Dead Image

by Joan Lock

  They both gazed perplexedly at the map. Then Smith’s sturdy finger plunged on to a spot just north of the Caledonian Road which marked the exit of Islington Tunnel. Best glanced back and forth from tunnel entrance to exit. ‘That’s an amazingly long tunnel?’ He shook his head. ‘The times I’ve walked through Islington and never realized that was underneath!’ He paused to refocus on the map’s tiny print, ‘So, it looks as if the next likely spot is–’

  ‘Battlebridge Basin,’ they said in unison.

  The Battlebridge Basin sliced a long oblong out of the south side of the canal, in the strange no-man’s-land just beyond the tunnel and before North London’s clutch of railway termini. Edging the basin were timber yards, a flour mill, an ice house, an iron foundry and some mixed merchandise warehouses and wharves. But the more Best and Smith looked at it, the more they realized that although it might look a likely spot it was an unlikely stopping place for a string of boats on a fast regular service to the Midlands, loaded up and just started on its run. Best shrugged and made another note in his list of new questions for the traffic manager: Any reason to stop at Battlebridge Basin? Did they that night?

  It would help if he knew a bit more about the canals. But he had never needed to before. Canals were just there, somehow. Something one took for granted. You noticed them but somehow, strangely, you didn’t. He’d seen the Islington Tunnel entrance before but had never thought about where the tunnel went or where the canal re-emerged.

  ‘What we need to look at are the locks. It has to be a lock, I think. They have no choice but to stop there.’

  The next stretch of canal curved into a long bend, fringed on the south side with a group of circles indicating the gasometers of the Imperial Gas Works. Then there was a series of straight lines where coal shutes led down to the water.

  ‘Here’s a lock.’ Smith’s finger plunged again to a boat-shaped island at the end of a long, unmarked sweep of canal. St Pancras double lock where, Thornley claimed, there had been a row between a man and a woman. Not only that, it was the site of the ugly writing on the wall. Behind it, open ground.

  ‘Oh, this is interesting!’ exclaimed Best. ‘Very interesting!’ They grinned at each other. They thought St Pancras double lock looked even more interesting when they discovered that the only other locks before the site of the explosion were the busy triple flight at Camden Town. He tapped his pencil abstractedly on the map. ‘Of course, there is one other thing we haven’t even considered …‘

  Smith looked up enquiringly.

  ‘She might not have been alive when she boarded. If she boarded that is.’ He paused. Her body could have been wrapped in a roll of tarpaulin or carpet – or made into just another long parcel.’

  Smith nodded. The thought sobered them both for a moment. What a sad end for a young girl, thought Best. Life is not fair. Nor death either. But then, he knew that already.

  Something was nagging at Best. One of those thoughts which hover tantalizingly just out of reach. He concentrated, then, as it began to form, he tried to grab at it but it disappeared again. To distract himself, so that it might pop up unbidden, he turned his attention to the advertisements on the panel above the heads of the omnibus passengers opposite, but they were all too familiar: Oakey’s Knife Polish, Gatti’s Charing Cross Music Hall, Pears Soap and Holloway’s Wonderful Pills for the Throat and Chest.

  Much good Holloway’s Wonderful Pills had done his Emma, he thought, bitterly. He knew that advertisement by heart – telling you that if you didn’t take them ‘at the commencement of a disorder, disastrous consequences would result’. Well, they had anyway. In fact, if she hadn’t been taking Holloway’s Wonderful Pills she might have gone to the doctor sooner.

  The fearful expression on the face of the young woman opposite brought Best up sharp. He realized he was glaring ferociously. She must think him mad. Slowly he relaxed his face until it took on an almost benign expression then switched his gaze to a more cheerful advertisement, that for Gatti’s Music Hall. Happier memories there. Emma loved Gatti’s ice-cream, both the penny-licks and the striped hokey-pokeys. And Gatti’s Palace of Varieties had been a familiar haunt for him and his colleagues when they lived at the single man’s section house in Westminster.

