Christ Almighty. Nothing sinister at all. Just a waste of a life. Pointless. In the end the answer had been simple. No deep secrets. No conspiracy. They’d been hunting for something that wasn’t there, and Harper was as guilty as any of them. More; he’d been the one in charge, urging them on. For a moment he wanted to laugh at his own stupidity. With his rank, he should know better. Keep an open mind; how often had he said that to detectives over the years? But this time he’d ignored it completely, searching instead for connections that never existed.
‘How much money did he owe?’
‘Two shillings, sir.’
No sum at all. A life ended for that.
‘At least we can clear that from the books.’ He could hear the emptiness in his voice. They had the result. He should have been celebrating. But it didn’t seem like a victory at all.
The matron wasn’t in her office at the infirmary. Harper waited for five minutes, but when she didn’t return, he strode down the corridor to Davey Mullen’s room.
‘Anyone been in to see him?’ he asked the constable on guard.
‘The nurse early on, and the doctor doing his rounds.’
He shouldn’t be disturbed, then. ‘Tap on the door if you see anyone coming.’
Mullen was lying on his back, head on the pillows. Awake. He turned, eyes narrowing as he saw his visitor.
‘I’ve brought some news. I wish it was better, but I thought you’d like to know. We found the man who killed your father.’
The gaze turned to stone. His jaw moved, as he was trying to make a word, but he flinched from the pain.
‘No. It was nothing to do with Thorpe. You murdered him for nothing.’ No reaction at all. ‘The man who did it is called Soapy Turnbull,’ Harper continued. ‘Have you ever heard of him?’
Mullen shook his head. Once. Twice.
‘Turns out your father owed him money. Two shillings. You could have given him that out of your pocket and never even noticed.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry.’
He had nothing more to say right now. Plenty of questions, but those would wait. Let Mullen take it all in.
‘You’ve done some good work since you joined the squad,’ he told Rogers.
The big man beamed. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘What put you on to Turnbull?’
‘I talked to a couple of men I’d known on the beat. As soon as I mentioned a limp, one of them said his name. It was a place to start, so I thought I’d ask him about Somerset Street and Francis Mullen. He just wasn’t too easy to find. It took me most of the night. And when I did come across him, he needed some persuading to come down here.’
It was easy enough to imagine how Rogers had persuaded him. No matter, that was done. Turnbull would stand trial for murder.
Fess murder
Arson
Metropole shooting
Barracks robbery
Francis Mullen
Barney Thorpe
Missing pistol
Davey Mullen
Bert Jones
At first, Bert Jones refused to say a word.
‘He’s been like that the whole journey,’ Walsh said. ‘Absolutely shtum. Still, it makes a change to have a prisoner who’s not complaining all the time.’
‘Did you question him at all?’
The inspector shook his head. ‘I thought we’d wait until we were back here.’
Jones was a big man, a bruiser. He seemed to fill the small room. Broad shoulders and thick wrists with plenty of dark hair peering out of the cuffs. Scarred knuckles and a thick shadow of stubble across his face. Everyone’s idea of a bodyguard. No collar or tie, a cheap suit buttoned tight across his chest.
‘Ready?’ Harper asked.
‘Completely.’ Walsh smiled. ‘See if we can get a peep out of him.’
‘We’re charging you with murder, Bert,’ the inspector began. ‘You know what that means, don’t you?’ No response. ‘If the jury finds you guilty, it’s the noose for you.’
‘I didn’t shoot him.’ He had a gruff, rasping voice that sounded as if every word had been dragged over pebbles.
‘No, we know that,’ Walsh agreed. ‘But it doesn’t matter. You found the man who did, you paid him and you supplied him with the gun. That makes you guilty.’
‘And the gun you were carrying when you were arrested was stolen from Harewood Barracks last year,’ Harper said. ‘We checked the serial number.’
Jones turned his head to look at him with no expression on his face. ‘I bought it. Don’t know where it came from.’
‘Who sold it to you?’
‘Don’t remember.’
‘You help us, we can help you,’ Walsh said.
