Brass Lives

by Chris Nickson

  From the back of the car, he watched the faces he passed. Ground down after a single day of work, walking with slumped shoulders. They faded from his mind as soon as he’d passed. Only one thing was important at the moment: what the doctor had said to Annabelle.

  All he could do was hope it really was something minor, a tiny lapse that wouldn’t be repeated. For God’s sake, Annabelle was only fifty-four. A year older than him, and he hardly felt ancient. She was active, full of life.

  The driver roused him from his thoughts. ‘We’re here, sir.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you. Usual time in the morning.’

  At the bottom of the steps he took a breath, not sure how life might change once he reached the top. But Annabelle and Mary were sitting at the table, chattering away and laughing like the closest of friends. It lifted his heart. She wouldn’t be doing that if she’d had bad news, would she?

  ‘I was just telling her some things I’d heard about the pilgrimage.’ Annabelle’s face was flushed with pleasure. ‘I’ll dish up the food.’

  No mention of the doctor as they ate. Light, easy conversation until the plates had been cleared away and they sat with cups of tea and slices of cake.

  ‘Well?’ Harper asked. ‘What did he have to say?’

  She stared at the tablecloth, picking up crumbs and dropping them in her saucer. ‘I told him what had happened. He asked me a whole lot of questions. Was I tired, all sorts of things like that.’

  ‘What did he say after that, Mam?’

  ‘He’s not certain. It might be something and nothing.’

  ‘What about going to London?’

  She exhaled and he could feel her disappointment. ‘He thinks it’s best if I stay here.’ She raised her head and looked at them. ‘So you’re going to be stuck with me, I’m afraid.’ She tried to smile, but her heart wasn’t in it. ‘He wants me to see someone. A doctor in Park Square who specializes in things like this. Just to be on the safe side,’ she added.

  ‘Have you made an appointment?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘I telephoned this afternoon. I thought I’d better do it quickly while I had the courage.’ Annabelle looked from one of them to the other. ‘Day after tomorrow at three o’clock.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’ She squeezed his hand.

  Driscoll, the shooter from Sheffield. He’d looked a sorry specimen when Harper had marched into the interview room at Millgarth late that afternoon. Bedraggled, weary, someone who knew he’d lost everything.

  ‘When you took those shots at the hotel, what were your instructions?’

  ‘To wait until your man went in, then shoot. Not to hit anyone. Just to scare them.’ He had the clipped speech and clear tones of someone with education and money. A lieutenant in India, according to the folder lying on the desk. Qualified as a marksman. Medals for bravery. Mentioned in dispatches. He was in his thirties, a faded soul who was never likely to see good days again.

  ‘Who gave you the orders?’ Harper asked. ‘Who paid you?’

  ‘Thorpe.’ He hung his head lower and took a cigarette from the packet in his pocket. He sucked down the smoke like it was mother’s milk.

  ‘How did you know him?’

  The man blinked and tried to smile. ‘I bought the gun from him.’

  Harper tried to keep his face still, to hide the excitement bubbling through his system. He shifted the chair a little closer to the table. ‘Tell me about that,’ he said. ‘All of it.’

  He watched as a constable led Driscoll down to the cells, then walked back to the detectives’ room.

  ‘Jones has vanished, sir,’ Ash said. ‘Gone on the run. I’ve let every division know and sent out a description to all the men on the beat.’

  One more bloody thing. Harper felt as if he could punch the wall.

  ‘Someone told him.’

  ‘What did Driscoll have to say, sir?’

  ‘You were spot on about him. Former officer, Indian Army, cashiered for stealing from the mess. Down on his luck. Good with a weapon, thought he might be able to rob people or hire out his services. Someone tipped him the wink that Thorpe had some guns for sale. He bought the pistol six months ago. But the Metropole was the first job he’d had and that was purely because Barney got in touch.’

  ‘So we have Thorpe for the break-in at the barracks, too.’

