“What do you propose?” Bowman sighed.
Watkins moved in for the kill. “If you were prepared to grant me unparalleled access to your investigation, and exclusive rights to the story - ”
“Subject to approval, of course,” interjected Bowman.
“Approval is a word I cannot bear, Inspector Bowman,” retorted the editor. “For my taste, it is a little too close to censorship. If my terms are unacceptable to you, then I would not wish to take up any more of your time.”
Watkins’ fingers clattered over the typewriter once more as he returned to his work, refusing to acknowledge Inspector Bowman’s continued presence in the room. Now it was Bowman’s turn to play his hand. Reaching forwards to the desk, he clutched at the paper upon which Watkins typed, and tore it from the mechanism. Now he had his attention once more, the inspector leaned over the desk to meet Watkins’ gaze.
“We both know that you need me as much as I need you. Your circulation is falling. I’m sure you could do with a little scandal to liven up your front pages. If you were to play fair by me Watkins, and give me final approval before you print, then I am willing to grant you access to my investigation. You will answer to either my colleague, Sergeant Graves, or myself. And you shall know only what we think you should know. Is that understood? I don’t want you prying into matters that do not concern you or your readership.”
Watkins considered this for a while. As he stood to face the inspector, man to man, a wide smile spread across his face, displaying an uneven row of yellow-brown teeth. He held out one hand to seal the bargain, and clapped another across Bowman’s shoulder with a strength that belied his wiry frame. “I must be going soft,” he said as he shook Bowman’s hand, “It’s a pleasure doing business with you, inspector.”
Bowman shifted uncomfortably where he stood. He had had little choice, but he felt uneasy with the deal he had just struck. Still, he reasoned, as long as Watkins was kept on a tight rein he couldn’t wreak too much damage. Who knows, it might even do the Force some good.“Excellent,” he said. “But steer clear of Ignatius Hicks.”
“A condition?” queried Watkins, his eyebrows rising high upon his head.
“Only the one. Inspector Hicks would be only too pleased to offer you his unconsidered opinions. I would rather you didn’t ask for them.”
Watkins made a mental note, then took up Bowman’s scrap of paper once more. “These are all the details you have, inspector?”
Bowman turned at the door, placing his hat on his head in readiness for the cold outside. “At present, yes. The detail of the eyes is most telling, of course. Is there any chance of including a likeness? The head is being held by Doctor John Crane at Charing Cross. I told him to expect you.”
Watkins was taken by surprise at this extra nugget of information. “The head?” he enquired.
“It was severed at the neck,” replied Bowman reluctantly. He was wary of giving away too much information but it was obvious that, if Watkins was going to include a portrait from life, he would find out sooner or later. “I would rather we kept the more grisly details to ourselves.”
Watkins thought. He had always prided himself on his investigative instinct, and something told him this was a story that deserved special attention. It would do no harm to his profile or his career prospects if this story led to a rise in circulation. Ordinarily, he would have despatched the staff recorder to draw the likeness but, in this instance, he felt it would do no harm to go himself. In fact, it would do no harm at all if he were to take this story entirely upon his own shoulders. That way, he could bask in the glory alone as the readership grew.
“Well,” he said, moving to the coat stand by the door, “I’d hate to keep the doctor waiting.”
As Bowman turned to follow, the door suddenly burst open before him, and in poked Sergeant Graves’ shining face. He was panting heavily from having run up the stairs two at a time in his enthusiasm to share his news.
“Ah, Inspector Bowman, glad you’re still here.”
Bowman raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were opening the case with the commissioner?”
“I got as far as Trafalgar Square,” panted Graves, “When I was stopped by a runner from the Yard. There’s been a garrotting in Southwark, thought you might like to come along.”
Bowman shook his head. “No thank you, Graves. I’ll head back to the Yard myself. I have some thinking to do.”
As Bowman skulked out the door, Graves turned to Watkins with a wink.
“It’s all go today, isn’t it?”
