‘I can’t question the whole town,’ Inspector Drayman was saying, somewhere in the far distance. ‘I simply haven’t got the manpower available for that.’
The trick to understanding any man was to see the world as he saw it through his own eyes, Blackstone told himself. So how did the world look through Bickersdale’s?
The mine-owner had been abroad for a number of years, probably working in places where advancement was less dependent on a man’s ability than on the colour of his skin. And that—as Blackstone knew from his own observation of English merchants in India—led to arrogance.
So Bickersdale returns to England with a pocketful of money and an almost overpowering belief in his own infallibility. He has already decided that he wants to buy himself a business that will give him both an income and a certain standing in the community, and he decides that owning salt mines will answer both his needs. He doesn’t ask anyone else’s advice. Why should he, when he already knows it all? And it is only when he has actually purchased the Melbourne Mine—and been running it for a while—that he comes to see that he might just as well have taken his fortune and thrown it straight down the mine shaft.
‘Besides, who’s to say that the killer’s from this town at all? He could be a visitor.’
There were many men who would simply admit their mistake and write it off to experience, Blackstone reasoned. There were many others who would be crushed by what had happened and spend the rest of their lives haunted by bitter regret. But Bickersdale did not strike him as falling into either of these camps.
Bickersdale was quite a different breed altogether. For him, being cheated by one man would seem exactly the same as being cheated by life in general. And he would not tolerate that. He would want his wealth returned to him, and if the only way to achieve that objective was to embark on a life of crime, then it wouldn’t bother him at all.
Inspector Drayman, having reached the end of his litany of woes, had now fallen silent and was obviously waiting for some sympathetic response from his listener.
‘What do you know about a man called Lawrence Bickersdale?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Bickersdale?’ Drayman replied, clearly knocked completely off balance by the unexpected question. ‘I...I believe he owns a couple of the salt mines in Marston.’
‘That much I already knew,’ Blackstone said. ‘What else can you tell me about him?’
‘Not a great deal, I’m afraid. He seems to keep himself pretty much to himself.’
‘You haven’t heard any whispers about him?’
‘Whispers?’
‘Rumours that he’s not quite as respectable as he appears—that he might perhaps be involved in something a little shady?’
‘Look here, Sam, I don’t really see how any of this fits in with the investigation into Margie’s Thomas’s tragic death,’ Drayman said.
‘It doesn’t,’ Blackstone admitted.
‘In that case, it must have something to do with this diamond-smuggling theory of yours, and I’m sorry, but I’ve got much more important matters to deal with at the moment than your pet obsession. I have a murderer to catch.’
‘I appreciate that,’ Blackstone told him. ‘But if you could just take five minutes to fill me in on—’
‘Five minutes or five hours, it makes no difference,’ Drayman said, with growing irritation. ‘My mind’s focused—as it should be—on Margie’s murder. I simply can’t deal with anything else.’
Archie Patterson could, Blackstone thought. Patterson could be right up to his elbows in a serious crime, yet still find a moment or two to admire the latest piece of technical gadgetry or make a new contact who might just be useful during a future investigation. If Patterson were sitting opposite him now, he would dismantle his boss’s theory, examine every small part of it individually, and then see if it still fitted together. If Patterson was sitting there, there’d already be at least five or six other theories lying on the table by now.
But Patterson wasn’t there—and Blackstone found himself missing the chubby sergeant more than he’d ever thought he would.
Eight
Ellie Carr did not see the point of re-fighting battles she had already won and, having proved to her own satisfaction that she would be served in the King Charles’s Arms whenever she wanted to be, she was quite content, that evening, to let Jed Trent go up to the bar and order the drinks.
Trent returned to the table with a pint for himself and a port and lemon for Ellie. He sat down, took a healthy swig of his beer, then said, ‘Have the powers-that-be decided whether to allow you to examine Lucy Stanford’s body yet?’
