Harper picked up his daughter, kissed her nose and heard her giggle.
‘I hadn’t expected to see you during the day.’ Annabelle came out, wiping her hands on a rag, then smiled. ‘And Sergeant Ash.’
‘Mrs Harper.’ He clutched his battered bowler hat awkwardly in his hands.
‘Annabelle,’ she reminded him with a smile, ‘how many times do I have to tell you?’
‘We were nearby,’ Harper explained.
‘Have you eaten?’
‘Not yet.’
‘I’ll have Ellen find you something. Do you mind looking after Mary for a few minutes? I need to go downstairs and talk to Dan.’
He hefted the child a little higher. ‘I don’t think she’ll tell any police secrets.’
They waited until the footsteps had faded, Annabelle on her way to the pub below, before they began.
‘What have you managed to find out?’
‘Not as much as you, by the look of it, sir.’
Harper recounted what Mrs Fisher had told him. ‘How does that fit with what you’ve learned?’
‘I went to see my mother first.’ Ash’s face reddened slightly at the admission. ‘I thought she’d be able to tell me about the family.’
‘Did she?’ He bounced Mary on his knee, grinning as she started to laugh.
‘Seems Len’s father wasn’t above a bit of thieving when he could get away with it. Never caught, but everyone knew.’
And down on Dufton Court he wasn’t alone. No one was likely to tell the coppers.
‘So it runs in the family.’
‘She told me Len’s older brother has been in prison a few times. I never really knew him, can’t even picture what he looked like. Then I went over to the chemic. He hasn’t been there since ’90, when he went to prison. Someone told me he’d been lodging on Rugby Mount. And that’s where I saw you.’
‘A troublemaker?’ He combed his fingers through his daughter’s hair.
‘Not so much that.’ He sighed. ‘Things seemed to disappear when he was around. They could never prove it was Len, but it stopped after he’d gone.’ He ran a hand over his head. ‘It’s funny, sir, it’s not how I remember him at all.’
They heard someone climbing the stairs and fell silent. Ellen entered, carrying a tray with a plate of beef sandwiches and a pot of tea, Annabelle right behind her.
‘What’s got the pair of you around here? I thought you were at the park first thing.’ She settled in the chair, watching the two of them before leaning over and scooping Mary into her arms and stroking her hair back into place.
‘Trying to find out about someone,’ Harper told her. ‘His body turned up in Waterloo Lake this morning.’
‘Someone from round here?’ Annabelle asked. ‘Who?’
‘His name’s Leonard Tench.’
‘Len Tench?’ she said in astonishment. ‘He’s dead?’
‘Did you know him?’ Harper seemed surprised.
‘He used to be a customer.’ She thought rapidly. ‘Must have been … four years ago. Probably not long before I met you, Tom. I finally had to tell him not to come back. He’d have a few, then try to pick fights. I had to threaten him with the cudgel before he’d go.’
That was easy to imagine; Annabelle wasn’t afraid of anyone.
‘Do you know anything else about him?’
‘Never wanted to,’ she answered with a frown. ‘It was good riddance as far as I was concerned.’ She held Mary at arm’s length and sniffed. ‘Come on, you, I think you need changing.’
‘Now we need to know what Tench has been up to recently,’ Harper said as they ate.
‘Whatever it was, it must have been bad for him to end up that way.’ Ash shook his head. ‘It’s just hard to believe, sir. I remember him the way we were when we were lads. He liked some fun, but that was all.’
‘People change. Not always for the better.’
‘True enough.’ He paused for a moment. ‘By the way, how was the torpedo demonstration?’
‘Impressive,’ he answered after a moment. With everything else he’d forgotten all about it.
Before they left, Harper slipped into the bedroom. Mary was napping in her cot, her white gown flowing around her small body. He gazed at her for a moment.
‘Lovely when they’re asleep, aren’t they?’ Annabelle whispered. She was sitting in an armchair by the window, reading. ‘I thought I’d give you two some peace while you were working.’
‘No need. It was hardly secret.’
‘When you get home later I want to talk to you about something.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s only an idea.’
‘Fine,’ he told her, baffled, then kissed her. ‘I’ll try not to be late, but …’
She laughed quietly. ‘I know, Tom. Work.’
THREE
‘Time to start talking to the narks,’ Harper said as they sat on the top deck of the tram going back into Leeds. Down on the pavement a boy was shouting the headline about a disaster at Thornhill Colliery. One hundred and thirty-five dead in an underground explosion. So many it was impossible to imagine.
‘I’ve been thinking the same, sir. It’s strange, though …’
‘What is?’
‘It looks as if Len’s been involved in crime for a while.’
‘True.’ With his record, money but no job, what other explanation could there be? Mrs Fisher told him that Tench always seemed to have money. Whatever he’d been doing was more than shoplifting and fights, that was certain. Something that paid.
‘But we haven’t come across him for a few years, sir. And it seems to me that we know most of them, one way or another.’
‘Maybe he’s been lucky,’ Harper answered. ‘Or we just haven’t been looking in the right places.’ He was certain that Tench hadn’t been living on the straight and narrow.
