The Tick of Death

by Peter Lovesey

  ‘More so by the explosion at Victoria in February,’ added Cribb, with an interest in bringing the catalogue briskly up to date. ‘And the simultaneous attempts on London Bridge, Paddington and Ludgate Hill.’

  ‘What did you say?’ said Jowett, still mentally at Praed Street. ‘Ah, yes, indeed. The railway station outrages. Well, the dynamite party unwittingly did you a good turn, Sergeant, leaving three unexploded machines for us to take to Woolwich and dismantle. You cannot expect to have such good fortune again, however. Next time, the disagreeable things are sure to go off.’

  Cribb decided it was time to correct the impression that he had a personal stake in the dynamite campaign. ‘I’m confident that the Special Branch has allowed for that, sir. Some of the best detectives in the Force were conscripted for it. Best leave it all to them, I say.’

  ‘The Special Branch,’ Jowett repeated distantly. ‘A handpicked group of detectives brought together for the sole purpose of combating the dynamitards. They occupy the room next to mine. I had to give them my telephone-set and two of my clerical assistants. Most inconvenient. Brand-new desks and stools and a hat-stand of their own. Someone in high authority is exceedingly exercised about all this, Cribb.’

  ‘I’m not surprised, sir. Who’s to say where the next bomb might be placed? For a party of Irish-Americans just off the boat, these dynamiters have an uncanny knack of setting their machines down in public places without being noticed. Each of those stations was well patrolled. And you know how it is with railway station patrols—one constable is always assigned to watch the comings and goings at the cloakroom. What with trunk murders and stolen property and anarchists’ black bags, you need to keep an eye on everyone who approaches the counter. How four large cases containing bombs were deposited the same night at four stations without anyone having any recollection of who left them, I can’t fathom.’

  Jowett nodded his agreement. ‘I suppose one must accept that constables on duty are not infallible. There is the possibility, for example, of some person unknown chancing to deliver an infernal machine to the cloakroom in the interval between reliefs, when the new relief are being marched to their beats, but it is quite inconceivable that such a thing could have happened at four stations on one evening. Unless, of course, the dynamite party got to know the times at which the reliefs were changed.’

  Cribb was sceptical. ‘Not likely, in my estimation, sir. The recent practice is to vary the reliefs from week to week. One week they might change over at six, the next half-past. It’s all arranged by the divisional Inspectors. The information isn’t given to the men themselves until a day or two before. The dynamiters couldn’t possibly have known it without the co-operation of one of the Force. And that, sir, would mean that we were harbouring an informer.’

  Cribb fully expected Jowett to consider the suggestion as scandalous and outrageous as a bare head at Ascot, or braces in the Boat Race. Instead, he lifted his forefinger in front of him in a gesture pregnant with significance.

  ‘Exactly what I was coming to, Sergeant. What would you say if I told you that one of the Force—one of the Detective Department, indeed—had been seen in the company of Irish-Americans in a public house shortly before the explosion at the Local Government Board, and again before the attacks on the railway stations?’

  ‘I should find it difficult to believe, sir—unless there was some explanation. Perhaps the officer concerned was a member of the Special Branch.’

  ‘He was not, Sergeant. Nor did he record any account of the meetings in his daily diary.’

  ‘Then I should want an explanation, sir,’ decided Cribb. ‘I should call him in and ask him to give an account of himself.’

  Jowett smiled in a superior way. ‘Doubtless you would, Sergeant, doubtless you would. It seems the obvious thing to do. However, the obvious thing is not necessarily the most productive of results. If we call the officer in and question his behaviour, the word will not be long in reaching his American associates. Dismissing this man from the Force would be a poor exchange for keeping in contact with the dynamitards, if dynamitards they be.’

  Cribb frowned, and said nothing, not a little shocked at the deviousness of what Jowett was suggesting.

