by BK Duncan
May felt overwhelmed and disorientated. Her passage down the road was accompanied by the assault of the horses’ snorting and stamping, and the rumble of iron-shod cart wheels; conversations in many languages and accents conducted in engine-room shouts; the heavy whump of ships’ ropes as they hit the unseen quayside; the whirr and lumber of the hydraulic luffer cranes; and the constant clank and grating of chain links. Her eardrums reverberated in time to the thudding of a screw propeller in the distance: a large vessel making her way down Limehouse Reach.
She steadied herself against a cart side as she dodged a pair of boys being chased by a Chinaman screaming oaths. She took a moment to breathe in the scents she’d been wrapped in all her life. There was the smell of the sea - the muscular steam tramps with their hot oil, smoke, coal dust and metal, and the more romantic tang of hemp rope and oaky tar from the sailing ships. All intensified by the spice of salt. And the cargoes they’d brought with them from far-flung places. If she was blind to the spring sunshine and deaf to the house sparrows fighting over fallen grain from the horses’ nosebags, she’d still be able to tell it was April. The oily animal-reek of the last of the wool bales; the nose-prickling sharpness of consignments of cut softwood; and the sugar. The sickly, comforting, luxurious taste of sweetness on the back of her throat that would hang in the air for the rest of the month, returning when the West India runs docked again in September.
May had almost reached her destination when she was caught up in a crowd of girls tumbling out of the bottling factory adjacent to the dock. Their screaming chatter reminded her of gulls in a feeding frenzy. She threaded her way through to reach the wide metal gates thrown open to the ebb and flow of the quayside and its six wharves. The watchman’s hut was just inside. She waited while he checked off a list of discharged goods. Two berthed ships were blocking her view of the water but beyond their hulks she could see the majestic masts of a sailing ship in Dundee Wharf waiting to go into the Graving Dock for repair. Everywhere men were dodging and weaving with loads she knew would be crippling their backs and producing calluses the size of oranges on their shoulders. The lucky ones were supervising the swinging down of crane-hoisted sacks, crates, and bales. She took advantage of a lull in the watchman’s activity and walked over.
‘Excuse me. I’m the Poplar Coroner’s Officer.’
‘Know who you are well enough, love. What are you wanting down this neck of the woods?’
But his face was new to her. Was everyone on the payroll of keeping tabs? May pulled her notebook from her satchel in an effort to appear distracted by professional matters.
‘I’m making enquiries about someone who worked at Elliott Shipping on Anchor Wharf.’
‘Young Miles, you mean? Poor bugger. Dope fiend, yes. Deserved to die for it? No.’
May was tempted to ask him what he knew about Miles’ opium taking but she had now secured better sources for that information - Richard Weatherby, for example.
‘A warehouse manager. There must’ve been one.’
‘Can’t help you, love. Get all sorts coming and going here as you can see. Hang on a mo.’
He lifted a red flag she hadn’t noticed leaning against his thigh, and began to wave it frantically.
‘You, yes you! Don’t go leaving that there or I’ll have your guts for garters! Stop being such a lazy git and get it where it should be going else I’ll report you for malingering!’
He rested the flag against his leg once more.
‘Now, where was I? Been on duty over Millwall ’til recent, ain’t I? Tell you what.’ He took a step past May’s shoulder. ‘Here, Ern!’
So close to her ear he sounded like a foghorn.
‘Bring yourself over here and give this young lady the benefit.’
May turned to see a group of men leaving the nearest transit shed wheeling empty hand trucks. She watched as the stockiest detached himself and trundled towards them.
‘You got a fag, miss?’ The watchman tapped the side of his nose. ‘It’s no smoking on the quays and Ern’s freer in his talk with a gasper between his lips.’
She should’ve thought of that. It would’ve been no trouble to pop into the Greek tobacconist’s on her way over. She’d been away so long from the commercial end of the docks that she’d forgotten the way things worked: a little something, for a little something in exchange.
‘Tell him I won’t be a minute.’
She hurried up to the last of the girls leaving the factory and bought three Woodbines for the same price she could’ve purchased a packet of twenty. But it was too little too late because when she returned to the hut she had the feeling that the watchman had already filled Ern in on the background for her visit. She would’ve given all that remained of her motorbike fund to have heard it. May offered the docker a cigarette. And then belatedly, the watchman.
‘Don’t mind if I do, love. Ta very much.’
The two men stood and smoked - the watchman scrawling his signature on every piece of paper thrust under his nose - sharing a story that involved a stevedore who had unearthed a rats’ nest in the number four transit shed and been bitten so badly he’d had to go off to Poplar Hospital. It seems it was the funniest thing they’d heard for a long while. Ern had his arm draped over the top rung of his hand truck as if around a lover’s shoulders.
‘Got to be getting back.’
But he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. May gave him the last of the cigarettes. He tucked it behind his ear.