VII
Interrogation
Bow Street Police Station was an imposing building, the subject of many recent renovations. It presented a grand façade to the outside world, all Palladian pillars and columns, its many windows reflecting the grey, broiling clouds above. It was home to ‘E’ Division of the Metropolitan Police and, exactly sixty years earlier, had been the site of London’s first ever Police Office. Now, it often drew crowds as prisoners were transported by Black Maria, a large, black, horse-drawn prison van, from the cells to court or even more sensationally, to the gallows at Newgate.
Deep within the bowels of Bow Street, Isambard Fogg lay on a bed in a police cell. Despite his wounds having been cleaned, he still looked a sorry state. Both his eyes were swollen and shone a lustrous purple-black. His nose was spread across his face and a cheek was cracked. His hair was plastered down upon his head. Clots of blood peeled from his scalp. There was little furniture in the cell aside from a ledge beneath the high, barred window that served for a seat and Fogg’s bed, a soiled mattress on a cold metal frame. Next to this, there was a bucket and a rickety stool.
“He looks like a simpleton, and not long for this world, neither.” Sergeant Williams’ broad Welsh vowels sang out along the rows of cells beneath the station. Williams had a pockmarked face and wide, brown eyes. A full set of whiskers graced his cheeks and his hair was swept back from a widow’s peak. Inspector Treacher stood alongside him, now in smarter clothes, his hands deep in his pockets. The row of cells was set back from a short subterranean corridor, separated from the main thoroughfare by vertical bars and doors, giving the attendant officers an unbroken view of the felons inside.
Today, three of the six cells were occupied but, aside from the occasional cough or grunt, the inmates were quiet.
“You goin” in, then?” Williams turned to Treacher, scratching his chin with his stubby fingers. Treacher nodded and Williams fumbled with the keys on his belt. Unlocking the door and swinging it slowly open, the sergeant stepped aside as Treacher approached the prone figure on the bed.
“Can you hear me, Fogg? It’s me, Treacher. You remember me from the den, don’t you?”
Fogg opened a painful eye and began to writhe on his mattress.
“Can you hear me, Fogg?” Treacher crouched next to him and tugged gently on his sleeve.
“A fisherman,” Fogg rasped. “That’s all I am.”
Behind the bars, closing the door after Treacher, Sergeant Williams threw back his head and laughed. “Any the wiser now, are you?”
Treacher called over his shoulder, bristling at Williams’ levity. “He’s lost a lot of blood, that’s all. He’s delirious.” He turned his head back to the wretched heap beside him. “Fogg, do you know where you are?”
Isambard Fogg tried to lift his head from the mattress, his throat rattling with the effort. “Heaven?” he whispered through a mouth caked with blood.
“No, Fogg,” said Treacher sadly. “Not in Heaven.”
Fogg pulled his knees up to his chest, clasping his stomach in agony. A sudden panic overcame him. “Then I am in Hell!” he wailed, his eyes brimming with salty tears.
Treacher reached out to calm him as he writhed in pain, speaking now in hushed tones to dispel his fear. “No Fogg, not in Hell neither.”
Williams cackled from behind the bars. “Not yet, at any rate.” Pulling a pipe nonchalantly from his pocket, he began to pack it with tobacco from a
leather pouch. Ignoring the remark, Treacher continued.
“Fogg, you are safe. You are in the cells at Bow Street.”
Fogg looked around him, his eyes as wide as he could prise them. “Peelers?” he stuttered in alarm.
“He’s more afraid of us than of the Devil himself,” observed the sergeant in the corridor wryly, tamping down his tobacco with a thumb.
Treacher leaned forward and cradled Fogg’s head in his hands. “I am Inspector Edmund Treacher. I brought you here from Hardacre’s den. Fogg, he hurt you.”
Fogg squinted into Treacher’s face, as if trying to make sense of the image. Slowly a look of recognition dawned. “I remember,” he gasped.
“Good. Now Fogg, if you help us, we can help you. How long have you known Jabez Kane?”
