Turning his thoughts to Ebenezer Druitt, Pyke pondered something the felon had said during their last encounter, and he realised it needed further clarification. But when, about an hour later, he presented himself at the gates of the Model Prison, instead of leading him directly to the cells, the warder took him to the governor’s office and left him there without further explanation.
‘Ah, yes, this was highly unusual, highly unusual indeed,’ the governor said, once they were alone in his office. ‘The prisoner you wish to speak to has been transferred by order of the Home Office.’
‘Transferred where?’
‘I don’t know. The order didn’t say. The documentation was in order and I couldn’t very well say no. A carriage arrived for him yesterday. The documentation stated it was, and I quote, “in defence of the realm”.’
Pyke tried to swallow but his throat was suddenly bone dry. ‘You’ll have to take it up with the Home Office, Detective Inspector.’
‘I will,’ Pyke said, already halfway across the room. ‘Believe me, sir, I’ll do just that.’
‘Druitt’s been transferred to another location, on the orders of someone in the Home Office.’ Pyke had gone directly to Scotland Yard and found Walter Wells sitting alone in his office.
‘Really?’ Wells looked up at him and put down his pen. ‘Why?’
‘Someone suspects Druitt knows who our killer is and is using his political connections to try to force this information from him.’
‘But that kind of request would have to come from a fairly senior figure.’
‘I know.’ Pyke thought again about Palmer and his association with Mayne. ‘I’d like you to try to find out who gave it — and where Druitt has been taken.’
Wells drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘I’ll do what I can, old man. But I’m afraid my reach extends only so far.’
‘My guess is that someone in the Detective Branch passed this information about Druitt to Pierce, who went directly to the Home Office.’
That seemed to strike a chord. ‘I think I might have some information for you on that front. I was going to sit on it for a day, check it out for myself, but in the circumstances…’
Pyke felt his stomach tightening. ‘Sit on what?’
‘I have men loyal to me in Holborn Division; policemen who are close to Pierce. From time to time they hear things and pass them back to me.’
‘Go on.’
‘I had a visit from one such man earlier this afternoon. He told me the identity of Pierce’s source of information in the Branch.’
‘And?’
Wells shook his head and offered Pyke an apologetic look. ‘I’m sorry, Pyke. I know how much you like the man…’
Pyke followed Jack Whicher into the privy at the back of the station house and before the younger man had even realised there was someone behind him, Pyke had shoved him into the hut and bolted the door. It was damp and fetid and the stench rising up from the cesspit turned his stomach. As soon as Whicher turned around and saw him, saw the expression on his face, he knew. He didn’t even try to hide it. His shoulders slumped forward and his head fell, as though the scaffold that had been holding him up until this point had suddenly disintegrated.
‘I knew you’d find out sooner or later. If you can believe it, I wanted you to find out. At least now I don’t have to lie.’
Pyke swung his fist, felt it connect with the side of Whicher’s head. Whicher stumbled but didn’t fall.
‘Why, Jack?’
‘I could make it easy and say I despise you and the way you work.’ Whicher must have seen the hurt register in Pyke’s eyes because instinctively he flinched.
‘I just want to know, Jack. Is that the truth?’ Pyke was surprised at how badly he was taking the news, how much he’d come to like and respect Whicher.
‘Do you really want the truth?’ Whicher exhaled loudly, trying to pull himself together. ‘Do you want to know how my son died of cholera? How my wife went insane from the grief? Do you really want to know how this grief led her back to the work she’d once done? How she turned her back on me and started to sleep with men for money? How a man, one of her customers, hit her in the face and how she retaliated with a pair of scissors? The madam sent for me, and in my panic, and because I trusted him at the time, I sent for Pierce. And he was brilliant. You should know that, too. Pierce took care of it: he paid off the madam, disposed of the body and had my wife admitted to a sanatorium.’
Pyke stood there, not sure what to say. What Whicher had told him had stripped him of his anger but it didn’t diminish the betrayal. ‘So you did what you did because you felt you owed him?’
