“You must tell me.”
“Why must I? You’re going to hang me anyway, aren’t you? Whether I tell you or not.”
“Don’t be so sure of that. The judge might give you a lenient sentence if he knows you have cooperated fully with our investigation.”
Enoch laughed. “Don’t try to pull one over on me. I’m going to hang for this. I know I will. You should consider yourself lucky I’m even telling you this story. I could’ve taken all my secrets to the grave with me, but this has been my life’s work, and I am proud of my accomplishments. The man I met had his own interest in finding the Hirsch brothers. He knew of a plot that they were organising. A plot to bomb the Metropolitan Railway.”
Flynt leaned in to England. “It’s the informer I was telling you about,” he whispered. He looked up at Billings as he did so, giving him a conspiratorial glance.
“How did you meet this man?” England asked.
“At a pub. I met him at a pub. Although I knew about him before. I’d been following him for several days, waiting for the right time to make his acquaintance. He was a very cagey man. Very suspicious of everyone. He wouldn’t have talked to me if I’d approached him on the street. But I knew he’d let his guard down at the pub, so I arranged to bump into him.”
“How did you know of him?”
“I don’t need to disclose that to you.”
The newspapers, Billings thought. His name had been mentioned in the newspapers as one of the detectives involved in the case. Enoch must have tracked him down and followed him to the Duke of Avondale. His Irish immigrant routine had all been a carefully orchestrated charade. Billings felt his stomach churn. How could he have been so stupid.
“I followed this man to Aldgate,” Enoch continued, “where he met up with my brother Joseph, who led him to an abandoned building just behind the synagogue. I waited outside the building for them to come out again. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I saw them, or whether I’d get the chance to attack them, but if fate wanted me to succeed, then an opportunity would surely arise. And it did. The first person to walk out of the building was my contact. He left this building on his own.”
“I need to know more about this man,” England said. “If you won’t give us his name, then at least tell us something about him.”
“There’s nothing to tell. He was a nobody. A sad figure of a man. Tall, skinny, with a pathetic moustache. He never achieved anything in his life and was embittered because of it. He was desperately looking to participate in an act that would give him some glory before he died. But clearly the plot that my brothers were organising was not what he expected, because he walked out of the building with hunched shoulders, looking disappointed. This last desperate act had been just another failure.”
Enoch was describing Jeremiah Quick, the alias Billings had used when he attended the plot meeting. But Billings wondered whether Enoch was actually describing him. Is that how he saw him? As a sad, desperate, lovelorn man?
“The next person to leave the building was my brother Ruben. He was a big, burly man, and I could see a gun bulging in his coat pocket. There was no way I could attack him. But I knew Joseph was still in the building, and perhaps – who knows – somebody else. There was no point waiting for Joseph to come out of the building. Every fool knows that you should have a separate exit when attending a secret meeting. In case the police are spying on you.”
Billings cringed when he heard this. Every fool knew this, except for him. He wondered how he had ever made it to detective sergeant. He was a good policeman once. Before his judgement got clouded by morphine or feelings of yearning and lust. But now he had failed so absolutely, he’d be surprised if he would still be working at Scotland Yard in one week’s time.
“So I left the alley in which I was standing and went round to the back of the building. Sure enough, as I got there, I saw Joseph jumping down from the yard wall. I knew my stepbrothers. They all looked like my father – the same curly copper-coloured hair. But clearly Joseph didn’t recognise me, because he paid me no attention. As soon as he landed on the pavement, he reached out his arm to help his accomplice down. His accomplice was his brother Zebulun, who also didn’t recognise me. They were about to run away, without giving me even a fleeting glance, when I stopped them.
“I came here about the meeting,” I said to them.
Joseph turned to look at me. “What meeting?”
“I read about it in the Liberty.You’re organising a plot to bomb the Metropolitan Railway. I want to be part of it.”
Joseph paused and looked at me with suspicion before replying, “There is no plot.”
“Why not?”
He waved me away with his hand. “Go away. The meeting is over. There is no plot.”
“But I have an idea for another plot. It’s less ambitious but equally effective.”
The brothers looked at each other.
“I’m not interested,” Joseph said after thinking it through, then he turned his back on me and walked away, but Zebulun grabbed his arm and stopped him.
“We might as well listen to the boy,” he said.
“We don’t know him. It’s too risky.”
“But there’s no harm in hearing him out.”
“You hear him out if you want to. I’m off.” Shaking himself loose from his brother’s grasp, he marched away from us.
“Let’s go back in,” Zebulun suggested. He jumped up against the wall and pulled himself onto it. Then he reached his arm out and helped me up. We entered the building through the back door and climbed up to the room in which the failed plot meeting had taken place.
“Well? What’s your plan?” Zebulun asked.
I hesitated. I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t planned this meeting. I hadn’t planned any of my killings. But I had my knife in my pocket, and we were alone.
“Sit down and I’ll tell you,” I said. I had to disarm him. Zebulun was bigger and stronger than me. I knew that if it came to a struggle, he would win.
