Kith and Kin

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘So who is this man?’ Henry said. ‘This Gough or Clough, or whatever his real name might be. Mickey, if we once knew that, I feel that everything else would fall into place.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Pentonville prison always made Henry think that the designers and architects had perhaps had in hand drawings in a neo-classical style for some foreign embassy project, and that on the project’s failure they had instead applied these to the exterior of this building.

  Prisoners did not arrive through the grand and imposing front entrance to the building and so would not suffer that moment of uncertainty – wondering if they were actually in the right place. Though once inside, Henry thought, there could be no mistaking the building for anything but a place of incarceration.

  It had once been a model for the so-called ‘separate system’. The prison had been built as a series of spokes stretching out from a watchtower, each spoke housing prisoners in solitary cells. Even during exercise they were forbidden to communicate. They marched in silent rows with cloth sacks on their heads that mostly blocked their ability to see one another. At prayers, they were confined in separate ‘coffins’, as the men called them, able to see only the minister, standing at the front of what was effectively an amphitheatre of blinkered men.

  Pentonville no longer operated that system – which had led to despair, madness and suicide far more often that it had led to reform, Henry thought – and many of the cells were now occupied by two or three men in cramped and insanitary conditions that led to a new set of problems. Violence was a commonplace and Henry didn’t regard the prison officers as being much better than the inmates in that regard.

  Henry was of a similar opinion to Mickey as far as Alf Peterson was concerned. His grandparents had emigrated to England and their children and grandchildren had been born in London. The first generation had apparently been shopkeepers – Henry wasn’t sure what had brought them to England but they, like generations of others, had come to London, worked and married and had children and become part of its texture.

  That texture sometimes became roughened, over time. The three Peterson boys had little to commend them, in Henry’s opinion, though to be fair, he hadn’t known about Max. Max seemed to have either steered clear of trouble or been better at not getting caught – until, of course, someone had decided he was in their way and had stabbed him to death.

  Alf was brought into the visiting room and sat down opposite Henry. The guard hovered by the door. Alf was less than thirty years of age, but he looked twice that. His skin was grey from lack of light and poor food and his teeth – those he had left – brown and decayed. He was skinny, apart from an oddly distended paunch that hung over the top of his trousers, and Henry wondered if he might be ill.

  ‘I’ve come to talk to you about your brother, Max.’ Henry pushed forward the photograph of Max, dead but cleaned of mud, just before the post-mortem had begun.

  Alf’s gaze left Henry’s face for long enough to glance at it and then returned. Mickey had warned him that Alf believed that his capacity to keep on staring at a man and saying nothing was guaranteed to unsettle and frighten and Henry could see that in certain circumstances that might be the case. But, for the moment at least, he was unimpressed.

  ‘He died of a single stab wound. We believe he died in company with this man. William – known as Billy – Crane.’

  He held out the second photograph and Alf responded in the same way. It seemed that conversation was to be in short supply.

  ‘Who would have wanted your brother dead?’ Henry asked.

  Alf grinned. It was not a pleasant sight, and when he began to laugh his breath reached Henry, putrid and rotten.

  ‘You find it entertaining? That your brother is dead?’

  ‘He was a nance. A pansy.’ He leaned forward. ‘A poonce. One less of them sort around, ain’t no one going to be sorry.’ He grinned again. ‘Or maybe that’s what you are, ain’t it?’ He sat back, clearly amused, then picked up both photographs and ripped them across the middle and chucked them to the floor.

  The guard moved in and Henry did not detain him.

  Mickey had encountered the opposite response, he told Henry when they were comparing notes later on. Nat Timmins didn’t want to shut up.

  ‘I don’t think he gets many visitors,’ Mickey said. ‘He spent the first ten minutes bending my ear about the food, his cell mates and how he’s better than them in a dozen different ways, most of which seem to have to do with the scale of violence each of them employed.’

  ‘So, another waste of time,’ Henry said. He’d felt oddly demoralized after his visit to Alf Peterson.

