Telegram Home

by Kirsten McKenzie

  Clifford Meredith paid no heed to Christmas being one week away. There was no winding down of activity, no joyful imbibing of rum in the office. Criminals didn’t take holidays, and he didn’t expect his colleagues to either. The port was no place for Christmas festivities, bar the obligatory Christmas Day service. The American’s had the right idea, slaves. In Meredith’s mind, the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 was an utter tragedy, and if he was in parliament he’d have it repealed faster than the harlots downed their knickers.

  His poky office awash with paperwork, he ignored the mutinous glances of his colleagues and scribbled away in his notebook, building a watertight case against Williams and Kurdi. They couldn’t escape from the full weight of the law this time.

  He painstakingly cross-referenced everything in the catalogue against the items listed in all the manifests he’d been able to find, item after item after item. Screeds of figures and calculations marched down the pages of his notebook. The catalogue was almost indecipherable now with Meredith’s scratchings all over it.

  ‘Aha! Got them,’ Meredith yelled.

  No one bothered enquiring what he’d got, they didn’t care. His colleagues were sick to death of his obsession with some random importer. There was enough going on at the Liverpool docks to keep them busy without also engaging in a witch hunt. They’d had word that a smuggling ring was operating out of the Prince’s Dock, and involved the dock-masters, which was of more concern than a furniture importer bringing in two or three more chairs than they declared on the manifest.

  Nothing annoyed Meredith more than being ignored. He was protecting the revenue of the Crown, so why didn’t they appreciate his efforts? That they tasked him with rolling out the Merchant Shipping Act, and not to examine the manifests for one importer, didn’t bother him.

  Meredith’s colleagues ignored his obsession, having decided it was better staying well away from it. And it was easier having Meredith occupied elsewhere, leaving them to get on with real customs work, unimpeded.

  ‘I’m going to the Salthouse Dock,’ Meredith called out.

  No one acknowledged his announcement, a raucous game of cards was underway, with a bottle of rum rapidly consumed by the players. Meredith snorted in disgust. They must all be on the take. Once his promotion came through, he’d toss them all out.

  With his trusty notebook under his arm, he trudged down the narrow wooden staircase, the temperature dropping with every step. At the bottom of the stairwell the beginnings of a snow flurry, and the outstretched hand of a young boy begging greeted him.

  ‘Get away with you,’ Meredith grumbled, brushing by the boy, immune to his pleas.

  The snow never lasted long, becoming more of an inconvenience. Still, the people of Liverpool would complain and the poor would die, not that he cared. If people like that infernal beggar were too lazy to provide a roof over their own heads through hard, honest work, then they were better off dead. Looking after them was not his concern. He was not a charity.

  It took every ounce of concentration to walk along the icy paths. He would not be one of those idiots who went arse over tail by rushing. You gained nothing by rushing something. His government issue boots provided excellent protection against the inclement weather as he trudged the seven hundred yards from the office to a warehouse on the Salthouse Dock. Usually a bustling hive of activity, filled with square-rigged sailing ships servicing China and India, but today it was eerily quiet — the stevedores and dockers given leave to travel home for the Christmas season. Tall red brick warehouses brooded on the water’s edge, locked up tight awaiting Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise men to sign off the goods being landed or exported, depending on the paperwork. The paperwork was Meredith’s secret weapon.

  Clutched in his hand was the key for warehouse #5, the bonded warehouse shown on the Williams and Ye manifests.

  Opening the door unleashed an overpowering stench of exotic woods and spices, curdling in his nasal passages, clogging up his sinuses. Meredith’s eyes watered and he clamped a dirty handkerchief over his nose. Stealing his nerves, he entered the cavernous space, closing the door. After striking a match to the lamp on the wall, he lifted it from its hook and waved it around.

  Everywhere he looked there were towering crates and barrels and boxes. The scuttling of rats the only other sound he could hear. He checked his notes, and made his way up to the next floor, where he was sure he was about to find evidence of smuggling, irrefutable evidence.

  The wooden floors echoed under his boots, the lamplight casting grotesque mockeries on the walls. Although the warehouse was new, industry had covered the windows in grime, further diffusing the winter light, turning them into shadows haunting every corner. In the middle of the space was an undulating mass, giant white sheets obscuring what could only have been a full consignment of furniture, of every type imaginable.

  Meredith struggled with the tarpaulin, the scraping of wood against wood ungodly loud in his ears. And there in the kerosene lantern’s light was the latest shipment brought in from India by Williams and Ye. Every stick represented in the prostitute’s catalogue by exceptional lifelike drawings. The stink of corruption filled Meredith’s lungs.

  After lighting a second lamp and bringing it closer to the goods, Meredith got to work. There was only one item he was after — a writing box clearly illustrated in the Williams catalogue, but missing from any of the manifests. Not a single manifest mentioned anything resembling a writing box, or slope. So like a demon collecting souls from a cemetery, he fired through the shipment, hauling out tables and shifting sideboards, stacking delicate mother-of-pearl tables on top of rosewood occasional tables, with no care whether he inflicted any damage, such was his single-minded attention to his goal. Soon the warehouse looked like a gang of thieves had forced their way through. Night had fallen whilst Meredith worked, and unusually for Liverpool, the snow had stuck, blanketing the empty quays, layers of white crystalline snow shimmering under the hissing gas lamps of the city.

