The Detective Branch pm-4

by Andrew Pepper

  Wells nodded. ‘It’s Pierce. He’s played this final card from the bottom of the deck. No one could have seen it coming.’

  ‘But you persuaded me to waive my committal hearing, didn’t you, Walter? If I’d taken the hearing, the Crown’s lawyers would’ve been forced to reveal their hand.’

  ‘I know and I feel terrible. Just terrible. Please, old man. If there’s anything I can do for you, any way of making amends…’

  ‘Give me the keys and let me walk out of here.’

  Wells simply stared at him. ‘Within reason, Pyke.’

  ‘In a day, I go before a magistrate and jury with no chance of refuting the evidence that will be presented to them. What do you expect me to say?’

  ‘Perhaps I could try to find this new witness.’ Wells hesitated.

  ‘And do what?’

  ‘Talk to him; persuade him not to testify against you.’

  Pyke shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t do any good; clearly Pierce has something on him. There’s no way he would have agreed to testify otherwise.’

  ‘But if I could find him… and… What if he had an accident? Something that prevented him from getting to the courtroom?’

  Pyke was surprised at this suggestion.

  ‘Things are never as bad as you think they are,’ Wells continued. ‘When I was a soldier in Afghanistan, our regiment was attacked by the natives. We were ambushed in the mountains and outnumbered. It was hopeless; men were falling like flies. I made a choice. I hid under a pile of corpses pretending to be dead. I stayed there for almost a day. It was baking hot so you can imagine the stench. Eventually reinforcements arrived. I was the only one left alive. Later, I received a medal for my endeavours. It made my reputation as a soldier but not a day goes by when I don’t feel ashamed of what I did.’

  It was a strange tale. Pyke could see that Wells didn’t often tell it and that this confession had taken its toll. But it didn’t do anything to change or alleviate the predicament he faced.

  Pyke didn’t hear anything or receive another visitor until the following afternoon. It took him a few seconds to recognise Conor Rafferty: he was gaunter than Pyke remembered and he’d shaved his head. There was none of his former insouciance, either. His countenance was grim and determined.

  ‘So what is it you think I can do for you, big man?’

  Pyke couldn’t tell whether he’d used this last term ironically. ‘Think of it, in the first instance, in terms of what I can do for you.’

  ‘While you’re locked up in here, not a whole lot, I’d wager.’ His smile revealed rotten teeth and black gums.

  ‘Perhaps we need each other.’

  ‘How do you work that one out?’ He tried to appear indifferent but Pyke could tell he was interested.

  ‘I can give you George Culpepper. In fact, I can serve up George Culpepper’s mob on a plate.’

  Pyke could see that the name had scored a hit, but Rafferty was still a long way from being convinced.

  ‘Like I said, big man, there’s nothing you can do for me while you’re rottin’ in this place.’

  ‘That’s why I need your help.’

  Conor Rafferty nodded, as though he’d been expecting this. ‘Hell’d freeze over before a Rafferty went out of his way to help the law.’

  ‘How can I be the law if I’m locked up?’

  Rafferty scratched his head. ‘You have a point there, I’ll grant you.’

  ‘Then you’ll at least listen to what I’ve got to say.’

  ‘I’ll listen, but at this precise moment, that’s all I’m prepared to do.’

  ‘You know I grew up on the same street as Culpepper? We used to call him Little Georgie. For the first seven years of his life, he slept in a coal-shed with a pack of dogs. He learnt to bark before he could talk.’

  That, at least, made Rafferty smile.