  The inspector seemed to read his thoughts. ‘You must understand that we are not dealing with petty thieves or one of your backyard murderers, Cribb. We are fighting a secret society pledged to wrench Ireland from Her Majesty’s dominion by every means at its disposal. It is better organised and better financed than any Irish conspiracy this century. It is known as the Clan-na-Gael. Its membership in America runs to thousands, Sergeant, thousands, all organised into numerous subordinate bodies, or camps. The dynamitards are emissaries of the Clan, trained men picked for their daring and knowledge of explosives and sent here to mount a campaign of terror and destruction. Faced with a conspiracy on such a scale as that, we are not going to pounce on the one policeman whose erratic behaviour may help us to defeat the Clan. He will be dealt with when his usefulness to us is over, you may be assured.’

  Cribb was floundering. He knew nothing of secret societies. Wasn’t there said to be a War Office Intelligence Department to deal with such things? ‘Might I enquire what connexion this has got with me, sir?’

  ‘Indeed you may, Sergeant. You have been nominated to make contact with the constable in question and win his confidence.’

  ‘Me, sir?’

  ‘If you perform your duties well, Cribb, you may be the first agent to penetrate the dynamite conspiracy in London.’

  ‘Agent?’ repeated Cribb, eyes agape.

  ‘No more than a word, Sergeant. I can promise you that the whole of the Special Branch is deeply interested in the outcome of your mission. You will function independently of them, however, and remain responsible to me. It is at my suggestion that you are to be educated in the science of explosives. The closer one gets to the dynamitards, the more necessary it becomes to understand their diabolical machines. Do you follow me?’

  ‘I’m not sure, sir. Are you proposing that I should infiltrate the dynamite conspiracy by befriending the constable who is suspected of being an informer?’

  ‘Exactly so, Cribb. And to anticipate your next question, the reason why you have been selected is that you already know the constable in question better than anybody else in the Force. He is your sometime super-numerary and satellite, Detective-Constable Thackeray.’

  CHAPTER

  2

  LONG AFTER THE CAB put them down in Great Scotland Yard, Cribb was deep in conversation with Inspector Jowett. For the first time that day he functioned as a detective. He was totally involved in acquiring information, and he subjected Jowett to the class of interrogation usually reserved for the last suspect in a case of murder. He discharged a volley of questions at the hapless inspector under the blue lamp at the very entrance to the police offices. Nothing in the case against Thackeray escaped his attention. He extracted the evidence the Special Branch had amassed syllable by syllable. Only when he had recorded it all in his notebook and had it checked again by Jowett did he allow him to pass inside. Then, still studying the notes, he walked slowly across the Yard and along Northumberland Avenue in the direction of the Embankment.

  There, by the Thames, where he and Thackeray had so often plotted the arrest of dangerous men, Cribb pondered his assistant’s strange conduct. Strange—it was unbelievable that a constable who had faced corpses, crocodiles, even naked chorus girls, in the name of law and order should so abandon his principles as to consort with the dynamite party. Thackeray an informer? Thackeray the lion-hearted, the man above all others he would have at his side in an emergency? Monstrous.

  Yet as he stood at the Embankment wall and regarded the river—not the steam-launches and sailing-barges, nor the beguiling glitter of afternoon sunlight, but the water itself below him, turbid and thick with impurities, flowing more rapidly than ever it appeared from a cursory glance across the surface—Cribb decided to re-examine his opinion of T
hackeray. It took several more minutes’ contemplation of the water to achieve the detachment to penetrate the layers of loyalty and regard formed in five years. What was then revealed—what he really knew of the man—was so slight that he winced at the realisation.

  He called himself a detective and all he knew about his principal assistant was that he stood six feet tall in his socks, sported a grey beard and was game for anything except educational classes. Exaggeration, perhaps, but not short of the truth. Oh, there were other details—the fondness for melodrama and Kop’s ale, the tender feet and the sensitiveness upon the subject of retirement—but what did they amount to? What grounds had he for believing Thackeray incorruptible? The plain truth was that the section house adjoining Paradise Street police station could be a dynamite manufactory for all he knew. Not once had he met Thackeray off duty. He had no idea whether he was a Home Ruler or a hot gospeller. The man was dependable when it mattered, and that had always been enough.