‘I did what I did because he said he’d prosecute her and me if I didn’t.’ Whicher shook his head. ‘Pierce’s brilliance only lasted until you arrived at the department. Then he wanted his pound of flesh. The quid pro quo for his silence was for me to keep him abreast of all the occurrences in the Branch.’
‘But from what you’ve told me, he’s just as implicated as you.’
They stood for a moment or two, each contemplating the other, the damage that had been done. Pyke pursed his lips. He knew what the clever thing to do would be: keep Whicher close at hand and have him pass on false information to Pierce. But he felt so betrayed by the man, he couldn’t stand the thought of being in the same room as him. ‘I accept your explanation, Detective Sergeant, but I want you out of the Detective Branch immediately. You’ll go and see the acting superintendent in the morning and you’ll ask for an immediate transfer back to uniform. I’ll see that the request is approved. I’ll also make sure that nothing of what you told me ever comes to light.’
Whicher cast his head down and nodded. He had already accepted his fate. ‘You may not believe it, Pyke, but I’ve always liked you, as a detective and a man.’
Pyke kicked open the privy door and cleared a path for him. ‘Now get out of my sight. I never want to see you again.’
For most people, violence was an abstraction; it was something that happened in other parts of the city; a product of poverty and despair. It was what happened when the poorest of the poor were forced to live cheek by jowl and fight for the crumbs brushed off the rich man’s table, crumbs that meant the difference between life and death. The truth was that violence, the kind that came from the blackest place in the heart, couldn’t be explained in such simple terms.
Pyke was waiting for Benedict Pierce on the pavement outside the Bow Street station house. He made no effort to conceal his presence and Pierce saw him almost as soon as he’d stepped out of the building. But instead of standing there, Pyke darted into one of the alleyways that ran perpendicular to Bow Street. At first, he didn’t think that Pierce was going to follow him. He must have counted to thirty before he saw the superintendent’s silhouette in the dark mouth of the alleyway. In the end, hubris had got the better of him, as Pyke had been certain it would. Perhaps he was curious, too. He saw Pyke in the shadows and flashed a crooked smile. He didn’t see what was coming; Pyke waited until Pierce was almost next to him before he made his move.
Afterwards, Pyke wasn’t sure whether he’d ever intended to try to talk to Pierce. It wasn’t until he drove his fist deep into the upper reaches of Pierce’s stomach that he realised how deeply Whicher’s betrayal, and Pierce’s part in it, had wounded him. Pyke saw Pierce’s mouth flop open. He swung his fist again and landed a blow on Pierce’s chin and felt it shatter, then another to the side of Pierce’s head, an arch of blood splattering the sleeve of his coat. Pierce coughed, trying to catch his breath as a spool of saliva dribbled from his mouth. He tried to back away but Pyke caught his head in an armlock and punched him in the nose with his other hand. It was as though a gale were blowing in Pyke’s ears and everything he saw had a red hue. Swinging Pierce around, Pyke smashed his skull into the brick wall and then stepped back and lifted him up off his feet with a combination of punches. Too far gone to stop, he allowed Pierce to slither on to the wet ground and kicked him so hard i
n the stomach that the man vomited blood. Benedict Pierce was no longer moving, a near-silent groan from his face-down body the only indication that he was, in fact, alive. And suddenly Pyke was sickened by what he’d just done.
The first gin barely touched the sides of his throat. He stood at the counter and ordered two more, and then two more again. In the yard he had run cold water over his hands, washing the blood from his knuckles. Later, around midnight, when he could no longer talk without slurring or walk in a straight line, the landlord threw him out and he wandered aimlessly for another hour, the wind and the rain sobering him up a little. He’d taken his first drink in the Green Dragon on the Strand. At two o’clock in the morning, he found himself standing on the street in Soho where Sarah Scott had taken a room, not even sure how he’d managed to find his way there. When he banged on her door, it took her a few minutes to answer it and she did so only after he’d identified himself. She had been sleeping; her hair was unkempt and she could barely open her eyes.