  On Monday morning it was raining. In fact, it had been raining almost continuously since the previous afternoon and the water had gathered in sludge-coloured puddles, carriages and omnibuses spraying brown slush on to the pavements, meaning that pedestrians had to hug the buildings if they didn’t want to get wet. The guards had searched Pyke as he’d left the felons’ room and the only item they let him take with him was a skin filled with porter, or so he’d told them; they also hadn’t noticed a hairpin that he’d smuggled out in his mouth. To get from the station house to the courtroom meant crossing the road but nothing was being left to chance; Pyke was shackled in leg-irons and handcuffs and escorted by half a dozen police constables and an inspector, who carried his pistol at all times. Neither Wells nor Pierce had been back to visit him and he had spent his last night in the cell quietly contemplating all the things that could go wrong. A queue had formed, and it snaked out of the courthouse along Bow Street as far as the Brown Bear. Pyke had already been told by the gaoler to expect quite an audience; after all, as he put it, it wasn’t every day folk got to see a copper get his just desserts. Shielded from the onlookers by a phalanx of uniformed constables, they went in to the building using a private entrance and followed a series of narrow passageways that led to the courtroom itself.

  Pyke took his place on a small, elevated platform surrounded by a wooden rail on one side of the room, across from the bench. There was a gilt-framed mirror and a large clock on the wall behind him. The spectators had gone quiet when he’d first entered the room, but now there was an excited buzz. Pyke had told Felix not to come, but he knew that his son would probably be there. Perhaps Sarah would come, too, even though she had been given the same instructions. He surveyed the faces gathered in front of him and, to his relief, he didn’t see anyone he knew except for Whicher and Eddie Lockhart, who were deep in conversation.

  The constables who’d escorted him from the station house congregated on one side of the dock. Pyke hadn’t bothered to ask whether he might be unshackled because he knew there was no point. Though no one had said so explicitly, it was clear that the constables, turnkeys and gaolers had been instructed not to let him out of their sight. Pyke studied the faces of the crowd again, this time hoping he might see Conor Rafferty in the room. Instead he saw Sarah Scott and then Felix; they were standing together. Pyke had no idea they had even met, but when he caught Sarah’s eye, he smiled and mouthed the words ‘thank you’. It was regrettable that they had come but he had known they would. Briefly he wondered how they’d react when the trial got under way. It would be especially hard on the lad, Pyke mused; hard but unavoidable.

  ‘All set, then?’ His lawyer, Geoffrey Quince, QC, had aged since Pyke had first met him, but in a distinguished manner. Quince’s serene expression indicated he had no idea that another prosecution witness had been added to the list.

  ‘The Attorney-General is conducting the prosecution himself,’ Quince was explaining, ‘with assistance from Worthington and Chambers.’

  As he stood there and numbly listened, Pyke felt for the wineskin he’d concealed under his waistcoat. It would soon be over, one way or the other. He felt closer to the noose than ever.

  Soon afterwards the twelve jurors strode into the room and took their allotted seats, just below the bench.

  At exactly nine o’clock, the door nearest the public entrance opened and the magistrate, George James Stevenson, JP, entered the room, closely followed by another man wearing robes and a wig, and then a procession of dignities, including Walter Wells and, as it turned out, Benedict Pierce, who hobbled in and was last to take his seat. Wells and Pierce were not sitting next to one another, and while Pierce made a point of not looking over at Pyke, Wells met his eyes almost immediately and gave an encouraging smile. For a moment, Pyke wondered whether this meant he’d been able to get to Villums.

  As the chief magistrate banged the gavel to bring the room to order, Pyke looked again for any sign of Rafferty.

  ‘The jury for our Lord the King upon their oath do present that Detective Inspector Pyke, late of Scotland Yard and Islington in the county of Middlesex, on the fourteenth day
of July eighteen hundred and forty-four, did with malice aforethought commit the wilful murder of William Sharp and that on the twenty-second day of March eighteen hundred and forty-four did steal the Saviour’s Cross and other items from the private residence of the Archdeacon of London. How do you plead?’

  All eyes in the room turned to him. Pyke waited for a moment or two then said, ‘Not guilty.’

  As the magistrate swore in the twelve jurors, Pyke could feel his heart thumping. Briefly he caught a glimpse of Felix, straining on tiptoes to see what was happening, but he still couldn’t see Rafferty. He smiled at the lad, trying to exude a confidence he didn’t feel.

  ‘I now call on the Attorney-General, Nicolas Tomlinson, QC, to present the case for the prosecution.’

