by Andy Conway
Dyke Wilkinson puffed on a pipe, in his billycock hat and whiskers, forever looking like he was setting off out of the door.
“Evening, sir,” said the boy. “What can I get you?”
Joe bumped the bar. “A pint of Burton’s dinner ale, young man,” he said. They had a bloody familiar way of addressing their elders and betters, these lads.
The boy poured his pint and Joe handed over threepence, collected his drink and edged to the rear of the bar.
If you died and became a ghost, did you come back as your younger self? Was there a rule for that?
He knocked back the pint and put a good half of it down. Needed it. Shock.
There was no such thing as ghosts. Only women believed that kind of nonsense. There was science and facts. Like in a broadsheet. Facts in plain old black and white. That was what the newspapers were.
But the news wasn’t about facts anymore. No one knew that more than a newsvendor. You had the broadsheets with their acres of print, and you could rely on that for Objective Truth. But there were other kinds of paper, like The Illustrated Police News. The worst newspaper in England, they called it. He’d always sold that paper, right from the start. It sold well in Birmingham. If there was one thing people liked more than a lurid crime story, it was a lurid crime story with pictures. Blood and murder. Husbands turning violent, fathers killing their children. Madness, blood, evil. It had built Joe Rees’s business empire – a shed that sat on Moseley village green. It had bought this pint.
That and being a Harvey Duff.
He took out the old brooch he had pinned inside his jacket lapel, and turned it over in the gaslight. An old penny that someone had turned into a brooch, with an engraving of a zephyr blowing wind from furious cheeks and the letters D and M in ornate filigree.
A ghost.
Someone barging towards him across the bar. He looked up expecting to see Daniel Pearce again, but it was only Herbert Parker staggering in.
He caught Joe’s eye and grinned. “Evening, Joe.”
“Evening, Herbert. How are you?”
“Dry.”
After a pint. A sponger, a waster. Not like that brother of his, a respectable chartered accountant in the city and one of them funny handshaking masons. Herbie was the runt of the family – the bad one who was on the skids. Every family has one, I guess, thought Joe. And if you don’t know who it is in your family, then it’s probably you.
Dyke Wilkinson stepped forward, pointing his pipe. “Now don’t you disturb my clientele, Herbert. Out with you.”
“He’s all right,” said Joe. “I owe him one.”
Herbert belched and tottered round in a circle and tipped his hat, glassy eyed. “A mild, please.”
Dyke Wilkinson poured the beer and slid it across the bar. “Just the one, mind,” he said. “You look like you’ve had a skinful already.”
What was it with landlords? Their trade was getting good men jiggered, so why did they always object when a customer looked as drunk as a boiled owl? You’d think they’d be happy.
“He’s all right, Dyke. I’ll make sure he’s out of here after this.”
“He’s a gentleman, he is,” Herbert slurred. “A true gentleman.”
Dyke came over and leaned close. “Are you all right, though, Joe? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
Joe put on a smile. “All is well. To tell you the truth, I could do with a bit of company tonight.”
Anyone. Even Half-Shot Herbert.
“I seen a ghost too,” said Herbert.
Dyke walked off to serve another customer and Herbert gulped down half his pint.
“Standing in front of me like you’re in front of me now. A bloody ghost. Disappeared. Pff! Like that.”
“That must have been a terrible shock for you, Herbert.”
Herbert waved his hand dismissively. As drunk as he was, he knew when someone was codding him on, and didn’t care if it was someone who had just paid for his pint.
“The problem with this place is, with Moseley is, everyone thinks their money’s from a different mint.”
“Yes, Herbert.”
“Take my brother, for instance. Turfed me out of house and home. My own brother.”
Joe supped at his ale and found himself far away, only half listening to Herbert’s rant about his brother.
It couldn’t have been him. It was impossible. And it couldn’t have been a ghost. That was impossible too. So if it looked exactly like him, but younger, it could only mean it was Daniel Pearce’s son. It must be.
And the son might know where the father was.
“Thinks he’s so high and mighty, looking down his long nose at me. I could tell a few things about what he gets up to. It’d knock the smile right off the reverend’s face.”
You couldn’t go to the police with tales about ghosts and men who aged backwards. You needed a good solid fact. And Daniel Pearce’s son walking through Moseley village was a good solid fact. Even though a son was kind of like a ghost.
He totted up quick arithmetic on his fingers.
1888. Ninety-eight is ten and oh-eight twenty plus four is twenty-four. It was twenty-four years ago. Dear God, how the time flies.
If this were Daniel Pearce’s son, he would have to have had the boy after he’d disappeared from Birmingham. There was no way the lad who’d walked right up to Joe and tried to steal a paper was any older than twenty.
And that meant Daniel Pearce might still be alive.
These were the kind of facts that would definitely interest Inspector Beadle, who hadn’t paid Joe Rees nearly so much money for information as he ought to have lately.
Joe downed his pint, wiped the froth from his moustache, and tipped his hat to the landlord. He was out the door before poor, addled Herbert knew he was gone, striding across the green to the tram stop on the other side.
