‘Oh, I don’t know, bach. Perhaps they’re a dynasty of brain surgeons and they don’t want the public to know that there’s hereditary insanity in the family.’
‘You cannot be serious,’ exclaimed Sheila.
‘Well, yes and no,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t really serious about the brain surgeons bit, but I do seriously suggest that we may be looking for more than one person.’
‘Is this your good news?’ said Sheila. ‘That there may be busloads of loonies out there armed with bombs and knives and God knows what?’
‘No, actually. I was sort of distracted by the possibilities. What I had been about to say was that it almost certainly isn’t Mad Jack Garton.’
He unzipped his document case and pulled out a sheaf of photocopies, spreading them on the table.
‘If,’ he said, ‘you read decent working-class newspapers, instead of the trendy liberal rubbish with which you waste your time, you would have known that Mad Jack’s black ancestry has been well canvassed in the tabloids.’
From across two of the sheets a solid black headline announced, ‘SEND ’EM HOME JACK HAS BLACK BLOOD’. Underneath, a photo of John Garton speaking at a rally was flanked by a reproduction of a painting. The caption read, ‘Left, Mad Jack Garton speaks at an anti-refugee rally; Right, a portrait of his beautiful, pipe-smoking black ancestress which hangs in the Burton Gallery.’
I skimmed through the stories. There were five of them, all dating from about a year ago. All five were similarly jeering in tone, but only the first one had the painting, which turned out to be Negress with a Pipe of Tobacco by ‘Unknown’ and may not have been Mad Jack’s forebear at all, merely some other black lady of the period.
‘So it wasn’t your mad Nazi,’ commented Sheila.
‘It still might have been,’ I said. ‘He might have some other reason that we don’t know about.’
‘True,’ said John, ‘but that only puts him on a par with all the rest of the survivors of the six families, doesn’t it?’
‘So, you’ve managed to possibly eliminate one suspect,’ I said. ‘Well done!’
From the big Welshman’s expression I expected a hot retort, but just then one of his team emerged from the back door to announce that they had finished photographing, fingerprinting and forensicking the kitchen. John asked him to send the bombs man out.
The bombs man was a scholarly bespectacled little plainclothes officer, with a beaming smile.
‘Are you far enough finished to accept a glass of Mr Tyroll’s excellent whisky?’ John asked him.
‘Oh, indeed,’ he said. ‘That would be most welcome, It’s very dusty in there, but I think we’ve finished with the scene.’ He looked at his watch. ‘In time for you to cook lunch, too,’ he said, smiling. ‘Apart from the bottom of the sink, everything else is OK. A bit dusty, but working.’
‘What was it?’ asked John.
‘It was a shallow cardboard box — the kind you buy photographic paper in. Inside it was a thin tin container filled with the charge. It was detonated by a pressure device that moved when the end of the package was opened.’
‘And what was it intended to do?’ I asked.
‘Very much what it did do,’ he said. ‘To go off very noisily, with a short sharp blast effect, very much like a stun grenade.’
‘Not to kill or injure?’ I said.
‘Well, I won’t say that it wouldn’t injure if you were close to it, or even kill if you were elderly or had a dodgy heart, but that doesn’t seem to be the intention.’
He finished his drink and left us. Sheila was looking thoughtful.
‘How,’ she asked, ‘did he know that I’d been to the police museum?’
‘Could he be tapping our phone?’ I asked.
‘I doubt it,’ John replied. ‘That’s not as easy as people think. Are you still splashing about on the Internet, Sheila?’
She nodded. ‘But I had Alasdair check for cookies and wipe them. So far as know, no one can track where I’ve been and, anyway, I didn’t deal with the museum through the Internet. I just phoned them.’
‘Then he must be watching you, as we thought.’
‘But even if he is — and I can’t see how he is — how the blazes did he know that I had ordered photographs from the museum?’
‘He knows what you’re researching. We know he’s been along the same trails himself. Presumably he’s been to the museum and seen those photographs. He’d have known you’d want copies.’