  Just as the chief magistrate finished speaking, Pyke noticed a man he didn’t recognise, with a cloth hat pulled down over his face, step out of the crowd.

  Mr Roland Dunn, a shoemaker from Clerkenwell who had queued through the night to ensure he secured a place for himself at the front of the public viewing area, saw everything and later gave a full statement to the police.

  A rough-looking gentleman wearing a hat of some sort and a black, velveteen shooting jacket had pushed his way through the crowd of spectators and, striding forcefully, had ducked under the rail and approached the dock, where the defendant was standing. It had all happened quickly. Too quickly, he stressed, for anyone to have intervened. No one saw the pistol in the man’s hand until the last minute; he had concealed it under his jacket. The man screamed the defendant’s name, as though angry at him, raised the pistol and fired. The blast, much louder than he’d been expecting, echoed around the room. The defendant, Pyke, collapsed on the stand clutching his stomach. The ball-shot had hit him squarely in the gut and blood was pumping from the wound. The air in the room was thick with people’s shouts and screams. The gunman then made for the door behind the dock that the defendant had first appeared from; a police constable moved to block his path but the gunman had raised his pistol, as if to fire, and the policeman had to let him pass. All of this happened, the shoemaker said, in the space of a few seconds. After the gunman had fled the room, pandemonium broke out.

  Pyke lay on the floor next to the dock, gasping for air. His hands, his stomach, his clothes were all covered in blood. He could hear the screams around him and his first thought was of Felix, the fact that the boy would have to see him like this. There were faces crowded around him, peering down at him, concerned at the amount of blood he’d lost. He stared at the tallow rings on the ceiling and heard men barking orders at each other. Jack Whicher was one of the first to reach him and he kept the others at bay. Someone shouted for a stretcher and out of nowhere one appeared; a policeman carrying one end of it, a civilian the other end. Whicher and the man in civilian clothes, who’d identified himself as a doctor, lifted Pyke on to it. He clutched his stomach and groaned. The doctor looked around for the constables who’d escorted Pyke from the station house and shouted, ‘They’ll need to operate; can someone please remove the irons.’ It wasn’t a question, and one of the constables duly obliged.

  Whicher went ahead of them, clearing a path. The doctor was carrying one end of the stretcher, the policeman the other. Pyke heard someone say, ‘We need to get him to St Bartholomew’s as quickly as possible.’ As they carried him through the crowd, he could hear Felix screaming, ‘That’s my father, let me through.’

  Outside, it was still raining but there was a carriage already waiting. Its doors were open and, still on the stretcher, Pyke was pushed inside. He could hear raised voices, a debate about who would accompany him. Eventually the two who had carried the stretcher joined him and the carriage moved off. They all waited until it had turned from Bow Street on to Long Acre, before Pyke looked up at Conor Rafferty, dressed in the policeman’s uniform Whicher had procured for him, and at his accomplice, dressed as a doctor, and smiled. Sitting up, he wiped off the pig’s blood that he had smuggled into the court in a wineskin, and looked out of the glass at the back of the carriage. There would be others following. Conor Rafferty banged on the roof and the carriage shuddered to a halt. Even before it had stopped, the three of them had leapt through the door, landed on the pavement and darted into one of the side alleyways that criss-crossed Long Acre.

  Golden Square

  FEBRUARY 1845

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Up to his knees in excrement, Pyke used the tub to scoop up another load of shit and signalled for Peter, the rope-man, to haul it up out of the cesspit. Somewhere above, the two tub-men, Jimmy and Matthew, were waiting to collect it and empty it into the cart. It would take another fifteen or twenty tubfuls before the cesspit was empty, which, Pyke estimated, meant he would be wading around in faeces for at least another hour. And this was only their second call of the night. By his estimation there were another three pits to clear before they were finished. The tub came scuttling down to him and Pyke filled it again then signalled for Peter to haul it back up. It was monotonous, backbreaking work, but as awful as it was, after two weeks as a hole-man shovelling shit into a bucket, Pyke could honestly say he had stopped noticing how badly it stank. They had been reluctant to employ him at first, even though their hole-man had left to work in a tannery. They didn’t know him; no one they knew could speak for him, either. But Pyke had persisted and it had been his efforts to find new business that had finally won around Matthew, one of the tub-men and the leader of the team. In the two weeks since they had taken him on, Pyke had worked hard, spoken little, complained even less, and had proved himself to be a valuable member of the crew. Each night they worked from 11 p.m. until five in the morning; the first part of the night involved emptying the cesspits into a cask attached to the back of their cart; the second part was the transportation of this load to a farm in Hackney, where it would be used as manure. For each cesspit they cleared they were paid five shillings and a bottle of gin, and they might get another shilling or two from the farmer. At the end of the night, after Matthew had taken what was owed to him for providing the cart and horse, they would divide what remained into equal amounts.