‘No, they haven’t,’ Ellie replied. ‘The local police surgeon isn’t very keen on the idea at all and is being very difficult about it. He claims that performing the autopsy is his job.’
‘And, strictly speaking, he’s right.’
‘Perhaps so. But the man’s a positive dodo, Jed. He might once have known his way around an autopsy table, but I doubt he’s opened a medical textbook in the last thirty years—and there’ve been a lot of significant advances in that time. So even if there is something to be learned from the body, I very much doubt that he’s the man to learn it.’
‘Still, if he doesn’t want you to...’
‘Superintendent Bullock’s arguing that I should be allowed to see it. And the superintendent can be very persuasive when he wants to be. In fact, I think he’s rather a good copper.’
‘And what’s this “good copper” doing about catching the murderer?’ Trent asked.
‘As far as I know, he’s following pretty much the same procedure as he has in all the other cases.’
‘So he’s putting all his faith in finding eyewitnesses?’
‘Yes.’
‘It didn’t work before,’ Trent pointed out.
‘I know that,’ Ellie agreed, ‘but what else can he do?’
‘Given the lack of any other evidence, probably not a great deal,’ Jed Trent conceded.
‘And it’s because the police are getting nowhere that it’s even more vital than ever that I’m given the opportunity to examine the body. Because I’m the only real hope.’
‘You always did have a high opinion of yourself, Dr Carr,’ Jed Trent said dryly. ‘What about the boy—the one Lucy Stanford was supposed to be sweet on?’
‘He’s gone missing. The local police are looking for him, but even if they find him, I can’t see he’ll have much to contribute.’
‘Unless he turns out to be the actual murderer himself.’
‘I don’t think he is, not for a second. He has no connection with the other dead girls and, from what Lucy’s mother said, he did seem to be genuinely fond of Lucy herself.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Trent agreed. ‘Chances are, he’ll turn out to be no more than another dead end.’
Ellie was thoughtfully silent for a moment, then she said, ‘Did you mean what you said about me having a high opinion of myself?’
‘I suppose I did.’
‘But is it justified?’
‘You sound a bit unsure of yourself all of a sudden,’ Jed said, surprised. ‘What’s brought that on?’
‘I’m always unsure of myself—though, to give myself due credit, I usually manage to hide it very well.’
‘Well, I’m blowed,’ Jed Trent said.
‘I’m working in a new field of science, and I’m making up half the rules as I go along,’ Ellie said earnestly. ‘Many of the people I have to deal with treat me as if I were some kind of witch doctor or circus freak. So sometimes I do have a crisis of confidence. Sometimes I do find myself wondering if a good percentage of the work I do is any more than mumbo-jumbo.’
‘I’d never have guessed.’
‘But I do respect your opinion, Jed. So tell me honestly: am I as good as I think I am?’
Jed Trent smiled at her fondly. ‘You’re better!’ he said. ‘You’re the best there is.’
Ellie breathed a sigh of relief ‘Thank
s, Jed,’ she said. ‘I really needed to hear that.’
*
Blackstone disliked the telephone almost as much as his chubby sergeant loved it, but there were times when it was necessary to put his prejudices against the infernal machine to one side and make use of it—and this call to London was one of those times.
Patterson came on to the line almost immediately. ‘It’s good to hear your voice, sir,’ he said.
And it was good to hear Archie’s, Blackstone thought, even if the sergeant’s was so crackly and metallic that it hardly sounded human.
‘I need some information,’ he told Patterson. ‘I doubt you’ll be able to provide it, but you’re the best shot at finding it that I’ve got.’
Patterson chuckled. ‘Best shot you’ve got? Then you’d better “fire away”, hadn’t you, sir?’
Blackstone grinned. He really did miss Patterson.
‘I’m interested in a man called Bickersdale, who seems to have spent a great deal of his adult life travelling abroad,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where you’ll need to go to find out about—’
‘Bickersdale?’ Patterson interrupted. ‘Lawrence Bickersdale?’