He could reacquaint himself with Inspector Beadle after a good night’s sleep. If he felt as sure about it in the light of day, he’d go straight to the police station and tell him that an old ghost had returned, like a murderer to the scene of the crime.
— 16 —
RACHEL SAT ON THE STEPS in Chamberlain Square, her back to the early morning rush of office workers, sketching out a family tree in her notebook. She liked to sit in the south-west corner next to the sculpture of Thomas Attwood that lounged across the steps, hidden away, a secret; his sheets of bronze paper flying across the steps behind him. It had always made her feel close to history, as if she were sitting with this man from the past, he writing on his sheet of paper with his quill; she writing in her notebook. As if they could co-exist, side by side, through a space of 150 years.
It was more than an idle fantasy now. It was real. She really could do that. Perhaps she could go back to 1832 and see him become the first MP for Birmingham. The possibilities had been buzzing inside her all night and she couldn’t think of anything else.
The council house clock tolled ten so she put her notebook and stack of family photos in her bag and twisted to her feet.
“Bye, Thomas.”
She turned to see the cluster of students outside the brutalist concrete block of the Central Library and Mr Fenwick arriving to greet them. She climbed the steps and joined the group, nodding to Danny.
Mr Fenwick had just finished speaking when she got there. He walked into the 1960s concrete and glass building and they followed him in, through the foyer and up the series of escalators, snaking up to the sixth floor and the Local Studies section. It felt strange to be coming here for study, when she’d come here so many times for pleasure, just to read and look up things for her own amusement, ever since she’d been about twelve.
Mr Fenwick took them round the department and pointed out the various resources he’d covered in his lecture yesterday and they split off into their project pairs and spread out to claim different desks in the acres of book-lined space.
As soon as Nick had pointed out the computers that stored the local newspaper facs
imiles, Danny had sat straight down and looked one up. When the front page splashed across the screen, he grinned like he’d invented it himself. It was the Birmingham Gazette & Express they’d been looking at last night. She felt a thrill go through her. Here it was on a computer screen and she’d seen it only last night, the real thing, freshly printed.
“It’s just mad, isn’t it,” she said.
“So, I’ve been thinking,” he said. “We don’t do this Rees or Read or whoever it is. We do her instead.”
“Who?”
“Amy Parker. The girl I met when I went through the touchstone the first time.”
“You know that’s not what the word touchstone means, right?”
“It’s what I’m calling it,” he said, opening his notebook at the page of notes and sketches he’d made in the lecture. Seeing it close up, Rachel could tell he was good. Better than she’d thought.
She looked at her own notebook with her scribbled inscription of the gravestone details. It seemed feeble and tiny and dwarfed by his effort. His notebook was even twice the size of hers, a great canvas for inspirational broad-brush strokes, hers, a secret depository of spidery meanderings no one could read.
“You’re a really good artist,” she said. “Why aren’t you at art school?”
“My mum thinks training to be an artist is a waste of a degree. I’d be poor the rest of my life.”
“And she thought a History degree would really be a ticket to wealth?”
“It’s a compromise.”
“This Amy Parker isn’t one of the names in the churchyard,” Rachel said, but she knew as she said it that it would make no difference.
“So what? Just tell Nick we’re doing this instead. He’ll let us. He likes you.”
He got up and headed for the information desk.
“No he doesn’t,” she said. But Danny had already gone.
The woman behind the information desk was young, but her thick black glasses and red hair pinned up in a bun made it look as if she acting the archetypal librarian. Danny looked at her name badge and turned on the charm.
“Excuse me... Kath,” he said. “Can you help me?”
“I’ll try my best,” she said.
Rachel wanted to vomit. He was practically undressing her with his eyes and she was encouraging him.
“If I wanted to find out all about a person from a hundred years ago,” he said. “Where would I look here?”
“Take your pick,” she said, smiling a little too warmly for a librarian. “We’ve got a whole floor of resources. How much do you know already?”
“Well, we’ve got a name, an address, and the year. She’s about my age in 1912, I think.”
“Well, you could start with the births and deaths fiches. Once you know the birth date, you can buy a birth certificate from the Register Office round the corner. Same with a death certificate. Then you can take it from there.”
“Thank you, Kath. That’s very helpful.”
Kath smiled and went to fetch the box of fiches for him.
He turned to Rachel. “I’ll look up Amy, you look up her father. It’s Parker, 12 Alcester Road.”
Rachel stared at him with disgust.
“What?” he said.
“Old enough to be your mum.”
She walked off to get a microfiche reader. Mr Fenwick was there leaning over Jessica and Stacy, trying to show them how to use it, which seemed to be difficult, largely because they couldn’t work out why they couldn’t touch the screen to operate it.
“No, look, you’ve put it in the wrong way. Flip it over. You see?”
“And we have to look through all that lot?” said Stacy.
“Won’t take you long. You’ve already got year to work from.”
Rachel coughed and he turned to her. “Er, Nick?”
“Rachel.”
“If we’ve got an address, right, and a year, is there any way of finding out who was living there then?”
He looked at her curiously but didn’t ask why. “I’ll show you.”
As she followed him to the other side of the Local Studies section, she heard Jessica put on a Brummie accent.
