Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street

by Sally Spencer

  ‘We should study the cadaver in its current state,’ said one of the students, who’d latched on to her line of thinking.

  ‘We should study its current state,’ Ellie agreed. ‘This cadaver is as new to me as it is to you – I promise you, I haven’t even taken a peek at it – and we’ll all be looking at it with fresh eyes. The one thing I can tell you is that it was found hanging from a tree – so let’s see if we can work out how the man died.’

  Several of the students laughed, but when they saw the look in their instructor’s eyes, the laughter quickly died away.

  Ellie Carr stripped back the sheet.

  ‘Take your time,’ she said.

  Almost immediately, the student who thought that he’d already got the measure of her said, ‘Asphyxiation.’

  Ellie covered the cadaver with the sheet again.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she demanded.

  ‘Jackson,’ the student said, with less certainty now. ‘Andrew Jackson. I was named after the president.’

  ‘Which would seem to suggest that your parents had high hopes for you – at least when you were younger,’ Ellie Carr mused. ‘So you think he died of asphyxiation, do you, Mr Jackson?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, I do.’

  ‘And you don’t think the gunshot wound to his stomach had anything to do with his death?’

  ‘The . . . the gunshot wound,’ Jackson stammered. ‘I didn’t see any gunshot wound.’

  ‘Didn’t see a gunshot wound!’ Ellie scoffed. ‘And you call yourself a medical student!’

  She stripped off the sheet again.

  ‘There is no gunshot wound!’ Jackson protested.

  ‘No, there isn’t,’ Ellie Carr agreed. ‘But when I said there was, you couldn’t tell me there wasn’t – because you hadn’t looked.’

  ‘Is she always as formidable as this?’ Meade asked Blackstone.

  ‘This is nothing,’ Blackstone told him, and realized he was sounding quite proud of Ellie. ‘She’s very much the new girl here, and probably hasn’t quite found her feet yet. So she’s taking things carefully – holding back a little.’

  ‘Jesus, in that case, I’d hate to meet her when she has a full head of steam,’ Meade said.

  ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ Blackstone countered. ‘You’d find her fascinating.’

  And I find her fascinating, he thought. I find her much more than that.

  But he was still not sure how to come to terms with the fact that she was actually in New York.

  Ellie glanced down at the corpse’s face and neck.

  ‘Was it asphyxiation, Mr Jackson?’ she asked.

  ‘I . . . I don’t know, ma’am.’

  ‘Then take a closer look – and this time, please don’t rush it.’

  The student bent over the body, and examined it for a full two minutes.

  ‘I’d like to look at the eyes if I may, ma’am,’ he said.

  ‘Be my guest,’ Ellie replied.

  Jackson pulled back the eyelids, and peered at the dead eyes.

  ‘He died from occlusion of the blood vessels, leading to cerebral oedema followed by cerebral ischaemia,’ he pronounced.

  ‘And what leads you to that particular conclusion?’

  ‘There’s evidence of petechiae – little bloodmarks – on the face. And also in the eyes.’

  ‘There you are, Mr Jackson, you see just how good you can be when you let your mind – rather than your mouth – do your thinking for you?’ Ellie asked.

  For a moment, Jackson was unsure whether to take it as an insult or a compliment.

  ‘It’s a compliment,’ Ellie said, reading his mind.

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

  ‘Now I’ve been nice to you – and you’re pleased with yourself – and it’s time to move on,’ Ellie said. ‘What caused the occlusions that you’ve so correctly noted?’

  ‘The rope,’ Jackson said.

  ‘You’re doing it again,’ Ellie warned. ‘Never assume anything, Mr Jackson. Study the neck carefully.’

  ‘Am I wrong, ma’am?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ellie said, deliberately looking away from the cadaver. ‘You tell me.’

  Jackson leant over the body again. ‘The bruising is in the form of a continuous band, which is certainly consistent with the ligature marks common in most hangings,’ he said carefully.