‘You’d better come in,’ she said, assessing him coolly, perhaps smelling the gin on his breath.
The room was as Pyke remembered it: small, frugal, unfurnished. There were no chairs, just a flock mattress that took up most of the floor space. Sarah had already seen his bruised knuckles. Pyke went to embrace her but she pushed him away. The room started to spin.
‘Who did you fight?’ Sarah asked, gesturing at his fists.
‘A superintendent. I did most of the fighting.’
She gave him a quizzical stare. ‘Won’t that get you into trouble?’
Pyke hadn’t really thought about the consequences of his actions, but he didn’t believe that Pierce would come at him through official channels. It struck him then that he should have finished the man off. Now he was injured and humiliated, Pierce was an even more dangerous adversary.
‘What did he do to you?’
‘It’s a long story.’ Pyke looked around the small room. ‘Have you got any gin?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’ Sarah rubbed her eyes and yawned. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t offer you a thing.’
‘How was the inquest?’
‘Short and to the point. Brendan died by his own hand — an overdose of Prussian acid. It’s the funeral that’s proving to be a problem. The Catholic Church doesn’t want to have anything to do with him.’
‘I tried to see Druitt today. He’d been moved to a secret location by order of the Home Office.’
Pyke wanted to assess her reaction but all the gin he’d drunk had blurred his vision and he couldn’t tell whether Sarah was concerned or upset by this news. She just folded her arms and said, ‘Is that what you came here at two in the morning to tell me?’
‘Someone else thinks Druitt knows who’s been killing these men. They’re going to try and force the information out of him.’
‘And am I supposed to feel sorry for him?’
Pyke’s mouth felt as if all of the moisture had been leached from it. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned him. I’m sorry.’
Sarah cupped Pyke’s face in her hands. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way but I think you should go…’
Up close he could smell the perfume on her skin. He wanted to tell her that he needed to be with someone, that he needed to be with her, that he wanted to fall asleep next to her, feeling her warmth on his skin.
She tilted her head upwards and pecked him on the cheek ‘… before one of us says something we might regret in the morning.’
The following day was a Sunday and Pyke staggered from his bed, reached blindly for the commode and emptied the contents of his stomach into the bowl. He splashed his face with cold water and dressed quickly, trying to ignore his shaking fingers and the foul taste in his mouth. Downstairs, Felix had made his own breakfast — Mrs Booth had Sundays off — and was eating it in the living room.
‘Have you arrested Palmer yet?’ Felix looked up hopefully from the bowl of porridge on his lap.
‘I don’t even know for sure if he’s done anything wrong.’
‘Then why did you tell me I’d broken the investigation wide open?’
Pyke put his hand to his temple. ‘Not now, please. Let me make myself some coffee.’
‘I just thought that since we…’
‘ Not now, all right,’ Pyke snapped.
Felix shovelled a spoonful of porridge into his mouth and looked out of the window. ‘I’m going to St Matthew’s today. I was there yesterday and the day before. Not that you would know. I heard you come in last night about three. The night before that you didn’t come home at all.’
Pyke saw how badly he’d failed the lad and how much he must miss Godfrey’s steady hand. He was about to apologise when Felix said, ‘Mr Leech knocked on the door earlier. I’m surprised you didn’t hear him. It seems one of the pigs has escaped again and is stuck in his garden. I said I’d pass on the message. He wasn’t very happy.’
Pyke swore under his breath. The last thing he wanted to do was deal with a stranded pig.
‘I should have let you know where I was. I had to work late last night…’
Felix shook his head. ‘I heard you crashing around downstairs when you came in. The whole street probably heard you.’
Pyke couldn’t face another argument so he let himself out of the back door, making sure Copper remained in the house.