  He supposed he ought to examine the divisional defaulters’ book. Thackeray’s name would be there, for sure. There was not a constable of any length of service whose sheet was blank. Entries on the defaulter sheet in the first years of service, said the Police Code, will materially reduce the possibility of eventual promotion and selection for the prizes of the Force—so every station inspector took it as his duty to foster discipline among young constables by including their names from time to time in the Morning Report. Nor were the not-so-young forgotten: If a man’s conduct has not been uniformly good, or his incapacity may have been brought about by irregular or vicious habits, the Commissioner will recommend that a lower scale of pension or gratuity be granted to him. In his more bitter moments, when the prizes of the Force seemed too remote to bother over, Cribb would point out that even if one earned a commendation (and there was no regular procedure for that) the only place where it could be recorded was on the defaulter sheet.

  So Thackeray’s sheet would contain the predictable catalogue of misdemeanours—taking off the armlet to obtain a drink from a publican, gossiping on duty, quarrelling with comrades, soliciting gratuities, unpunctuality, and so on—together with a list of the stations he had served in, and perhaps an entry in red ink commending his part in the arrest of Charles Peace in 1878. Cribb doubted if there would be any subsequent entries in red; none of the crimes he and Thackeray had investigated had caused such a stir.

  He thought of going down to Rotherhithe to find out what the Paradise Street contingent knew of Thackeray. There must be someone who had an off-duty drink with him, or lodged in the section house. You could hardly use the same scullery and tin bath without getting to know something about a man. He considered the idea, and rejected it.

  This was his dilemma—the repugnance he felt at being asked to spy on Thackeray, and the necessity of discovering what the man was doing. Until he was sure of Thackeray’s complicity, he refused to ignore the bond between them— however slender it suddenly seemed. For Jowett, though, the issue had been clear. ‘The Yard recognises that some of its employees are corrupt,’ he had blandly explained. ‘What do you expect on a wage of seventy-eight pounds a year for a constable, First Class? Read your Police Gazette, Sergeant. It is full of wretched officers who have succumbed to bribery of one sort or another. There are just as many dismissed constables—not to speak of sergeants—scrubbing out workhouses as there are inspectors such as myself promoted for unstinting service. That is the nature of our profession, Cribb. Thackeray has misguidedly transgressed, and must prepare to join the floor-scubbers. Not before he has rendered certain services to the dynamite investigation, however. You are not, on any account, to inform him of what we know.’ There was nothing for it but to cooperate. If Thackeray were really an informer, Cribb could only believe it by seeing it for himself. If not—if he were innocent and shamefully misrepresented—the way to set the record straight was to learn what was going on. Either way, Cribb was now drawn in to the dynamite investigation, and the threat to public safety overshadowed everything. He was committed to a course of action totally repugnant to him—spying on Thackeray, decent, dutiful, dependable Thackeray.

  ‘Damn you, Thackeray!’ he said aloud, and instantly felt better for it.

  He left the Embankment thinking not of his assistant, but Mrs Cribb, and how she would take the news of his move to Woolwich Arsenal.

  THE COURSE IN explosives, Cribb shortly discovered, was organised with Civil Service precision. A team of Home Office experts and sergeant-instructors from the Royal Artillery engaged his attention continuously between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. each day. As their solitary trainee, he stood in solemn attendance while they mounted their set-pieces, lit the fuses, and retired. Sometimes the preliminaries took two or three hours, but the conversation was entirely confined to such things as time-fuses and percussion-caps. The instructors shrank from anything more sociable. Between detonations they allowed him to eat or sleep. Any remaining time—and there was precious little of it—was expected to be spent practising with fire-arms on the ranges. By the week’s end he was almost ready to doubt whether observation of the Sabbath was permitted to secret agents under instruction.

  It required unimaginable self-discipline to raise himself from his pillow on the Sunday, his head still singing from a Lithofracteur blast and his shoulder sore from rifle-practice, and examine a telegraph message from Inspector Jowett: Thackeray off duty today. Suggest you keep under discreet observation. Did this mean no explosions were planned that day? He was into his clothes and out of the Arsenal gates before anyone could tell him otherwise.