  ‘Good,’ Ellie said, continuing to stare into space.

  ‘But . . .’ Jackson said tentatively.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘When you look closely, you can see that the pattern isn’t as regular as it might be. There are some slight protuberances in it. And there’s some bruising which is not part of the pattern at all.’

  Ellie swung round, abandoning all show of indifference.

  ‘Show me!’ she said.

  Jackson pointed out the bruising.

  ‘Check on his hyoid bone,’ Ellie ordered.

  Jackson placed two of his fingers on the cadaver’s neck, just below the chin.

  ‘Not like that!’ Ellie snapped. ‘You’re not stroking a kitten, for Christ’s sake – you’re checking for damage.’

  Applying more pressure, Jackson ran his fingers up and down the bone.

  ‘I think it’s broken,’ he said.

  Ellie did not quite push him out of the way, but she came pretty close to it, and, once she was in position, she ran her own fingers over the bone in the same way as Jackson had done – though with a great deal more assurance and expertise.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ she said. ‘I think it is broken. And what does that tell us, Mr Jackson?’

  ‘It tells us that . . . that he didn’t die from being hanged.’

  ‘Try again,’ Ellie said severely.

  ‘It tells us that, although the hanging may have been what actually killed him, there’d been some manual strangulation before he was strung up.’

  ‘And since it would have been impossible for him to strangle himself – and unlikely that he’d have been in any position to hang himself once he had been strangled by someone else – I think we can rule out suicide,’ Ellie said. ‘What we have here, gentlemen, is a murder victim.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s what he said?’ Blackstone had demanded of the snitch, after the man had told him about Jake’s boast in the saloon. ‘That they had to kill three men?’

  ‘I’m sure – ’cos while he was speakin’, he held up three fingers,’ the snitch had replied.

  ‘I think we’ve just found out who Jake and Bob’s third victim was,’ Blackstone said to Meade.

  ‘Yeah – ain’t that a bitch,’ Meade replied.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The first meal that Blackstone and Meade had ever eaten together had been at Delmonico’s on Beaver Street. Alex had claimed at the time – and on matters New York, Alex was invariably right – that not only was it the oldest restaurant in the city, but that some of the marble pillars which supported the entrance had been especially shipped out from the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii.

  It had been Alex who’d paid for the meal on that occasion – which was just as well, since Blackstone’s salary would have been all but eaten up by the cover charge – and it was Alex who insisted on treating Blackstone and Ellie to another Delmonico’s meal after the autopsy.

  ‘I thought you were magnificent this afternoon, Dr Carr, and you should regard this meal as nothing more than a modest repayment for your having allowed me to watch you work,’ he said smoothly, as they sipped their welcome cocktail.

  ‘Gawd, love-a-duck, if that’s why yer doin’ it, then I’m ’ere under false pretences, ’cos I din’t know nuffink bart yer being in the gallery,’ Ellie replied, in her broadest cockney.

  Meade looked mystified. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

  ‘She goes off like that sometimes,’ Blackstone told him. ‘Just ignore her.’

  ‘No, really, I couldn’t,’ Alex Meade protested. ‘If I’ve offended you in any way, Dr Carr . . .’


  ‘You haven’t offended me at all,’ Ellie interrupted. ‘But honestly, Alex – “Regard this meal as nothing more than a modest repayment for allowing me to watch you work”? You sounded like you’d just stepped out of the pages of a badly written novel – and I just couldn’t resist taking the mickey.’

  Meade smiled sheepishly. ‘Actually, I sounded more as if I’d just stepped out of a New York high society gathering,’ he said. ‘I suppose I was trying to impress you.’

  ‘You’ve no need to try,’ Ellie responded. ‘If you’re good enough for Sam Blackstone – as you clearly are – then you’re good enough for me.’

  She fell into a sudden silence, the expression on her face saying she thought she’d said too much – that she’d inadvertently revealed more of herself than she might have wished to.

