A Burden Shared: The Dundee Murders

by Malcolm Archibald

  A Burden Shared:

  The Dundee Murders

  Malcolm Archibald

  © Malcolm Archibald 2013

  The author asserts the moral right to be identified

  as the author of the work in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of

  Fledgling Press Ltd,

  7 Lennox St., Edinburgh, EH4 1QB

  Published by Fledgling Press, 2013

  www.fledglingpress.co.uk

  Print ISBN: 9781905916597

  eBook ISBN: 9781905916603

  Following his adventures in The Darkest Walk, Detective Mendick returns in this, the second of the Mendick Mysteries.

  PROLOGUE

  DUNDEE, Autumn 1827

  “Get up there, you little dog, and get it swept.”

  The voice echoed in the choking darkness, distorted by the surrounding brickwork but still containing enough menace to make Jamie shiver. He looked upward to where the flue ascended forever, the sides black and slippery with soot and the exit a tiny circle of light diminished by distance.

  “Move you bugger! Or it will be the worse for you.”

  Aware the threat was genuine Jamie continued the climb, coughed as the soot entered his throat and tried not to sneeze as particles irritated his nostrils. Soot had smoothed the inside of the flue so he had to scramble for hand and footholds. He brushed continuously as he did so, for if the fall of soot lessened his master would take it ill. His master was not a man to cross. His voice boomed up the flue, echoing horribly as it always did, and Jamie inched upward, sweeping, pushing the soot before him with his cap and blinking the soot from his eyes. He did not cry: he had stopped crying years ago. Tears only invited blows.

  He had been a climbing boy since his father had died of fever and his mother had signed him onto a seven year apprentice. He knew nothing else but he knew life was a nightmare of misery, pain and work. He hated the restriction; he hated the dark; he hated the rough, bullying voice of his burly master; he hated the smell of soot nearly as much as he hated the smell of drink on his master’s breath that was an invariable precursor to unremitting violence. He had been so young when his mother signed the articles of apprenticeship he had all but forgotten his earlier life: his world was restricted to the circumference of a flue, the exhausted slumber of end-of-work and the cringing acceptance of his master’s belt.

  “Faster you wee bastard! There are two more to go after this one.”

  There were always more to go. There was always more work, always more sweat and more pain and always the gnawing agony of hunger in his shrivelled belly.

  Jamie braced himself with his back against one side of the flue and his feet on the other and brushed into the tiny wedges between the brick. He blinked against the renewed clouds of soot; felt for the tiny hand and footholds and inched up. The circle of daylight seemed to recede even though the desperate darkness beneath him increased. His master delighted in telling him about climbing boys dying up these chimneys; losing their footing and sliding downward, screaming to a crashing death on the grate far below. The lucky died at once; the less lucky survived in mangled agony and lived the remainder of their miserable lives as broken cripples. Other boys had vanished in a maze of flues in some old building or were trapped in a restricted space to die of thirst and terror in the dark.

  Jamie gasped as an intense heat beat upon the soles of his feet. He looked down, coughed in the spiralling smoke and knew at once what had happened. His master had placed a pile of straw on the grate and set light to it. The heat was only a taste of what to expect, a warning that the fire would be lit now to urge him to greater endeavour. Never a patient man, the master would brook no excuses. Jamie began to brush even more furiously and shoved his skinny body upward at a greater rate.

  He felt his feet slip but clung on with broken nails, he whimpered as the smoking vacuum beneath invited him to fall, but slammed his knees against the brick and moved upward. He gasped as the orange glow beneath him increased and the heat came in waves against his bare feet and legs. He reached up, but too quickly, and his fingers slid on a soot-smoothed shelf so he slithered and had to push flat hands against the brickwork opposite. His brush fell, bouncing once, twice, three times from the walls of the flue, to clatter into the fire below and sent biting sparks against the legs of his Master.

  “You clumsy wee bastard! Come down here and get your brush, and take what’s coming to you!” The flue hideously deformed the word and intensified the menace and Jamie knew too well what would happen when he returned. He had experienced his Master’s rage too often; the whirring belt and the plunging fists and boots until he was reduced to a cringing broken, wreck as his Master leaned over him, panting, with his broad red face dripping with sweat and his mouth open.

  Reinforced by a score of memories, the fear overwhelmed him. Jamie looked downward, listened to his Master’s repetitive curses and knew what was going to happen, and then he began to claw his way upward. He had no plan and no real idea what he was doing; he only wanted to get as far away as possible from his Master and the agonising brutality that was the inevitable result of dropping the brush. The flue narrowed as he climbed, so the sides were scraping against his shoulders and hips, but still he pushed on. He gasped; sobbed as the rough bricks rubbed him raw, tore away the skin of elbows and knees, rubbing the flesh from shoulders and hips and buttocks as he strove to escape.

  “Where the devil are you, Jamie?” The voice thundered through the dark tunnel of the flue, battering against his ears. “Get down here, you little bastard!”