  A train to Liverpool Street and a cab across London Bridge brought him to Rotherhithe, and Paradise Street police station. The sergeant on duty was an old friend.

  ‘Thackeray? Reliable man. Helped to arrest Charlie Peace in seventy-eight, did you know that?’

  ‘He’s helped me too, on occasions,’ said Cribb, a little bleakly. ‘Where do I find him this morning—in the section house?’

  ‘I doubt it. He’s an early riser. He’ll have been up since six. Thackeray doesn’t believe in spending his time here when he can be up and about. Not lately, anyway.’

  Cribb noted the emphasis. ‘He’s changed his habits, you mean?’

  There was a shade too much of the professional manner in the inquiry. The duty-sergeant shot him a quick glance. He felt the shabbiness of what he was doing.

  ‘He goes out a bit more, that’s all,’ explained the sergeant. ‘I don’t believe in prying into a man’s off-duty hours.’

  ‘Nor me,’ said Cribb emphatically. ‘A bobby’s entitled to his private life, as much as any member of the public. Do you know the duty I shirk more than any other? Inspecting the lodgings once a month. It’s a liberty going into a man’s home uninvited, in my opinion. No, I was wanting to see Thackeray for old time’s sake. We’ve worked together so often, you understand. You wouldn’t know where I could find him, I suppose?’ This was altogether more casual and disarming.

  ‘Sunday morning?’ said the sergeant. ‘Probably at one of the main railway stations. He spends a lot of his time at the stations, if my information’s correct.’

  Cribb gulped.

  ‘I’ll ask if anyone knows,’ the sergeant continued. ‘I wouldn’t want to send you to Paddington if he’s fixed on Waterloo this time.’

  The constable at the desk thought Thackeray had set off in the direction of London Bridge.

  ‘I’ll try that, then,’ said Cribb, quickly. ‘You wouldn’t know what he does at the main line stations, would you?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, Sergeant. He don’t talk to nobody about it.’

  Cribb thanked them, and took a bus up Jamaica Road and Tooley Street, a mile’s drive along the riverside, past breweries and warehouses. To the left, trains thundered along the viaduct above the chimney-pots of Bermondsey.

  He left the bus at a step brisk enough to betray anxiety about the future of London Bridge station. Thackeray was not in the booking-hall. Nor had the man in
the cloakroom seen anyone answering his description that morning. His step eased a little.

  Eventually he discerned a familiar, bearded figure in bowler hat and ulster at the far end of the Brighton platform. He purchased a platform ticket and strode straight up to his man. Discreet observation be blowed!

  Thackeray had not noticed his approach. ‘Good Lord! You, Sarge? Fancy that!’

  ‘I saw you standing there,’ said Cribb, truthfully, ‘so I came along.’

  ‘What are you doing, then? Are you off to Brighton for the day?’

  ‘Not me,’ said Cribb. ‘How about you?’

  A tinge of mild embarrassment coloured the constable’s cheeks. ‘Me, Sarge? I-er-well, if you really want to know, I’m here because of this.’ He made a small, limp gesture with his hand.

  Cribb’s eyes followed the direction, and then blinked. ‘That, you mean?’

  Thackeray nodded.

  In his bee-line along the platform, Cribb had quite omitted to notice it: an enormous express locomotive painted in the brilliant golden ochre and dark olive green livery of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway Company.

  ‘Number 214,’ Thackeray said, as if he were making an introduction. ‘The Gladstone. One of William Stroudley’s engines.’

  Cribb nodded, avoiding the impulse to lift his hat.

  ‘Did you ever see such a finish?’ Thackeray went on, with undisguised emotion. ‘Look at that buffer-beam, Sarge. There’s all of five colours in it—red, white, black, yellow and claret. And how about the wheels—ain’t they the handsomest that ever touched a track? What other railway company would paint its wheel-centres bright yellow and keep ’em as clean as that?’ He turned on Cribb, almost challenging him to supply an answer.

  The sergeant frowned. ‘Do I understand, Thackeray, that you came here this morning to make the acquaintance of this—er—Number 214? To a railway terminus, on your day off?’