‘Possibly,’ Ash agreed. But his voice sounded doubtful. ‘We need to find Ted Bradley.’
‘Who?’
‘Len and me met him when we started at the chemic. Palled around a bit. He was a year or so older, knew the ropes. They became good pals. He might be able to tell us something.’
‘Is he still at the works?’
The sergeant shook his head. ‘Left around the same time as Len. I stopped off at the address they had for him but he’s not been there for over two years now.’
‘See if you can find him. With a little luck we’ll know more after we talk to a few people. We’ll meet at Millgarth later.’
But Pieman Peter, Herbert Drake, and seven others that he tracked down here and there all shook their heads when he mentioned Tench. None of them had ever heard of him. Walking up Briggate, Harper heard the paperboy yelling the fresh headline from the Evening Post, hot off the press:
‘Torpedo brings up body!’
He paid his ha’penny and stopped to glance at the front page, the crowds on the streets swirling around him. For all they’d tried to stop reporters watching, one had an accurate account of the grand explosion on Waterloo Lake.
The article was sensational, but that was the way to sell papers, climaxing with the body rising to the surface. At least they had no details, just the mystery. Who was the corpse? How had he ended up in the water?
Harper rolled up the newspaper, carrying it like a baton. He had three more people he wanted to see, then he’d call it a day. He’d changed since Mary arrived and he knew it. No more endless hours working. Now he was happy to be at his own hearth. He’d never particularly desired children, never even thought about them. He’d been taken by surprise when Annabelle told him she was pregnant. But from the moment he saw Mary and picked her up as if she was the most delicate thing in the world, he had known everything was different.
He’d started out as a copper on a beat that took in the yards and courts between Briggate and Lands Lane. He could probably still have walked them all with his eyes closed. But in the last few years, things there had altered. Many of the old places had been torn do
wn to build Queen’s Arcade. So new he sometimes felt he could still smell the paint on it. Leeds was becoming a different place. Modern, fast. How long before he felt left behind?
Boots slipping on the greasy cobbles, he cut through to Swan Street, and the White Swan, which stood behind the music hall. Horseshoe Harry had started drinking there the year before, moving after they finally demolished the old Rose and Crown.
Harper found him in the corner, over by the empty fireplace, a glass on the table in front of him, face set in a frown under a moustache that almost hid his mouth.
‘You look down in the dumps.’ He signalled the waiter for another beer and took a seat to Harry’s right, keeping his good ear towards the man. At least he’d be able to hear him.
‘Thunder had to be put down yesterday. I’ve known that horse since he were a colt. Sad days, Mr Harper.’
Harry was a farrier, shoeing half the horses that pulled carts around the centre of the city. It had been his family’s trade for generations, forging and hammering, then fitting the horseshoes to the animals.
He was a big man with heavy, muscled arms covered in tiny burns and scars. There was a bigger scar on his left cheek where a mare had kicked him once, slicing him open from temple to jaw. It gave him a dangerous look; maybe that was why people told him things.
‘Leonard Tench,’ Harper said. There was a pause, less than a heartbeat, but long enough. Harry knew something, he was sure of it.
‘Who?’
‘Come on Harry, don’t kid a kidder. You know, I can see it in your eyes.’
The man lowered his head, gazing at the drink before him. ‘George Archer.’
The words were so quiet that Harper had to strain to make them out.
‘And that’s all I’m saying.’
He knew the name. He knew it too bloody well. Harper nodded, put down a shilling and walked off, back down Briggate and through towards Millgarth.
The police had been after Archer for years but they’d never found anyone brave enough to testify against him. The few who said they would either changed their minds later or disappeared from the city, never seen again, not even a body to be found.
And the thought took him back to Dufton Court, where Tench and Ash had been born.
Archer had grown up there too, in a house round the corner on Somerset Street. He was still a small boy when he’d started out as a runner for the local gang. As he grew, filling out, learning how to wield a cutthroat razor, he’d become the man who threatened and cut anyone who didn’t do as he was told. By the time he was eighteen, Archer had worked his way up to be the leader of the gang and he’d stayed there ever since. Clever and ruthless; a dangerous combination. Business had boomed. Arson, murder, thefts, prostitution; the coppers knew he was behind them all if there was money to be made. People didn’t cross him. They didn’t refuse him. And they definitely didn’t stand in court and give evidence against him.
He’d moved out to the suburbs somewhere. That was what the inspector had heard, and now he was trying to present himself as respectable. He could afford the best lawyers, not that he’d needed them too often; there was rarely enough evidence to take him to court, let alone put him away. If Archer was behind Leonard Tench’s death, proving it was going to be a hard battle.
Wharton was waiting in the office when he opened the door. His report was already complete, lying on Harper’s desk, the writing a neat copperplate.
‘What did Mrs Brooker have to say to you?’
‘It’s all there, sir.’
‘I know. That’s for the record. I want to know what you made of her.’ What ended up on paper was only half the story. It would be a good lesson for the lad: if you were working a case you needed everything you could find.
‘She’s terrified,’ Wharton began after thinking for a few seconds. ‘She’s scared we’ll find a body and scared we won’t, if you know what I mean, sir.’ The inspector nodded. ‘I don’t think she’d heard about the leg. But once she does she’s going to put two and two together.’