‘Yes, his first name is Lawrence,’ Blackstone said cautiously.
‘There’s a Lawrence Bickersdale who’s a bit of a legend among my pals at the Foreign Office,’ Patterson said, ‘but I don’t think they’ve heard much about him for the last two or three years.’
‘They won’t have,’ Blackstone told him. ‘What do they know about him before then?’
‘They’ve been tracking his movements all over the world for years. It became a sort of hobby for them—a bit like playing armchair detectives.’
‘Yes, but what did they tell you?’ Blackstone asked impatiently.
‘Bickersdale was particularly famous—or maybe I should say infamous—for what he did in Africa, while he was working as a mercenary in the Congo Free State, for King Leopold of the Belgians.’
‘Go on,’ Blackstone encouraged.
‘The natives used to call all the Europeans white devils—which is hardly surprising, considering the way they treated them—but according to my pals at the FO, Bickersdale was such a vicious, ruthless bastard that he was the White Devil.’
‘Did he have anything to do with the diamond trade?’
‘Not in the Congo, no. I don’t know if there are any diamonds there. But he may have been involved in diamond trading later, when he moved on.’
‘So what was he involved in while he was in the Congo?’
‘You name it, he probably did it. Slavery was big business, and so was ivory smuggling. And then there was the rubber harvesting.’
‘What about it?’
‘Rubber grows on vines there, and they used to force the natives to slash through the vines and lather themselves in rubber latex. Then, when the latex had dried, it would be scraped off them, which was a very painful process, because all their bodily hair would come with it.’
‘Yes, I can well imagine it would be painful,’ Blackstone said, grimacing slightly.
‘Still, at least the ones involved in rubber production got to stay alive as long as they were useful,’ Patterson continued, ‘which is more than you can say for a lot of other poor huggers. There’ve been literally millions of people killed out there, and my pals believe that Bickersdale’s probably responsible for quite a number of those deaths.’
‘If he is, however did he get away with it?’
‘Oh, that was easy enough. The Congo Free State is King Leopold’s personal property, and that means his word is law. If he doesn’t object to the natives being slaughtered—and he doesn’t, as long as it brings in the profits—there isn’t really much anybody else can do about it.’
‘If he is the same Bickersdale—and that seems very likely—then he’s an even nastier piece of work than I took him to be when I met him,’ Blackstone said thoughtfully.
‘Give me another day and I can probably find out a lot more about him for you,’ Patterson said.
‘Thanks. If you can find the time, I’d appreciate that,’ Blackstone said. ‘How are things back in the Smoke?’
‘The case I’m working on should be over in a day or two,’ Patterson told him. The sergeant hesitated for a second, then said, ‘I think I’m going to have to bend the rules if I want to see justice done.’
‘Bend them?’
‘Well, more like break them, actually.’
‘And why are you telling me this?’
‘I’m not quite sure,’ Patterson confessed. ‘Maybe I hoped that if I told you, you’d try to talk me out of it.’
‘But do you really want me to try and talk you out of it?’ Blackstone wondered.
‘No,’ Patterson replied. ‘Now that it’s coming up to the crunch, I don’t think I do. It seems to me that if I back out now, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.’
‘Then I’ve just one piece of advice for you,’ Blackstone said. ‘And what’s that?’
‘Be careful—and don’t get caught.’
‘You’re like a father to me,’ Patterson said, and even though his voice did still sound crackly and metallic, Blackstone could tell he was smiling.
‘A father would take you across his knees and give you a good tanning,’ Blackstone said. ‘But, strong as my knees are, they’d never be able to support a fat bugger like you.’
‘You can be very hurtful, sir,’ Patterson said, with mock-sorrow. ‘See you back in London.’
An unexpected shudder ran right through Blackstone’s whole body, as if a sudden dark shadow had fallen over him—or as if he had sensed someone walking over his grave.
‘I said, I’ll see you back in London, sir,’ Archie Patterson repeated. ‘Yes,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘I certainly hope you will.’
