Craddock

by Paul Finch

  Craddock puffed on his cigar. “Fellow named Krueger. He’s a Boer, apparently. Don’t like the look of him at all … nasty, sneering sort.”

  “First time I’ve ever come across a man of the cloth who needed a bodyguard.”

  Craddock took a sip of malt. “He isn’t a bodyguard as such … more a man-servant. Brutal-looking bugger for all that.

  “So … what do we think?”

  “Not sure. Tomorrow morning I’m off to Top Lock.”

  Munro glanced up. “Is that wise?”

  Craddock shrugged. It had been four years now, but both of them still had painfully fresh memories of the strike and the violent disturbances on the brow of No. 9 colliery, Top Lock. The masters were callously casual when it came to announcing planned pit-closures because seams were worked-out – especially when everyone knew that the seams weren’t actually worked-out at all, but that, with the new laws on ventilation and lighting, deeper delving was now a costly enterprise. Sympathetic as the borough police might have been to the redundant workers – and they were sympathetic, for many of the constables had friends and relatives in the mining trade – it was still their duty to contain any demonstration, and angry confrontations had occurred at Top Lock, with several injured on both sides.

  “There can’t be any place in this borough where folk mustn’t go,” Craddock said. “And broken fences need to get mended.”

  “You rather than me,” Munro replied.

  “You’ll have other things to do … rounding up the market pickpockets, for example.”

  Munro nodded. “Four of the morning shift are coming on early and in plain dress. We’ll be ready.”

  “Remember Jack, this time we want evidence for full convictions. Thrashing the little blighters doesn’t seem to have made a jot of difference.”

  At Top Lock, five rows of back-to-back terraces occupied a barren, clinker-strewn patch of spoil-land. Conditions up there had always been hard. Latrines shared by seven or more families, communal yards in which all manner of scabby, scrawny animals were kept, water-pumps which drew on wells contaminated by leakages from adjacent septic-tanks – all of this made for appalling sanitation. The houses themselves were of the poorest stock: narrow, airless, damp from floor to roof, with weak foundations connecting to underground ventilation-shafts, and thus allowing access to all manner of vermin. This had been the case when the pit – five minutes walk over the brow – had been a hive of bustling activity, when the Top Lock slum had been occupied by official employees of Messrs. Byrtle & Son, the masters and excavators of No. 9 Colliery, who also happened to own and, according to contract at least, had promised to maintain the properties. However, since Messrs. Byrtle & Son had moved on, abandoning Top Lock altogether, the crumbling houses had gone totally to rack and ruin, and the company shop, which although expensive, had once provided for all needs in the small community, had been closed and left derelict.

  Not that the shop, even in these dire days, was ever empty, Major Craddock thought, as he walked his horse towards the miserable end-terrace where it was located. Those strong enough to trudge several miles both to and from their ten hours at forge, furnace or coal-face, would be absent at this hour – mid-morning on a dank, foggy October day – which left only the old and infirm and destitute. They might sleep free-of-charge in the rotted hulks of their former homes, with only rats for company, but the bulk of the daylight hours were usually spent in the waiting-area of the company shop, where at least there was space enough to huddle together and a large chimney-grate where a single bag of hand-picked coal could blaze away and provide warmth for all.

  As Craddock approached, a tall, ragged man, with a mop of white hair but a face and vest blackened by coal-dust, stood in the doorway, sorting through a sack. Craddock recognised him immediately. He was William Childs, elder brother of the prisoner Thomas. William now worked at the Makerfield collieries, but was a night-man, and here calling at the company shop to settle his aged mother for the day. On seeing the police chief, his dirty face cracked into a menacing frown.

  “Come to see how we’re coping, major?” he asked. “After you and your men helped Byrtle & Son break our backs for us?”

  Craddock dismounted. “What’s this struggle between yourselves and Reverend Pettigrew?”

  The miner seemed shaken by the directness of the question. Instead of replying, he hawked and spat on the floor, then hauled his sack into the shop. Craddock tethered his horse to a broken drainpipe, and followed. Inside, tattered wrecks of people occupied every cramped space: the aged, the twitching, the lame. Wooden slats had been nailed ineffectually across the broken window, but there was a foul odour of mildew; Craddock wasn’t sure if it came from the decayed rafters above, or the people sheltering under them. William Childs was now kneeling by a cast-iron skillet, which he was filling with coal from the sack.