  Now, there was an Italian immigrant who had done well for himself – Carlo Gatti. He had arrived in London from Switzerland, practically penniless, and had gone out into the streets to sell coffee and roast chestnuts, begun the craze for the penny-lick ice-creams and ended up owning restaurants, billiard halls and music halls. The Gattis were also London’s biggest ice suppliers. When he was on the beat Best had often chatted to the drivers of their black and yellow carts as they did their rounds to restaurants, shops and houses of the wealthy, dropping off huge slabs of frozen water.

  ‘Ice!’ Best exclaimed suddenly. ‘That’s it! Ice!’

  Chapter Seven

  Best now had the full attention of all the passengers, not just the frightened young woman opposite. But he didn’t care. Ice! Smiling idiotically, the Sergeant jumped vigorously to his feet, causing the omnibus to sway and the conductor to look cross.

  He was still feeling pleased with himself when he alighted from a second omnibus at the end of the Caledonian Road. Stepping lightly, he took the first left into Wharfdale Road, then right into New Wharf Road which backed on to the Battlebridge Basin. The day was bright and sunny but there was a tingle in the air and a mistiness in the distance. Autumn behaving as it should, at last. Perhaps it was a sign. He passed a flour mill and there it was – a three-storey, yellow-brick building with red brick trim. Writ large above the arched entrance: Carlo Gatti, Ice Merchant.

  The archway led into an interior yard where Best turned in, squeezing his way alongside one of the familiar, high-sided carts and deliberately resisting the urge to look up at the two huge, sweating horses towering above him.

  The company office was like most warehouse offices – a partitioned oblong with half-windowed walls which allowed a good view of the activity going on in the yard outside. The man in charge, one Carlo Offridi, was a short, solid-looking man in his thirties who had little English – and what he did have he seemed reluctant to utilize on Best. Only after the Sergeant had switched to Italian, discovered some mutual aquaintances in the community, assured the man that he wanted only to know a little about ice selling to assist him with some cases of fraud involving a competitor, did Offridi begin to relax and show him around.

  In the yard by the far wall which overlooked the canal basin were two brick-lined ice wells, like giant pudding basins buried in the earth.

  ‘They hold five tons each,’ offered Carlo, obviously warmed by Best’s wonder. Best found the sight of two workmen sitting down among the ice blocks drinking tea even more amazing.

  ‘It’s hard work,’ said Offridi, misunderstanding Best’s startled glance, ‘they need to stop here and there.’

  Carlo was soon called upon to check a disputed load so he deposited Best back in the office where Jones, the English clerk, gave him a cup of coffee before retreating behind his ledgers. Best did not intend to let him stay there. He guessed, by the man’s deference that he had judged him to be some prospective customer from a foreign restaurant.

  ‘Is it true,’ Best enquired of him, ‘that some of the ice comes all the way from Norway?’ It sounded like just curiosity but it was more than that. Best really wanted to know everything about this ice-transportation business.

  ‘All of it,’ nodded Jones politely.

  ‘Remarkable,’ Best shook his head. ‘And how long does that take?’

  ‘About six days,’ Jones laughed, ‘with the wind in the right direction, ‘course.’

  ‘But why doesn’t the ice melt?’

  ‘Oh, it does, some of it, dunnit? About a third, usually. But,’ he grinned, ‘we only pays for what’s left. It gets measured as it comes in – down at Limehouse Dock.’

  ‘Amazing,’ exclaimed Best, ‘amazing.’

  Havi
ng amazed Best once, Jones was eager to do so again. A pale little man with a pale little life he didn’t often get to become the centre of attention.

  ‘Some companies gets it from America, you know. But we never have. Used to take some from the canal when it froze over, way back that was. But you couldn’t be sure of gettin’ it an’ it was pretty dirty when you did. You should have seen some of the things we found in it!’

  Best thought he would rather not know and got him back on track with, ‘So now it all comes from Norway?’

  The man was warming to his theme now, ‘ Oh, yeah!’ he said excitedly. ‘Got great lakes of it there, they have, so you can cut it in thick slabs, regular size an’ all. Then it grows again, they say, an’ they get another load from the same place!’

  Best had never heard of ice ‘growing’. He shook his head. ‘Fascinating,’ and he meant it.