  ‘Yes.’ He felt tired, bone-weary. ‘And we have Jones, who was Thorpe’s bodyguard, hiring Beckett to kill Fess and providing the gun. Seems I was wrong about Davey Mullen being the place where the roads all met.’ He picked up a mug of tea and drank. Stone cold. ‘Beckett used to be a member of the Erin Boys. Anything more on that?’

  ‘We have a couple of informers in the gang.’

  ‘What do they say?’

  ‘Claim they’ve never seen him around, so he might be telling the truth.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s it, sir.’

  ‘We need to do better,’ he said to the men. ‘All of us.’

  He took out his pen and began to write.

  Fess murder

  Arson

  Metropole shooting

  Barracks robbery

  Francis Mullen

  Barney Thorpe

  Missing pistol

  Davey Mullen

  Bert Jones

  He was beginning to feel as if he was drowning in violence and death.

  ‘How did it become so complicated?’ he asked the superintendent later, hearing the frustration and exhaustion in his voice. ‘We’ve moved from Mullen behind everything to Barney Thorpe being responsible … do you really believe he concocted all this by himself, all because Mullen gave him a beating?’

  ‘People have done worse for less, sir. You know that.’

  ‘I do.’ He looked at the superintendent. ‘But tell me this, then: can you really see Barney coming up with anything as devious as this? Where would he have got information on Fess being in Leeds?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ Ash said with a grimace. ‘That’s the problem. I wish I did.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Davey Mullen was stable, the nurse said when Harper telephoned from Millgarth. But he hadn’t regained consciousness yet.

  Shot eleven times and survived. Beaten and dumped and still here. He shook his head in disbelief. Mullen was the man no one could kill.

  Who’d done it? Who had given the order? It couldn’t have been Thorpe. He was already dead, and he’d bet a pound to a penny that Mullen had killed him. Who, then?

  Only eight o’clock in the morning and he already felt the deep throb of a headache.

  ‘Bert Jones?’ he asked.

  ‘No sign, sir,’ Walsh replied. ‘Absolutely nothing at all. I’ve sent a request to every force across the country. He has a sister in Bristol, he might try down there.’

  Keep hunting. It was all they could do. He glanced at the list on the wall. It read like an accusation. His failings.

  ‘Make sure they know he’s probably armed.’

  ‘There’s one other thing we haven’t discussed,’ Ash said.

  ‘The arson?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I asked Beckett; he says he doesn’t know anything about it and I believe him. But I’m positive it connects to Davey Mullen.’

  ‘It does, I’ve no doubt about that. I bet we’ll find Thorpe was behind it somehow.’

  At two o’clock he was sitting in the back of the motor car, watching the landscape change as the vehicle passed through Sheepscar, Harehills, the woods around Gipton and beyond the new parade of shops at Oakwood, the stone still the soft colour of honey in the sunlight.

  On to the Mansion at Roundhay Park, surrounded by acre after landscaped acre. Hard to believe that fifty years ago all this had belonged to a single family. To possess so much seemed wrong, unreasonable. But now it was a park, owned by the city, free and open to everyone. Soon enough the marchers would be sitting down to tea here.

  He spotted Annabelle, striding around as she checked everything and
gave instructions. She had a pair of raffia roses in the red, white and green suffragist colours pinned to her hat. But what made him stop and stare was the length of her skirt. Four inches off the floor, short enough to show a little ankle. It was daring, provocative. The other women had hems the same length, too.

  The constables were strolling around with pleasant smiles. This was light duty for them. A few women were beginning to gather down in the arena for the afternoon meeting. Only a dozen so far, but plenty more to come and thousands were expected at the gathering on Woodhouse Moor tonight.

  He turned as he heard a ragged cheer and saw Miss Beaver and the other women appear, marching together. They looked dusty and weary. Annabelle and Isabella Ford came forward, along with Miss Meikle. Every one of them in the shorter skirts, all with sashes in the colours.

  Harper kept his distance. He was here to make sure things remained peaceful, nothing more. He stood out on the terrace looking down as women and a few men trickled along the path and into the arena.