“Nick? If we’ve got an address, roit, and a year, roit...”
“Did you see her shoes?” said Stacy.
“My god, she must have got them at the Rag Market.”
Nick strolled into a row of stacks lined with directories and Rachel followed, her face burning with anger.
“Normally, you’d look in the Census, but if you know the address, and it’s within the last hundred years, you’ve got these little beauties. Kelly’s Directories.”
He stroked his fingers along the rows of red and black books. Rachel picked out the Directory for 1912 and leafed through it.
“Go to the Streets section and you can find out the head of the household.”
“This is it,” she said. “Twelve, Alcester Road. Mr Richard Parker.”
“Why are you starting from an address anyway?”
She looked up into his eyes. “Er, we’re not doing the name from the grave. We’re doing a girl called Amy Parker. We know she lived there in 1912.”
“You’re supposed to do someone buried in St Mary’s.”
“We’ll do a great project, I promise.”
He looked over his shoulder and leaned in closer. “Do not. Tell. The others.”
He tapped his nose and she walked back to find Danny. He was staring at the white-on-black text on the enormous microfiche reader screen.
“The father’s called Richard Parker,” she said. “Have you found Amy?”
He had that look again. Almost like when she’d come back to find him sitting on the gravestone.
“Yeah,” he said.
He pointed at the screen. She leaned over him to look.
“She dies in three days’ time.”
— 17 —
INSPECTOR BEADLE SCANNED the overnight arrest sheets from the various police stations under his command. Balsall Heath had been busy, as usual, Kings Norton less so. Here at Moseley Police Station on Woodbridge Road, there had been two domestics and a drunk starting a fight in the Bull’s Head. He checked the desk calendar and for the fifth time that week, he noted the full moon was on Saturday. Always when the incidents increased.
He took the arrest sheet out and examined the mugshot clipped to the charge sheet. Herbert’s familiar scowl.
If only he’d taken Macpherson’s suggestion on board years ago: to put Herbert Parker in a paddy wagon, take him for a long ride, and throw him out in Wolverhampton or Smethwick. Let him be someone else’s problem for a month or so, till he found his way back.
Leafing through the Balsall Heath reports, he found that most of it concerned a variety ‘theatre’ that was a brothel in all but name. The kind of place where young girls entertained on the stage and the same young girls entertained old men from the audience backstage. No one paid for this entertainment, but the Champagne, which was little more than cheap carbonated wine, was expensive, and the gentlemen were encouraged to buy a great quantity of it.
Once or twice a week, the ‘theatre’ would erupt, usually when one of the lower orders resented the conspicuous wealth of a toff, or a Peaky decided to relieve a gent of his pocket watch and wallet. Twenty-four years ago, you would have as likely seen an ostrich walking through Moseley village as a Peaky Blinder, but now they were virtually camped on the Moseley and Balsall Heath border. It was an invisible border, nothing more than Brighton Road, but it existed in the minds of the populace. The Peakies hadn’t yet crossed it. They didn’t need to. The toffs and shabby genteel of Moseley came to them. The brothels of Balsall Heath and Highgate were their watering hole.
Desk Sergeant Frank Donaghy clumped through, did his little cough, and rapped the door before walking in. “Sir, there’s someone here wants to see you. Asked specifically for you. Won’t say what it is.”
“Who is it?”
“Fellah by the name of Joseph Rees. I can tell
him to fill out a statement, if you want?”
Beadle pulled off his spectacles and sat back, humming to himself.
“Sir?”
“Show him through.”
“What? In here, sir? Your office?”
Beadle sighed. “Donaghy. This was all rather before your time.”
Donaghy stepped further inside and closed the door behind him, sensing that his Inspector was taking him into his confidence. A rare event.
“Joe Rees is an ex-informant.”
“Ah, I see.”
“He keeps the news vendor’s hut on Moseley village green, and has done since he was a boy. Built it up himself. He’s served us well over many years, although I haven’t had need of his services for quite a while.”
“So he might have something new?”
“Possibly. Or he might want money for old rope.”
“I’ll show him through.”
Donaghy clumped back to the reception desk.
Joe Rees had always been reliable, back in the day. He’d given solid information. Thirty years ago one wouldn’t have thought it was needed in a quiet, respectable suburb like Moseley, but even back then Birmingham had washed right up and wet everyone’s feet, bringing with it a tide of scum.
The brothels and fleshpots of Calthorpe Park had spread to Highgate at first, and then the contagion had enveloped Balsall Heath. These places, once independent villages, had defected to Birmingham ten years ago. Before Moseley had succumbed to become a suburb, the corruption had already been rife.
And he did not kid himself that respectable, middle-class Moseley had always been entirely innocent. Quiet it might have been, but behind those net curtains and Aspidistra plants standing guard at every window, there was just as much greed, vice, murder. They marched to St Mary’s every Sunday in their best clothes, but it didn’t stop them coveting their neighbour’s gold and killing them for it.
From the perspective of a Detective Inspector, Moseley had never been quiet.
The door opened again and Donaghy showed Joe through. Beadle rose and shook his hand.
“Joe, old friend. How good to see you.”