“Kane?” spluttered Fogg, his breathing laboured. “What d’you want to know about Kane? I’ll not see him hanged.”
“We suspect him of many things, Fogg, but he’s slippery. We can’t get anything on him. I infiltrated the gang to catch him, but I swear he knew. He did nothing but spend his days with his pipe. We need evidence, Fogg. Something to pin on him. You owe him nothing, Fogg.”
Fogg’s eyes were rolling back into his head as he tried to stay conscious. He grasped Treacher’s lapels as if his very life depended on it. Suddenly, he seemed to muster his strength. His breathing settled and his eyes became clear. He drew himself closer to Treacher’s face and with a tremendous effort he formed his words, each taking a whole breath to propel them from his drying mouth. “What – will – become – of – me?”
Treacher looked around at Sergeant Williams and, with a look, cautioned him to say nothing. “Fogg,” he began, “Where did you get those clothes? The ones you brought to Hardacre?”
Fogg released his hold on Treacher’s coat and sunk back into his bed. “Found ’em,” he lied.
“Well,” continued Treacher, “We found something this morning too, Fogg. We found a gentleman’s body in Southwark. The sort of gentleman that would wear such clothes as you ‘found’. What do you know of that?”
“A man might swing for such a murder, Fogg,” Sergeant Williams added from the door. “But we can spare you if you tell us all you know of your friend, Jabez Kane.”
At this interjection, Isambard Fogg took a deep breath and erupted into a horrible, dry, painful laugh. “He ain’t no friend of mine. Hardacre’s the one. He looks out for me.”
Treacher rose from his crouched position and began to pace the cell, rapidly losing patience. He had spent many long, uncomfortable hours in that blasted den trying to get something on Kane and he saw Fogg as his last, best hope for information. “Hardacre’s no friend of yours, Fogg. He beat you,” he exclaimed. “He wanted you in the river!”
Fogg began to descend once more into his delirium. “I’ve done nothing but good for him,” he cried, plaintively. “He meant no harm by his beating.”
Treacher knew his time was short. Fogg’s injuries were beyond repair and it was only a matter of time before they got the better of him. He sprang to Fogg’s side once more and, sitting on the ramshackle stool beside the bed, raised his voice in desperation. “What do you know of Jabez Kane?”
Fogg’s head was limp now, a cold sweat breaking out upon his brow. His fevered state had the effect of loosening his tongue and, like a body of water as the flood gates lift, the words came pouring forth. “He killed that peeler at Blackfriars, made him swallow his own tongue. He told me.” Treacher looked again to Sergeant Williams, but could see that he had already fumbled for his notebook and pencil and was scratching feverishly at the pages.
“Grayson.” Treacher had known Grayson well enough. A man who’d spent his whole life in service, Sergeant Grayson was as good a policeman as any in the Force. He had been attacked one night whilst off duty, and his body had been found in the gutter. “I hope you’re getting this Sergeant Williams.”
“Of course,” replied Williams sharply, without lifting his eyes from his notebook.
“There was a family in Shoreditch,” Fogg continued. “Kane was caught liftin” their silver. The guv’nor chased him off but he came back. Slit their throats and torched the place.”
“Curtain Road,” offered Sergeant Williams to Treacher’s blank look. “I remember the blaze.” He returned to his notes, scratching his pencil on the paper in earnest. Meanwhile, Fogg was fading fast. His whole body was twitching now, his hands grasping at the air and his back arching painfully from the bed.
“And then,” he gabbled, “The sack. There was a sack.”
Williams stopped writing and looked up. “Sack?” he said in his soft Welsh brogue. “What sack?”
Fogg was silent now, his eyes staring into space as if beholding some vision quite unseen to Treacher. He reached for the air with an outstretched hand, seeming to clutch at something that hung before him.
“What is it Fogg?” asked Treacher softly, aware that he didn’t have long. “What do you remember?”