  ‘I’ve been puzzling over Fanshawe’s murder, and something about it doesn’t quite add up,’ Meade said, coming to the rescue with a change of subject.

  ‘You’re thinking of the timing,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘I am,’ Meade agreed. ‘If the kidnappers had always intended for him to die, then why didn’t they tell Mad Bob and Snake to do it during the actual kidnapping itself? That would surely have been easier – and safer – than having them spirit Holt away and then come back – when the police had already arrived – to finish Fanshawe off.’

  ‘And why did they try to make it look like suicide?’ Blackstone added. ‘They already had the blood of the two Pinkerton men on their hands – why not just slit his throat, too?’

  Ellie laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Meade asked.

  ‘I assist half a dozen inspectors from the Yard nowadays,’ Ellie said, ‘and almost all the cases I’ve worked on have been so simple that an intelligent dormouse could have cracked them. A man murders his wife, one business partner kills another, and they leave behind them a trail of forensic evidence wide enough to drive a coach and four along. But somehow, when Sam’s involved, it’s never simple. He’s like . . . he’s like the iron filings of detective work, constantly being pulled towards the magnet of complexity.’ She grinned. ‘It’s quite clever, that – I must remember it, so I can use it again. And next time, of course, it will be much more polished, so everyone will think I’m brilliant.’

  ‘A lot of people already think you’re brilliant – almost as many as think you can be real pain in the arse,’ Blackstone said drily.

  Ellie laughed again. ‘You see, Alex,’ she said. ‘That’s how you should talk to a woman.’ She stood up. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I must follow a biological imperative.’

  ‘What?’ Meade asked.

  ‘She needs to go the can,’ Blackstone said, practising his American.

  The two men watched Ellie cross the restaurant.

  Then Meade said, ‘Have you told her that you love her? Have you actually put it into words?’

  ‘No,’ Blackstone admitted. ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Well, I really think you should,’ Meade advised.

  The more she read of her husband’s journal, the more Mary Turner grew to appreciate the wisdom of the Soldiers of God in shielding their womenfolk from the evils of the world.

  It was clear to her now that things were much worse than she had ever imagined. Satan stalked the earth like a proud monarch, his pathway made up of the souls that the foolish and weak had thrown at his feet. Women relinquished their virtue as if it were of no consequence. Men rolled the dice with abandon, never realizing that they were gambling not for the money on the table but with their chances of life everlasting. And even the children, so it seemed from what Joseph had written, had lost their innocence before they had even had time to become fully aware that they possessed it.

  She had started the journal at the beginning, and her progress had been slow. Even in the early stages, she had often found the need to break off and pray for strength, and now she had only to read a few lines before finding herself on her knees again.

  She had reached the point at which Joseph had been assigned the night shift – the point at which he had abandoned his other work on Coney Island in order to save just one man.

  ‘We were told by Mr Fanshawe that he would be bringing a visitor to Mr Holt tomorrow night,’ she read. ‘Cody, who has been working the night shift for over a year, sniggered, and when I asked him why, he would only say that I should wait and see for myself.’

  What horrors lay in store for her on the pages which followed, Mary wondered. And would the Lord grant her the strength to deal with them?

  ‘The visitor was wearing a long dress and a broad hat with a veil. There are women on Coney Island (respectable women) who dress in just such a manner, but this was not one of them. This was an abomination.’

  Mary read on, hardly able to believe the words – hardly able to accept that, even in a world awash with corruption, such wickedness could exist.

  ‘I have been to New York City and found the Devil’s Lair,’ Joseph had written on the next page. ‘It is a modern Sodom called the Blue Light Club, and it is on Canal Street in the Lower East Side. I stood outside, and watched as men – almost burning up with lust – entered the place. I wanted to enter it myself, and destroy it, as Christ destroyed the money changers’ stalls in the Temple. But that is not the mission that the Lord has given me. He has entrusted the soul of William Holt to my hands, and soon – when the time is right – I will confront Mr Holt and tell him that there must be no more visitors from this Blue Light, and that if he will put his faith in the Lord our God he might still be saved.’

