Craddock (3 page)

Read Craddock Online

Authors: Paul Finch,Neil Jackson

BOOK: Craddock
7.4Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“
The doctor can do that when he arrives,” the major said. He knelt beside the body, his face grave. His voice lowered to monotone. “Gentlemen – there is a monster among us. We must step very carefully from here on in. Inspector Munro, you will cancel all leave until this matter is settled.”
“
Yes sir, of course.”
“
You will also concentrate night-patrols on the Scholes district. I don’t mean to leave other areas unprotected, but this neighbourhood must have particular attention.”
Munro nodded.
“
Now ...” The major rose to his feet. “We’ll need to speak to as many of these people as we can. We’ll start straight away.”
“
Major Craddock, sir!” came a frantic voice.
All turned, to find one of the division’s youngest officers scrambling up a narrow ginnel toward them. He was red-faced, his helmet in his hand.
“
It’s Constable Butterfield, sir!” he shouted. “He’s found a witness!”
Two minutes later, they had moved to one of the neighbourhood’s communal yards. Once again, rubble strewed it, much of it spilling from overflowing dustbins. In one corner, there was an outhouse, a rickety old structure knocked together from planks and nails. Constable Butterfield, his lantern on the ground, was leaning against it, speaking through a tiny gap.
“
Come on, Roisin, love!” he was saying. “You know who I am. It’s PC Butterfield. I’m always round this neck of the woods. You can trust me.”
Craddock shouldered his way forward. The PC saw him and drew back. “It’s Roisin Lachlan, sir. She’s Kathleen McConnolly’s drinking partner. Or was. She won’t come out. She’s frightened half to death.”
“
Sure she’s not just relieving herself?” someone wondered, to coarse chuckles.
“
No jokes, please,” Craddock said sternly.
Butterfield certainly wasn’t laughing. “They’re always out together, them two, sir. On the game, if you want my opinion. Thing is, they sop up gin like rubbing rags.”
“
What’s she saying?” Munro asked.
The constable scratched his head. “Well, she doesn’t speak English very well, I’m afraid. I can’t really tell.”
Craddock stepped back. “Alright – break the thing down.”
The constables went at it in a team, prying the rotted slats apart with their blackthorn staffs. A few moments later, Roisin Lachlan, shrieking hysterically, was being hauled out into the lamplight. She was a disgusting sight: gap-toothed, grubby-faced, hair white but filthy, and hung in rat-tails. Her bodice and many layered skirts were heavy with dirt, ripped full of holes.
“
O Dhia, O Dhia …”
she screeched.
“Nil me ag iarraidh dul leis! Nil me ag iarraidh imeacht leis!”
It took the burly officers several minutes to restrain her, so frantic were her kickings. There were mutters of disbelief from the gathered crowd.
“
Now, now come on Miss Lachlan,” Munro said, trying to be reasonable. Then she bellowed right in his face. He staggered backward. “Lord-God almighty – smells like a bloody still!”
“
What happened, Miss Lachlan?” Craddock asked. “What did you see?”
“
Nach dtuigeann sibh? An bhfuil sibh uile as bhur meabhar? Ta muid cailte. Leann se muid. Leann se muid an bhealac ar fad anseo!”
“
What in Christ’s name is she gabbling about?” a constable wondered.
“
Bhi a fhois agam gur e a bhi ann. Bhi se beag. Comh beag le paiste. Cheap Caitlin gur paiste a bhi ann. Chuaigh si thar n-ais chuige tar eis a d’imigh muid thairis. Cheap si go raibh se gortaithe. Ansim do leim se … A Thiarna, do leim se mar a dheineadh cat!”
Craddock turned to Munro. “Can any of these people translate for us?”
“
She says he was small, sir,” came a wavering voice from behind. “Like a child.”
They turned. Sergeant Rafferty was there, gazing at the fevered woman with odd, haunted eyes. His normally ruddy face had paled to alabaster; his brow was beaded with sweat.
“
Like a child?” Munro said, bewildered.
The big Irish sergeant listened as the woman gibbered on. If anything, he grew paler. “She ... she says that she and Kathleen McConnolly passed him in the alley. They thought he was hurt. Then he attacked them. I think after that she must have fled.”
“
Get her to be more specific, Rafferty,” Craddock said.
The sergeant nodded, but before he could ask her anything else, she sprang savagely at him and had to be held again. Her hair was now in a frenzy, her eyes wide enough to burst from their sockets. She jabbed at Rafferty with a long, dirt-encrusted finger.
“
Tusa! Ta a fhios agat-sa! Ta tu ar n-os muidine! Ta tu mar I gceanna linne! Is duine dar gcuid fein tu! Ta a fhios agat cad e seo! Ta a fhios agat!”
Rafferty never flinched from the tirade, but the sweat was now dripping from his brow. Only after several seconds did he turn back to the major. “She’s just babbling, sir. Not making sense.”
Craddock nodded. “Alright. Munro, get her to the office. See if you can calm her down.”
“
She’s very drunk, sir,” the inspector said.
“
I don’t give a damn. She’s not going anywhere ‘til she’s given us a full statement. Just make sure you don’t let her have anything else.”
Munro nodded and signalled to various constables, who began hustling the terrified woman away.
“
Ta se thar n-ais chugainn!”
she screamed, to the awed silence of the crowd.
“Ta se linn aris! Togfaidh se muid ar fad leis!”