  “Well?” the major asked him.

  “There’s no bloody struggle,” Childs replied irritably.

  “I see.” Craddock walked over and took tight hold of the sack. “And, just out of interest, where have you got this from?”

  Childs rose slowly to his feet. Even under the pit-dirt, he’d paled a little. “You wouldn’t take a man for picking coal, major? Not when the masters themselves don’t want it?”

  Craddock kept hold of the sack. “A few years ago, men were transported for less.”

  They exchanged stares, the surly old miner probably realising that Major Craddock, for all his army manners and gruff exterior, was one of the more enlightened authorities in the town, but knowing full well that he could be flint-hard when the need arose.

  “Of course,” Craddock added, “if it was the case that I was too busy in conversation with someone like yourself, say … discussing an issue of great interest to me, I might not notice your pilfering.”

  He released the sack, and beat his gloved hands together

  Grudgingly, Childs nodded towards the doorway. Together, they left the building.

  “Like I say,” Childs said when they got outside, “there isn’t no strife between us and Pettigrew … ’cept he considers all union men heathens, damned to Hell.”

  “If it’s any consolation, he feels the same way about me,” Craddock replied.

  “Well he’s frightened of you, like as not. And so he should be.”

  “Why?”

  Childs seemed to struggle before answering. “It’s … all talk, that’s it … just talk.”

  “And talk is cheap. So out with it.”

  “If you must know …” Childs nodded towards the distant edifice of the pithead, “it’s the old mine. Folk reckon there’s something odd happening over there … something ghostly, like.”

  Craddock didn’t flinch. “Go on.”

  “There’s been disturbances … you know, noises.”

  “Noises?”

  “Screams, like.”

  “Screams?”

  Childs was growing uncomfortable under the major’s intense gaze. “Aye, at night, now and then.”

  “And you’ve never reported it to the police?”

  “What, so you lot can come and laugh at us, and maybe rough us up a bit more?”

  “But if someone was being attacked?”

  “Behave!” Childs interrupted. “It’s folk stories, isn’t it? With all the lads we have killed and maimed underground, every pit-brow has its boggart.”

  “Has anyone seen anything, been hurt?”

  Childs became thoughtful. The tone of his voice lowered. “Well that’s just it. Not really. Least, not ’til recent. My nephew Fred, Tom’s lad. He went missing.”

  “When?”

  “Three days back.”

  “And how old is he?”

  “Twelve next June.”

  “You know, for all your principles, you really should have reported this.”

  Childs shrugged. “We’re always made do without your lot. Besides, there’s lads younger’n him take themselves off to find work and board. Since
the pit was closed, every man on the Lock has to slog three miles or more to earn a day’s pay. Some of ’em only come home Sundays.”

  “You think this is what young Fred’s done?”

  “I don’t know. But he’s old enough to know his own mind. Lord ’elp us, I was cutting coal myself at five years old.”

  “And what’s this got to do with Reverend Pettigrew?”

  Childs thought before answering. “It’s not so much him as this fella of his. This Krueger bloke. He hangs around the pit for no good reason, always keeping watch like, seeing folk off if they stray too near.”

  “And your brother thinks Krueger has something to do with the boy’s disappearance?”

  “Well put it this way, Tom didn’t reckon it would do any harm to ask.”

  Craddock pondered. He only knew the man Krueger because he’d seen him in the town centre with Martha Pettigrew, the reverend’s wife, buying supplies. He was a burly, menacing sort, with a jet-black beard and eyes like chips of tar. The smart suits and big watch-chain he always sported did nothing to soften the hard outline of his physique, or dilute his brooding aura. As far as Craddock was aware, Krueger was a relative newcomer to the district. The Pettigrews had only been back from Africa three years or so, and Krueger had returned with them. By all accounts, he’d proved an indispensable guide and protector out in the wilds of Bechuanaland, and had signed on to serve the family for the remainder of his life. He was the only servant they kept, though he apparently spent more time prowling on the pit-brow than working in the tall, gloomy vicarage on the far side of it.