‘Is there anything to identify the girl?’
‘There’s a little scar on the back of her neck, that’s all. Nothing on her legs.’
‘What about her disappearance? What did she have to say about that?’
‘Charlotte’s never done it before, sir. The mother kept saying so. She was adamant. It’s why she’s sure something bad has happened.’
‘What about young men? Has the girl been courting?’
‘Not that Mrs Brooker knows, sir.’ Wharton ran a nervous hand through his thick brush of hair. He smelled of old cabbage and tobacco.
But parents often didn’t know the whole truth about their children; Harper had learned that long ago.
‘Who else is in the family?’
‘A sister, sir. Cordelia. She’s a year younger.’
‘Talk to her in the morning, she might know something. How had Charlotte been before she vanished? Happy? Melancholy?’
‘Quite normal, according to Mrs Brooker.’
‘Dig deeper into it tomorrow. There’s not a lot we can do without a body, though. You might as well go home for now.’ As the constable was leaving, he added, ‘This is your case, Mr Wharton. I want you to work on it until you find some answers. Keep me informed, and come to me if you have any questions.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ His smile was a mix of gratitude and fear. ‘I won’t let you down.’
Harper stared over at Superintendent Kendall’s office. He’d gone to a meeting, and wouldn’t be back tonight. He’d need to know about George Archer.
Five minutes later Ash arrived.
‘Nothing yet, sir,’ he said. ‘No luck on Bradley or anything else. I thought I’d go out again tonight and see who I can find.’
The inspector sat back in his chair. ‘I’ve come up with a name to make you think. George Archer. Horseshoe Harry says he and Tench had something going.’
‘Len with Archer?’ The sergeant shook his head. ‘I can’t believe that, sir. Not the Len I knew.’
‘People change,’ Harper reminded him.
‘I know, but …’ The words tailed away. ‘Well, maybe he did, at that.’
‘We’ll find out more in the morning. And I’ll want a word with the super then, too.’
‘You’re off with the fairies again, Tom.’
‘Sorry.’ He smiled and sighed, pushing the plate away. Good steak and kidney pie, but he hadn’t been hungry. The thoughts kept stirring and raging in his head.
Annabelle had Mary on her knee, spooning beef tea into the girl’s mouth. She loved the taste, she’d enjoyed it from the first, reaching out to clutch the spoon with her pudgy little hands. Her brown hair had grown in thick curls they brushed every night, and her eyes seemed to take in and examine everything around her.
‘What were you thinking?’
‘Work,’ he admitted and tried once more to shake it from his mind. Now he was home it was time to discover what was on hers. ‘You said there was something you wanted to talk about.’
They could have cleared her books off the table before the meal. They’d even done it for a while. But each time, all the volumes quickly found their way back. Now it hardly seemed worth the effort. It was easier to move them around so there was a space to eat.
‘There is,’ Annabelle said. She wiped the baby’s mouth and lowered her gently to the ground, watching her stagger determinedly away towards a doll on the rug. She’d begun to walk two months before, tentative at first, then suddenly more certain. ‘I’ve been thinking about selling the bakeries.’
For a moment he didn’t know what to say. He’d wondered what to expect, what was so important, but he’d never imagined this.
‘What? Why?’ He didn’t understand; it seemed unlikely, impossible. She owned three of them, all local, built them up from scratch. She’d only opened the third shop two years before; he could remember the day quite clearly. They baked all the goods in a kitchen behind the Victoria, starting in the midd
le of each night.
‘It just feels like the right time.’
He waited. He knew Annabelle; she’d never make a business decision just on feel. When it came to money, she was cunning as a fox. There had to be a deeper reason.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘There’s more, isn’t there?’
‘Miss Ford’s asked me to be the secretary of the Suffrage Society.’
‘Do you want to do it?’ Stupid question, he thought. Of course she did if she was considering selling the bakeries.
‘I’ve already told them I will.’ From the corner of her eye she saw Mary about to wander into the kitchen and hurried to pick her up. The little girl squirmed in her arms.
She’d been offered a post on the committee before. At that time she’d turned it down, once she discovered she was going to have a child.
‘Miss Frobisher’s retiring,’ she continued with a smile. ‘She’s moving to Harrogate. Going for the spa water.’
‘The last time you were offered something you said it would involve travel …’
‘Not being the secretary. That’s just local,’ she told him. ‘I made sure of that.’
Harper pursed his lips. ‘I don’t see why you need to sell the bakeries in order to do it, though.’
‘Time.’ He could hear her hesitation. ‘It’s going to take a few hours every day. Then there’s the speaking at meetings. I’m not going to give that up. Mary. You. I won’t be able to do everything.’
‘What about Mary?’ She’d settled down, curled happily in the crook of her mother’s arm and inspecting her fingers. ‘When you’re working, I mean.’
‘Most of the work will be here. And when I have to go round town I’ll take her with me.’
Inside, he smiled. She’d already arranged the details. Annabelle had made up her mind and he had no desire to change it.
‘Do you have someone lined up to buy the bakeries?’
The Iron Water Page 3