 

It was close on midnight, and Craddock and Munro stood alone in the great Gothic hallway of the infirmary mortuary. Green tiles arched high over their heads. A dank dimness hung at either end of the long, wide passage. Silence reigned.
“
You know, there was a man guillotined in France, five or six years ago,” Munro finally said. “Dumollard, his name was. He’d killed ten women. Bludgeoned them to death, one after another, after luring them into a wood.”
Craddock glanced up. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“
I’m just saying, it’s happened before.”
The major sniffed. “What did he kill them for? Did anyone bother to find out, before truncating him?”
“
He was a thief, as far as I know. He wanted their clothes.”
“
And you believe that?”
Munro shrugged. “That was the reason they gave.”
Craddock strode about, trying to press the creeping chill from his feet. “I doubt our man would get much for the clothes of his chosen victims.”
Munro nodded. “Just a thought. Course, we don’t even know the same man committed these murders yet.”
“
Oh, I think we do,” put in the house surgeon, appearing at a side door. He was stripped to his waistcoat and watch-chain. His shirt-sleeves were rolled back, his forearms wet and soapy. He mopped them down with a towel. In the firelit chamber behind him, a figure lay on a slab, draped in a bloody sheet.
“
Yes indeed, gentlemen,” he added, in his cultured Scottish accident. “I think we do. The injuries are virtually identical. Crushed windpipes, shattered neck vertebrae. A very strong person, with a very strong pair of hands.”
“
Sexually molested?” Craddock wondered.
The doctor shook his head. “Not a trace.”
“
Did he beat her?” Munro asked.
The doctor mused, then again shook his head. “A few abrasions and scratches. Nothing that wouldn’t have been caused by her dropping to the ground after he’d finished with her.”
“
Our killer is efficient,” Craddock said.
“
Worryingly so,” the doctor replied. “The James O’Hare death was no fluke, chief inspector. In neither case was there a fight. Scarcely a struggle, in fact. Once he’d got a grip on them, it was over. They didn’t stand a chance.”
Munro shook his head. “And he’s supposed to be small? Like a child?” He glanced at the major. “Or are we discounting that?”
Craddock turned sharply, striding from the hall. “We’re not discounting anything yet.”

