Chapter One
Inspector Benjamin Ross
I ONCE met a man on his way to commit a murder. I didn’t know it at the time. Perhaps no more did he. What was to become a crime could still have been no more than a hazy thought, a sick dream in his mind. If he had formed the resolve, then he still might have been frightened by the horror of it, a natural revulsion driving him back from the brink. A word would have been enough. I might have detained him if only to ask where he was going and told him to mind how he went; as police officers are always supposed to advise the public. He had still enough time to think it over. He might have changed his plans, had I spoken. But we passed by one another ‘like ships in the night’, as the saying goes, and a woman died.
I made the transition from uniformed officer to plain clothes when I’d not been long in the force, only a couple of years. The occasion was the Great Exhibition of 1851. The idea was I should mingle with the crowds and catch pickpockets and passers of bad coin among visitors to the great Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. I was moderately successful, although I soon learned that the criminal fraternity (and sorority) spots a policeman within seconds of his arrival on the scene however he’s dressed.
Be that as it may, I’ve been with plain-clothes branch ever since, based at Scotland Yard and eventually rising to the rank of inspector. That, even if I say so myself, isn’t bad for someone who began his working life as a pit boy in his native Derbyshire, before coming down to London to try his luck. But I’ll never forget the Great Exhibition. I’d seen machinery at the pithead but nothing like the Crystal Palace had to offer. All kinds of gadgets and contrivances were on display: splendid furniture and household requirements fit for the Queen to use, everything you could think of, and even a steam locomotive to take you around the site.
One product wasn’t on show back then but was well on display as I walked homeward that Saturday evening sixteen years later, in early November 1867 to be precise. It’s something I’ll swear London must be unrivalled for throughout the world. It isn’t made of metal, wood, china clay or cloth, nor has it sprung from the ingenious mind of an inventor or craftsman. It doesn’t come clanking past you belching steam and spilling oil. It isn’t painted every colour of the rainbow, but instead is a dirty yellow or dingy grey in colour. It’s silent and formed from the dank breath of the city itself. It is fog.
The London fog is like a living beast. It swirls around you and attacks you from all sides, sneaking into your throat and crawling up your nostrils. It blinds your vision. Sometimes it appears so thick, it tricks you into thinking you can reach out and grab handfuls of it, like cotton waste. But, of course, you can’t. It slips mockingly through your fingers leaving only its tarry smell sticking to your clothes, hair and skin. Even when you try to shut it out behind your own front door, it is still there in your living room with you.
That day the fog descended in mid-afternoon and by four o’clock had wrapped its clammy embrace round central London and even stretched its damp fingers as far as the city’s outer fringe. Things had been pretty quiet all day. The weather had a lot to do with that: even crooks are kept at home by fog. Through the windows of my tiny office at Scotland Yard, I’d watched it thicken and now the sun – wherever it was up there above the grey blanket – was going down and darkness creeping in. Indoors the gas lighting made the world bright and clear; but the murk pressing against the window-panes mocked our efforts to keep it at bay. Officers came in coughing and swearing you could scarcely see a hand in front of your face. By the time I set off for home, you certainly couldn’t unless you held it in front of your nose.
Superintendent Dunn took himself off homewards at four, muttering about a dinner party he and his wife were to attend, though how on earth was he to reach home in time to get ready? What was more, after that, how were he and Mrs Dunn to make their way to their hosts’ house in Camden?
‘And you might as well go home, too, Ross,’ he concluded.
So I took him at his word and left the building not long after him. My intention was to cross the river not by Westminster Bridge as I normally did, but by Waterloo Bridge. It wasn’t really so very far to walk if the weather had been clear. But it took me three-quarters of an hour and near-disastrous collision with a dozen obstacles before a worsening of the smell told me I’d reached the great embankment under construction along the Thames. Fog had put paid to work on that, too, for the day.
As for the stench, that rose from the Thames itself. Unable to escape upward and trapped at low level, the watery miasma mingled with all the other odours. Everything goes into the river, even though Mr Bazalgette’s wonderful new sewer system, part of it under my feet and the embankment, is designed to remove one source of pollution. But the river traffic discharges its own debris and if anyone living in the area wants to get rid of something, household or trade refuse, legal or otherwise, the easiest way is to take it to the river and throw it in.
Bodies, mostly animal but occasionally human, also find their way into the river. Murderers roll their victims silently over the edge by night. Suicides fling themselves from the bridges. I am glad I don’t serve with the River Police. The smoke from the engines entering and leaving the great rail terminus of Waterloo on the south side added a whiff of their distinctive odour to the rest. I was used to that. I came home to it every night.
I found my way to the great nine-arched granite bridge and stepped on to it. There was no attendant in the toll-booth. I dare say he thought no one would cross in this weather. The cabmen had as good as given up plying their trade. At the best of times, the traffic using the bridge is limited by the fact that Londoners with their natural thrift object to paying the toll so, if they can, they cross elsewhere. I understand that the original investors in the bridge have never got their money back. They even say the government will have to take it over eventually and that will be the end of the toll and the taxpayer will have to pick up the bill.
I set out, keeping prudently to the stonework on the lefthand side, reaching out to touch it every few minutes.
In no time I felt quite alone in that silent world. The only occasional sound was a muffled blast of a foghorn. But mostly the river traffic had heaved to and was riding out the fog at anchor. Warning lights were of no use now. At intervals the gas lamps along the bridge glowed uselessly, doing no more than lend a saffron hue to the few inches of air around them. I could hear my own footsteps echoing off the parapet. Although I’d muffled my scarf round the lower part of my face, covering my nose, the wretched fog still found its way into my throat and made me splutter.