  ‘At first, yes,’ Mickey agreed. ‘And then I showed him the pictures of our dead hoodlums and we moved on to the subject of Grigor Vardanyan and how he died. I asked our Mr Timmins if he knew Grigor well and he got very cagey, asking what I meant by well and what I might be suggesting, and saying how there was nothing like that between him and Grigor. Nothing like there was between Billy Crane and Max Peterson. I told him I wasn’t suggesting anything and asked if the rumours about Max and Billy Crane were true. If he thought that might have had something to do with their deaths.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he didn’t seem to think so. It seems everyone knew but no one talked about it. Since Bailey didn’t see fit to act no one else did either. As Timmins put it, Crane and Peterson didn’t rub anyone’s nose in it, so it was largely a case of “don’t ask questions and you’ll be told no lies”.

  ‘But then I happened to mention how exactly Max had died and suddenly all the chat stopped. I got the feeling he was quite enjoying himself up until then but the mood changed, Henry, and he suddenly looked less sure of himself. There was still the bravado, but I’d have said I scared him, somehow.’

  ‘And you challenged him on this.’

  ‘Of course, and he demanded to be taken back to his cell.’

  ‘You’d talked about the wound. The shape of it.’

  ‘And speculated as to the kind of weapon. A poleaxe, I thought, or maybe an ice pick, but no, the profile is wrong for both. The pathologist said it was rounded in shape and straight, no curve. Timmins recognized something, Henry, something that made him clam up tighter than a duck’s arse – and that’s watertight.’

  ‘So, this is a recognizable MO,’ Henry said. ‘The assailant is known – at least in certain circles – and feared too. How are your friends managing with the boy Eddy?’

  ‘Keeping him close and keeping him busy,’ Mickey said. ‘No one’s been seen that doesn’t have legitimate business locally so I’m assuming no one’s come to look for him. My guess is he’s supposed to report back sometime soon.’

  The central office was busy, humming with quiet and purposeful conversation. Henry stretched, suddenly restless and wanting to walk; aware that he had a stack of files on his desk that needed to be examined.

  A constable came in with yet another. ‘Sergeant says this is the woman in the wedding dress,’ he said, and then retreated at pace.

  ‘In the wedding dress?’ Mickey asked.

  ‘The couple in the clipping that Grigor kept. Local police made enquiries but they moved on a couple of years back. A copy of the marriage lines arrived this morning. Turns out the bride was a local girl, and’ – he indicated the folder – ‘that she had a record.’

  ‘For prostitution,’ Mickey guessed.

  Henry opened the folder and Mickey came round to read over his shoulder. ‘Emma Joan Phillips. Last known address on Commercial Road. Picked up for soliciting. One count. Either she got lucky or she was scared off and stopped the game.’

  ‘Reported missing by her landlady,’ Henry said. ‘Three years before the date of the marriage certificate.’ He pointed to the marriage lines. Her occupation was listed as chambermaid. ‘So, in that three years she disappeared, moved to Bradford, got a job as a chambermaid and found a man to marry. And then saw fit to inform Grigor Vardanyan of the fact.’

 
‘And it meant enough to him that he kept the newspaper cutting.’

  ‘And Nathaniel Timmins recognizes the wounds on Max Peterson and was a friend of Grigor’s. And is also the subject of one of his clippings. Mickey, what do we know about the man Timmins shot?’

  ‘Well, he survived,’ Mickey said. ‘I don’t know that we have more than that. Presumably he testified.’

  He got up. ‘I’ll go and and see what I can ferret out,’ he said, ‘and leave you with your stabbings. We should go and speak to this landlady, see if Emma Joan Phillips sent her a record of her nuptials, and while we’re about it, I’d like to know if Martha Howells is still remembered by those she shared a house with.’

  ‘When I’ve finished with these,’ Henry said, ‘we can do both on the way home. They are within a street or two of one another.’