  ‘I thought you could do with this.’ Annabelle handed him a cup of tea. And very welcome. His throat was parched.

  ‘Everything going well?’ he asked.

  ‘Like clockwork,’ she told him, then twirled to show off the skirt. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It certainly caught my attention,’ he told her with admiration. ‘What’s the reason?’

  ‘Orders from the top. It keeps the hems out of the dirt and it’s a way to identify us. A kind of uniform.’

  Harper grinned. ‘Very effective.’

  Annabelle’s face was flushed with pleasure at the day. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, smelling the powder on her skin.

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Fine,’ she told him, but a shadow passed across her face. ‘I didn’t drive. Took the tram out here and Mrs Marsden’s going to give me a lift to Woodhouse Moor. Don’t forget we’ll have two guests tonight.’ A hurried kiss on his cheek and she was gone.

  There were no problems. About five hundred, mainly women, stood on the grass and listened to the speeches. Long before they’d finished talking, Harper was back in the car and heading for Millgarth. The case had been gnawing away at him all afternoon.

  ‘Well?’ he asked Ash. ‘Tell me we have something good.’

  The superintendent sighed. ‘A possible sighting of Bert Jones at Crewe Station, sir. That would make sense if he was taking the train to Bristol, sir. It’s a railway hub.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  No help at all. ‘Nothing on any of the other angles?’

  ‘Not yet. Beckett and the hotel shooter have both been placed on remand for trial,’ Ash told him. ‘The day hasn’t been a complete waste, sir.’

  ‘I know,’ Harper agreed. ‘It just feels that way. Keep them at it.’

  Parker had his office windows open, pulling in all the noise and fumes of the traffic along Great George Street.

  ‘What does your gut tell you, Tom?’ he asked.

  ‘It doesn’t, sir. That’s the problem.’

  ‘Barney Thorpe is at the centre of things, isn’t he?’

  ‘I hadn’t expected it, but yes,’ Harper answered. ‘Almost everything leads to him.’

  ‘Do you believe this tale that it was all revenge for Davey Mullen giving him that leathering?’

  ‘I did at first. Now … no, sir.’

  He might have believed that Barney had directed Mullen’s beating. But Thorpe was dead before that happened, and he doubted that the man’s reach extended beyond the grave.

  ‘Then we need to dig deep and find out why he was doing it.’

  ‘I’ll put the men on it.’

  ‘It’s not as if we have anything else,’ Parker said.

  That was true. They were making headway with finding the men who’d committed the crimes, but they were nowhere on the identity of whoever had ordered them.

  ‘It’s not the only place we’re stumped, sir. We still haven’t managed to come up with anything worthwhile on Francis Mullen’s murder or the way his son was beaten and dumped.’

  ‘It doesn’t look good, Tom.’

  ‘I know that, sir. They’re pushing, believe me.’

  ‘What about this Pilgrimage?’ Parker asked. ‘Everything going off well with that, at least?’

  ‘So far, sir.’ He glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘They should be close to Woodhouse Moor now …’

  ‘You go,’ Parker told him. ‘Keep an eye on things.’

  First, though, he stopped at the infirmary. The constable outside Mullen’s room stood to attention as soon as he spotted Harper.

  ‘Any change?’

  ‘No, sir. The nurses have turned him a little to stop bed sores, but that’s it. He still hasn’t stirred.’

  He opened the door and stared for a moment. Mullen looked so young, so helpless and alone. More like a broken child than a big man.

  ‘Let Millgarth know as soon as he regains consciousness.’

  The sight preyed on his mind during the short drive. Who would want to do that to him?

  His driver parked close to the Adam and Eve statues at the bottom of the moor, where a jovial uniformed sergeant was giving orders to his constables and watching them disperse around the edges of the crowd.

  ‘Good turnout,’ Harper said. ‘Sergeant Darnall, isn’t it?’

  ‘Spot on, sir.’ The man beamed at being remembered. ‘We’ve got two, maybe three thousand women here. All seems good-natured so far. They even had a brass band walking with them part of the way.’