Jones snorted. ‘What are you going to do? Make sure the drop is long enough to break my neck straight away?’
Harper stood up and left. He’d said his piece; if he stayed, he’d simply be a distraction. Better to let Walsh burrow into the man’s head and twist him inside out.
He’d never seriously expected a truthful answer from Jones. He wanted to see the man, to hear him. They’d recovered two of the stolen weapons now. That was a start. The third was hidden away, either in Thorpe’s home or somewhere else. They’d find it. And the fourth? He didn’t have a clue. That was the one which really worried him.
Galt was writing up the report of the Bristol trip, looking uncomfortable behind a desk. Ash had sent Rogers home to sleep; he’d worked for more than twenty-four hours straight. Sissons was off somewhere. Apart from the scratch of pen on paper, the detectives’ room was quiet.
Yet even with his poor hearing, Harper could identify all the other sounds around Millgarth. After so many years here, they were a part of him. The small creaks and groans of the building, the sound of footsteps on the stairs, the comings and goings in the parade ground at the back.
‘Penny for them, sir,’ Ash said.
‘Not worth your money,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’m just on my way to talk to Thorpe’s lawyer.’
‘We’ve interviewed him twice. He says he never saw the face of Barney’s killer.’
‘Maybe I can stir something in his memory. At the moment there’s nothing I can do here.’
At first it seemed like a wasted trip. A chance to sit in a plush office on Park Square with Mr Simmons, the worried, fidgeting solicitor. He’d seen his client murdered as they walked together; that would be enough to terrify anyone.
Nothing jogged his memory; it was as if his senses had frozen the moment he saw Barney Thorpe collapse on the pavement. All Simmons could recall was the blur of a dark shape hurrying past. He hadn’t seen the flash of a knife or the blow.
‘I’m sure you find all that unlikely, Mr Harper,’ he admitted. He was a prissy man, pushing sixty, dressed in the formal clothes of the law – a black frock coat with a wing collar and black tie. Pale and thin, he looked curiously bloodless, with fine wisps of hair combed across his skull. But he was good at his work; over the decades he’d represented plenty of important people in Leeds.
‘We want whoever killed Mr Thorpe.’
‘So do I.’ The man gave a small, sharp nod. ‘I’m not hiding anything. I was checking something in my notebook and then …’ He remained silent for a long time. ‘We always imagine how we’ll react, don’t we?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘That we’ll do something heroic. In the event, I discovered I was helpless. It’s not a pleasant revelation. I’m sorry.’
‘For what it’s worth, you couldn’t have saved him.’
‘No.’ He sighed. ‘But I could have tried.’
‘Are you sure there’s nothing at all you can remember about the killer?’
Simmons began to shake his head, then stopped and narrowed his eyes. ‘Maybe there is something. His shoes.’ He was quiet for a moment. ‘It just came back into my mind, right this minute. The shoes. An image, nothing more than that. Someone running, wearing a pair of brown shoes. I can’t swear I saw it or if my mind’s playing tricks. It might not even have been then. I’m
sorry …’
‘Please concentrate on it, sir. It’s important.’
Simmons was quiet, going over it all, letting the moment play again and again. Finally he took a breath. ‘I think it’s real,’ he said. ‘I think it happened then. But in all conscience, I can’t go any further than that. I certainly wouldn’t swear to it in court. No competent barrister would give me the chance, anyway.’
Harper nodded. He was right. For one second he’d been close to something that might help convict Mullen. Then it was snatched away again. Just like everything else that related to the man.
‘Do we have a list of everything Davey Mullen had with him?’ he asked Simmons. The man knew where every piece of paper from the case was kept.
‘We took an inventory of his hotel room before we put it all in storage, sir.’
‘Find that for me, please.’ Harper thought for a moment. ‘What about the clothes he was wearing when he was taken to hospital?’
‘No.’ Sissons stretched out the word. ‘I’m sure we don’t have a record of those. We wouldn’t have any need.’
Mullen had one pair of black boots and a pair of black shoes in his room. Both American made. Harper sat for a moment, then picked up his hat and strode out into the sunshine.
