by H. B. Lyle
The flustered doctor rinsed his hands in a sluice.
‘I’ll have to report it as murder,’ the doctor said eventually. ‘At the very least Sir Edward Henry must be informed.’
Kell picked lint from his coat. ‘Very well. If you think of anything, please inform me.’ He pulled a card out of his wallet and laid it on the side.
‘Well, there is one thing,’ the doctor said suddenly. ‘There was a considerable amount of time between the death and entering the water.’
‘The body was thrown into the river already dead?’
‘Yes, but some time after the death. Days, possibly a week or two. Hard to tell but he was almost bloodless when he went into the water.’
Kell glanced at the pile of clothes beyond the corpse. ‘And yet no bloodstains?’
‘Not one.’
No papers, either, Kell cursed inwardly. Whoever killed Leyton knew who Kell was – the visiting card attested to that, a message, a warning, or a courtesy. No courtesy shown to Leyton: bled, then dumped, probably as part of a torture routine. Which meant whoever killed Leyton knew about Kell, while Kell in turn knew nothing: not who killed Leyton, nor why, nor what was happening at Woolwich. He doubted anyone else on his staff had a clue either, despite their brilliant manners and first-class educations, especially the enthusiastic idiot Russell. They knew nothing. He looked again at the card. Sighing, he set his lights to Scotland Yard and the tiresome task of talking to Sir Edward Henry, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
Four miles due north of Barts, Wiggins woke up. He swung his legs out of the narrow cot and pulled a hand through his hair. A dull ache pinched above one eye, the familiar sign of a hangover. Someone had left a large jug of water and a glass for him on the table. The house appeared empty. Bill, he knew, had gone on early shift. Wiggins planned to go to the station on his way to work, as Bill had promised to stand him a loan but didn’t have the cash on him. When do loans become charity? Wiggins thought as he shrugged on his jacket.
He drank half the jug and listened for any sound of Emily but she must have gone out too. On the sideboard was a piece of pie wrapped in a linen handkerchief. Wiggins breathed in the smell of pastry, lavender and the same indefinable something that he’d caught the night before when he spoke to Emily. He held the handkerchief to his face a moment longer and then thrust it deep into his pocket.
Tottenham Police Station was the largest building on Chesnut Road. It stood three windows high by three wide by three deep, a brick cube – no digressions, no frills. Wiggins pulled his collar close, turned off the High Road and approached the steps up into the station. He looked up and down the street quickly, as he was used to doing whenever he arrived anywhere. A childhood habit that stuck.
On the opposite side of the road, the gates to the rubber factory swung open. A few loafers idled nearby. Two men in particular stood out, huddled together under tight hats, hunched and rocking from one foot to the other. Further down on the left, near the factory office, a tangle of foreign workers – cheap labour after a spare day’s work. One of them was shouting and gesticulating. A car came out of the factory gates and turned right towards Tottenham High Road.
Wiggins had to get to work, so he hurried up the steps and put his hand to the heavy police station door.
A pistol barked.
First one shot, then two, then a third punched the air. The two men he’d noticed ran out in front of the factory motor car; each held up a pistol.
The windscreen shattered. One of the men rushed forward and tried to wrestle something from the passenger. Wiggins started towards them but the other man, a red scarf at his throat, turned and shot without hesitation. Wiggins heard the bullet chip the wall behind him as he ducked.
‘Davay!’ the man with the scarf cried as the other pulled clear from the motor, a cotton bag in his hand. The two men took off at a fast pace down the street, letting off shots as they went.
Wiggins rushed into the police station and down the hall, into the sergeants’ room. ‘Bill, Bill! There’s an armed robbery out there, you deaf bastards.’
‘Get the guns,’ Bill cried as he grabbed his hat. ‘In the cabinet upstairs.’
Wiggins ran back to the street, Bill at his side.
By now the two gunmen were a few hundred yards down the road but Wiggins could see a straggle of people following them. He and Bill caught up with the pursuers and joined them, ducking every minute or so as the gunmen – seemingly in no real rush – turned and took potshots at the growing crowd.
‘Who are they?’ Wiggins glanced around at the pursuers.
