Blackstone and the Heart of Darkness

by Sally Spencer

  Watkins glanced up at the clock on the wall. ‘But the salt must almost be coming to the boil by now.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And if I take the men away from the pan, then the batch could well be ruined.’

  ‘It probably will be,’ Bickersdale agreed. ‘But I don’t care. I value that tie-pin more than I value anything else in the world, and I want it back now. So either you summon the men immediately, or I will call the police. And if there’s one thing you can be certain of, it is that a full-scale police search will damage production a great deal more than leaving a pan unattended for a few minutes.’

  The manager sighed. ‘I’ll have the men sent for right away,’ he said defeatedly.

  A ghost of a smile flickered on Bickersdale’s lips for a moment, and then was gone.

  What a fool Blackstone was, he thought. Did the inspector really think that after the conversation they’d had the previous day he would be allowed to roam around Marston as he pleased? Could he possibly believe that the man he was spying on—the man he was determined to destroy—would have missed spotting him crouched behind the ash cans? And didn’t it occur to him—even for a second—that he might soon be walking into a trap?

  The man was an amateur. A bungler. He wouldn’t have survived for an hour in the Congo Free State. And, as a matter of fact, he wasn’t due to survive for another hour in Marston, either.

  *

  Superintendent Bullock was not at all surprised when Jamie Green turned out to be a strikingly handsome boy, because Mrs Stanford had already told him that was the case. What did surprise him was just how young Jamie looked, for though he said that he was seventeen, he could easily have been taken for at least two years younger.

  ‘Why did you run away, Jamie?’ the superintendent asked.

  ‘I got scared,’ the boy replied. ‘I thought you’d be certain to blame Lucy’s death on me. But running away was the act of a coward! And a fool!’

  ‘Or a guilty man,’ Bullock pointed out.

  ‘If I’d only stopped to think for a minute, I’d have seen that it doesn’t matter what you believe,’ Jamie continued, and it was clear that he either hadn’t heard what Bullock said or didn’t care. ‘It doesn’t matter if I’m tried for murder and hanged—because now that Lucy’s dead, I don’t want to go on living anyway.’

  There was an intensity and tragedy to his voice, and though Bullock wasn’t sure that he wanted to believe him, he discovered that he already did.

  ‘You must have really loved the girl,’ the superintendent heard himself say.

  A tear trickled down Jamie’s cheek. ‘I did love her,’ he said. ‘And she loved me.’

  ‘But you must surely have known that you couldn’t possibly have had a future together. You’re just a groom. You could never have kept Lucy in the style to which she was accustomed.’

  ‘She didn’t care about living in style. All she wanted was to be with me for ever.’

  ‘But didn’t you realize that her parents would never accept it, however much their daughter wanted them to?’

  ‘I did. I wanted us to run away together straight away. But Lucy thought she could talk them round. If she’d...If she’d listened to me, she wouldn’t be dead now. Why didn’t I try harder to persuade her?’

  ‘You can’t blame yourself,’ Bullock said.

  ‘But I do,’ the boy told him.

  ‘How often have you seen her since you gave up your job in London and came back here?’

  ‘Most days. She would manage to find some excuse to slip away, so that we could we have a few precious minutes together.’ Jamie paused. ‘Did her mother and father know I’d come back?’

  ‘Her mother did. She saw you from her carriage window, when she was driving through the town. But her father had no idea you’d returned.’

  ‘Then Lucy must have been wrong.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘For the last two or three days she thought that there was somebody watching her.’

  ‘Did she have any idea who it might have been?’

  ‘She thought it might have been a private detective, hired by her father. But if her father didn’t know, it couldn’t have been that.’

  ‘Perhaps her mother...’

  ‘Mrs Stanford would never have had her watched.’

  ‘Did Lucy happen to catch sight of this person she thought was watching her?’

  Jamie shook his head. ‘No, she didn’t see anybody. It was just a feeling that she had, and she must have been wrong.’ A look of sudden horror appeared on the boy’s face. ‘Unless...’ he gasped.

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Unless the man who was watching her was her killer! Do you think that’s possible?’

  Bullock nodded gravely. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think that’s more than possible.’

  *

  The man walking towards the Number One Pan was wearing a suit that had been the latest fashion among the gentry four or five years earlier, and had a bowler hat—rather than a flat cap—perched on his head. When he reached the pan, he opened the door and stepped inside.

  A foreman, doing his routine daily rounds, Blackstone assumed, from his hiding place behind the ash cans.

  It took less than a minute for the inspector’s assumption to be proved false. The foreman emerged again, and he was not alone. Following at his heel were the wallers and lump-men who had been working on Number One Pan. They looked ill at ease, but not guilty—as if they were about to be accused of something they hadn’t done but thought it likely they would be convicted anyway.

  The procession made its way towards the manager’s office. The pan they had been working on—the pan that Bickersdale had visited only a few minutes earlier—was now completely deserted.

  This was the kind of lucky break he had been hoping for, but never expected to get, Blackstone told himself, as he broke cover and walked quickly towards the double doors of Number One Pan.