  The circle of light was like a beacon, a lighthouse in the turmoil of darkness and fear. Feeling his breath rasp in his throat and the soot clog his nostrils and eyes, Jamie edged himself up, reaching for the tiniest of holds as he strained for escape. He felt the downdraught cooling his face and knew he was within a few yards of freedom, and then he stuck. As he neared the top, the chimney abruptly narrowed so even his underfed body could not wriggle through.

  Fresh air tantalised his face but he was trapped. The sweep’s cap on his head had pushed the soot ahead of him so now it had constricted even the small space of this flue. For a moment Jamie gave way to frustration as he struggled with the weight of compressed soot above him. He wrestled himself an extra inch and screamed as the sharp bricks scraped skin and flesh from his hips. “I’m not going back,” he said, repeating the words like a mantra, “I’m never going back.”

  He strained, moaning with effort as he pushed hard with his cap. Tears had coursed white lines down his face before he felt the mass above him give. He shifted slightly and a black avalanche of soot descended on his face and cascaded down his naked body. He felt the ripping agony of unyielding brick slashing deep into his skin, but he knew there was hope and pushed himself the final few feet upward.

  His Master’s voice was far below him, half-heard and wholly unheeded now. All that mattered was easing out of the chimney and escaping along the roof. He could not see beyond that; he thought only of escape. Next week, tomorrow, the next hour; none of that mattered. The panic that drove him recognised only his need to run from the immediate threat; the future was irrelevant.

  Jamie’s hand waved in the air, and then his arm; he moaned at the agony of torn flesh but haule
d himself upward, feeling the bricks shred the skin from his hips and ankles but he was free. He ripped off his cap, threw it back down the flue and allowed the cool air to dry the sweat from his body. He leaned over the chimney, feeling the first surge of triumph he could ever remember experiencing. It was a sensation he savoured, unfamiliar but so welcome that he shouted an incoherent animal cry of victory. He looked around. He had expected to see the familiar sight of a roofscape, but instead he was on top of a tall factory chimney. The chimney stretched downward, thirty, forty, maybe fifty feet of vertical brick with a keen wind already raising goose pimples on his unprotected skin and ruffling the filthy, lice-ridden tangle of his black hair. For a long time Jamie sat on the rim of the chimney, unsure of what to do. He knew he had two choices; he could return the way he came and face his Master, or climb down the outside of the chimney.

  When he closed his eyes a vision of his Master returned; the bulging eyes and foul breath, the sagging jowls, the ever-ready fists. The decision was made, he looked down the stalk of the chimney, if he fell he would die; but better a quick death than the constant torment of life. Jamie inhaled the crisp air, turned around, and lowered himself downward. He held onto the rim for a minute, aware that once he released his hold he would be unable to return, and then took a deep breath and felt for the first foothold.

  For years he had been used to climbing in enclosed spaces with a hard surface on which he could lean back, but here there was nothing. The space behind him beckoned with sucking tenderness, inviting him to fall, encouraging him with the appeal of freedom, the subtle siren call of nothingness and peace, but he resisted. The chimney was just an inverted flue; a problem to be overcome. He could not think what lay beyond; the next hour was a distant country, tomorrow was unthinkable, only the next handhold mattered, the next inch of red-brick chimney to negotiate, the next level to clamber down.

  There was no end to this circular monstrosity, life was reduced to fighting the chill wind that threatened to pluck at him, to fighting the pain in his fingers and toes, to surviving another minute, another second, another breath as he eased down. He knew he was trembling, he knew he could not last another single level of unending brick; he must surrender to the pain and fall into the peace of oblivion. And then there was a different sensation, a roof of sliding blue slate, and he sagged down in disbelief.

  He had made it; he had survived and now all he had to do was shin down one of the cast-iron waterspouts to the ground and run as far away as possible from the Master. Run and run and run until the breath rasped in his chest and his throat burned from heaving in air that tasted rich and sweet after the smoke-choked thickness of the flues. He was free, he had survived. Never again would he look upward in fear as the black confines of the chimney dragged him in, never again would he cringe before the rage of his Master; never again would he listen with dread for his Master’s dragging footsteps.

  He was hungry. The realisation dawned slowly. Hunger was nothing; many master sweeps starved their apprentices so they did not put on weight and remained undersized and scrawny for negotiating the constricted spaces within the flues, but now something was different. Jamie frowned as he explored his novel position until he found an answer. Yes, he was hungry and he could do something about it.

  Glancing upward, he judged the time by the sun. Nearly evening and late summer, so there would be fruit in the gardens. He had seen fruit many times on the servant’s tables in the houses of the wealthy, and he had even eaten it once or twice, if a kindly cook had taken pity on him, or he had sneaked an apple when nobody was looking. Now he could see an apple tree beyond a high wall, with the fruit hanging heavy on the branches, inviting him to help himself. The concept of theft was as unknown to him as possession and kindness; he had never owned anything and never expected to.

  It was the work of a second to climb the wall; another moment saw him scramble along a branch and then he sat astride a bough with his bare legs swinging on either side as he munched into the sweetest apple he had ever tasted.