‘This is Tottenham,’ Bill said with grim pride.
Up ahead, the road ended and the horizon opened up. Wiggins pointed. ‘They’re breaking for the marshes. If we’re quick, we can catch ’em by the bridge.’
Together they ran at right angles and then swung through rows of squat, new-built terraces.
‘There,’ Wiggins shouted. ‘They’ll come down Park View.’
‘They’ve got guns,’ Bill said.
‘And we got surprise.’
Ahead of them on their left ran a single row of terraced housing, with a break in the middle that led out to the railway lines. Beyond stood the Tottenham dust destructor, ribboning smoke into the air, its great chimney dwarfing the surrounds. ‘They’ve got to come through,’ said Wiggins. ‘You wait here and I’ll go round the back of the destructor. I’ll pile in from the side and then you can pick up the pieces.’ Bill looked doubtful. ‘We only need to stop ’em for a minute – they’ve got half of Tottenham on their tail.’
Wiggins skidded across the wasteland and into position. In the distance another barrage of shots rang out. He craned his neck away from the road, so as to hear more accurately. Judging sound had been a problem ever since a dud shell went off at Ladysmith and burst his right eardrum. As he strained to hear, he saw a young boy race out in front of him. The boy stopped and stared along the road, his leg jiggling in excitement.
Wiggins shouted at him. ‘Hop it.’
The boy, who couldn’t have been more than six, glanced at Wiggins but didn’t move away. Instead he pointed in the direction of the firing: ‘Bang bang.’
Wiggins shouted again but the child, twenty yards out into the road, directly in the line of the fleeing gunmen, simply laughed and paced towards the noises. Wiggins looked back to his right, to Bill’s hiding place, then back to the kid, and at the empty space on the far corner where soon (how soon?) two armed men would appear.
‘Christ.’ Wiggins dashed out to the boy. He grabbed him around his waist and hustled to the other side of the road. As he reached the lee of a coal shed, the gunmen rushed past, leaving Wiggins, still clutching the boy, too late to ambush them. He clung to the child as he watched, the boy’s breath hot and fast.
As the gunmen reached the break in the road, heading out to the railway footbridge and the marshes beyond, Bill stepped out in front of them. ‘Bill. No!’ Wiggins shouted, rearing up.
The gunmen didn’t hear him. Instead, they drew to an abrupt halt at the sight of Bill and his uniformed frame.
‘Come on. Give in, the game’s up,’ Bill said in his distinctive, loud, clear tone. He held up his hands, and walked slowly forward. Wiggins threw down the boy and shouted again.
The man in the red scarf lifted up his left arm and loosed off two shots. Bill clutched his face and toppled to the ground, like a tall tree felled.
Wiggins rushed to Bill’s side as the gunmen sped on. Blood pumped out of his left cheek but his eyes were open. ‘It’s all right, mate, I’m here,’ Wiggins cried, scrambling in his pockets. He pressed a handkerchief to Bill’s face. ‘Stay awake, Bill, it’ll be all right, you’ll see. Ambulance!’ he shouted.
The handkerchief pressed to Bill’s face turned crimson. Blood kept coming, soaking Bill’s moustache, Wiggins’s hands, sleeves, even his hair. A towel appeared from somewhere, and then more people, as Wiggins tried to staunch the flow. They carried Bill into a near
by house. All the while, his eyes open, staring at Wiggins, transfixed, frightened.
‘Stay awake, Bill, stay awake,’ Wiggins pleaded.
Then he saw it in his eyes, the fading light. He and Bill had seen it in South Africa, Knightly dying of a bullet in the gut; he’d seen it in Whitechapel, in the poorhouse, always, ever only a moment.
‘You coming?’ the medic called to him as they pushed Bill’s stretcher into the ambulance, but Wiggins shook his head.
‘His name’s Tyler,’ Wiggins shouted at them. ‘Constable William Tyler.’ He watched as the ambulance drove away.
The street had filled with people. Men, women and children milled around. Wiggins looked at the blood-sodden handkerchief in his fist. A cotton memento that earlier had smelt of pastry and lavender and a happy home.
