The Killing Man

by Andrew Wareham

  “I think, Mr Rufus, that I may trust Mr Parsons’ discretion.”

  “You can indeed, sir. I am sure you should take the lease.”

  The new distillery was running within the month, six pot stills muttering over the flames and producing their steady trickle of proof spirits, filling up the gallon jars in the most satisfactory fashion.

  Sam bought in more earthenware pots and hired the services of a farmer’s trap and a man to drive it, making deliveries every day. The cash was paid to Mr Rufus, being safer that way, and came to Sam’s hands every week in a flow of profits.

  He debated building bigger stills but knew that he could maintain his quality on the small; he did not wish to take the risk that might be inherent in larger quantities, heavier mashes, more of malt and yeast and sugar, and a far greater chance of a slight error producing a toxic batch. His wisdom was admired only a month later, after a batch of whitestick was sold in a dozen beerhouses that did not buy from him. Drinkers died; a few were blinded; a score, at least, lost the ability to walk in a straight line. The supplier was tracked down by the constables, under direct command of the Sheriff of the County, and his sins were laid bare to the public. Rufus was openly condemnatory.

  “Every corner that could be cut, Mr Heythorne, was! Lead pipes! Cheap potatoes, many of them half-green or with patches of rot; contaminated baker’s yeast, thrown out of a bakehouse; old molasses rather than sugar, transported from Liverpool where the barrels had been condemned. Add to that, water from the river in town, and what may be found in that polluted course, no man knows.”

  Sam was horrified.

  “Surely the villain must hang, Mr Rufus?”

  “Undoubtedly, Mr Heythorne. That will be no loss to the world. The problem is, that his people now have no supply of gin for their houses…”

  “Do you think they will attempt to force me to sell cheap to them, Mr Rufus?”

  “Force, certainly, Mr Heythorne. Sell? That I doubt. I much suspect that your deliveries may be held up, stolen, taken off you.”

  “A shotgun to my driver, perhaps?”

  “No. There will be a gang, six or more of them, and armed and willing to shoot, perhaps wishing to shoot, so as to pass a message to you that you must supply them for free or die yourself. You will receive an order to run your stills at night as well as day in order to meet their needs.”

  “No. I will not be intimidated, Mr Rufus. If there is to be six of them, then I will hire a dozen of mine, sir!”

  “I can provide the necessary equipment, as one might say, Mr Heythorne. I have no use for violent criminals who think they may rule over us all with their street gangs.”

  Sam wondered just what gain Rufus might envisage. He said that he must first look to the safety of his warehouse and would then take measures to protect his deliveries. For the while, he would delay sending any of his product into town.

  “Uncle Abe, I think I am being used, by Rufus, for his own ends…”

  Sam told the tale to the older man, who had far more knowledge of local affairs.

  “Rufus sees his chance to end the rivalry with the Tapper Gang, Sam. Rufus has some influence over perhaps one half of the criminal activities in Stoke. Men who work protection pay him a levy; houses of ill-fame purchase the services of hard men he knows to keep order and collect overdue fees and bills; many of the dippers and blaggers and larceners move all of their take through his hands at his price. The Tapper Gang control the remainder, and often try to suborn – or beat – his people.”

  The terms were unfamiliar to Sam.

  “Pickpockets and street robbers and housebreakers, Sam, and those who steal from warehouses and shops as well. They have a hierarchy, as it were, of masters of their various trades. At the top, creaming off the profits, sit Rufus, and the Tappers.”

  “Thus, sir, if I am to respond to armed villains with my own guns, Rufus must profit…”

  “Just so, Sam. If you do not, then you will lose everything, of course. You have a choice, I suspect, of give half of your output to the Tappers, or close down and run; or you may choose to fight. You would need to recruit a dozen of hard men, Sam.”

  Sam knew it would not be too difficult to pick up men to act as guards. There were older fellows, in their thirties or even past that, who had served the Colours and then been discharged, wounded or sick. Those men would not be able to march fifteen miles a day with a musket and a sixty-pound pack, but they would be perfectly capable of sitting on the bench of a wagon, or behind a gatehouse window, with pistols and long gun to hand. With their training and experience, they would be more than a match for gutter-rats who had never practised with firearms.

  Some of them would die, however; as well, they would make a dent in his profits – idle hands taking a wage and producing nothing. He could find himself to lose as much by hiring guards as he would by shutting down.

  “These Tappers, Uncle Abe, who are they?”

  “Three brothers, Sam, sons to a small merchant who went bust fifteen years since – exactly why, I don’t know, but there was said to be underhand dealing involved. The sons were just grown and believed their father had been robbed. They sought, and obtained, revenge, or so it is said, and ended up with some guineas in their pockets and the understanding that the man with the knife and billy was king, that he sat on top of the pile. Over the years, they have used brutal violence to grow more powerful. They are known and hated. It is said that two of them take their pick of young females as they want them, forcing the daughters of poor men and discarding them to the houses after making use of them for days or months, as they wish. The third is said to prefer boys, but on the same basis. They are feared, in a way that Rufus is not. Rufus’ people know that if they do him a favour, he will respond as open-handedly as he may. The Tappers’ minions know that if they do not do as they are told they will be beaten, at a minimum.”