Zebulun sat down, and I walked behind him.
“My plan is this,” I said, then quickly pulled my knife out of my pocket, grabbed his head and slit his throat. And that was that. Two brothers down. Things had gone so easy for me. Much easier than I had expected. That’s how I knew I was on the right track. Fate was on my side. I was going to get my inheritance.”
England frowned and shuffled in his chair. He seemed irritated by something. “So you are confessing to the murders of Issachar and Zebulun. But what about Joseph? Did you kill Joseph too?”
“No. I played no part in his death. He was killed by his own brothers in the graveyard. And you, yourselves, hanged Judah. That spared me some trouble. The next death I was responsible for was that of Levi.”
“And I suppose you’re going to tell me that you killed Simeon too.”
“Yes.”
England shook his head. “Well, you’ve certainly been busy, haven’t you?”
Enoch was taken aback by England’s tone of incredulity and didn’t reply.
“So tell me. How did you kill Levi Hirsch?” England asked.
“With poison.”
“Which poison?”
“Cyanide. I put cyanide in his food.”
“How on earth were you able to put cyanide in his food? The food was delivered to the door every day by two constables.”
“I don’t want to tell you how I did it.”
“Why not?”
Enoch shrugged. “I just don’t.”
“You don’t want to tell us because you don’t know. You don’t know how the poison was administered, do you?”
“Of course I do.”
“No, you don’t. You know about everything else, because you read about it in the papers. But we didn’t tell the press where the poison was found.”
“What are you saying? You think I’m lying?”
“I do.”
“Why would I lie?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps you
derive some sort of perverted pleasure out of telling us these sordid details. You certainly seemed to cherish telling us about how your mother sold herself to others. And how you did the same. Many times.”
Enoch shrugged. “Well, if you don’t believe me, then set me free. I’ll go back to France. As soon as Ruben has been guillotined, I’ll go to my father’s lawyer and claim my inheritance.”
England paused before replying. He took off his eyeglasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “If you want us to believe you, then tell us which item of food you poisoned.”
Enoch hesitated. He glanced quickly at Billings, then hung his head and stared back at his shoes. “No,” he said. “I won’t do that.”
Billings felt his heart pound in his chest. The pork pies, he thought. Enoch had put cyanide in the pork pies after he had brought them to Mrs Appleby’s house. Billings could’ve eaten one of those pies himself. He could’ve been dead.
“Well…” England put his glasses back on. “In that case, we might as well end this interview now.”
Enoch sat up and looked surprised. “You’re setting me free?”
“No, we haven’t finished with you yet, young man. Not by a long mile. But perhaps one night in the holding cells will make you reconsider your story.” England turned towards the two constables at the door. “Take him away.”
The constables walked towards Enoch, pulled him out of his chair and dragged him out of the room.
“That boy is too smug for his own good!” England said, after Enoch left the room. “He’s a narcissist and a compulsive liar.”
“You don’t think he killed the Hirsch brothers?” Flynt asked
“I don’t know what to think! This case is a complete headache!” England took his eyeglasses off again and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “But I suppose it doesn’t really matter if he’s telling the truth or not. We have his confession, and if we can get the French police to confirm that he really is Jacques Hirsch’s bastard son, then that should be enough for the judge to convict him. Now that Ruben Hirsch is on his way back to France, we can finally close the file on these blessed Hirsch brothers!”
Epilogue
Chief Superintendent O’Sullivan was sitting on Clarkson’s desk, chatting to him, when Billings walked into the office.
“Ah, Detective Sergeant Billings,” he said, smiling at the detective. “I want a word with you.” The superintendent’s smile was cold and polite. Billings knew immediately what it meant.
“Please come with me to my office.”
Clarkson looked on with large, curious eyes as Billings followed the superintendent out of the room.
“Well, that was a very complicated case we have just completed,” O’Sullivan said, now sitting at his desk. “And I believe we have you to thank for catching the culprit. So well done.”
O’Sullivan nodded and smiled again, but Billings knew that this was just a polite preamble to the bad news that was to follow, and he didn’t smile back.
“We received confirmation from the French police that this Dan fellow is indeed the illegitimate son of Jacques Hirsch,” O’Sullivan continued. “My, my, what a case that was! The French police have even arrested Dan’s mother. It appears she was complicit in the murders. She’s the one who put him up to it. Apparently, all this time she had been grooming her son to exact vengeance on her former lover. Dan Hirsch appears to have been a mere puppet in his mother’s destructive ambitions.”
Billings remembered the vacant stare in Enoch’s eyes when he pointed the gun at him in Dover. Now he understood why Enoch seemed so inhuman. So vacant of feeling or compassion. He never got to know the real Enoch, because there was no one there. Enoch was an empty vessel. An automaton, built to carry out his mother’s bitter vengeance.
“But this isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about. Chief Inspector Flynt has informed me of something that has come to light about you during the investigation.” O’Sullivan pointed at a chair in front of his desk. “Do sit down, Billings.”