  Tears ran down Mary’s cheeks, and now – only now – did she acknowledge that there had been times when she had doubted her husband.

  And what a fool she had been!

  How unworthy of him!

  She must tell Inspector Blackstone what she had discovered, she thought, because – though she did not understand these things herself – it might perhaps help him with his investigation.

  But even if it did not help the investigation, telling him would still serve God’s purpose, because he would surely be as outraged as her husband had been about the Blue Light Club, and take immediate steps to close it. And Joseph, who had wanted to destroy the place himself, would look down from heaven, and smile.

  Meade had watched in amazement as Ellie – skinny little Ellie – had demolished the largest steak that he had ever seen served at Delmonico’s.

  Now she pushed her plate away, rubbed her stomach, and said, ‘So what’s for pudding?’

  ‘I recommend that you try the Chocolate Brownie,’ Meade said. He stood up. ‘The maître d’ has been told to charge everything to my account, so now, if you’ll excuse me . . .’

  ‘You’re leaving?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘I have another appointment,’ Meade replied, unconvincingly. ‘It has been a delight to meet you, Dr Carr.’

  ‘The name’s Ellie,’ Ellie said. ‘If you call me Dr Carr again, I swear I’ll save that Chocolate Brownie, so that the next time I meet you I can stuff it right up your Khyber.’

  ‘Up my what?’ Meade asked.

  Blackstone smiled. ‘Trust me, Alex, you really don’t want to know.’

  They shook hands, and Meade left.

  ‘Did he really have another appointment?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘I suspect not,’ Blackstone replied. ‘I rather think he was just being tactful.’

  ‘Leaving us alone, so we could talk?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So what shall we talk about?’

  What indeed, Blackstone wondered. There was so much he wanted to say – and so much he thought he shouldn’t.

  ‘Why did you come to America?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, there’s certainly no beating about the bush with you these days, is there?’ Ellie countered.

  ‘You didn’t answer the question,’ Blackstone pointed out.

  ‘No,’ Ellie agreed. ‘I didn’t, did I? What do you want me to say, Sam? That I came to
America because of you?’

  ‘That would be nice – but only if it’s true.’

  ‘I’d have been a fool not to jump at the chance of coming here,’ Ellie said cautiously. ‘I’m helping to create a new science.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m a woman with so many ideas – so many theories. And the Americans are open to them, in a way that most people I have to deal with in England are not.’

  ‘I understand that.’

  ‘And yet, when I was offered the opportunity, the first thing I thought about was you.’

  ‘But you still didn’t try to contact me, once you’d landed.’

  Ellie shrugged awkwardly. ‘What can I say? I got wrapped up in my work. That’s the problem, Sam. We both get wrapped up in our work.’

  ‘We could try not to,’ Blackstone suggested. ‘We could make a real effort to spend more time with each other and see where that leads.’

  A patrolman appeared in the doorway, looked around, and then made a beeline for their table.

  ‘Are you Inspector Blackstone?’ he asked, tentatively.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought they were joking when they said I should look for a man dressed like a bum,’ the patrolman mused. Then a look of horror came to his face. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Blackstone assured him. ‘What’s that in your hand? A message for me?’

  ‘Yes, sir. They said at the station that it was urgent.’

  Blackstone slit open the envelope, and scanned the note inside.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I have to go,’ he said to Ellie.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘The kidnappers have contacted the Holts again. They want the ransom paid tomorrow morning, and I really need to talk it through with Alex.’ He stood up. ‘I really am sorry.’

  Ellie smiled sadly up at him. ‘No problem, Sam, you can’t help getting wrapped up in your work,’ she said.