  “Hi! Get out of that!” The challenge was as rough as it was unexpected, and Jamie almost fell from the tree in surprise. He looked down to see a tall man waving a fist at him, but before the man could speak again Jamie had scrambled higher up the tree and was racing along an overhanging branch. It was nothing to reach the edge, balance for a second and drop to the ground ten feet below. He rolled as he landed, picked himself up and continued to chew on the apple as he loped along, relishing this new freedom.

  He did not think what to do, he moved instinctively as he explored the town of Dundee. He had lived here all his life but knew it only as a place of work and oppression. Now he could see the opportunities, the shops with displays tempting nimble fingers, the windows not quite closed through which he could squeeze, the gentlemen with silk handkerchiefs and silver watches placed carelessly for any slender hand to slide away with.

  Yet Jamie ignored these sweet temptations and wandered down to the docks. He did not know how often he had dreamed of running away to sea, of tasting the freedom of these beautiful vessels that sailed to strange places. He did not know to where they sailed, he only knew there would not be any chimneys there, or masters with hectoring voices and ready fists. Now he heard the call of the seagulls and smelled the strangely exciting aroma of tar and damp canvas and whatever cargoes these vessels carried.

  The first vessel was a passenger ferry so no good to him; he did not want to slog back and forth to Fife. The second was a recently returned whaler, reeking of blubber and battered by ice and gales. The third was larger, with three tall masts and the figurehead of a Highland warrior. He sneaked on board, slipped under the first hatch cover he saw and finished his apple.

  He felt the sudden cold blast before he realised he had been sleeping, but the face that stared at him was more perplexed than angry, and the hand that lifted him was gentler than his master had ever been.

  “Now what do we have here? A young stowaway.”

  Other men joined the first, hard of face but without the predatory cruelty he had come to recognise so well.

  “A naked young stowaway,” Jamie’s experience with people was limited, but he knew enough to avoid this man, his eyes were too interested.

  “What’s your name, boy?” The first man pushed the second aside.

  “Jamie.”

  “Jamie what?” The first man asked. “What’s your last name?”

  Jamie thought for a long time; he did not think he had a last name. He had always been Jamie. He looked up.

  “Wee bastard.” It was the only name he knew.

  “Poor wee bugger,” one of the men said. “Look at the colour of him. He’s either a runaway climbing boy or a beggar.” He bent closer, his scarred face concerned. “You don’t know your name, do you?”

  Jamie shook his head.

  “Well then, I’ll give you one. You’re a mendicant, I guess, so you can be Jamie Mendicant. No . . . that’s too long; not Mendicant, Mendick. That’s your name now and forever more.” The man straightened up. “Well, James Mendick, you and I and everybody else on this ship are bound for the Indies, so you’d better bid farewell to Dundee and prepare yourself for hard work.”

  When James Mendick looked over the taffrail he could see the town of his birth and childhood already fading behind a pall of its own smoke. He felt no emotion when the ship dipped her foremast to the incoming waves and slid clear of the Firth of Tay.

  CHAPTER ONE

  DUNDEE, SCOTLAND 23 March 1849

  Fluttering bravely in a fitful easterly wind, the red and white house flag proclaimed that the Dundee, Perth and London Shipping Line steamer was back home in the Tay. Detective Sergeant Mendick of Scotland Yard watched the smuts trail astern, fought the slow sinking sickness in his stomach, struck a Lucifer match and puffed his pipe to life. He stared at the passengers who milled at the rail, listened to their excited chatter and contemplated his immediate future.

  He was returning to Dundee, God help
him. He was returning to the only place on earth that frightened him. He had experienced the humid heat of India and the alien cultures of China; he had survived tropical typhoons that could raise waves sixty feet high, Baltic ice so thick it imprisoned a whole fleet of ships and the results of battle and siege. None of these had scarred him as Dundee had. Only the death of Emma, his wife had left a deeper impression.

  Mendick did not smile as he watched the passengers stare at their surroundings or huddle into their cloaks as if doomed to exile. He felt like an exile himself: exiled to return to the place of his birth. He watched as Dundee loomed up on the north bank of the Tay, a town of slender mill chimneys penetrating an eternal pall of smoke, of mud-coloured tenements and of a harbour crowded with shipping. Above all was the Law, rising over five hundred feet of rock, grass, and woodland to dominate the town.

  He remembered his childhood thoughts of the Law as a watchful mother caring for her teeming children. Mendick snorted; he left her by sea, and now he was returning the same way. He would not stay long; he could not stay long, he must leave by the next tide. He had no desire to confront his past; he wanted to forget it, together with the nightmares that sometimes surfaced from his sleep.

  Even as he struggled to avoid the plunge into dismal memories, Mendick eyed the crowd, sorting them into their various categories and unconsciously searching for criminals. After the voyage from London he knew they were a heterogeneous bunch: tradesmen and businessmen, a few genuine travellers, a peddler or two, a sprinkling of families and a couple of gentlemen who filled the first class cabins. He grunted as he saw two undoubted pickpockets hovering on the fringes, their half-furtive swagger typical of their type and their youthful faces lean and predatory. Mendick searched his memory and nodded; he knew their names and most of their criminal history.