‘Never knew his name. Didn’t have much to do with us - lightermen do the discharging for Anchor and the other wharves down that end. Some dealporters work the timber warehouses on Old Sun but it was only ever casuals got stints at Elliott Shipping. Reckon he was picking them off the street and paying the monkeys peanuts. Bleeding scandal if you ask me. Heard said the latest had a crib in Oak Lane. One of my mates got into a bit of a do with him once down the Vine Tavern. Made it up, after like, and got invited back to his place to bury the hatchet over a bottle of rum had found its way into his back pocket. Might still be lying on the floor there dead drunk for all I know.’
Then he turned and, pulling his hand truck behind him, set off across the apron to the catcalls of his gang.
Chapter Forty-Four
Oak Lane looked unpromising. There was a paint factory down one end and an engineering works at the other. In-between were buildings that seemed to have been long disused - those not with their windows bricked in had all the glass broken. None appeared habitable, but would serve the purposes of a man intending to make himself difficult to find. Why else wouldn’t he have come forward when he’d heard about Miles’ death? Perhaps because he knew more than was good for him about drug smuggling.
Conscious that she was wearing her second-best skirt and a pair of un-darned stockings, May picked her way through the debris filling the doorway of the only premises not to have planks nailed across the entrance. The smashed windows let in sufficient light to reveal a cavernous space with iron pillars propping up a ceiling that had shed enough laths in places to reveal the joists above. It had been a warehouse or home of one of the lighter industries serving the docks - perhaps sack making or oakum manufacturing; the walls smelled musty enough for either - before it had been stripped of anything and everything useful.
There was one thing remaining. A hump of what looked to be blankets in the left-hand corner. Keeping half an eye on the doorway, May skirted along the wall until she could get a better look. Beside it were the unmistakable signs of a makeshift fireplace; a brick hearth on a heat-buckled sheet of tin, a scattering of ash and bent nails nestling in the centre. It couldn’t have offered much heat but any larger and it would’ve risked setting the timbers alight. Goosebumps raised the hairs on her forearms as she thought of Elliott Shipping. That, in turn, reminded her of the story of the rats’ nest in the transit shed. Glad that she was
rarely without gloves, May returned to the doorway to rummage through the old sacks and broken crates until she found a length of lath to act as a poker.
She slid her reluctant feet towards the evidence of habitation. What if the warehouse manager was still here as the docker had intimated... not dead drunk... but just dead? There was no stench of rotting flesh though. Just a thin veil of urine - rodent and human. Turning sideways so she could run to the door if necessary, May stopped when she judged she was at the outer limit of the lath’s reach then stretched her arm out and prodded the nearest end of the bundle. She was sure something was under the covering but knew she’d have to get closer to establish what. Her throat was tight, her stomach fluttering. Another two steps and she poked again. Three large furry bodies bolted. Her scream echoed. Two of the rats made for holes in the wainscot but the biggest and blackest headed straight for her. Her reactions sharper than she would’ve thought possible, she whacked it on the back before it shot past her feet.
Her heart was racing as she edged towards the bundle. There was something else she could smell now. Without a name as yet, it was metallic - clean and cold. May reached down and pulled at the corner of the top blanket. Underneath was a filthy bolster, a rip at the seam spewing feathers. She poked at it with her stick in case it was the nest. Nothing. Bolder now, she levered it from the pile and tugged the second blanket clear. Three boxes. Oblong and all the size of a baby’s coffin. She squatted beside them. They had sliding tops. She inched the first lid aside to reveal the contents. Packed head to toe like sardines were sticks of dynamite.
The air left May’s lungs and she had to struggle to refill them. Had she got it all wrong and this is what Elliott Shipping had been bringing onshore from the deepest recesses of ships’ holds? It was probably the one consignment that would command a higher price than drugs. Or had it been hidden by those intent on a conspiracy of a far more sinister and catastrophic nature: Sinn Féin’s bid to bring down the British Government. She replaced the coverings and picked her way out onto the street.
***
It was mid-afternoon by the time May had finished reporting her find to the police. The detective at the Limehouse Station had made her wait for someone to arrive from Scotland Yard. In her deposition she’d come up with a perfectly acceptable reason for being in the disused building that satisfied both sets of officers. It was the truth anyway; she had been trying to trace a witness. Given the power and autonomy of a coroner’s court she wasn’t obliged to say for whose inquest. By the end of her session with them she was convinced her find had nothing to do with Miles Elliott anyway.
Jack’s note with the details of their evening assignation was waiting for her when she got to the office. She made a cup of tea and took it back to her desk where she sat and studied the contents of her notebook. The facts - as opposed to ideas and speculation - she’d gleaned about Miles Elliott’s death could all be condensed into one page. She felt she was letting him down; he may not have been the most upright of citizens but that didn’t mean his killer deserved to get away with it. Twiddling a pencil between her fingers, she started to go through everything she had written from the beginning to see if there was anything she’d missed.