  ‘And within a street or two of Bailey’s ground,’ Mickey added.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Henry worked his way through the files on his desk, looking for a particular pattern of signature. Some filtering had already been done; he had been given only those unsolved killings that involved a single stab wound, but it still left a considerable number over the previous five years.

  For some time, Henry found nothing. Some cases he was able to dismiss very quickly by looking at the post-mortem results. Those that specified width of blade seemed easy to discard but others, where the weapon used was in some doubt, he had to read much more closely.

  By the time Mickey returned he had isolated four ‘possibles’, and all of those were of more recent date. ‘Three years ago, there is no record of this kind of injury,’ he told Mickey. ‘And yet the wounds are so consistent and so precise that I cannot believe they began so recently. Our killer is much more practised than that.’

  ‘So, you’re thinking he’s been inside.’

  ‘It seems likely. Which means we have to delve further back to find a record of any previous offences. Our man can’t have been arrested for murder, or even woundings like this, or someone here would have recognized the pattern.’

  ‘Unless he committed offences elsewhere.’

  ‘True. But we can be certain he has been in London for at least the past two or three years and reasonably certain too that Timmins either knows him or knows of him. Knows enough to be afraid, at any rate.’

  ‘And Bailey; is he working for or against Bailey?’

  ‘That’s a big question, but for now we concentrate on what we have. We’ve now got six incidents we can use to build some kind of pattern. Martha Howells, from January of this year. A known prostitute, though – previously, at least – of a better sort, not a streetwalker. Max Peterson. No criminal record, but we know that he was embroiled with the criminal fraternity.’

  ‘And these others?’

  ‘Toby Black. Worked at the East India Docks as a stevedore. His mother was a native of the East End and his father was Jamaican. It seems he was taken up by his mother’s family and he obtained his work through their connections. You know how so many of these jobs are tied to family and tradition.’

  Mickey nodded. ‘Criminal record?’

  ‘He got into fights when he was drunk. Nothing more significant. Then there is an unknown male, fished out of the Thames in a bad state. I’m adding him to our list because the profile of the killing blow would seem to fit, but the truth is he might be out of our range. Then there is Elizabeth Levy – no relation to our clockmaker, I don’t think. On her way home from work one night She was heard arguing with a man, and a couple who knew her slightly apparently stopped to ask if she was all right. She told them there was nothing to be concerned about and they went on their way but the following morning she was found dead on that same spot.’

  ‘And the man she was arguing with?’

  ‘They said he was a stranger to them. He sounds nondescript: medium height and weight, might have had dark hair.’

  ‘And did she have criminal connections?’

  ‘No, she was a shop girl, due to be married at the end of the year.’

  ‘And our last?’

  ‘A child,’ Henry said. ‘A boy of nine. Found by his uncle in a yard at the back of a warehouse on Camperdown Street. He’d been missing overnight after his mother had sent him to the shop for bread. It was a regular errand and when he didn’t come back, she raised the alarm. He was found a mile from home.’

  ‘And had he been molested?’

  Henry shook his head. ‘Not that it was reported in the post-mortem. But his hands had been bound and, if you look at the photographs, the rope marks are very familiar.’

  Mickey studied the images for a moment or two and nodded. ‘Poor little blighter,’ he said. ‘And this was two months ago, back in October. Is this the most recent, apart from Peterson?’

  Henry nodded. ‘Did you find anything more on Martha Howells? Anything we had missed before?’ He and Mickey had not been involved in that investigation, only in the finding of the body.

  ‘Nothing apart from the fact that it’s certain now – though unprovable, as it happens – that the landlady was in fact a madam, which we’d already assumed. One of the girls said that Martha had been told to leave but then she clammed up and, when challenged, changed her story.’

  ‘So, we go back and enquire further,’ Henry said.

  But the day was to end as frustratingly as it had begun. The house that had been shared by Martha Howells and the other girls was now occupied by a family who knew nothing of its history and the landlady of Emma Joan Phillips, the young woman whose wedding announcement Grigor had treasured, had retired over two years before, sold up and gone to live ‘somewhere by the sea’, neighbours told them.