People streamed across the railway bridge and out over the open marshes. Rumours echoed through the throng as they marched on, tracing the escape of the gunmen. There was a gang I tell you, fifteen of them at least. Shut your noise, it was two – I saw it all. You was hiding under the kitchen table. A copper’s been shot, I hear. Two, three. Four. Some old bird threw a potato at them, so she did. Is it a child dead? Where’s the police, where are they? Is it Rooskies?
Through it all, Wiggins stumbled on. It was a carnival: wild with rumour, gobs agape, steam rising into the air from their yapping, mingling with the falling mist. Hostages up on the marshes. A large gang. Theft, anarchists, charlatans, yobs, the jabberers echoed in his ear. Rooskies.
He knew most of it couldn’t be true. Yet he knew Bill was dead. It hadn’t occurred to anyone to go home, to hide, to let the coppers do their job. The jamboree traipsing across the marshes was nothing if not democratic. A shooting party, out on the marshes looking for game, joined the melee. They’d opened fire on the fleeing gunmen and claimed to have at least winged their men.
Eventually, the pursuers thinned out. Wiggins reached Billet Lane over the other side of the river Lea. Bystanders on the high street chattered. The gunmen had commandeered a tram, so one shopkeeper said. ‘There was two of them, shooting and shouting and all whatnot.’ He waved his hands about wildly. ‘They jumped the number seven, I saw it all. Now, who’s for half a pound of bacon?’
Wiggins glanced around. A constable he recognised from the Tottenham station jogged past.
‘Hey Jim,’ Wiggins called. ‘What’s the latest?’
‘We’ve got a call to go to Hale End. I think it’s all up.’
Wiggins ran with him, down a short cut, until he met a wall of police – like at a football or cricket match – surrounding a small cottage next to the pub. Another rumour rippled through the crowd: attempted double suicide. One by the train tracks less than a mile away, the other in the besieged cottage. Jim put his hand on Wiggins’s shoulder then joined his colleagues in the scrum trying to hold back the onlookers.
Wiggins found Emily at her neighbours’, the Jellys. He pushed through the door to the parlour. Emily rocked forward, keening. Mrs Jelly, a stern woman of forty, looked up sharply as he entered. Her long-boned hand held Emily’s like a mother with a child.
‘Please, I think you should—’
‘Em?’
She looked up through red-raw eyes and searched his face. ‘He’s dead, H, he’s gone,’ she said in a moment of clarity. But then, distraught, she collapsed back in the chair.
Her hair hung loosely around her hunched shoulders. Wiggins felt his attention drawn to a mole on the point of her left clavicle, usually so carefully covered. It flashed in and out of view behind her collarless shift as her racked body bobbed. He hadn’t seen that mole for years.
‘I’ll find out who did this, and why,’ he said. ‘I promise.’
He went to the Tylers’ empty house, and lit the oil lamp in the narrow hall. Bill’s blue and yellow ‘going out’ scarf hung loosely on the banister, the fire in the parlour remained unmade. Wiggins strode over to the Welsh dresser and helped himself to a bottle of sloe gin he knew Bill liked to have on hand. Bill had no need for it now.
3
‘It was here, at Tottenham’s very own O.K. Corral, that the desperate anarchist Lepidus chose to make his last stand. Hundreds of brave citizens on his tail, the full might of the Metropolitan Police massing at the gates. His partner, the coward Hefeld, had already turned a gun on himself and now only Lepidus remained, the death of a child, of a policeman too, gnawing at his evil heart. Trapped, alone, crazed by Rooski madness, he places the gun on his own temple and pulls the fateful trigger …’
Wiggins looked up at Oak Cottage, a small, grey-brick affair with two windows, one above the other, and a door in its left corner. Bullet holes pockmarked the walls. He’d walked the four miles to Hale End from the police station that morning, amidst crowds of sightseers. The story was all over the newspapers, less than twenty-four hours after Bill’s death. They were already calling it the Tottenham Outrage.
‘Oi you, have you paid?’ The speaker waved his derby at Wiggins. ‘This is a guided tour.’ The man gestured. ‘Pay your penny, or sling your hook.’
‘A penny?’
‘An honest price. Now, where were we, gentlemen and the lady …’ He tipped his hat.