  Jones took Best’s eagerness as a tribute to his own, hitherto unappreciated, scintillating personality so that when Best asked, ‘How often do shipments come in?’ he couldn’t wait to scintillate again.

  Ice shipments came in only from spring to October he revealed. In the winter, the Norwegian boats got iced in which Best and Jones found very droll. More to the point, the last shipments had arrived a week earlier. It occurred to Best that what had come in last would be used first as the pit filled up. He must keep that in mind.

  ‘Colourful fellows, are they? These Norwegians?’ Maybe the fair victim had come from Scandinavia.

  ‘Dunno. We never sees them – just the canal boatmen, that’s all we ever sees.’ He grimaced at his new friend, to indicate his low opinion of the latter.

  Offridi returned, clipboard in hand and a preoccupied look on his face. Best decided not to outstay his welcome. The rather relieved foreman held up his clipboard apologetically and motioned to the clerk to accompany the visitor off the premises.

  The yard was frantic now and the noise deafening. The rattle of harness and heavy wheels on cobblestones competing against the grinding and rattle of the cranes as they reached down into the wells for their glistening burdens.

  ‘They must be strong to do that!’ shouted Best, as he dodged out of the path of a man pushing and guiding the slabs on to his cart.

  ‘They’re used to it,’ shrugged Jones.

  He couldn’t see any stables. ‘Where do you keep all the horses?’ asked Best, as he pressed himself against a wall to avoid a handsome pair of dark-brown drays with white flashes on their noses.

  Jones jerked his head upwards. ‘Stables are up there.’ He pointed to where a fairly steep path led up to the first floor. They were almost at the entrance when, without having to probe any further, Jones offered Best the information he was seeking.

  ‘The grooms and some of the ice-men live up there, as well. Only the single ones, of course.’

  They shook hands in a friendly, nonchalant fashion and Best strolled off again down New Wharf Road. The sun was less bright now but his heart was even lighter. Cheadle had asked him to find ‘somewhere cool’ and he had found it. Not only that, it was on the canalside. All he had to do was work out how the body had got to Regent’s Park. An ice cart! Or – he remembered something Jones had said – of course, that was it!

  ‘The body could have been put in the ice well two weeks before the explosion,’ an excited Best explained to a doubting Cheadle and a startled Smith’ – wrapped in sacking, or similar – until the murderer – maybe one of the ice-men or a groom – saw his chance to get rid of her. Just his bad luck it should be on the night of the explosion.’

  There was a short, surprised silence before Cheadle murmured drily, ‘All a bit too fanciful, if you ask me. I mean, it’s heavy stuff, that ice, wouldn’t it crush the body?’

  Best hadn’t thought of that. ‘It’s only one possibility, sir,’ he said defensively. ‘I’m only trying every picture, like you said. Liza Moody lived quite near the canal. She’s the nearest match we’ve got so far – and you did say the body might have been kept somewhere cool …‘

  ‘All right, all right,’ the Chief Inspector answered, shooting himself up in his chair and causing Smith, who had never seen this pantomime before, to almost jump out of his own seat in surprise. ‘Just supposing you’re right,’ Cheadle said, in a more placatory tone, ‘how d’you suppose the body got to Regent’s Park?’

  ‘Easily,’ said Best, playing his trump card. ‘Ice doesn’t just get unloaded from boats at Battlebridge – it gets loaded up – to go north.’

  ‘Hmph. Well, we’ll see. You think that makes more sense if the victim is this barmaid, Eliza Moody?’

  ‘It’s only ten minutes’ walk away.’

  ‘What did you find out at the Three Tuns, young Smith?’

  ‘Well, the landlord now thinks she did just go off of her own accord.’

  ‘That right?’ murmured Cheadle quietly. ‘And did he say what made him think that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Smith eagerly. ‘At first he thought she had no followers, but now he remembers there was a man who was thick with her, a dark bloke with a scar on his lip – dressed like a sailor.’

  Cheadle and Best looked at each other.

  ‘Sir?’ said Smith, reddening.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked from one to the other uncertainly. ‘At first he thought there was nothing missing, but some money had gone after all …‘

  ‘A man gifted with afterthought,’ murmured Best.