  ‘So, that’s that for now,’ Mickey said.

  ‘That is certainly that,’ Henry agreed. ‘We should go home. On Sunday we’ll see Kem and Malina Cooper and hope they can shed some light, but for now … what will you do about the boy?’

  ‘Leave him in the Pritchards’ care till tomorrow and then allow him to escape, I think. The streets will be quieter on a Sunday and make him a little easier to observe.’

  Henry yawned. ‘I think I may well sleep tonight,’ he said.

  You probably will, Mickey thought. We’re past the twelfth of December now. The dreams are less likely to come back before New Year.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Cuxton Road cemetery in Strood was a peaceful place and, Malina thought, a pleasant one too, with its double-winged chapel of rest and gentle landscaping. Their mother’s grave was a little way from the chapel, tucked away behind a group of Victorian monuments and shaded by trees. The Victorian graves tended to get a little overgrown in summer when the ivy and wild flowers took advantage of the lack of care, compared to that lavished on the newer graves. Malina came when she could and tidied their mother’s plot, brushing away the leaves in autumn and weeding the turf in summer.

  It was a modest grave with an equally modest little stone, not like the grand Victorian crosses and angels that shadowed it. They had buried her under her family name of Cooper, neither Malina nor Kem wanting her death tainted by what both saw as a dead name. Here, at least, she should reclaim her own.

  They laid flowers on the grave and Malina crouched down, not wanting to muddy her stockings by kneeling, to remove the last of the autumn leaves that now lay rotting there.

  ‘I’m glad she’s not around to see this,’ Kem said suddenly.

  ‘To see what?’ Malina scolded him. ‘It don’t concern us, Kem.’

  ‘Don’t it? Come on, Mali. This is as much about us and Ma as it is about the dead men on that mud. It started that night, didn’t it?’

  She rose to her feet, shaking her head sadly. ‘No, I reckon it started well before then. What was she doing, Kem? We both know she was up to something.’

  ‘Do you think she killed him? Our dad, I mean.’

  ‘I don’t see how. I see why she might have, but not how. After he came back she scarce went anywhere. It wasn’t like before, when she’d be
off who knows where and sometimes not even telling us when she’d come home.’

  ‘Well, we never told him about that. It would have been a lot worse if we had, I reckon.’

  Malina nodded. The truth was there were too many questions and their mother had been firm in her resolve not to answer any of them, not even when they had been growing towards adulthood. She wondered, had their mother lived, if she would confide now. After all, at eighteen and twenty they were no longer children.

  Though in reality, Malina thought, she’d not felt like a child in a very long time.

  ‘Reckon we should go,’ Kem said. ‘You think that copper will turn up?’

  ‘I’m sure they both will,’ Malina told him. ‘You get one, you get the other.’

  It was a half hour walk back to Kem’s lodgings on Glanville Road. The landlady allowed them to make use of her front parlour when Malina visited. Today, however, when they arrived, she told them that their friend would be waiting for them at the Steam Packet. ‘Such a well-mannered gentleman,’ she said, and looked speculatively at Malina.

  ‘I’m guessing that would be the tall one,’ Malina said, as they walked away. ‘The Chief Inspector.’

  ‘At least he didn’t say he was a policeman – though I’m surprised she didn’t smell him out. She has a nose for trouble.’

  The Steam Packet had a lounge bar respectable enough for Malina not to feel uncomfortable and she took a seat at Henry’s table while Mickey went to ‘get them in’.

  ‘You impressed Mrs Pierce,’ she told him. ‘Said you had nice manners.’

  ‘Thanks for not saying you were the law,’ Kem said. ‘I can do without getting my ear bent for bringing trouble to a respectable house.’

  ‘You’ve been to the cemetery, I believe,’ Henry said.

  ‘Our mother died five years ago last Friday,’ Malina said. ‘We couldn’t get there on the day.’