  *

  Mick Huggins was hiding behind a wall of salt blocks in the store room just beyond the Number One Pan, and when he heard the doors to the pan swing open, he began to suspect that the moment for which he had been waiting for over two hours had finally arrived.

  Huggins shifted position. Earlier he had shaved the corner off one of the blocks of salt and, looking through the gap he had created, he could see a tall, thin figure shrouded by steam.

  So Blackstone really had come! Just as Mr Bickersdale had always maintained that he would!

  Huggins shook his head in silent admiration of his boss. Bickersdale was the smartest man he had ever met, he thought, and this racket was the smartest one he had ever heard of. Nobody but Mr Bickersdale could have come up with the idea. Nobody but he could have supervised it with such ruthless efficiency. He didn’t think twice about killing when he felt that killing was required. The man had ice in his veins and Huggins had come to regard him as an almost godlike figure.

  The tall thin man shrouded in the steam looked briefly at the pan itself, then turned his attention to the salt moulds that had just been filled. Soon he would widen his search. Soon he would come into the salt store, with not the slightest idea of what was waiting for him there.

  Mick Huggins smiled. He remembered how exuberant he’d felt after raping the young girl he had met quite by chance, and how he’d thought that beating up a hapless stranger in the Hanging Tree would be a perfect way to round off a very pleasurable morning.

  It had been a mistake to pick Blackstone as his target. Blackstone had spoiled it all by fighting back, and now he had to pay the price.

  But this encounter would be different from the last one. This time, when he struck, Blackstone would not even see it coming—would know nothing at all until he started to feel a pain worse than anything he could ever have possibly imagined.

  Two

  Blackstone stood next to the steaming brine pan. His eyes were closed and his mind was firmly fixed on reconstructing the sequence of events that had probably occurr
ed in the pan some fifteen minutes before he had entered it himself:

  Bickersdale arrives with a packet of stolen jewels—possibly already wrapped in oil-cloth—in his jacket pocket.

  He probably invents some reason for being there, but he has no real need to, because he is a shareholder, and he can go where he likes.

  He finds an excuse to detach one of the men—his man on the inside—from the rest of the workers, and. when he is sure they are not being observed, he slips the package to him.

  And what does the man do with it?

  Slips it straight into a mould of hardening salt?

  No! The risk is too great. Bickersdale’s unexpected visit will have set the other workers on edge, and nervous men notice things. Far better then to wait until later, when all the other men have relaxed again, or else are distracted by something else.

  So what is Bickersdale’s man to do with the contraband until the right opportunity arises?

  He will have to hide it. And where else would he hide it but in the salt store next to the pan—a store which is already crammed full with thousands of. blocks of salt, and where, unless you were actually looking for it, a small package will go unnoticed?

  Blackstone opened his eyes again, smiled triumphantly to himself, and headed in the direction of the salt store.

  He should have stopped and asked himself why it had all been so easy...should have wondered why Bickersdale had delivered the jewels himself, when he could just as easily have sent one of his underlings to do it...should have questioned the fact that the men had left the pan just at the right moment for him, even though the brine needed their attention.

  He should have asked all this, but he was so pleased to have got a lucky break that he didn’t.

  And when the blow fell, he never even saw it coming.

  *

  The phone that had been sitting silently at the corner of Archie Patterson’s desk suddenly began to ring, and Patterson felt his heart miss a beat, because this was the special phone—the one that connected him with the madam of the brothel, and only with the madam of the brothel.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, answering the phone in a slightly effeminate squeak, very different from his normal rich, nasal tone.

  ‘I have a message for that fat friend of yours, the one who dotes on his sister,’ said a harsh female voice on the other end of the line.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You’re to tell him that the dress he ordered for his darling sister has finally arrived, and that he should pick it up some time today.’

  ‘Good. I’m sure he’ll be very pleased.’

  ‘I’ll bet he will!’ The madam laughed, lasciviously. ‘I’ll bet he’s just bursting to see it—if you know what I mean!’

  ‘No,’ Patterson said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Well, ain’t you the little innocent?’ the madam said scornfully. ‘Anyway, make sure you tell him that dresses like this one are very much in demand, and if he doesn’t pick it up today, I’ll sell it to somebody else, and he’ll lose his deposit. Have you got that?’

  ‘I’ve got it.’

  ‘That’s what he’s hoping—to get it!’ the madam cackled, and then the line went dead.

  Patterson hung up the phone. So she’d procured the girl for him, just as she’d promised. Then it was about time that he paid Gabriel Moore another visit.

  *

  Blackstone’s head was pounding like a bass drum, but he knew he couldn’t afford to waste any time thinking about that now, because there were other, more urgent matters he had to worry about. He was sure he was moving, but equally sure that he was not doing it of his own volition.

  His trunk was pressed up against something hard and muscular, but his head seemed to be upside down and lolling from side to side. His legs, too, seemed to be floating—and there was a hand holding those legs in place that did not belong to him.

  ‘It’s a pity you’re asleep, you bastard,’ he heard a rough voice say from somewhere close to his ear. ‘I’d have been happier to have you awake when you took your hot bath—so you could have appreciated it more.’

  He was being carried, he told himself. He was on somebody’s shoulders and he was being carried.

