Churchyard and Hawke (4 page)

‘Inspector Dyson and I have very little in common, Churchyard. I doubt if he and I will ever meet again. Even if we did, I can’t envisage sharing confidences with him.’

When the London constable still appeared uncertain, Harvey said, ‘I’ll vouch for that, Tom. You can speak your mind to Superintendent Hawke. When we were in the Marines together I said things to him that would have had me court-martialled and flogged had they been repeated to anyone else.’

Harvey’s words succeeded in re-assuring Tom Churchyard. Hesitantly at first, but with increasing confidence, he said, ‘Things don’t always go the way they should when they’re reported to Inspector Dyson. Villains who’ve been caught bang-to-rights never reach court, others who’ve done little - or perhaps nothing at all - go down, sometimes for a very long time. This isn’t just hearsay, sir, I’ve had it happen to villains I’ve handed over to him.’

Silent for a long time, Amos frowned, ‘These are serious allegations, Churchyard, have you spoken of them to anyone else?’

Tom Churchyard shook his head, ‘I wouldn’t dare. As you mentioned when we were talking about him earlier, he’s the son-in-law of an Assistant Commissioner and I would lose more than the job I enjoy. I keep my mouth shut and do my best to keep out of his way.’

‘That’s not going to be easy when he takes over "K" Division.’ Amos pointed out.

‘I know.’ Tom Churchyard said, unhappily, ‘I’m going to have to think of a reason for moving to another Division.’

Changing the subject, Amos said, ‘You told me there was something you had kept back when we were all in Dyson’s office, what is it?’

‘It’s about Jimmy Banks. With his family background there has never been any doubt that he’d get himself into trouble. He was born into a family where thieving is a way of life and he’s never known anything else, but he’s a small time thief and, quite frankly, has neither the gumption nor the brains to be anything else but until he disappeared from the scene some weeks ago he’d started keeping company with men who will either end their lives on the gallows, or be put away never to be seen again. He showed up again recently and since then has been swaggering around looking like a cat that’s had the cream. Even more worrying, the more active villains have gone very quiet and are keeping their heads down. A rumour is going around that something big is being planned and it’s got back to senior officers on the Division. I was asked to try to find out what’s going on. I managed to corner someone who has given me good information in the past. He told me I shouldn’t worry because, although something big is being planned and will involve the Banks family and others, it’s not going to happen on "K" Division - or even in London. He either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell more than that, but from what you’ve told me, I’d say trouble is coming your way and you’re right to be worried about it.’

‘I am very worried.’ Amos said, ‘The Cornwall constabulary is a new force and has a great many critics. My Chief Constable is anxious we should be seen to be making a big difference to crime in the country. All the information I have at the moment indicates that something is going to happen at or around the time of the county’s summer ball. Everyone with any social standing in the county will be there, so if anything goes wrong it will be disastrous for the force. Is there any chance this informant would say more if he was offered money?’

‘There would probably have been a very good chance.’ Tom Churchyard said, adding apologetically, ‘Unfortunately, he got drunk a couple of nights ago and chose the wrong man to pick a fight with. He was knifed and died on the pavement outside a side door of St Leonard’s hospital, just around the corner from Hoxton.’

While he was talking, the London policeman had glanced at the clock on the wall of the hotel’s lounge. Now he said, ‘I really must get back to the station, or I am going to be in trouble.’

‘Of course,’ Amos said, sympathetically, ‘but before you go . . . you have my address. If you learn anything more please let me know as a matter of urgency. I would be particularly pleased if you could give me names of anyone rumoured to be involved in whatever is going on, together with the type of crime they specialise in, or crimes in which they are known, or even suspected of being involved.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ Tom Churchyard promised and shook hands with both the Cornish policemen but as he was leaving, Amos said, "There’s one other thing, Tom . . . if you ever feel like a change of scenery, or find it impossible to work with Dyson, can offer you a place in the Cornwall constabulary with the rank of sergeant and guaranteed promotion to inspector within two or three years. You’d find it interesting work because I would have you working with me as an ‘investigation officer’. It would be a brand new post, created especially to exploit the talents I believe you possess.’