She was digesting the final few paragraphs when she heard it. A shuffling just outside her door as if someone was gathering themselves together to enter. She called out but there was no response. Anyone with a legitimate reason for being in the building would have answered. And now she had let whoever it was know she was inside. May’s hand involuntarily went up to her neck. What if the news had already got back about the questions she’d been asking at the docks? She’d told the dope-runner who she was; what if the elusive warehouseman, and not the Tong, was his supplier? Could one or other of them have come to teach her another lesson in keeping her mouth shut? There was no way out. Unless she could run down to the coroner’s chambers, unlock that door and the one to the courtroom, then out into the vestibule and head for the side exit to the mortuary complex. Except she was frozen. Couldn’t move. Could hardly think. The handle turned and her mouth went dry.
A giggle escaped her as Alf Dent, the caretaker, stood in all his shabby glory in the doorway.
‘Thought my ears was playing tricks when I didn’t see no light. Why ain’t you put it on? Damage your peepers you will.’ He flicked the switch. ‘Couple of stiffs been delivered. The undertaker brought them in at sparrow’s fart. Don’t know why people have to go dying in the middle of the night; no one ever thinks of my beauty sleep - let alone the gout what with me going up and down them stairs. They’re all tucked up waiting. Husband and wife, he said. Gas, he reckons. Well, just so as you know. I’m back off up to my pit. If you hear a clattering it’ll be the pins giving way and tumbling me down the stairs. End up with a busted neck, I’ll be bound.’
He scratched his unshaven chin. May could almost feel the bristles prickling his skin.
‘Not a bad way to go though. Good job we’ve got plenty of drawers going begging. See I’m given a decent send-off, like. Black horses with plumes if the collection will stretch.’ He laughed exposing almost toothless gums and backed out, chuckling.
May wobbled on rubber legs into the kitchenette. She held her wrists under the coldwater tap until her heart slowed, and her hands stopped shaking enough to feel useful again.
Back in the office she walked to the window. Standing to one side and with her palm pressed against the frame, she looked out. Okay, so she’d been wrong about the caretaker but that didn’t mean she wasn’t having her movements stalked. Going over everything that had happened since Miles Elliott’s body had been found had confirmed her suspicions that someone was always one step behind. Or ahead. She had to do something to put them off the scent, thereby allowing her enough freedom to work on setting a trap.
As she watched the smoke from the factory chimneys settle into smudgy grey clouds, her thoughts coalesced into a plan. After she’d finished up here she’d go to the newspaper office and get Andy Taylor to write up a piece for tomorrow’s early edition; carefully worded it would hint at the suspicion of a link between the dynamite she’d uncovered, Sinn Féin, and a young man’s body recently found in Limehouse Causeway. The Tong would know it was a fabrication and make the assumption she’d heeded their warnings and was delivering a blind alley for Braxton Clarke to conclude the inquest with. She wanted to cheer with the beauty of it. Instead she returned to her desk and picked up the telephone receiver: Miles Elliott’s wasn’t the only death demanding attention.
Once put through, May waited until the garrulous woman at City of London Coroner’s Court had finished telling her that they were about to close up early because of an official function, before giving her name. The voice turned gossipy as she was told that Braxton Clarke’s wife was no longer in hospital but still needed his constant care and attention. May interrupted her description of the house and grounds in Sussex she’d once visited for a charity tea to announce she needed to make arrangements for the new arrivals in the mortuary. Did May want to speak to the coroner’s officer? No, she did not (he might be the one to take over her job and she didn’t fancy swapping professional niceties with him). In that case, as the locum deputy Mr Halliday was at Southwark Court, it would have to be the coroner himself. May felt she was being granted an audience with Royalty. The thud of the receiver on the desktop. It was a few minutes before it was picked up again.
‘Atkins here. I take it you have the facilities to conduct a post-mortem in Poplar?’ He made it sound like an outpost of the Empire in Darkest Africa.
‘Yes, there’s no problem there. It’s simply a case of the formal viewing.’
‘How many corpses do you have for me? I do hope it’s not another of those explosions you seem so fond of in your armaments’ factories down there.’
‘That’s Woolwich. We’re on the other side of the river. The Thames,’ she added just in case he thought she meant
the Limpopo.
‘You’ll have to organise for them to come here. I don’t have the time. In fact, we might as well do the PM.’
May thought of Dr Swan’s loss of fees. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, I’m not sure that would be acceptable to our juries; they are...’ how could she describe men schooled in Colonel Tindal’s distrust of medical men? ‘...rather set in their ways.’
Mr Atkins’ harrumph rumbled in her ear.
‘Get your undertaker to be waiting at the back entrance to my court at five o’clock sharp. There’ll be no need for him to unload. Include the paperwork and I’ll sign confirmation of viewing. But the inquests will have to wait for at least...’ His voice trailed away from the mouthpiece: ‘Miss Parry, when is my next vacant slot?’
As the seconds stretched into minutes, May wanted to scream with frustration. No wonder Braxton Clarke appeared to think her efficient. Mr Atkins breathed again into the mouthpiece.
‘A week. I suspect these interim arrangements will be over by then anyway.’
Did he know something she didn’t? Were plans in place for the new coroner - and coroner’s officer - to be in post at the beginning of next month?
‘I think that concludes the business in hand, does it not?’