Billings did as he was told. He was trembling. This is it, he thought. This is the end of my career. He was unable to look his boss in the eyes and kept his eyes fixed on his shoes.
“I’ve known you for a long time, Billings. I remember when you were still a constable. You were young and eager and well educated. You spoke several languages, which we thought would be useful in Scotland Yard, which is why you were promoted. And you did good work for us at first. But your last few cases… Well, there was all that business in Edinburgh last year, for instance, when the little girl you were supposed to be guarding got murdered. Questions were raised then about exactly what you were doing at the time, which have never been successfully answered. And now there is this new confession of yours that you have made to Flynt. I expect you know what I’m talking about. I don’t want to embarrass you by spelling it out.”
O’Sullivan paused and waited for an acknowledgement. Billings nodded without looking the superintendent in the eyes.
“Now, I’m a man of the world, Billings. I know that people like you exist, and I know that you can’t help your unnatural desires. I am not one to judge. As far as I’m concerned, what goes on behind closed doors is none of my business. But in this case, your actions in your personal life have led indirectly to the murder of three people. Now, I am not blaming you for their deaths, Billings. I know that you were unaware that this man you had met was using you to locate his victims. And the moment you realised what was happening, you took action and put the case before your personal interests, which was an honourable thing to do. I admire you for that, Billings. But nevertheless, sodomy is illegal in this country, and we simply can’t have sodomites in the police force. I’m sure you understand that.”
O’Sullivan paused again for acknowledgement. Billings nodded.
“I do not want to fire you, Billings. Firing you would raise questions among the staff and the press, and I think we had better keep this hushed up. So what I’m proposing is that you resign.”
There was another pause. Billings did not respond.
“We won’t let you go empty handed. You’ll receive three months’ pay, which should be enough to tide you over until you find yourself a new position. And I’ll give you a good reference. You’ll be back on your feet in no time, I’m sure.”
O’Sullivan paused again and stared at Billings for a reaction. Billings remained quiet.
“I have prepared your resignation letter.” O’Sullivan pulled a letter out of his desk drawer and passed it on to Billings. “Read that and put your signature on the bottom of the page.” He grabbed a pen, dipped it in the inkwell and handed it to Billings. “You can go home once you’ve signed that. Probably best to leave through the back entrance. I’d rather the others didn’t know you’ve left.”
“Surely they’ll notice I’m not here.”
“I’ll fill them in in due course.”
“What will you tell them?”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell them the truth. I’ll tell them you had to leave because of health issues.”
“What health issues?”
“Didn’t you injure your back?”
“That was several years ago.”
“The injury has flared up again, preventing you from continuing your work.”
Billings was about to argue that nobody would believe that, but he changed his mind.
“Can I at least say goodbye to Clarkson?” he asked instead.
O’Sullivan hesitated. “I really think it´s best if you leave immediately. I want to avoid gossip and speculation.”
“But Clarkson has been my partner for many years. I’d like to at least say goodbye to him.”
“I’m sorry, Billings. I will not allow it.”
“But…”
O’Sullivan frowned. “You’re making this harder than it needs to be, Billings.” He held the pen out again. “Please. Just sign the document and go.”
Billings sighed. He took the pen from O’Sullivan and si
gned the bottom of the page.
Billings sat on a bench in Battersea Park, staring at the Thames, which was quietly flowing and swirling before him. He’d been sitting there for nearly forty-five minutes. He couldn’t bring himself to go home yet. He didn’t know what to say to Mrs Appleby when she asked what he was doing there so early.
He felt the way Enoch must have felt as he sat on that curb. Rejected, dejected, daunted by the prospect of having to find a new job.
Two ducks came swimming towards him, quacking and begging for food. He remembered how Enoch used to like feeding the ducks while he waited for Billings to come home. He smiled. But wait… no, of course not. What a fool he was! Of course Enoch didn’t linger in the park while Billings was at work. He was somewhere in the East End, trying to kill the Hirsch brothers!
Billings frowned. Why couldn’t he stop thinking about that blessed boy! He could feel the palpitations starting again.
He had determined, when sitting in the superintendent’s office, to go straight to the chemist’s and stock up on morphine. But he had stopped in the park on the way, and as he sat on the bench watching the river, the sound of the water lapping against the banks had soothed him and eased his symptoms.
He wondered why he had never sat in the park before. Battersea Park was such a beautiful park, and so close to home. He had always rushed straight back home after his shift finished, longing for his bed and another shot of morphine. Never had he taken the time to pause and take in his surroundings. It felt good to feel the breeze brush his skin while he listened to the birds chirping in the trees and watched the people pass by: lovers strolling arm in arm, nannies pushing perambulators, or gentlemen escaping the bustle of family life by taking their dogs out for a walk.
Perhaps losing his job wasn’t so bad after all. It was the job that had made him a morphine addict. It was the job that always brought about his migraines. He now had the opportunity of finding himself a less stressful position. Superintendent O’Sullivan had been kind to him by offering him three months’ pay. This really was a great opportunity for him to break away from a job he hated. He remembered something Enoch had said during his confession. Fate was on his side.
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