‘This is all getting to me,’ she said and shuddered. She got up and walked into the house.
‘You,’ said John, ‘were just about to sound off earlier on. You were just about to give me the old outraged public routine about “Why aren’t the police doing anything to stop this?”, were you not?’
I nodded shamefacedly. ‘Yes, John, I was, and I’m sorry, but you must see it from our point of view.’
‘I do, boyo, I do. I wouldn’t like this situation one little bit, even if you weren’t friends. It’s all very well to say that the package wasn’t meant to kill or injure, but it could have done. He may not particularly want to kill, but he doesn’t seem to care very much if it happens by accident as it were.’
‘So what else is there to do?’ I asked.
‘Nothing, boyo, except be damned careful — all the time. Watch out for Sheila, watch out for yourself. Don’t make unnecessary journeys. Keep this place secure. You know all this.’
‘Secure?’ I said. ‘What’s the point of keeping this place secure and not going out if the swine’s simply going to send us exploding parcels? What’ll the next one be — a jolly little packet of napalm?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I think he’ll give up the letter-bomb trick now. He must know we’re on to that. He won’t expect you or Sheila to open anything yourselves now.’
‘So, what’s next?’
‘I don’t know, and that’s what’s worrying me. He ups the ante every time. From a stolen briefcase to a dead cat to a nasty psychological trick with a spider to an incendiary bomb to a stun bomb. What’s his next step up?’
‘I can’t help feeling it might be a real honest-to-goodness bomb.’
He shook his head. ‘No, I’m sure he’ll stop that. He’ll go off on a different tack — one we’re not expecting.’
‘Like what? Arsenic? Drive-by machine-gunning? Come on, John!’
He sighed. ‘I’d like to nail him before his next move.’
‘But you can’t. What do we know about him? Nothing. We haven’t a clue as to who he is or where he is or what it’s really about.’
‘We know he watches you — or someone watches you for him.’
‘And what good is that?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I have put a plain-clothes bloke on prowling about this area seeing who’s moving and when, what’s usual and what isn’t, you know.’
‘And what have you got?’
‘Nothing much. It’s a quiet street. During the day it’s your neighbours going about their business, people visiting them — legitimately so far as we can tell. In the evening it’s very similar, apart from the occasional incursion along the gully by teenage drunks and old whatsisname walking his dog. Nothing that looks out of order,’
‘So how’s he doing it, John? How the hell did he know about Sheila and spiders? Even I didn’t know that! She’s never told anyone in Britain.’
He had no answers. After he’d gone I called Mrs Dunk and asked her to set the kitchen to rights, and got a man in to fit a new sink. In the evening Sheila and I tried watching TV. Talking to each other was a strain. All our ears were still ringing and we got tired of conversing in a slow shout. TV that we couldn’t hear properly wasn’t much better, so we turned in early.
For the first time in days Sheila snuggled up against me in bed.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘What about?’
‘About the whole stupid thing, but most of all about going to market on you the other day. You didn’t dese
rve it. It’s just that — well, it’s like the spiders thing — I like to know I can deal with things and it makes me angry when I can’t, but I shouldn’t have given you a blue. It’s not your fault. If it’s anybody’s fault it’s mine.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ I said. ‘It’s not your fault some steaming psychopath takes exception to what you’re doing.’
‘Do you really want me to stop?’ she asked.
‘Of course not. I want you to be able to do whatever you want to do — safely. Anyway, as we’ve said before, stopping won’t necessarily stop Jack the Cat-Ripper.’
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I.’
‘You don’t have to say you’re sorry.’
‘I just did.’
‘If you keep saying you’re sorry I’ll tear off your clothes and fall on you.’
‘In that case, I’m very, very sorry — and anyway, I’m not wearing any clothes.’