  That morning they didn’t finish until well after five; they had been held up at a house in Shoreditch where it had taken a pickaxe to remove the stone slab covering the cesspit and the entire cellar floor had been thick with the overflowing soil. Matthew kept his horse, Henry, in a stable just north of Golden Square, and if it was especially cold, as it was that morning, they would sit on the straw and pass around the gin they’d been given. Otherwise they would go and sit in Golden Square itself and watch the market traders arrive and set up their stalls. This was the part of the day they liked best; watching other folk start their working day when theirs had just finished. Sitting in a warm pub would have been even better, but no landlord would allow them through the front door on account of the stench from their clothes.

  On this occasion, Peter, who was married and whose wife had just given birth for the third time, left after just a few swigs of gin, and Jimmy went shortly after, claiming a headache and fatigue. That left just Pyke and Matthew, and with the gin warming their stomachs, they fell into easy conversation.

  ‘You’ve settled in well, Johnny.’

  That’s what Pyke had called himself: Johnny from Northamptonshire. Or the Doc. All he’d told them was he’d once been a doctor until he’d fallen prey to the bottle and had killed a patient in his care. They hadn’t asked him further questions. It was what he liked best about them; they accepted him because he worked hard and didn’t complain.

  Matthew was still handsome in his forties, with short brown hair and boyish dimples when he smiled. All Pyke knew about him was that he lived with a woman called Laura. He untied his boots, slipped them off and rubbed the soles of his feet. Pyke swallowed a mouthful of gin and shuddered.

  ‘You’re the best hole-man we’ve had since Morris.’ Instinctively Matthew looked for the others to confirm what he’d said before realising it was just the two of
them.

  It had been three weeks since Pyke’s escape from Bow Street, and this was the moment he’d been waiting for.

  Since Matthew was the one who’d mentioned Morris Keate, Pyke now had the opportunity to ask about him. He’d tried to steer the conversation towards the subject of the murders before, but no one had taken the bait.

  ‘Who was Morris?’ Pyke asked, casually, scratching the beard he’d grown to conceal his identity.

  ‘Morris Keate, but he’s no longer with us.’

  ‘Did the fumes get too much for him?’ Pyke smiled, trying to make a joke of it.

  ‘You would’ve been curing the sick in Northamptonshire at the time it happened, Doc.’

  Pyke took another swig of gin and passed the bottle back to Matthew. ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Since it’s just the two of us I’ll tell you. But don’t tell the others I’ve mentioned it. They still don’t like to think about what happened.’ Matthew drank from the bottle then wiped his mouth. ‘They reckon he killed two boys; one not far from here in Soho. Found him guilty, and put him to death on the scaffold.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘I know. Terrible times for all of us. Especially his family.’

  ‘You reckon he was guilty?’

  ‘Guilty? No. No way. Morris was always a little odd. You have to understand, he was a simple man… gentle, sweet natured, more of a boy than a man, really. But he had these odd beliefs, about God and the Devil. I’d say that’s why they picked on him. You see, the second boy was stabbed and nailed to a door. They tried to paint Morris as some kind of religious lunatic — a Devil worshipper.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Pyke said, repeating himself. ‘Did the Peelers ask you questions?’

  ‘Some, but truth be told, they weren’t much interested. Especially when it became clear we weren’t going to put Morris into the noose for ’em.’