Nine
Mick Huggins had never been able to understand why—when he knew he could snap the man in two as easily as he could snap a twig—Mr Bickersdale managed to scare him quite so much. Even now, in the cabin of his own boat, where he should have felt in complete control of the situation, he was finding it hard to stand still under Bickersdale’s penetrating gaze.
‘What exactly did our friend, the revolting Horace, tell you?’ the mine-owner asked.
‘Beg pardon, Mr Bickersdale?’
‘What did Horace Crimp tell you, once he’d sprung you from the police holding cells?’
‘Oh, I see what you mean. He said I’d been a bloody idiot to get in a fight with that bobby.’
‘And so you have. Anything else?’
‘He said that there’d been talk of havin’ me bumped off.’ Huggins laughed uneasily. ‘But he was only kiddin’, wasn’t he, Mr Bickersdale?’
‘Was he?’ Bickersdale asked. ‘Do you remember what I told you about my time in the Congo Free State, Huggins?’
‘Most of it.’
‘Do you recall how I made sure that our native soldiers weren’t wasting bullets?’
Huggins shuddered. ‘Yes, I remember that bit, Mr Bickersdale.’
‘And does it strike you that a man capable of issuing that kind of order is also the kind of man who would make jokes about having people killed?’
‘No, Mr Bickersdale.’
The mine-owner nodded. ‘Good. Then we understand each other.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Did Crimp also mention that you should do everything you could to remain inconspicuous?’
‘Sorry?’
Bickersdale sighed heavily. ‘Did he tell you that you should keep your head down?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘That’s what I told him to tell you. That’s what I wanted you to do. But now, it seems, the situation has changed.’
‘Has it?’
‘Oh, yes indeed. I had hoped that your friend Inspector Blackstone would help me to find something of mine that has gone missing. But he hasn’t, which is very disappointing. And to make matters even worse, he appears to have become so suspicious of me that he actually paid me a visit
this afternoon. You don’t know why he did that, do you? You don’t know what it was that put him on to me?’
‘No, Mr Bickersdale, I don’t. I swear I don’t.’
‘And I believe you, Huggins. But the point is not so much how he found me, as that he has. And we just can’t afford to have him poking around—not with one shipment due to arrive in the next couple of days, and another shipment due out again almost immediately.’
‘You’re right, there, Mr Bickersdale,’ Mick Huggins said.
‘Of course I’m right,’ the mine-owner agreed. ‘If I could postpone the outward shipment, then I would, but our client is likely to turn very unpleasant if he doesn’t get the goods when he’s expecting them, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t like foreigners, so I wouldn’t know,’ Huggins said. Then, catching the glint in Bickersdale’s eye, he quickly added, ‘but I’m sure you’re as right about that, as you have been about everythin’ else.’
‘So if the mountain won’t go to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the mountain,’ Bickersdale said. He paused again. ‘You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?’
‘Course I do, Mr Bickersdale,’ Huggins said, unconvincingly. ‘It’s as clear as daylight.’
‘Let me put it another way that you might find easier to comprehend,’ Bickersdale said. ‘If we can’t stop the shipment when Blackstone’s here, then we’ll have to stop Blackstone being here when there’s a shipment.’
Huggins smiled, a process that involved revealing a row of crooked and broken teeth. ‘You want me to nobble him?’ he asked.
‘That’s about the long and short of it,’ Bickersdale agreed. ‘I’ll fix him so he won’t be able to walk for a month,’ Huggins promised.
Bickersdale frowned. ‘I’m afraid that simply won’t do,’ he said. ‘If we hurt him, we’ll only confirm his suspicions. I want the solution we employ to be more permanent.’
‘You want me to kill him?’
‘Exactly.’
Huggins smiled happily. ‘Will a razor job suit you?’ he asked. ‘Sneak up behind him an’ slit his throat?’
Blackstone and the Heart of Darkness Page 15