  ‘He was doing his books and he just noticed …‘

  Cheadle and Best were getting to their feet. ‘I’ll get the cab’, said Best.

  ‘He’s a very pleasant man, easy-going,’ exclaimed Smith, adding desperately, ‘much too fat to attack anyone …‘ He had been going to go on to say something about Maisie and how she was about to tell him something and how he had been unable to find her again, but thought this did not seem a good moment.

  The Yard men were too late. By the time they arrived at the Three Tuns the area was thick with policemen. Liza Moody had been found. The smell met them at the top of the cellar steps. Below, her remains lay half out on the stone floor and half remaining in the barrel which had contained the body. Everything was so soggy and decomposing that it might have been hard to tell what had happened to her had it not been clear by the grotesquely lolling head that her throat had been cut. Alongside, another body. This time, male. Its wiry form had fallen almost into an S shape after being cut down from the noose suspended from a hoisting hook in the ceiling. The remains of dark ale from the broken barrel had stained the dead man’s rough tweed trousers, rolled-up sleeves and tow-coloured hair.

  ‘I had no notion at all, no notion,’ said an emotional Welsh voice, as the landlord came up behind the detectives. ‘My cellarman for ten years he was, and I did not even notice his passion for young Liza. Maisie came to me and said he had been bothering the girl, I asked him about it – and this is how it all ends!’ He shook his head. The voice had risen, the face remained impassive, but there was a tear in the eye.

  It seemed, then, that the case was already solved. A murder followed by a suicide due to remorse, or for fear of being caught. Nonetheless, a full investigation would have to take place. Someone, after all, may have assisted the barman on to the hook. If that were so, who else might now be in danger? Maisie, in case she changed her story? Best wondered who would get the docket for this one. Thank goodness it wouldn’t be him.

  Before the unscheduled rush to Somers Town, Best had planned to go to St John’s Wood to see Van Ellen again, or down to City Road to chase up any news on Minchin.

  Cheadle knocked both ideas on the head by waving a bundle of letters in his face. ‘The latest arrivals – the commissioner wants them looked at and actioned immediately. See to it, will you?’

  Best sighed inwardly. He hated this duty. Everyone knew better than the Detective Branch, had a better theory or some wonderful information to impart. He wondered if they ever realized how the extra burden of their l
etters lessened the detectives’ chances of finding the murderer. Of course, he had to admit that, occasionally, they did turn up something useful, but not often. With these bitter thoughts on his mind he retired to the Sergeants’ room, clutching his bundle of time-wasters.

  Best gave the pile of letters a quick run through to weed out the mad ones. The first was written in a large, sprawling hand on a ridiculously small piece of paper so that it amounted to no more than two sentences. The second was in miniscule writing, edge-to-edge on a large piece of watermarked vellum. The writing on the next started out even, controlled and of normal size but soon grew larger and larger and began leaping off in every direction. The text was embellished by huge capital letters and rows of angry exclamation marks: a mad one. The contents, he knew, would be depressingly familiar. The writer would have some secret knowledge he wished to pass on to the police. It was being divulged only to him via the newsa Electric Telegraph which seeped through his bedroom walls, or by some spirit forms materializing before him, but he was being pursued by evil people out to thwart him or even destroy him. The Sergeant put two mad letters to one side, lit the office lamps, took out his cigarettes and began to work his way through the rest, making notes as he went.

  A woman in Bow had a neighbour whose husband was always threatening to kill her – and she hadn’t seen her for two weeks. A gentleman writing from his club in St James’s wanted to know why they hadn’t rounded up all the suspected Fenians as the explosion was obviously their work. Another gentleman had seen a pretty young girl walking towards Macclesfield Bridge on the evening before the explosion. A woman in Holland Park had just returned home from a trip abroad to find her young sister was missing and had reported it to the police who seemed to be doing nothing. A semi-literate person, who preferred to remain anonymous, actually named the murderer as one of the evangelists trying to save the souls of the narrow-boatmen. The writer suggested that, should police care to drag the canal from the Paddington Basin to Brent, they would find many more such bodies. And so on.