He looked older and frailer than Pyke remembered, his silver hair not quite as neat as it had been, his face thinner and his shoulders slightly hunched. But he moved across the room with a surprising grace and took Pyke’s hand, giving it a firm squeeze.
‘To what do I owe this pleasure, Detective Inspector?’ He smiled easily, as though he and Pyke were old friends.
‘I was hoping you could tell me about your relationship with Charles Harcourt Hogarth.’ Pyke looked into Palmer’s face. ‘He died a few weeks ago.’
Palmer’s expression didn’t change. ‘Do you mind telling me why you’d like to know this, Detective Inspector?’
‘We’re currently investigating a possible link between his death and the murder of Isaac Guppy.’
‘And what does this have to do with me?’ Palmer asked.
‘Well, for a start, I am right in thinking you knew Hogarth, aren’t I, sir?’
‘Hogarth was an alderman in the City Corporation. Inevitably our paths crossed from time to time.’
Pyke looked around the sparsely furnished, high-ceilinged room. ‘Was he involved with the London Churches Fund?’
‘No, he wasn’t,’ Palmer said, without having to think about it. ‘Why would you ask that, Detective Inspector?’
‘Guppy was, though, wasn’t he? I believe he held a relatively minor administrative role,’ Pyke said, remembering the words of the bishop.
‘I’m afraid I never met this man Guppy. I knew Hogarth slightly, although I still don’t understand why you felt it necessary to come to my house to ask me these questions.’
‘I’m told that you’re one of the leading figures in the London Churches Fund. Is that correct?’
‘I’ve played my own small part in bringing religious education to the darker quarters of the capital.’ Palmer gave a bright smile. ‘You still haven’t answered my question, Detective Inspector. I wouldn’t like to think I’m a suspect in some matter or another. For your sake as much as mine.’
Pyke frowned. ‘Why for my sake?’
Palmer went back to the window and almost put his face against the glass pane. ‘I’ve made it my business to amass a good number of friends in the New Police - an organisation for which I have a great deal of admiration. If I felt my reputation was being unfairly maligned, I would have to let one of my friends know, and I’m guessing they could make life very difficult for the person involved.’
Pyke looked down at the polished marble floor; he could almost see his reflection in it. Sensing he had to tread more carefully, he adopted an abject tone. ‘I didn’t mean to imply anything, Sir St John. I’m just making it my business to talk, discreetly and of course confidentially, to anyone who knew both Hogarth and Guppy.’
Palmer nodded firmly. ‘Just doing your job, eh? Well, I suppose I can’t object to that.’
Pyke took a few steps towards Palmer. Through the window, he could see the men patrolling the back of the house. ‘I’ve never heard of a building contractor having to be guarded by men armed with pistols. Tell me, is that normal in the circles you move in?’
For the first time, Pyke saw the faintest of cracks in Palmer’s façade. ‘What I do, sir, in the privacy of my own home, is none of your business.’
‘Perhaps you’re worried that someone might be intending to cause you harm. In which case, maybe we, as the Metropolitan Police, could be of some assistance?’ Pyke looked at the contractor and smiled.
Palmer’s response was interrupted as the butler opened the door and cleared his throat. ‘You wanted something, Sir St John?’
Palmer turned around and looked out on to his perfectly manicured lawn. ‘Please show the detective inspector to the front door.’
It was difficult to tell whether anything had been gained from the exchange with Palmer, and as Pyke travelled back into London, he thought about the older man’s threat to go over his head and wondered how Sir Richard Mayne would react to such an overture.
Turning his thoughts to Ebenezer Druitt, Pyke pondered something the felon had said during their last encounter, and he realised it needed further clarification. But when, about an hour later, he presented himself at the gates of the Model Prison, instead of leading him directly to the cells, the warder took him to the governor’s office and left him there without further explanation.
‘Ah, yes, this was highly unusual, highly unusual indeed,’ the governor said, once they were alone in his office. ‘The prisoner you wish to speak to has been transferred by order of the Home Office.’
‘Transferred where?’
‘I don’t know. The order didn’t say. The documentation was in order and I couldn’t very well say no. A carriage arrived for him yesterday. The documentation stated it was, and I quote, “in defence of the realm”.’
Pyke tried to swallow but his throat was suddenly bone dry. ‘You’ll have to take it up with the Home Office, Detective Inspector.’
‘I will,’ Pyke said, already halfway across the room. ‘Believe me, sir, I’ll do just that.’
‘Druitt’s been transferred to another location, on the orders of someone in the Home Office.’ Pyke had gone directly to Scotland Yard and found Walter Wells sitting alone in his office.
‘Really?’ Wells looked up at him and put down his pen. ‘Why?’
‘Someone suspects Druitt knows who our killer is and is using his political connections to try to force this information from him.’
‘But that kind of request would have to come from a fairly senior figure.’
‘I know.’ Pyke thought again about Palmer and his association with Mayne. ‘I’d like you to try to find out who gave it - and where Druitt has been taken.’