I must have reached the halfway point, as far as I could judge, when I had warning I was no longer alone. Footsteps pattered towards me. Fog plays tricks with your hearing; so I stopped in case all I heard was the echo of my own cautious tread. But these were quick footsteps. The other person was running; there was no doubt about that. This was someone heedless of the lack of visibility and not afraid to pelt headlong into it.
Now the police officer in me was alert. It isn’t only fearlessness that makes someone risk his neck. Sometimes it’s fear itself. The other didn’t care where he or she ran, or what obstacle might lie ahead, because he – or she – was running away from something behind him – or her.
I waited where I was, straining my ears. I guessed it was a woman. The impact on the cobbles was light, not made by a man’s sturdy boots.
Tap-tap-tap
came the rapid footfalls, ever nearer, seeming to me to signal desperation. A woman made them: alone, afraid, and running headlong and heedless across the bridge through the enveloping ochre mass.
‘Damn this fog!’ I muttered into my scarf. I felt disorientated. I thought she was directly ahead of me, on the same side of the bridge. But she might be approaching to my right or even rushing straight down the middle. I moved out a little to the centre of the roadway. In the unlikely event wheeled traffic rattled on to the bridge, I could scuttle to one side. But from a central position, if she passed me either to left or right, I would know and with luck be able to intercept her. There was only the width of the bridge, after all. I debated briefly whether to shout out to let her know I was there. But if she were already terrified enough to risk life and limb, the sound of a disembodied and unfamiliar voice ahead of her would only panic her more.
Biff!
Before I could do anything about it, a dim shape materialised an arm’s length from me. I’d only time to realise it was wearing skirts, and the top of its head was crowned with something like a cockerel’s comb, before the figure cannoned full tilt into me. The breath gushed out of me. The world turned topsy-turvy. I staggered back and almost fell, yet managed to keep my footing and to reach out. By purest luck, I grasped a handful of light material – a woman’s gown – and, as I did, a dreadful screech right in my ear almost led me to release it again, but I hung on.
‘Madam!’ I shouted to the unknown, still only a silhouette, ‘I am a police officer! Don’t be alarmed!’
She let out another screech and began battering my chest and head with blows of her clenched fists. In with the smells of the fog, I sniffed another: cheap scent.
‘You let me go!’ she yelled. ‘I never done you no harm!’
‘I’m not going to do
you
any harm!’ I shouted back as we wrestled.
She realised I wasn’t going to let her go. I had even managed to get hold of her arm. She suddenly stopped struggling and in a weaker, pathetic voice, begged, ‘Don’t hurt me!’
‘I am not going to hurt you.’ I wanted to bellow at her but that would only have produced another panic on her part, so I tried my best to sound like a reasonable human being. ‘I told you, I’m a police officer.’
Her free arm came out of the murk and a hand patted my chest in a rather familiar fashion.
‘You ain’t the law,’ she said accusingly. ‘You ain’t got no uniform! Where’s your brass buttons?’
I realised that the peculiar crest on her head was formed by some kind of hat decorated with sprays of silk flowers or feathers pinned to it. I was now pretty sure that what I had here in my grasp was one of those women who plies her trade on the streets. I could be wrong. She might be a respectable girl, of course. But the flowery scent, the unseasonably lightweight material of her dress and summery nature of her headwear, to say nothing of the rapid way she’d checked my statement by examination of my clothing, suggested otherwise.
‘I am in plain clothes,’ I said.
‘Oh, yes?’ Now she was sarcastic. ‘Well, that’s a new one on me. They tells me all sorts of things, but it’s the first time a man’s told me he’s a plain-clothes rozzer.’
‘My name is Inspector Benjamin Ross,’ I said firmly. ‘And you are running away from someone.’
‘No, I ain’t!’ she retorted immediately. ‘Let go of my arm!’
‘Certainly not!’ I said. ‘You may have stolen someone’s wallet or watch and chain, and be running from justice.’
This time her free arm swung at me; and her clenched first struck me a forceful blow in the middle of my chest.
‘I ain’t a thief! I’m an honest girl.’
‘You are a ladybird,’ I said. I could have said ‘common prostitute’ but I suspected that would earn me another barrage of blows. ‘And you have just struck an officer of the law. For that alone I can arrest you.’
She had been trying to tug her arm free of my grasp, but now she relaxed, which was an odd sort of reaction to my threat. There was a silence. Perhaps she was only thinking it over, but I sensed she was also listening. For pursuit?
‘All right,’ she said suddenly. ‘Arrest me.’
‘You want me to arrest you?’ I tried not to sound surprised.
‘Yus! Go on, arrest me!’ She had leaned towards me as she spoke and mixed with the cheap scent came a blast of beery breath.
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘You think you will be safer in my custody than free and risking a meeting with
him
.’
‘Who?’ she demanded immediately. But there was fear in her voice again.
‘The man you are running away from. Who is he?’
I was loath to arrest her. She sounded very young. That was to be expected. The girls working the streets are mostly young, some distressingly so, only children. But I hadn’t caught her soliciting. I had only stopped a very frightened runaway girl. To haul her off to a police station and put her on a charge seemed uncalled for.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked.
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ she retorted sullenly.
‘Yes, I should like to know. I told you my name. Come along now, speak up, a fair exchange is no robbery.’
‘Daisy,’ she said, after a pause.
‘Surname?’
Another pause. ‘Smith.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said.
‘Think what you like. If I say I’m Daisy Smith, you show me proof I’m not.’
‘Well, Daisy Smith,’ I replied, ‘tell me what has scared you so.’