He wanted to know. For his own satisfaction. To settle it all in his mind.
At the infirmary, he decided to be official and wait outside the matron’s office until she returned. No ducking into Mullen’s room this time. Sitting on a chair, he felt like a schoolboy sent to the headmistress. She raised her eyes when she saw him.
‘I hadn’t expected to see you again, Deputy Chief Constable. I thought I’d made myself perfectly clear the last time.’
Good, he thought; she hadn’t heard about his other visit.
‘You had. But there’s something I need.’ He waited for her objection.
‘I—’
‘It’s important for a murder investigation.’ He cut through her words. Murder always left people quiet and uncomfortable. ‘I don’t want to talk to Mr Mullen. I want to take a look at his shoes.’
She stared at him sceptically. ‘That’s acceptable. But,’ she told him, ‘you’ll have the ward sister with you every moment, and you will not attempt to talk to the patient.’
‘Agreed.’
He didn’t have a chance to enter the room. The nurse brought him a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. As he loosened the knot, Harper realized he was holding his breath.
They were scuffed and dusty, but they were right there in front of him: a pair of black shoes.
‘At this rate, the squad’s going to get a reputation, sir,’ Ash said with a smile and the others laughed. ‘Solving all these cases in a single day.’
‘Two.’ Harper wanted to be exact. ‘And it’s bloody good going.’ He gave a small bow to the men. ‘You’ve worked wonders.’ He turned towards Walsh. ‘That was a good, quick confession you got from Bert Jones.’
The inspector shook his head. ‘All I had to do was point out the lies and contradictions in his story. Turns out that Barney Thorpe told him to arrange Fess’s murder, but to hire someone and not to do it himself. That way they could avoid a trail that led back to them.’
‘It didn’t work that way in the end, though, did it?’
‘Not quite.’ Walsh was flushed with pleasure at his success.
‘Why did Thorpe want Fess dead? What did Jones have to say about that?’
‘He claims that Barney didn’t tell him, and he didn’t ask. He just did what he was told. I believe him, sir; I haven’t been able to shake him on that.’
‘We’re solving crimes but we’re finding more damned questions.’
‘Never mind, sir,’ Ash said. ‘The rate we’re moving along now, we’ll have all the answers by Saturday.’
Fess murder
Arson
Metropole shooting
Barracks robbery
Francis Mullen
Barney Thorpe
Missing pistol
Davey Mullen
Bert Jones
‘Good work, Tom,’ Chief Constable Parker said. ‘Give them my congratulations. How does it feel to be out and working again?’
‘I’m enjoying it, sir,’ he replied. He felt alive, the blood singing in his veins in a way it hadn’t for too long.
Parker selected a cigar from the box on his desk, cut the end and lit it with a match, applying the flame evenly and carefully around the tip. He blew out the smoke and tilted his head back to watch it rise to the ceiling.
‘Let’s hope your luck holds and you can clear up everything else.’
TWENTY-TWO
It was the kind of balmy evening when men took their chairs and sat outside on the pavement in their shirtsleeves to enjoy the sun. Around Sheepscar, quite a few were doing that, cradling glasses of beer, braces slipped off their shoulders to hang around their waists.
Harper nodded his greetings as he passed, then ducked into the Victoria and up the stairs. As he opened the door to the living quarters, the smell of food greeted him.
Len was on the settee, legs stretched out, reading the Evening Post. As soon as he saw Harper, he stood, looking embarrassed.
‘Mary invited me for my supper,’ he began, tripping over his words. ‘I hope it’s … She said it would be …’
Harper waved him back down. ‘Of course it is, don’t be daft. You’re family now. Make yourself comfortable.’
‘I thought he should have a taste of my cooking,’ Mary said from the kitchen. She was deftly moving saucepans on the range. ‘See what he’s letting himself in for when we’re married.’
‘Where’s your mother?’
‘She said she fancied a lie-down.’ Mary glanced at him and raised her eyebrows in a knowing gesture. ‘And she said it would be good practice for me to cook.’