  “Your brother should still have come to me first,” Craddock said.

  “That isn’t Tom’s way. And you, better than anyone, ought to understand that, major.”

  Craddock did understand. He and the majority of his small police force, nearly all former dragoons, had served together in northern India, at times in the face of the entire Sikh nation. It had been an unremitting tale of heat, dust, battle and besiegement. Returning to civilian life had been a daunting and difficult experience for them, especially as this new uniformed service required tolerance and understanding as well as firmness and authority. Thomas Childs would have had similar difficulty readjusting after the bloodbath of the Crimea, though he of course would have had to deal with it alone.

  Craddock untethered his horse. “I’ll have notices posted for the boy. Has he any distinctive features?”

  Childs shrugged. “Carrot-red hair, freckles, nasty harelip. But major, I can feel it in my bones … you’ll play hell getting him found.”

  Craddock climbed into his saddle. “Only if I have to.”

  (iii) Loxosceles symptoms are among the most horrible. Creeping blisters will initially appear around the point of entry, causing open and running sores, which may take several days to heal. Clinical manifestations include agonising pain, which victims have likened to branding or exposure to hot coals, and systemic viscerocutaneous disease, which is characterized by jaundice, extreme bouts of fever, a browning or bloodying of the urine and eventual renal collapse. Death is not certain, but highly likely.

  An ashen track led into the colliery ruins. Everything along it was rusted, broken, fallen into pieces. The wooden sheds on the railways sidings were charcoal skeletons, their roofs hanging in, their bellies filled with thorns and bracken.

  It was still an awesome place, Craddock thought, as he strolled through it.

  In the narrow cindery ways between the buildings, the bones of old machinery lay in jagged hulks of metal buried deep in nettles. The cobbled forecourt at the front of the winding-house was riddled with cracks and thickly mossed over. The great monument of the pithead itself towered overhead, its massive fly-wheels corroded into place. The doors to the pithead offices had once been fastened with padlocks, but were now broken open, the empty spaces inside stuffed with rubbish. The once-teeming workshops were gaunt, gutted, silent – their floors awash with dirty rainwater, bats roosting in their attics.

  As Craddock stood on the forecourt, a faint, cold breeze ruffled his hair.

  Even he, raised with a silver spoon in his mouth compared to the Wigan colliers, was a born and bred Lancashire man, and could not fail to be moved by the sense of loss and desolation in this place. He set off down another alley, feeling deeply more moved by it than he could say. It was true, he and his men and had been greeted here with rocks, staves and nails twisted together into homemade grenades, though perhaps it had been understandable. At the end of the day, jobs were jobs – and memories died hard in the industrial heartlands of Britain. It was less than fifty years since the Manchester Yeomanry had charged a peaceful mass-meeting of cotton folk at Peter’s Field in Manchester, killing eleven; it was less than thirty since redcoats had opened fire on Welsh iron-workers during the Newport protests, dropping dozens of them. And weren’t Major Craddock and his men redcoats as such – in a different uniform?

  The atmosphere was almost too tragic to be frightening. But not completely so.

  As he wandered among the shambling buildings, it struck him as perfectly natural that something evil might be lurking here. The dereliction was so total it was ghostly. There were many recesses, many dark places. There was an awful silence too, as though the birds wouldn’t sing, as though the ground itself was desecrated. Beyond the central complex, Craddock found rusted railway lines leading away to a covered area full of shadows so inky they simply forbade entry. Above his head, the clouds were suddenly racing. Yet there was no real wind.

  He set off determinedly. He’d left his horse at the gates, and was now ready to get back to it. At times, even the company of a dumb brute was preferable to no company at all. Yet as he walked, the pitter-patter of tiny feet seemed to come from somewhere close by, as if someone was stalking him, or perhaps something, because, now that he listened to the noise, it seemed crazier, more hurried; not the steady progress of a two-footed creature. He glanced round, expecting to see an animal of some sort, and saw nothing save empty passageways and broken windows. He continued to walk. The thought was ridiculous of course; aside from the odd stray dog, the raped landscapes of these pit-brows were no place for any kind of beast. For all that, he was growing tense. He no longer felt alone, and was more than relieved to finally re-emerge onto the forecourt and set off down the main drive towards the gates. But even then it was a walk of several hundred yards, and every inch of the way he was aware of the grim waste surrounding himr. He wondered what he would see if he looked round again. Was that still the sound of those pitter-pattering feet weaving a drunken path right up to his exposed back?