Fogg was crying again now, the tears coming full and fat to his eyes before rolling down his blood encrusted cheek. “I had to bury it... but it was so heavy. I had to see... had to see.” His chest rising and falling rapidly, Fogg started to hyperventilate. Treacher cupped his head between his hands to try and still him, and shouted into his face.
“Tell us, Fogg. What did you see? What did Kane do?”
Fogg’s hands gripped the frame of the bed, as if he were trying to keep himself from flying off. His head rolled frantically from side to side. Spittle and blood foamed at his lips. Slowly, he found the strength to speak again, each word seemingly summoned from the deep recesses of Fogg’s mind with a colossal effort. “He cut off her head.”
Treacher and Williams shared a look, the sergeant’s pencil poised.
“What?” Treacher barked, desperate that Fogg should give him something more. “Who? Kane? What did he do, Fogg? What did he do?”
Evidently summoning up the last of his strength, Fogg lifted his upper body clean off the bed and looked straight at the inspector with a look that shook him to his very core. “He cut off her head!” he screamed. Then, with a strange smile playing over his face, Isambard Fogg fell slowly back onto the mattress and was still.
Treacher reached out from his stool beside the bed and felt for a pulse in Fogg’s neck. He turned to Williams, disappointment in his face. He wasn’t sure Isambard Fogg had given him enough. “He’s dead,” he said.
Sergeant Williams took a puff from his pipe and regarded the wretch on the bed from behind the smoke that curled about his face. “Well, Fogg,” he said plainly, smoothing his whiskers down across his cheeks, “It seems you escaped the hangman’s noose after all.”
VIII
Plans Are Hatched
Detective Inspector Bowman liked his office. As he stood at one of the four great windows that overlooked the city from the top floor of the newly built Scotland Yard, he felt he could reach straight out to any point in London with his fingertips. From the grand government buildings of Whitehall to the slums across the river on the South Bank, Bowman had made it his business to know London as intimately as one might know a friend; its back streets and alleys, its wide streets and squares. To aid him in this, one entire wall of his wood panelled office had been given over to the display of a large map of the city, a circle drawn on it to indicate the areas over which he and his division had jurisdiction. It was a very wide circle. On his desk behind him where he stood, hands clasped behind his back, lay a single sheet of paper. Written in a flowery hand, Bowman’s own, was a quote from the Met’s first commissioner, Sir Richard Mayne. It served both as a reminder to Bowman of his duties to the public, and as a riposte to the likes of Jack Watkins who thought little of the Force and their efforts to keep the streets of London safe from criminals. “The primary object of an efficient police is the prevention of crime,” it read. “The next, that of detection and punishment of offenders if crime is committed. To these ends all the efforts of the
police must be directed.” Bowman took the time to read the motto every day and took special note of the last sentence, even going to the trouble of underlining it in a heavy pen to highlight its importance; “The protection of life and property, the preservation of public tranquillity, and the absence of crime, will alone prove whether those efforts have been successful.”
Bowman was troubled. To have two murders reported in a day was unusual. Even given the fact that the head had lain frozen in the Thames for perhaps three days, the timing bothered him. Despite the preconceptions of the public, crime was still a relatively rare event on the streets of London, murder even more so. There were perhaps a hundred murders a year in the city, and that number had been falling for years. Various press campaigns highlighting the dangers of walking the streets had put fear in the hearts of many, but Bowman knew that, statistically at least, the Met was winning. Which was why the report of two such violent crimes so hard on each other’s heels was causing him so much consternation. As he turned back into the room, his eye fell instinctively to the latter half of Sir Richard Mayne’s statement; “The protection of life and property, the preservation of public tranquillity, and the absence of crime, will alone prove whether those efforts have been successful.” Today, Bowman was not so sure they had been.
A knock at the heavy oak door served to lift Bowman from his reverie.
“Come!” he barked.
The door swung open to admit Sergeant Williams, resplendent in regulation police cape and top hat. His knee high boots left little pools of water on the floor where he trod, and a sheen of mist had settled as glistening drops upon his face.
The Head in the Ice Page 6