  Then he uncovered four tea chests standing against the wall and Meredith stood back, wiping the sweat from his brow, a smile spreading across his face. Still nailed shut, they had to be where Williams and Kurdi had hidden the writing boxes, the boxes which weren’t on any manifest but which their catalogue gloriously depicted. Boxes inlaid with silver and ivory, boxes which were the among the most expensive items in the catalogue.

  Abandoning his search for want of a tool to open the sealed chests, Meredith moved to a row of small offices along the far wall. Unkempt and half stuffed with confiscated goods, the offices were an exercise in how not to conduct the Queen’s business. If Meredith had been a better customs and excise man, he’d have realised this was the area he should focus on if he wanted to ascend the ranks. Once Meredith spied a crowbar in the corner, he lost all logic.

  Almost hollering in glee, he was so intent on his endeavours that he didn’t hear the downstairs door open and close, and was oblivious to the gust of cool air which whipped up the wooden stairs.

  With the heavy crow bar over his shoulder, Meredith skipped back to the chests taunting him with their secrets. The screech of nails pulled from their homes assaulted the frigid air. Sweat beaded on Meredith’s face with the effort of using muscles which hadn’t done more than lift a pint of beer to his lips for the past twenty years.

  Finally the lid flew off, crashing against a brass topped table, toppling it over. The noise didn’t worry Meredith, no one was around to hear it. By now everyone had finished for the day, and was home beside their fireplaces, with their wives in their laps. Dropping the crowbar, he moved his lantern closer to the tea chest.

  Meredith pulled out handfuls of brittle straw from the open chest making the warehouse floor look like the abandoned nesting site of a flock of cormorants. As he sat on his heels, Meredith savoured the moment, overwhelmed by success as he uncovered a mirror image of the catalogue’s writing box.

  ‘I’ve got you,’ he said, frightening a small rodent at th
e top of the stairs, who scuttled into the darkest corner behind a wall of packing crates.

  Meredith could see the brass corner of a second box under the first. If this chest contained writing boxes then there must be more in the others. In his mind, he already had Williams and Kurdi tried, found guilty, hanged, drawn and quartered, despite that punishment being reserved for treason. His quest for vengeance had no room for mercy.

  Moving onto the second chest, Meredith stabbed the crowbar into the lid, using his body weight as leverage, sending it careering into the darkness. Oblivious to his surroundings, and digging through the straw packaging like a madman, Meredith threw handfuls of the stuff behind him until he revealed another writing box. He ran his hands over the smooth inlaid wood, which was almost warm under his skin. He lifted the lid. The box wasn’t empty.

  A sickly sweet scent filled the space as Meredith gazed upon row after row of packed rolls of fabric, oily to the touch. He didn’t bother pulling them out because he knew what they were — rolls of raw opium. This put a delightful spin on things.

  Meredith decided to bring back one of the town’s photographers to take irrefutable photographic evidence of the smuggling — something far more useful than the criminal’s photograph in the rogues gallery of the local constabulary. He removed one roll, for evidential purposes, shoving it into his coat pocket. He’d take it to someone he knew for them to value it, evidence for the file. Evidence was key.

  By the time Meredith had removed the lid of the last tea chest, nothing could have dampened his pleasure at a job well done. He’d left the writing boxes in situ for the photographer tomorrow. There was no risk to them going missing from the Customs bonded warehouse that he held the key for, and the power to deny entry. Oh, tomorrow would be a glorious day.

  Only after Meredith had swaggered down the dock, back towards his office, did the shadow emerge from the bowels of the warehouse — the beggar looking for shelter for the night.

  Begging had never been his life plan, he was barely old enough to have imagined any life for himself at all. His only goals were to survive each day, with enough food in his belly to see him survive. Tonight was another all-too-common night where he’d be going to bed hungry, but because of the distracted customs man, he had a dry place to sleep.

  Meredith had left a lantern burning in the office during his hunt for the crowbar, and the beggar used the lantern to help collect up the straw and tarpaulins for his bed.

  As the boy wrapped himself in the heavy cotton throw, snuggling into his makeshift bed, ignoring his rumbling stomach, he counselled himself to wake before the men arrived for work. They’d be filthy if they found him, and would blame him for the mess the other man had made.

  As the beggar drifted off to sleep, his world-weary eyes watched the little flames of the fire he’d built on the upturned brass table-top using handfuls of straw, and pieces of tea chests he’d broken into smaller pieces. The fire made it warm and dry, and Christmas was coming and there was always something to eat at Christmas. Maybe he’d go to that new Muslim church which was opening. He’d heard there would be plenty of food for all the children there.

  A hungry belly makes for a fitful sleep, and regardless of the night’s haven, the boy tossed and turned. His thrashing sending swirls of straw into the air, where it danced and weaved its way through the night, touching on the wooden floors before moving its impressionist dance on the warm currents above the boy’s makeshift fireplace.