  He kept a calm, measured pace. It was the old thing – policemen were only human, and suffered the same fears as everyone else. The fact that they weren’t supposed to didn’t matter a damn. The one thing they had to avoid was showing those fears. That was why Craddock continued walking in idle fashion; that was why he refused to stop and turn around – even though the could now hear the creaking of the pithead machinery, could hear the distant whistle of a steam engine pulling over the wasteland on rails that were rusted and broken.

  He was almost at the gate, and counting the yards he had left. Thirty, perhaps forty – it suddenly seemed a long way. As a combat soldier, he’d developed a crucial ability to sense when something was going on behind him. It was working overtime at this moment. He imagined the whole pit coming down in pursuit, half expected to see a gargantuan shadow fall across him. Ten yards remained. The urge to run was overwhelming, but peelers did not run. Not from their imagination, anyway.

  His horse was watching idly over the gate, giving no indication of alarm – that was surely a good sign. Lord-God though, it was suddenly cold. And that damn pitter-patter again, this time to the side of him – a thrashing in the undergrowth along the drive.

  And what a thrashing!

  Craddock looked sharply round, but the foliage was still.

  He reached the gate. It was made of heavy planks and bound with chains. At first he wrestle
d with the padlock, then, marking himself for an idiot, he turned and strode to the railings at the side, where a gap had first admitted him. He ducked back through it and untied his horse from the post. Only now did he deign to glance towards the colliery. As he’d expected, all was still; no spectral locomotive was pumping steam in the sidings, the fly-wheels were not mysteriously turning. It was a dead and decrepit sprawl, nothing more. However, he’d felt an inexplicable dread in those last few minutes, and, before climbing into the saddle, he looked again at the black apertures in the buildings, and imagined some nebulous thing lurking in the shadows behind them.

  “Damn nonsense,” he muttered.

  And a shoe scraped the ground behind him.

  Craddock swung round like lightning – and found himself eyeball-to-eyeball with a brutish, near-Neanderthal visage. Eyes like dark jewels regarded him; a thick black beard grew around a wide, ape-like mouth filled with ivory teeth.

  The major just managed to resist stepping back. Instead, he cleared his throat, and tapped his boot with his riding-crop. “Mr. Krueger, I presume?”

  “Here to show you off this property, sir,” the burly Boer said in his guttural Afrikaaner accent.

  “You are? I see.” Craddock thought on this as he mounted up. “I wasn’t aware you possessed ownership rights.”

  Krueger took hold of the horse’s bridle. He looked strong enough to wrestle the animal to the ground. “They’re my master’s. He charges me to see off all intruders.”

  “Then I’ll take it up with him,” Craddock replied, snatching the bridle back with a force that surprised the brutish servant. “Lead the way, if you please.”

  The Reverend Pettigrew had taken up residence in the old vicarage on the eastern edge of Top Lock, a rambling but dilapidated house set in a grey wilderness of slag and straggling weeds. Close behind it lay the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, and beyond that more mountainous heaps of rubble and clinker; fall-out from the pits at Aspull and Hindley.

  The Anglican Church had done poorly in the turbulent years of industrialisation. Revolutionaries had openly decried its ministers and bishops as princes without portfolio, as men of pomp and privilege who dined well, slept well, defended the abusive rights of the masters and threw all manner of calumny down on the heads of the starved and grovelling populace. In 1831, the Reform Bill had been rejected in the House of Lords after twenty-one bishops voted against it. In such circumstances, the Marxist accusation that religion was an opiate of the masses seemed highly perceptive. In any case, life as it already stood was more Hell than Earth; surely nothing after death could be worse than this? The result might not have been empty chapels – folk still attended services through entrenched personal conviction – but dissent was rife, and the more posturing a churchman, the greater the irritation. Understandable that the Reverend Pettigrew had yet to find himself a loving flock.