The offer took Tom Churchyard by surprise. Recovering quickly, he said, ‘Thank you, sir . . . thank you very much. It’s an offer I’ll consider seriously, but first I’ll try to gather the information you want to justify the faith you have in my ability.’

As the date for the Laneglos grand summer ball drew ever nearer, Amos became increasingly anxious at the lack of more information from Tom Churchyard. He wrote twice pleading with him to send whatever information he had gleaned, but received replies to neither.

In the meantime, Chief Constable Gilbert had been called to Laneglos on two occasions by Viscount Hogg. The septuagenarian peer owned the great house and was responsible for the success of the prestigious social occasion. He had not been told of the threat from London criminals, but was anxious there should be no untoward incident to mar the evening’s enjoyment.

The chief constable came to Amos’s office after his latest visit to the peer’s home and the two senior policemen discussed the situation. They had a close working relationship and Gilbert had no hesitation in expressing his concern.

‘I am seriously worried about the consequences of a major crime being committed during the Ball, Amos. A great many of those who will be present were highly critical of Cornwall having a police force in the first place and they resent every penny being spent on us. If a major incident takes place while they are at Laneglos they will seize upon it to prove their point. It might even cost both of us our jobs! Have we been able to learn any more from London?’

‘I’ve written two letters to the constable who knows Jimmy Banks and some of the other criminals we believe are likely to be involved, but have had no reply,’ Amos explained.

‘Could the lack of information have anything to do with the detective chief you do not see eye-to-eye with?’

‘It’s possible,’ Amos admitted.

‘Well, time is not on our side, Amos, the ball is only a few days away and, as I have said, our credibility and that of the Cornwall Constabulary is under threat. Unless you can make a breakthrough very quickly I will be obliged to call upon the services of Scotland Yard, regardless of your relations with the man in charge there.’

The ‘breakthrough’ referred to by Chief Constable Gilbert came about the next evening.

Amos was at home with Talwyn, seated in the kitchen drinking tea, when, looking out of a window, she said, ‘There’s someone coming up the path, Amos . . . it looks as though he might have been in a fight.’

Leaping to his feet and looking through the same window, Amos saw a tall young man with his left arm in a sling and a face that was bruised and grazed. At first he thought it must be someone coming to the house to report an incidence of fighting - yet there was something familiar about the man.

Not until the unexpected visitor had almost reached the door did Amos recognize him . . . it was Tom Churchyard.

CHAPTER 5

‘Coming for a quick game of billiards before turning in, Tom?’

The speaker was leaning across the green cloth of the billiard table, peering down the length of a slightly warped wooden cue as Tom Churchyard passed through the recreation room, en route to the staircase that led to the upstairs cubicles which served as bedrooms in the Hackney police section house

‘No, it’s been a hard day, I think I’ll turn in early. Who’s duty sergeant tonight?’

‘Sergeant Dogget . . . so you needn’t worry about being disturbed.’

As he spoke the off-duty policeman played his shot. The white ball cannoned off the red and dropped into a corner pocket and Tom left the billiard room, relieved to know Dogget would be on duty in the section house that night. There were strict rules governing conduct in the barrack-like police quarters. One requirement was that all constables were to be present in the building by 10 p.m. unless on late shift and all lights were required to be extinguished by midnight.

The duty sergeant was instructed to check that these rules were being adhered to - but some sergeants carried out their duties more diligently than others. Sergeant Dogget was nearing retirement and spent his duty hours carefully avoiding anything that might involve him in extra work, or cause problems for himself. It suited Tom to have such a man on duty this particular night.

Far from having an early night, he intended taking advantage of an insecure window in a ground floor cloakroom after lights out and heading for the beer-houses and dubious taverns to be found in the narrow alleyways of nearby Hoxton. Here he hoped to meet up with one of his informers who might be able to give him some useful information about what villainy the Banks family were planning to carry out in Cornwall.