Wiggins spoke to the policeman stationed at the door. ‘I won’t be long,’ he said. The copper, a friend of Bill’s who knew Wiggins, nodded.
‘Be quick,’ he said. ‘The inspector’s due.’
‘It was in this very cottage,’ the guide’s voice boomed, ‘that Lepidus left a bloodied dagger, the handle embossed in the German language with the legend “Give us this day our daily bread”. On the blade, ladies and gentlemen, etched no doubt by the hand of the dead man, one simple word: “heaven” …’
Up the cottage stairs, Wiggins cast an eye about the room. Lepidus was dead, and Hefeld lay dying in hospital, but there was more to the case, he knew. Bill hadn’t died as part of a robbery gone wrong. A single bed had been pushed up against the wall, underneath the front window where Lepidus must have witnessed the gathering police. A bloody stain marked the wallpaper, a chair remained upturned. From the pattern of the stains, Wiggins reasoned that Lepidus – pacing in agitation – was injured before receiving the shot that killed him. Size 11 police boots had stomped around the room. Wiggins picked out an impression of a square-toed shoe or boot – quite distinct from police issue and which also differed from Lepidus’s boot marks. They were the shoes of a small man. Dust on the back window of the unoccupied cottage had recently been disturbed, consistent perhaps with Lepidus looking for an escape route. Or signs that someone else had escaped, dropping down into the garden below.
He put his face to the floor, ran his hands along the skirting, traced every crease and crevice in the boards, as he had watched Sherlock Holmes do.
‘Get that arsehole out of here, Constable.’ A voice rose from the hall below. ‘I will not have wretched barkers profiteering from the death of one of my officers.’
Boots crunched on the stairs just as Wiggins’s eyes snagged on a glint in the hearth.
‘Another bloody trophy hunter?’
Wiggins leapt to his feet to find a man the size of the doorway, with ginger whiskers and liver spots.
‘Beat it.’ The inspector half raised a hand but then stopped and glanced back to the stairway.
‘A pal of Tyler’s, guv’nor. An army friend,’ Wiggins said. ‘Just curious, is all.’
The inspector’s voice softened. ‘You can’t be in here. This is a crime scene.’
‘Understood.’ Wiggins hesitated then squatted down. ‘What’s that?’ He pointed to the far corner, a faint print on the floor.
The inspector bent down to look, distracted, allowing Wiggins to scoop up the glinting object in the hearth.
‘I don’t see anything.’ The inspector righted himself. ‘In any case, we had the cottage surrounded. No one else was here. Lepidus and Hefeld acted alone. And we got ’em.’
‘Didn’t they shoot themselves?’
The
inspector growled. ‘Didn’t I ask you to leave?’
Wiggins stepped to the door. ‘What happened to the money?’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ The inspector’s whiskers twitched.
‘I heard it was a payroll robbery.’
The inspector looked away for a moment then regained himself. ‘I’m not here to answer questions, now get off before I have you arrested. Leave it to the professionals.’
Wiggins had worked for Sherlock Holmes long enough to know the cops didn’t like unexplained dead ends, not when they already had a man in stir. Once out of sight of Oak Cottage and the inspector, Wiggins opened his hand. He dusted off the ash and held up to the light a small brass eight-pointed star, inlaid with red enamel. Lepidus, or whoever it was in the cottage, had left something behind.
Ducking his head into a biting January wind, Kell picked his way across Whitehall to the Cabinet Office and reflected on Ewart’s singular failure to persuade anyone of the threat of German spies. His boss insisted Kell attend the monthly meeting of the Committee for Imperial Defence. As head of counter-intelligence, he was wheeled out to offer speculation on the threat of foreign agents in lieu of evidence. Perhaps Leyton’s death would sting the ministers into action, though somehow he doubted it. To make matters worse, the Commissioner of Police Sir Edward Henry had refused to turn over the investigation to Kell’s office, refused even to believe that Leyton’s killing was an espionage matter.
‘Look alive, Kell,’ Ewart called from the Cabinet Office doorway. He’d driven the two hundred yards from the War Office. ‘This is it. Our man— What was his name again?’