Wells drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘I’ll do what I can, old man. But I’m afraid my reach extends only so far.’
‘My guess is that someone in the Detective Branch passed this information about Druitt to Pierce, who went directly to the Home Office.’
That seemed to strike a chord. ‘I think I might have some information for you on that front. I was going to sit on it for a day, check it out for myself, but in the circumstances . . .’
Pyke felt his stomach tightening. ‘Sit on what?’
‘I have men loyal to me in Holborn Division; policemen who are close to Pierce. From time to time they hear things and pass them back to me.’
‘Go on.’
‘I had a visit from one such man earlier this afternoon. He told me the identity of Pierce’s source of information in the Branch.’
‘And?’
Wells shook his head and offered Pyke an apologetic look. ‘I’m sorry, Pyke. I know how much you like the man . . .’
Pyke followed Jack Whicher into the privy at the back of the station house and before the younger man had even realised there was someone behind him, Pyke had shoved him into the hut and bolted the door. It was damp and fetid and the stench rising up from the cesspit turned his stomach. As soon as Whicher turned around and saw him, saw the expression on his face, he knew. He didn’t even try to hide it. His shoulders slumped forward and his head fell, as though the scaffold that had been holding him up until this point had suddenly disintegrated.
‘I knew you’d find out sooner or later. If you can believe it, I wanted you to find out. At least now I don’t have to lie.’
Pyke swung his fist, felt it connect with the side of Whicher’s head. Whicher stumbled but didn’t fall.
‘Why, Jack?’
‘I could make it easy and say I despise you and the way you work.’ Whicher must have seen the hurt register in Pyke’s eyes because instinctively he flinched.
‘I just want to know, Jack. Is that the truth?’ Pyke was surprised at how badly he was taking the news, how much he’d come to like and respect Whicher.
‘Do you really want the truth?’ Whicher exhaled loudly, trying to pull himself together. ‘Do you want to know how my son died of cholera? How my wife went insane from the grief? Do you really want to know how this grief led her back to
the work she’d once done? How she turned her back on me and started to sleep with men for money? How a man, one of her customers, hit her in the face and how she retaliated with a pair of scissors? The madam sent for me, and in my panic, and because I trusted him at the time, I sent for Pierce. And he was brilliant. You should know that, too. Pierce took care of it: he paid off the madam, disposed of the body and had my wife admitted to a sanatorium.’
Pyke stood there, not sure what to say. What Whicher had told him had stripped him of his anger but it didn’t diminish the betrayal. ‘So you did what you did because you felt you owed him?’
‘I did what I did because he said he’d prosecute her and me if I didn’t.’ Whicher shook his head. ‘Pierce’s brilliance only lasted until you arrived at the department. Then he wanted his pound of flesh. The quid pro quo for his silence was for me to keep him abreast of all the occurrences in the Branch.’
‘But from what you’ve told me, he’s just as implicated as you.’
They stood for a moment or two, each contemplating the other, the damage that had been done. Pyke pursed his lips. He knew what the clever thing to do would be: keep Whicher close at hand and have him pass on false information to Pierce. But he felt so betrayed by the man, he couldn’t stand the thought of being in the same room as him. ‘I accept your explanation, Detective Sergeant, but I want you out of the Detective Branch immediately. You’ll go and see the acting superintendent in the morning and you’ll ask for an immediate transfer back to uniform. I’ll see that the request is approved. I’ll also make sure that nothing of what you told me ever comes to light.’
Whicher cast his head down and nodded. He had already accepted his fate. ‘You may not believe it, Pyke, but I’ve always liked you, as a detective and a man.’
Pyke kicked open the privy door and cleared a path for him. ‘Now get out of my sight. I never want to see you again.’
For most people, violence was an abstraction; it was something that happened in other parts of the city; a product of poverty and despair. It was what happened when the poorest of the poor were forced to live cheek by jowl and fight for the crumbs brushed off the rich man’s table, crumbs that meant the difference between life and death. The truth was that violence, the kind that came from the blackest place in the heart, couldn’t be explained in such simple terms.
Pyke was waiting for Benedict Pierce on the pavement outside the Bow Street station house. He made no effort to conceal his presence and Pierce saw him almost as soon as he’d stepped out of the building. But instead of standing there, Pyke darted into one of the alleyways that ran perpendicular to Bow Street. At first, he didn’t think that Pierce was going to follow him. He must have counted to thirty before he saw the superintendent’s silhouette in the dark mouth of the alleyway. In the end, hubris had got the better of him, as Pyke had been certain it would. Perhaps he was curious, too. He saw Pyke in the shadows and flashed a crooked smile. He didn’t see what was coming; Pyke waited until Pierce was almost next to him before he made his move.