  It felt like a celebration. The first speakers were up on a small platform, the crowds were cheering. The early evening sun shone, so many women together. He couldn’t pick out Annabelle at first, then he saw her at the back of the dais, grinning with pleasure.

  He stayed for an hour, wandering around, keeping an eye on people who stopped to watch, especially small groups of men. One bunch began to catcall; a copper hurried over and moved them on.

  It was all in hand. Soon enough, things would break up. The marchers would go to their lodgings. And tomorrow they’d be on the road again. Before he went home, though, he had to return to Millgarth.

  His men were working; he should be, too. Lead by example, that was what Superintendent Kendall had taught him back in the days when he was still an inspector. What would the man have thought of him rising so high? Laughed, probably. Kendall had been dead for eighteen years, but Harper remembered him clearly.

  Ash was still in his office, labouring over a pile of papers.

  ‘Well?’ Harper asked.

  ‘Not a sausage, sir.’

  The chief wants us to dig deeper into Thorpe.’

  A small cough. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but I’ve had Sissons doing just that, along with the break-in at the barracks. That’s why he hasn’t been with the rest of us. Early days yet.’

  They were working around him, not even consulting him first. Well, why not? They all had brains; any idea was worth pursuing.

  ‘Good. Why don’t you go home and spend some time with your wife?’

  For a moment, Ash frowned, as if the idea seemed wrong. Then he began to smile.

  ‘I will, if you really don’t mind, sir.’

  He looked at the squad, busy in the detectives’ room. ‘Send them all off. A good rest and they’ll come back refreshed in the morning.’

  Five minutes later, he had the place to himself, going over the reports and jotting down notes. A few ideas. The list glowered down at him.

  The night surprised him, full of traffic and noise, the air warm with the smell of oil and soot. Harper set out for Sheepscar, relishing the time to think as his footsteps echoed off the flagstones. By the time he reached the Victoria, he’d settled on a plan. At least he had something to begin the morning.

  Annabelle and Mary sat at the table with two other women. He joined them, but not for long. A day o
f tramping the roads had left the marchers exhausted. All they wanted was a good wash and a long sleep.

  Soon enough, Harper settled in bed next to his wife. Her head rested on his chest, hair tickling his neck. So familiar, so comforting.

  ‘A good day?’ he asked.

  ‘Wonderful.’ He could hear the pleasure in her voice.

  ‘I know you wanted to go on—’

  ‘Let’s not talk about it,’ she said. It was like a door slamming shut.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I understand it’s for the best,’ Annabelle said, ‘but …’

  But it hurt. She’d built up the Pilgrimage in her mind, she desperately wanted to set off with the other marchers. Now life had snatched it away from her.

  ‘I’ll see them off in the morning.’

  A long kiss then she rolled away to sleep.

  Harper turned the crank on the Rex and stepped back sharply as the engine caught. Annabelle adjusted something on the dash and the motor’s roar became an easy purr.

  The women they’d put up were crammed in beside her. A smile and a wave and the car glided down the street. A short drive to Woodhouse Moor to drop them off, then back again.

  ‘She’s putting on a brave face,’ Mary said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The thing is, it won’t make a difference,’ she said. ‘They won’t change the country with marches and speeches. It needs action.’

  ‘Do you want a lift into town? My driver’s here.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Harper leaned against the wall in Ash’s office. Out on the parade ground, a sergeant was drilling constables. It looked handsome enough to watch, but for the life of him he’d never understood what it had to do with being a copper.

  ‘Barney Thorpe,’ he said. ‘How much do we really know about him?’

  ‘He had a wife and a girlfriend,’ Walsh answered.

  ‘He had his business buying and selling tat for what, fifteen years, sir?’ Ash asked.

  ‘Must be close to that,’ Harper agreed. ‘But we all know it was moneylending that put the brass in his pocket.’

  ‘And he was vicious with people who didn’t repay on time,’ Galt said.