A few minutes after midnight, Tom climbed through the insecure sash window of the darkened cloakroom and dropped to the ground in a small yard at the rear of the section house. Letting himself out through the yard gate he entered an alleyway that ran behind the premises.

Wearing old clothes that had been used on more than one occasion when carrying out surveillance duties he would not be out of place among those frequenting the area towards which he was heading. Nevertheless, he was aware of the increasing danger of being recognized by those he had arrested in the past.

Although it was the early hours of the morning, there were still many people abroad in the litter-strewn streets and alleyways of the London slum and most of those who bumped against him were in varying states of intoxication.

There was no street lighting here. The naked flame from a pitch torch would have been dangerous, so old and rotten were the timbers of the overhanging upper rooms of the tightly packed and jumbled houses. Occasionally, the dull and uncertain yellow light from a candle stub escaped through a window pane that had not been blocked by a piece of rotting wood, or stuffed with a cloth to keep out rain, or the fetid, cold air.

Once, when passing by such a window, Tom tensed when someone called out to him in greeting. The call came from a drunken man who had recognized a familiar face but, fortunately, alcohol had confounded the recollection that Tom had once arrested him.

Before long Tom was in the foul-smelling heart of Hoxton. The stench, offensive to even the most insensitive nose, emanated from a variety of obnoxious causes, all detrimental to the health and well-being of those who lived here.

Occasionally, in the darkness Tom was accosted by a whining prostitute, too pox-raddled to show her face in the lighted streets where her younger sisters plied their age-old trade.

This was the area from which Tom had made his escape when he left to join the Royal Marines, many years before, and it held no terrors for him, although he would not have dared to show his face here alone in the uniform of a police constable.

Yet there was a certain jollity here in these night hours, albeit fuelled by cheap alcohol. He passed a number of smoke-filled beer-houses where discordant singing added to the general hubbub inside, before arriving at one that was in a small square and larger than the others. Pulling his cap down in a bid to shadow his face more, Tom entered the smoky and crowded interior and pushed his way between the drinkers, looking around him for a certain ‘Nick Shelby’, hoping the informer was not pursuing his nefarious ‘trade’ in a more salubrious area of London.

Shelby was an opportunist thief, stealing anything that its owner was careless enough to make available to him. Unlike many of Hoxton’s criminals, Shelby was not a violent man. Slightly built and with a wasting lung disease, he would not have lasted long had he chosen to take up more violent crime - or had he chosen an honest way of life. He was tolerated by his peers only because he was basically as dishonest as they were - and because his father had been a highly regarded burglar until, pursued by servants, he fell to his death from the roof of a mansion he was robbing.

Tom had arrested Shelby on two occasions. For the first offence the petty thief had received three months imprisonment for stealing clothes from a washing-line. The next time their paths had crossed, Shelby had stolen an overcoat from a tavern similar to the one Tom was now visiting.

Seized by a passer-by, Shelby had been handed over to Tom, but the coat’s owner had declined to proceed with a prosecution, not wishing to have it known that he frequented such establishments.

However, Shelby had been convinced that Tom had persuaded the coat’s owner not to prosecute and showed his gratitude by supplying him with occasional snippets of useful information about the predations of his fellow thieves.

Eventually, Tom located the petty-thief seated at a table talking to a youngish prostitute whom he believed to be supplementing the meagre income Shelby earned from his dishonest ways. His suspicions were confirmed when Shelby nudged his companion and nodded to where a prospective ‘client’ was showing an interest in her.

When the woman crossed to where the man was seated, Tom carried his drink across the room and sat down on the seat she had just vacated, saying, ‘Hello, Nick, it looks as though you’ve found yourself a good little wage earner. Is she as generous with her money as she is with her favours?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Churchyard, me and Molly was just talking, friendly like, when I saw the punter eyeing her. I was enjoying her company, but she’s a working-girl and has a living to earn so I told her he seemed interested and off she went. She might buy me a beer later on if she does well out of him, but that’s all.’