Chapter 22
After that we treated all mail with extreme caution. If we couldn’t see through it by holding it up to the light, or if it felt a bit thick, or if we had any suspicions at all it was up to John Parry’s man to suss it out The day after the bomb came one of the maniac’s cards:
RULE BRITANNIA,
MARMALADE AND JAM,
FIVE CHINESE CRACKERS UP YOUR BACKSIDE,
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Inevitably it made us wonder if there were three more bombs on the way
There was also, a day or two later, another package from the museum. That was examined by John’s expert and pronounced clean. Sheila took one look at the contents and shrieked with delight, then carried them off to the study and hunched over them like a miser with a bag of sovereigns for an hour.
‘Come on,’ I said, when at last I managed to call her to the dinner table. ‘Show and tell!’
She shook her head. ‘Not till after dinner,’ she said.
When food was over and the table cleared, she brought the museum packet and a file of papers to the table.
First she laid down a photocopy of a convict file.
‘That’s Jack Sullivan’s particulars,’ she said.
JACK SULLIVAN No 8714
tried 10th July 1865, arrived Fremantle Barracks March 1866.
Born 3rd March 1849
Trade: None
Height: 5 ft. 6 in.
Complexn: Fair
Head: Round
Hair: Red
Whiskers: Moustache
Visage: Round & freckled
Forehead: M. Ht
Eyebrows: Red
Eyes: Blue
Nose: Wide
Mouth: Wide
Chin: Rounded
Remarks: Lateral scars on left ribs. Tattoo on l. upper arm — harp, shamrock and ERIN GO BRAGH.
Convict 7 years’ transportation
Tried at Warwick, transported for assaults
Character: Violent
The summary of his convict career bore out the estimate of his character. Jack Sullivan had hardly passed a month in the barracks without attracting punishment. There were confinements, beatings and extra labour, running for pages, and always for assaults, on staff or fellow convicts. He had been released twice on a ticket-of-leave and recalled for fighting.
‘A pretty hard doer, eh?’ said Sheila, when I looked up.
‘If that means what I think it does, yes — a pretty hard doer. A bloke who talked with his fists.’
‘Seems like the whole family were much the same,’ she said. ‘Here, have a squid at this.’
She passed me a family tree of the Sullivans which she had drawn. ‘It might help you to understand the pictures,’ she said.
As I looked over the chart she slid a picture out of the packet. It was of a thickset fair man with heavy whiskers. From under a billycock hat he scowled at the camera.
‘That’, she announced, ‘is young Jack’s dad — Patrick Sullivan. He was photographed in 1861, when he was arrested for brawling in a pub. He was thirty-seven — middle-aged in those days — and he had convictions for fighting year in and year out. He’d done umpteen short sentences. Apparently when he wasn’t in the cells he was a navvy.’
She laid down another picture. This time it was a younger version of the navvy — an equally surly youth in his teens.
‘That’, she said, ‘is Jack’s elder brother, Patrick. Sixteen when the picture was taken. Nicked for fighting. There’s two more of him, as he grew up. In the last one he’s twenty-four — still bashing people.’
I looked at the chart. ‘What became of him?’ I asked. ‘There’s no date of death.’
‘Bit of a mystery,’ she said. ‘There’s a scribble on the last picture which may say that he emigrated, but you can’t read it properly. I can’t find a death record that’s definitely him, but there’s no conviction after 1869.’
Another picture emerged — a fresh-faced teenager, but still with the family scowl. ‘That’s Connor,’ she said. ‘He hadn’t got into the family trade. He’s twelve there and about to go to a reformatory for stealing.’
‘He died young,’ I remarked, looking at the chart.
She nodded. ‘Connor and his sister Catherine. He was thirteen, she was eleven. The death record says “fever”. They died within two days of each other.’
I thought about what the slums of Brum must have been like a hundred and fifty years ago. ‘Typhoid? Scarlet fever? Cholera?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. The record just says “fever”. I suppose the docs were overworked and weren’t too particular about slum kids.’
“‘She died of a fever and no one could save her,”’ I quoted.
She pulled out three pictures together and hugged them to her chest before laying them down in a row.
‘They’re the jewels,’ she announced. ‘Those pictures are my JS. Young Jack before he got forcibly emigrated.’