  He was glad he’d worked that out, but now he found himself wondering why the air was so steamy. What were you doing just before you blacked out? he asked himself Concentrate! Try to remember!

  He’d been in the Number One Pan—that was where the steam was coming from!—and he’d been about to enter the salt store. And then what had happened?

  ‘A lovely hot bath!’ crooned the voice.

  Blackstone opened his eyes and—because his head was still hanging down—found himself looking at the floor of the salt pan. And beyond that, he saw the edge of the pan itself.

  The man who was carrying him came to a halt. And suddenly Blackstone was being lifted clear of the shoulders and held high in the air.

  ‘You’re heavier than you look, copper,’ Mick Huggins said. ‘Still, I reckon I can hurl you to near the middle of the pan.’

  He let his arms slope backwards slightly, to give his throw more momentum. As he tensed himself, Blackstone came to life, twisting violently and propelling himself away from the pan. Blackstone hit the wall with a sickening thud, then slid down on to the floor. He was completely winded, and for the next few seconds he knew that he would be out of action, however much he fought against it.

  If Mick Huggins came at him again, he realized, he was finished. But Huggins was having problems of his own. The force that Blackstone had used to throw himself clear had knocked the narrowboat man completely off balance, and he stood teetering at the edge of the pan. For a moment it looked as if he might be able to right himself; then he stumbled and fell head first into the bubbling brine.

  Blackstone struggled to his feet and hobbled over to the pan. Huggins had somehow managed to turn himself over so that he was on his back, but the excruciating pain had quickly overcome him, and now he could do no more than scream in agony.

  Blackstone reached into the pan, grabbed hold of Huggins’s jacket, and pulled him towards the edge.

  Huggins didn’t try to fight him, but he wasn’t helping either. He probably didn’t even know where he was. The pain was all he could think about. The pain was all that existed in the whole world.

  Now that Huggins was close to the side, Blackstone could get a double-handed grip on the jacket. Spots of brine splashed on to his hands as he pulled. It hurt like hell, but it was nothing to what Huggins must be feeling.

  He heaved the man who had just tried to kill him out of the pan and lowered him to the floor.

  Huggins was in a frightful state. There was not an inch of his visible skin which was not blistered, and though his eyes were open, they were sightless. Yet from somewhere deep inside himself he was still finding the strength to continue to roar in agony.

  Three

  Elven for a hardened ex-copper like Jed Trent, observing the autopsy on Lucy Stanford had been a strain—so much of a strain, in fact, that halfway through the procedure he had been overtaken by an irresistible urge to head for the nearest pub and swallow a couple of large brandies. When he returned to the police morgue, Ellie Carr had completed her work but was still standing next to the marble slab, staring down at the corpse.

  ‘Any luck?’ Trent asked.

  Ellie looked up at him. ‘Luck?’ she repeated, and he could see from the expression on her face that she was both mystified and troubled.

  ‘What I meant to say was, have you found anything that might get us closer to catching the bastard who did this?’ Trent amplified.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ellie admitted. ‘But I’ve certainly discovered a couple of things which are rather puzzling.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, for a start, there’s the state of her skin. It’s obviously been very well cared for recently, but, even so, it still feels rougher than I’d have expected it to, given her privileg
ed background.’

  This was no time for humour—Jed Trent understood that—but he still couldn’t stop himself from chuckling.

  ‘Have I said something funny?’ Ellie asked sharply.

  ‘It’s not so much what you said as the assumptions that lie behind it,’ Trent told her. ‘To be honest, I think you’ve been reading too many of those romantic novels, Dr Carr.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You know the sorts of books I mean—the ones in which the heroes who are nearly always lords—have strong, manly jaws. And the heroines—who are never anything but ladies—have skin as soft as silk, and as fresh as the morning dew. Don’t pretend you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, Dr Carr. You’re a woman, and all women read that sort of tosh from time to time.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, this woman doesn’t,’ Ellie said, sounding prim—and perhaps a little guilty. ‘I’m far too busy, and I confine my reading to serious medical textbooks.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ Trent said, disbelievingly. ‘But the point is that, however the aristocracy are described in flowery books like that, you’ve no reason to assume that they’re any different from the rest of us. They have bad teeth and bunions, just like we do.’

  ‘But not quite as often, and usually not quite as extreme,’ Ellie said thoughtfully. ‘Besides, why—after she’s neglected it for so long—should she suddenly start taking better care of her skin?’

  Jed chuckled again, even though he had the grace to look shame-faced immediately the chuckle had subsided. ‘You need to spend less time with dead people and more time with live ones,’ he said. ‘If you got out more, you wouldn’t be so mystified by something that seems perfectly normal to me.’

  ‘Would you care to explain?’

  ‘Willingly. She probably started taking more pride in her appearance for the same reason that most women do.’

  ‘Because she’d read too much romantic tosh?’

  ‘No! Because she’d found the real thing. Because she’d got herself a man—this Jamie Green bloke.’

  ‘You may possibly be right,’ Ellie said, though she did not sound entirely convinced. She paused for a moment. ‘The other thing that’s got me perplexed is the contents of her stomach.’