It was a cool, damp morning and the ground was soft, the sky above sealed with clouds. He found Mabel, the fine-boned short-legged pig, in the middle of his neighbour’s lawn. The animal had sunk into the hole it had created and was clearly distressed, its short legs unable to propel it out of the muddy morass. From time to time the pig would wriggle, to no avail, and then squeal as if to underline its predicament. The neighbour, Percy Leech, was out there as soon as he saw Pyke, striding down the garden in his boots, his pet spaniel trotting at his heel.
‘I really have to object in the strongest possible terms, sir, about the damage that your vile swine has caused in my garden. I insist that you deal with the matter forthwith and make the appropriate reparations.’
The spaniel was circling around the stricken pig, yapping and taking the occasional nip at its tail. It had an irritating, high-pitched bark that was aggravating Pyke’s headache to such an extent that he thought he might have to take a shovel to the dog or at the very least aim a kick at its head.
‘It would seem that the pig is stuck,’ Pyke replied, having wandered around it a few times.
‘I didn’t ask for a description of what is obvious to me, sir. I told you to do something about it.’ Leech’s face was hot with anger.
‘What can I do? The pig’s stuck. If you’d taken better care of your lawn, this wouldn’t have happened.’ Pyke looked at the grass; his pig had clearly gone to work on it and now it looked as if an entire regiment had marched across it.
‘You dare to accuse me, sir? Before your swine ran amok in my garden, the lawn was in perfect condition.’
The spaniel was still yapping at his heels and Pyke edged it away from him with a sideways move of his boot. ‘Can you be sure it was the pig? Perhaps your little dog was trying to find a bone he’d buried earlier.’
‘You think my beloved King Charles would be capable of such an act as this?’ He pointed at the damaged lawn.
But Pyke wasn’t listening. Instead, he was trying to remember what he’d said to Sarah Scott and why she’d asked him to leave. He was also thinking about what he’d done to Pierce, what the ramifications of it might be, and the damage he’d caused, not just to Pierce personally but also to the investigation. In the cold light of day, Pyke could see that his actions had been rash and stupid.
Retracing his steps back to his own garden, and more particularly to the shed where he kept his tools, Pyke collected a shovel and a hatchet then rejoined Leech, who was still trying to pull his spaniel away from the stranded pig. Pyke’s thoughts returned to Whicher. It was a hard, unforgiving world and the sooner he remembered that, the better. Standing over the anim
al and ignoring the sudden protestations of his neighbour, Pyke took the hatchet, lifted up the pig’s head and sliced the blade across its throat. Mabel’s squeals were quite unlike anything he had heard before. When he looked down at the blade of the hatchet, he saw it was dripping with fresh blood and it made him want to vomit. The pig, which just a few moments ago had been writhing in the mud, had stopped moving. Now a vast pool of blood had extended around its head and was still flowing from the wound. It was really quite obscene. Even in the stiff breeze, you could smell it: at once rich, sweet and rancid.
‘There,’ Pyke said, wiping the blade of the hatchet on a patch of grass. ‘I won’t charge you for the meat. Think of it as reparation for the lawn.’
Leech was speechless, and even the dog had stopped barking.
Pyke turned suddenly and saw that Felix had followed him into the garden and had been watching from the other side of the wall. It was hard to make sense of the look on his face but later Pyke kept coming back to the same words. Revulsion. Fascination. Horror.
Andrew Pepper
The Detective Branch
TWENTY-TWO
Pyke had organised and carried out the searches of many houses, and some time during the previous day it had struck him what a cursory, even half-hearted, job he had made of the search at St Botolph’s. He hadn’t thought to look up the chimney or search behind the skirting boards or lift up the floorboards or get down on his hands and knees and work his way from one end of the cellar and loft to the other. In light of his suspicions regarding the Churches Fund, or at least the fact that Guppy and Hogarth might have known one another via Palmer, this failure now seemed like a glaring oversight.
On Monday morning, Pyke arrived at the rectory before eight and banged on the door. No one answered, and through one of the windows he noticed that dustsheets were now covering the large items of furniture. He knocked again, then took out his picklocks and had the door open in less than five minutes. The air in the hallway was musty, and the house eerily quiet.
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