Three pictures of a boy at about twelve, fourteen and seventeen.
‘What was he into then?’ I asked. ‘Bashing people?’
‘Not entirely. He started off where his brother Connor left off — stealing anything — but he took to his father’s trade and ended up getting shipped out for assaults.’
‘Surely they must have been pretty bad to warrant transportation? I mean, his dad never got transported.’
‘I don’t think it was what he did, so much as who he did it to. He was having one of his rare intervals of working at the building trade and I believe he thumped his boss and the boss’s wife.’
‘The boss’s wife! If it had been his own wife they wouldn’t have bothered. It would have been “lawful correction”. How’d he come to bash the gaffer’s wife?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ she said. ‘I think there’s a bit of scandal in it. I reckon he was having an affair with the boss’s lady and it all went wrong. If you thump a husband and wife it’s more like a family blue than a public brawl.’
‘You’ve got an overheated imagination,’ I said. ‘He might have had any kind of a row with his gaffer and the wife weighed in and got bashed,’
‘Look at him,’ she said. ‘Sexy little devil at seventeen,’
I looked again. ‘It must be the freckles,’ I suggested. ‘It’s well known that people with freckles are sex-mad.’
‘Only if they come across the right subject,’ she scowled from behind her own mask of freckles. ‘And they’re getting very rare.’
‘You’ve got the scowl!’ I said. ‘You haven’t got Sullivan blood, have you? You’re not the secret descendant of the missing Patrick? It’d explain a lot. Like your appetite for alcohol and your penchant for violence.’
‘Get on!’ she commanded, and laid down another photograph. Again the family resemblance showed in a man in his twenties.
‘That’s Eamon Daley,’ she said. ‘Jack’s nephew.’
‘He died young,’ I remarked after a glance at the chart. ‘He was only twenty-five or so. What killed him?’
&n
bsp; ‘The law,’ she said. ‘Eamon was hanged at Warwick in 1891 for murdering a gamekeeper.’
‘He was a poacher?’ I said.
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘He was a brawler like the previous generation. By the time he shotgunned a gamekeeper he’d done lots of time for hitting people That’s why they didn’t believe him that it was self-defence.’
‘Killing gamekeepers wasn’t self-defence in those days,’ I said. ‘Poachers were assaulting the sacred rights of property. Don’t forget — they used to get transported just for taking rabbits. Quite a lot of poachers got killed too, but that was all right — they were generally held to have deserved it,’
I looked at the diagram. ‘His sister Mary died young,’ I remarked. ‘What was that? Slum fever again?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It was an accident. She was crushed by a cartwheel while playing in the streets. The Sullivans were an unlucky family.’
‘Anyone who had to live in the slums of Victorian Brum must have been unlucky,’ I said. ‘It didn’t need a penchant for drink and violence as well. Who’s this Catherine Daley who stayed single? That’s unusual, and she died fairly young. She didn’t even make sixty.’
‘She did well to make fifty-eight. Look at this!’
She slid out another trio of pictures. This time they were of a girl, at about fourteen and eighteen, and the same girl as a woman of about thirty-five. In every photograph she was overpainted and over-dressed in a cheap, flashy style.
‘She was on the game!’ I said.
‘Too right. She’s got pages and pages of convictions for soliciting.’
‘And she had no kids?’
‘I don’t suppose she wanted them.’
‘Maybe not, but contraception wasn’t the order of the day for Victorian whores. She’d have had them whether she wanted them or not. But there’s none registered to her?’
She shook her head.
‘She might have had an unregistered one,’ I speculated. ‘Or more than one. There’s never been any way to enforce registration of births and there wasn’t the bureaucracy of the Welfare State then.’
‘There’s none shown with her in the censuses,’ Sheila said. ‘So perhaps she was lucky.’
‘Either that,’ I said, ‘or there’s some rich, powerful bloke around who doesn’t want you to reveal that his great-great-granny was a whore in Brum.’
Bad Penny Blues (A Chris Tyroll Mystery Book 3) Page 14