  Sam listened and gained the impression that his uncle did not like the Tappers. He suspected as well that he was being pointed in a particular direction. He preferred outright demands to indirect hints.

  “You seem to be sayin’, Uncle Abe, that was the three Tappers to be gone, there would be no followers to call feud for them.”

  Abe smiled and nodded.

  “Get rid of the Tappers, and the whole of the town comes into the hands of Rufus, for a few years. After a while, some other rival will rise, of course, as he gets older. He will make a good enough King of the Thieves, for as long as he lasts. We will both benefit from Rufus as the upright man. You must work the gin for a few years yet, Sam, before you have the thousands you require to go into coal, if that is still what you want. In the end, you will become a businessman of impeccable repute – but not yet. You must make your first pile, and that cannot be done by honest means. No man who starts from nothing does so with clean hands, Sam, and so you need a reliable man behind you and offering his protection.”

  Sam wondered just what clean hands would feel like – he did not think he knew. Born on the bread line, to a hard-working family that was lucky to feed itself each year, he knew that ‘clean hands’ were a luxury for the well-off to indulge in. If he made his pile, then he might well discover what the laws were, and try to fit in with them, but until he was certain of a full belly and a warm bed for the rest of his days, the frills of legality were for others to dabble in.

  “Where do the Tappers live, Uncle Abe? How can I get close to them?”

  “Rufus will know. He will have thought about the matter, Sam. He is not himself one for bloodshed - I doubt he has ever so much as carried a pistol - but he must know that there is no alternative. And he will be more than grateful – he is an honest man, truly an upright man, in fact.”

  Sam had heard the term, knew what an ‘upright man’ was, in the abstract, many of the troop had used cant more naturally than ordinary English and he knew some words. They didn’t have that sort of man up in the High Peak, but they had very few criminals there, and no gangs needing leaders. />
  “I must have another talk with him, Uncle Abe. By the way, are you the man who takes over when Rufus gets too old?”

  “Who, me? Whatever gives you that idea, Sam? I’m just the landlord of an inn, and not the biggest of those.”

  Sam nodded, able to hear that his question had not been answered, which was, he supposed, an answer in itself. It explained how Uncle Abe had been able to progress from hedge pub to inn, and how his inn might well become far greater before too many years had gone by.

  “I need a pair of double-barrel pocket pistols, Mr Rufus, heavy in the bore, as well. I could use a sort of roadbook as well, one that shows the location of the three brothers Tapper when out of business hours.”

  Rufus smiled, a faint twitch of the lips to show appreciation of such drollery.

  “They are never quite at leisure, Mr Heythorne, and may ever be found in fact in their working premises. On the other side of town, on the Stafford Road, a warehouse of good size and with a large old house attached to the left and a smaller and newer sort of cottage to the right, both with a door into the warehouse. The larger, older place is the family home, two of the brothers still dwelling there. The newer has the youngest of the three, whose habits are not quite approved of by the other two.”

  “So… shots in the night in one set of rooms must be heard in the other, Mr Rufus?”

  “Of a certainty. And there will be five or six of their hard men sleeping in the back of the warehouse, and probably one awake all night, each in his turn.”

  “And, from the little I have been told, the brothers will have company in their bedchambers.”

  “Invariably, Mr Heythorne.”

  “Is it a busy road?”

  “Very, during the working day, carts and wagons forever on the move.”

  “Then I must go past, I think, to get some idea of what is where. Is there another road behind the warehouse, or a yard for wagons, perhaps?”

  “The river lies directly at the back, Mr Heythorne. Little used nowadays, but once with small barges upon it. The new bridge was built too low for traffic to continue to that end of the town. There are some who say that the height of the bridge was set deliberately to close down that wharf – the Tappers believe so, for sure. The wharf is still there, is in effect the back doors to the warehouse, though more to the right-hand side.”

  “Where the new cottage is, in fact?”

  “Fairly much so, yes.”

  It was becoming likely that this was not a one-man job, that the Tappers must be dealt with by an armed band.

  “Might you know of, say, five or six men, one-time soldiers perhaps, or militiamen, even sailors who have left the sea? Men who know one end of a firelock from the other, and who might not be averse to pocketing a few guineas in gold for a night’s work, and who will not then go on the randy through the local pubs, shouting their mouths off?”

  Mr Rufus nodded, not wishing to say words aloud that might just be overheard as a commitment.

  “Not sailors, though, if you wish them to behave in sensible fashion thereafter. Not the mariner’s habit, living sensibly. There are men who have come home and taken to a hard-working existence and could make good use of a windfall. Cottages to make good, or a stock of leather for a cordwainer, or threads for a stocking-knitter, that sort of thing that might make much more of their lives. There are corporals and sergeants who found themselves surplus to requirement for getting a little older and less limber but are still strong in their minds. I know by hearsay of several such, Mr Heythorne. Given a day, I could speak to them.”

  “Then I might return to you tomorrow evening, perhaps? This is a business best done very quickly, I suspect.”

  “I shall look out for some tools of the trade for them, Mr Heythorne.”