  The flames were just as hungry as the sleeping vagrant, welcoming the dry fuel into its sweet embrace, before another puff of wind whipped the smouldering straw from the warmth, sending it dancing into a corner filled with dusty straw and cotton fibres. And from the smoulder, another fire grew, one unconfined by the circumference of a table-top, one who would eat well tonight as it tasted the exquisite furniture and licked the floors and window frames, before finally consuming the young lad dreaming of Christmas dinner, his tired head nestled on a bed of Indian straw.

  The Photographer

  Meredith slept the sleep of the virtuous, the inclement weather no dampener to his dreams of glory. Before going into the office, he stopped by the rooms of a photographer whose work he’d admired over the past few months. The photographer was more used to framing half-naked women than smuggled furniture, but Meredith had reasoned that the man would be more than competent to take photographs of static furniture as there was no temptation there, unlike the women he shot in provocative come hither poses. Meredith thought that there may even be an opportunity to collect a few images for his personal collection.

  The snow had partially melted, icing the streets with a filthy slime, waiting to catch an unwary footfall. The ice didn’t delay Meredith as he hurried to the photographer’s studio. Retribution for his ungainly fall from grace in London would soon be his.

  Roused from his bed by Meredith’s incessant knocking, Garth Moodie, the photographer, reluctantly showed Meredith through to his studio. A gilt day bed sat in front of a painted backdrop featuring the white columns and urns full of pale green ivy. The hooded camera took centre stage, with a modesty screen positioned to one side, which Meredith thought was a joke given that the photographer photographed the women nude.

  ‘So explain to me again what you want me to do?’ Garth Moodie asked, sinking into a tasselled arm chair which served as a prop.

  Meredith examined the framed photographs on the walls—elegant couples, or ladies posing with parasols. He stopped to fiddle with a nasty looking piece of equipment.

  ‘Neck clamp, stops them from moving while I take the photo.’

  ‘Hmm, well you won’t need that for what I want today. I need you to photograph some freight from India. It’s stored in a warehouse at the port. An easy job for a professional like you,’ Meredith said, paging through an album full of half-nude women, all posed on the day bed, or draped over the arm chair. Meredith’s eye paused as he located a picture of Josephine, and he slammed the album shut.

  ‘They don’t mind you taking photos of them then?’ Meredith asked.

  The photographer shook his head, confusion still plastered across his sleepy face.

  ‘How do you control yourself around them then? You’re a young man, how does payment work? Perk of the job?’

  Moodie stood up, his earlier confusion replaced with a simmering anger at the interruption to his sleep, and the intrusion into his affairs.

  ‘Look, mister, I don’t know who you are, but this is a legitimate business. If you want to hire me to take photographs for you, then yes, I can do that. But if you’re only here to make trouble, then I’ll show you the door.’

  ‘You don’t want to go making me an enemy. This could be a lucrative market for you, you’d be the first of your kind in Liverpool. Crime photographers are big in London, mainly for bodies though… but you’re well versed in taking photographs of bodies, aren’t you? I only want you to take photos of the evidence,’ Meredith explained.

  Moodie slumped. His shoulders folding in on themselves as he trudged over to the monstrous tripod.

  ‘Oh, and I think it prudent to take my photograph, for the file. It is a very important case I am working on, and the papers would consider it a coup to have a shot ready for their late editions, I’m sure,’ Meredith declared.

  ‘Fine. Give me half an hour to pack up my gear, and I’ll take your photographs.’

  ‘Good man. I’ll just wait here and peruse your work, you have an excellent eye for detail,’ Meredith said, stretching out on the bed with the heavy leather-bound album in his lap.

  The men hailed a carriage, the bulky camera equipment taking up most of the back seat, making it an uncomfortable ride for the pair. As they approached the port, excited voices reached their ears, and they came to an abrupt stop.

  ‘Can’t get you any closer, there’s trouble on the wharves,’ shouted the driver.

  Meredith peered out. There wasn’t much more that he could see other than a crowd of onlookers blocking the r
oad ahead.

  ‘Drive on,’ Meredith said.

  ‘No bloody way. There are children there and I ain’t driving my carriage through them. This is as far as I go. You don’t like it? Tough, you’re getting out either way,’ the driver replied.

  Meredith and the photographer climbed out. Meredith paid no attention to the struggle the photographer had with his gear, and marched off through the crowd, intent on finding out what was happening.

  ‘It’s a fire, mister,’ said the first person Meredith interrogated.

  ‘At the port,’ chimed another.

  ‘Don’t know how many men have died. Story is that it’s dozens at least,’ said a third, although from the smell of him, he’d been toasting the deceased since the early hours of the morning, the fug of rum keeping him upright.

  Meredith fought through to the iron gates at the entrance, with the photographer trailing in his wake. It was only at the gate that Meredith stopped, frozen in place with shock. He didn’t even blink when Moodie pushed past and assembled his equipment, the enormity of the scene too good to ignore.