Afterwards, Pyke wasn’t sure whether he’d ever intended to try to talk to Pierce. It wasn’t until he drove his fist deep into the upper reaches of Pierce’s stomach that he realised how deeply Whicher’s betrayal, and Pierce’s part in it, had wounded him. Pyke saw Pierce’s mouth flop open. He swung his fist again and landed a blow on Pierce’s chin and felt it shatter, then another to the side of Pierce’s head, an arch of blood splattering the sleeve of his coat. Pierce coughed, trying to catch his breath as a spool of saliva dribbled from his mouth. He tried to back away but Pyke caught his head in an armlock and punched him in the nose with his other hand. It was as though a gale were blowing in Pyke’s ears and everything he saw had a red hue. Swinging Pierce around, Pyke smashed his skull into the brick wall and then stepped back and lifted him up off his feet with a combination of punches. Too far gone to stop, he allowed Pierce to slither on to the wet ground and kicked him so hard in the stomach that the man vomited blood. Benedict Pierce was no longer moving, a near-silent groan from his face-down body the only indication that he was, in fact, alive. And suddenly Pyke was sickened by what he’d just done.
The first gin barely touched the sides of his throat. He stood at the counter and ordered two more, and then two more again. In the yard he had run cold water over his hands, washing the blood from his knuckles. Later, around midnight, when he could no longer talk without slurring or walk in a straight line, the landlord threw him out and he wandered aimlessly for another hour, the wind and the rain sobering him up a little. He’d taken his first drink in the Green Dragon on the Strand. At two o’clock in the morning, he found himself standing on the street in Soho where Sarah Scott had taken a room, not even sure how he’d managed to find his way there. When he banged on her door, it took her a few minutes to answer it and she did so only after he’d identified himself. She had been sleeping; her hair was unkempt and she could barely open her eyes.
‘You’d better come in,’ she said, assessing him coolly, perhaps smelling the gin on his breath.
The room was as Pyke remembered it: small, frugal, unfurnished. There were no chairs, just a flock mattress that took up most of the floor space. Sarah had already seen his bruised knuckles. Pyke went to embrace her but she pushed him away. The room started to spin.
‘Who did you fight?’ Sarah asked, gesturing at his fists.
‘A superintendent. I did most of the fighting.’
She gave him a quizzical stare. ‘Won’t that get you into trouble?’
Pyke hadn’t really thought about the consequences of his actions, but he didn’t believe that Pierce would come at him through official channels. It struck him then that he should have finished the man off. Now he was injured and humiliated, Pierce was an even more dangerous adversary.
‘What did he do to you?’
‘It’s a long story.’ Pyke looked around the small room. ‘Have you got any gin?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’ Sarah rubbed her eyes and yawned. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t offer you a thing.’
‘How was the inquest?’
‘Short and to the point. Brendan died by his own hand - an overdose of Prussian acid. It’s the funeral that’s proving to be a problem. The Catholic Church doesn’t want to have anything to do with him.’
‘I tried to see Druitt today. He’d been moved to a secret location by order of the Home Office.’
Pyke wanted to assess her reaction but all the gin he’d drunk had blurred his vision and he couldn’t tell whether Sarah was concerned or upset by this news. She just folded her arms and said, ‘Is that what you came here at two in the morning to tell me?’
‘Someone else thinks Druitt knows who’s been killing these men. They’re going to try and force the information out of him.’
‘And am I supposed to feel sorry for him?’
Pyke’s mouth felt as if all of the moisture had been leached from it. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned him. I’m sorry.’
Sarah cupped Pyke’s face in her hands. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way but I think you should go . . .’
Up close he could smell the perfume on her skin. He wanted to tell her that he needed to be with someone, that he needed to be with her, that he wanted to fall asleep next to her, feeling her warmth on his skin.
She tilted her head upwards and pecked him on the cheek ‘ . . . before one of us says something we might regret in the morning.’
The following day was a Sunday and Pyke staggered from his bed, reached blindly for the commode and emptied the contents of his stomach into the bowl. He splashed his face with cold water and dressed quickly, trying to ignore his shaking fingers and the foul taste in his mouth. Downstairs, Felix had made his own breakfast - Mrs Booth had Sundays off - and was eating it in the living room.
‘Have you arrested Palmer yet?’ Felix looked up hopefully from the bowl of porridge on his lap.
‘I don’t even know for sure if he’s done anything wrong.’
‘Then why did you tell me I’d broken the investigation wide open?’
Pyke put his hand to his temple. ‘Not now, please. Let me make myself some coffee.’
‘I just thought that since we . . .’
‘Not now, all right,’ Pyke snapped.
Felix shovelled a spoonful of porridge into his mouth and looked out of the window. ‘I’m going to St Matthew’s today. I was there yesterday and the day before. Not that you would know. I heard you come in last night about three. The night before that you didn’t come home at all.’
Pyke saw how badly he’d failed the lad and how much he must miss Godfrey’s steady hand. He was about to apologise when Felix said, ‘Mr Leech knocked on the door earlier. I’m surprised you didn’t hear him. It seems one of the pigs has escaped again and is stuck in his garden. I said I’d pass on the message. He wasn’t very happy.’
The Detective Branch Page 30