaign. He’d been allocated to Shoreditch, where following exemplary service as a constable, he’d been promoted to the rank of Sergeant and transferred to Stepney.
While holding down that rank, Ingram had been the man who had led the investigations following the discovery of an arms cache in a local house; investigations that had mysteriously culminated in the unexplained release from custody of the man who’d been occupying the house in which they’d been discovered, quite by accident, by two uniformed constables who’d entered the house in response to complaints regarding suspicious comings and goings. Percy consulted his notes and reminded himself that those two constables had been named Greenway and Padley, and the man who’d been released for no obvious reason had been one Nathaniel Hiscock.
Within two weeks of that bungle — further aggravated by the disappearance of many of the discovered weapons from the Scotland Yard vaults in which they were supposed to have been securely locked — Ingram had been promoted to Inspector and reallocated to Whitechapel’s Leman Street Station, just in time to have become involved in whatever dark deed had replaced Constable Michael Black with Constable Edward Ainsworth, both of whom had now conveniently disappeared.