  Sam made his way back to his own warehouse, put his horse up in the stall he had built on and harnessed up the trap and its trotting pony.

  “Delivery, master?”

  “No, keep the stills running, Amos. I hope to be delivering the day after tomorrow. Have we jars enough?”

  Amos was senior of the four men who worked the new stills, for being a little older and far less likely to take a swig from the product.

  “Tight, master. Nothing spare if so be it’s three days rather than two.”

  “I shall go into town and give an order for four hundred more of jars, and stoppers for them.”

  Closing the earthenware jars was a problem. Traditionally, the answer had been muslin or cheesecloth folded over the top and tied tight with waxed string round the neck. Good for pickle jars but allowing gin to spill through if they were rattled in transit, and releasing an unmistakable smell to passers-by. Cork was expensive, hard to come by, difficult and wasteful to cut to size. Metal screw tops cost more than a gallon of gin. The most recent solution they had come up with, and one they hoped to improve on, was of pottery plugs to almost the right size, turnip-shaped to sit in the neck, with cheap wax run hot to make a seal.

  Sam made his way into town, passed his order in at the pottery he had been recommended to by Rufus, and then quietly pointed the pony out on the Stafford Road. It began to rain, which he had hoped for; he pulled his greatcoat up, collar about his ears, wrapped his muffler about neck and chin and forced his hat as low as possible; he bent forward to protect his face from the driving wet. Every other driver on the road did the same, every man anonymous.

  The warehouse was much the same as any other: two storeyed, clay tiles, a wide front entrance, several men inside, lounging rather than working, a few bales and sacks up on racking, a smaller rear archway opening almost directly onto the river. There was a cottage with a pair of windows to one side, a larger house to the other; both seemed to be entered through the warehouse.

  ‘Only one way in’, he mused. ‘Only one way out’.

  That evening, he visited Rufus and met six men, all ten or twenty years older than him, weather-beaten, confident – none twitched or looked nervously about.

  “No need for names, nor any other nonsense. You’ve seen my face, you will know me and I know you. You’ll prefer that I do not shout your names about. If you will do as I tell you tomorrow night, you will pick up twenty guineas, gold coins in hand. You will be on killing business – if you don’t like that idea, well, off you go now. I will put a crown in your hand and see you out of the door, if you prefer. Mr Rufus will stand guarantor for me – watch.”

  Sam counted out one hundred and twenty gold coins, put them into six piles and passed them across to Rufus.

  “You know Mr Rufus. He will pay you whatever happens. He’s an upright man.”

  Sam used the cant term deliberately, sure they would understand it and all its implications.

  “Be here for ten o’clock tomorrow night. Walking boots on, as we are to cross the whole town. Can any of you row a boat?”

  Three said they had done so.

  “I need two of you on the water. Who’s strongest?”

  “My old chest can puff a bit after half an hour with an axe on the firewood, master – better not me if you want to row for any sort of time.”

  “So be it. You two to row?”

  The selected pair nodded.

  “Right, off you go, but before you do…”

  He handed out twenty shillings apiece, the silver coins easily passed in the shops or market stalls and drawing no attention in the way a gold coin did.

  “Extras. Suppose your missus chooses to argue you must not go, you have a little in hand for listening to me this evening.”

  They looked hard at him, wondering if he might be implying that they were the sort to be under a woman’s thumb; then they took the money and walked out, all six knowing they must come back and show they were men.

  “Crafty, Mr Heythorne! Very subtle!”

  “Honest as well, I hope, Mr Rufus.”

  “That too. Six short-barrel fowling pieces, such as men hire from me on occasion. Twelve pistols as well and loads for each. Gratis – for you will do m
e a lot of good if you remove the Tappers.”

  “Thank you, Mr Rufus. Two half-full barrels of gunpowder, if you would be so good, the top loaded with flints or cobblestones. Wrapped up dry, with an inch of fuse poking out.”

  Rufus was quick-witted, worked out the plan immediately.

  “And a small boat on the river, no doubt, Mr Heythorne.”

  Sam grinned, said that was the idea.

  The barrels were ready, wrapped in waxed canvas and with a length of quick fuse showing. Next to them were closed dark lanterns, candles inside with shutters that slid round to block off all light until it was needed, for illumination or to spark off a fuse.

  “The fuse is coiled around inside the top of the barrel and will give you nearly a minute after setting your flame, unless it sparks across, of course.”

  They laughed, there being no alternative.

  All six men had turned up, dressed sensibly, as Sam had expected, in woollies high on the neck with long sleeves, and dark waistcoats to keep them warm and less visible. They loaded and set the hammers safely flat in the pans, the two boatmen covering theirs with canvas, against water splashing off the oars.

  “Try not to fire your guns before the gunpowder barrels blow, gentlemen, but do not risk your necks – shoot when you must. You all have experience in the field, and you know your way about at least as well as I do. The warehouse we are to destroy belongs to the Tappers and may be expected to have the three brothers inside. They are not to survive the night. If you find one wounded or cornered, call me and I shall deal with the problem.”

  “Beg pardon, Master, but I ain’t never needed me hand held. Nor shall I tonight.”