Annabelle didn’t sleep during the day. They both knew that.
He was silent in the bedroom, watching her lying on the candlewick, eyes closed. Very softly, he turned to leave.
‘I’m not really sleeping,’ she said, but her voice was slurred and lazy enough to make it a lie.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Frightened,’ she answered after a moment. ‘And I’m weary, Tom. All the way to my bones. I didn’t feel like cooking. Besides, it’ll give her a taste of the future.’
‘It’s ready,’ Mary called from the living room.
‘Getting up?’
She nodded and held out her hand.
‘I really think trains will remain the way ahead,’ Len said. He had a glass of best bitter in front of him, brought up from downstairs. He’d eaten well, praised his fiancée’s cooking, and come out of his shell a little.
‘What about aeroplanes?’ Harper asked.
‘They’re all well and good,’ Len agreed. ‘But would you feel safe travelling up there?’
Ten minutes later, Annabelle began to collect the plates. ‘Mary said you two were going to the pictures. We’ll do the pots.’
‘We?’ Harper asked. ‘What did your last one die of?’
‘Overwork,’ Annabelle said. ‘Which is more than you’re likely to do around here.’
‘This is what it’s like, lad.’ He turned to Mary. ‘Are you going to make Len put a pinny on?’
The young man stared hard at the rug, as if he wished the floor would swallow him.
‘Why not?’ For a fraction of a second, her eyes blazed. Then she saw Harper’s grin, reached across and took her fiancé’s hand. ‘Don’t mind him. My da’s just having his fun. We’re both going to be working. Anyway, he agrees he should do his share.’
‘Yes,’ Len agreed with a nod and blushed again.
‘You’re training him well,’ he said, then winked before she could take the huff.
Once everything was clean, he read the newspapers for a few minutes, but his mind kept drifting back to the cases. Mullen, Thorpe, and the tangle surrounding them.
Two quest
ions stood out from the rest swirling around his brain. Who wanted Louis Fess dead? Who’d contacted Thorpe to arrange it and paid him?
He wasn’t going to solve it tonight. Maybe his luck would hold into tomorrow.
Mostly, though, he thought about Annabelle. A nap today. He’d need to keep a watch on her. But he didn’t know how, when he was at work all day. There was nothing he could do about any of her problems. He was powerless.
He stood in Ash’s office, watching the men at their desks. Walsh folded a paper, stuck it in his jacket pocket and left, Rogers behind him.
‘I hate to say it, sir, but after all yesterday’s success, I think we’re stuck again,’ Ash said. ‘Banging our head against a brick wall on the rest of it.’
‘Then we’ll have to keep on hitting it until we break through,’ Harper told him. ‘We’re not going to let this one fade away. We can’t.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What are they hunting for today?’
‘Anything,’ Ash told him. ‘Anything at all.’
He couldn’t put a foot right. Harper spent the morning out and about, but no one had any answers to give him. Ash was right; their momentum had screeched to a halt.
Who would have known Fess was in Leeds? It was pure chance that the police had discovered him; that was down to Rogers’s sharp ear for an accent.
Barney Thorpe. Again. They had all the papers from his office. Sissons was working his way through them, but so far nothing about guns.
Time to go through his house.
‘Sissons,’ he said, ‘Dig yourself out from those mountains. We’re taking a little trip.’
‘Sir?’ The sergeant looked confused.
‘Don’t worry, you’ll love it.’
Dorothea Thorpe was still wearing black, and there was dark crepe paper draped around the frame of her husband’s photograph. But it was all for appearances. She already had that spark in her eye. Barney had left her money and a good house. She’d never want for anything. Soon enough she’d be enjoying life again. A new woman would emerge.
Even if she hadn’t been aware of his final mistress, she knew full well that her husband had often been unfaithful; it must have rankled and hurt. Harper could see the future in her eyes. With him gone, her time was about to begin. But she didn’t know anything about his business. That was what she claimed, and he believed her. Thorpe would never trust information about moneylending and crime to a woman. Work and home were two different worlds.
Brass Lives Page 18