 

Continued enquiries revealed little of immediate significance.
James O’Hare, it was suggested, could have been murdered by one of his many enemies. The physical way he had been mastered was difficult to explain, but then he’d been dead-drunk at the time. The only problem with this thesis was that no-one was prepared to name a name, not even in the teeming rat-holes of Scholes, where loyalty could be bought for a few tots of impure alcohol. The same was true of Kathleen McConnolly. Most of the people who had seen her that fateful day reported her as having been inebriated, staggering from one crowded gin house to another, her friend Roisin Lachlan loyally in tow. As with the James O’Hare case, there was no suggestion they had fallen foul of anyone in particular.
Over a period of days, the woman Lachlan became gradually more coherent, until at last Sergeant Rafferty was able to interview her properly. In mental terms, however, she was in a pitiful state, maintaining that her friend had been attacked by a child, or at least someone of a child’s stature. She herself had been too fuddled with drink to intervene, but not so that she didn’t remember the killer’s odd apparel. This was especially interesting, but also baffling. He’d been dressed like a monk, she said. Hooded – only in Hessian or sackcloth. It had covered his body entirely, but hadn’t encumbered him so that he couldn’t leap at his victim like a tiger.
“
You think nobody else would have noticed someone like that?” the major asked, as he and Rafferty left the lodging house where the petrified witness had buried herself.
He stopped to wipe his boots on the kerbstone. A passing beggar doffed his ragged cap. The major acknowledged him with a wave of his stick.
“
People don’t notice much in this district, sir,” the sergeant said, standing by. “Too busy wallowing in their own misery.”
“
Sympathy, Rafferty?” Craddock wondered, setting off down a narrow lane between rows of slum terracing.
The sergeant followed, eyes fixed ahead, mouth tight. “They’re my own people, sir. Brought here on false promises, most of ‘em. Expecting jobs, better standards of living. Paid their own way with what few coppers they had, in many cases. Found themselves in –
this
. Little better than slaves, and that’s the ones who’ve got work.”
The major lit up a cigar and puffed on it. “Emotional words for an Irishman who served in Queen Victoria’s army.”
“
It was King George’s army when I joined up, sir.”
“
That makes a difference?”
Still Rafferty gazed ahead. “There wasn’t no famine as such then, sir. People were in control of their own survival. If anything, things were worse over
here
. What with the cotton strikes and Swing riots.”
Craddock blew out a plume of smoke. “Not quite sure I follow, sergeant.”
They’d emerged onto Chapel Lane, a busy trunk road, and were forced to step back as passing wagons threw up fountains of mud.
“
What I’m saying, sir, is – when I left Ireland, I wasn’t running away. I wasn’t taking no responsibility – I wasn’t being a traitor to my own kin.”
Craddock nodded. He hailed a cab, which pulled up, skidding. “And that’s what Roisin Lachlan’s been saying to you?” They climbed in.
“
Police barracks, driver. That you’re a traitor?”
“
Not as such, sir, no.”
“
Then what?”
Rafferty stared out into the traffic. Once again, beads of sweat stood on his brow. “Well – Ireland and Irish folk are sometimes a queer thing for an English gentleman, like yourself, to understand. If I might be so bold, sir. I think some things are best left unsaid.”
He couldn’t seem to meet his superior’s gaze.
“
Nothing to do with the case in hand, I hope?” the major said.
“
Not really, sir. No.”
“
No, Rafferty?”
After a moment’s thought, the sergeant shook his head forcefully. “No, sir. On my mother’s soul!”

 

Wigan was not the sort of town to be badly distressed by an unsolved double-murder, at least not when winter was drawing near, with all its threats of ‘flu, whooping cough, diphtheria, frostbite. November brought more heavy rain, flood tides on the River Douglas, cave-ins below ground, then ice, sleet and fog, which, thanks to the borough’s mass coal-burning, was thick and sulphurous.
The force constables were gradually despatched back to routine duties, while the ongoing investigation made painfully little ground. In fact, other crimes took precedence: a double-death in Wallgate, the town’s main thoroughfare, when a furious driver ran his cart over two children; a serious assault, when a Saturday night clog fight left a rowdy collier with two cracked shinbones; a violent burglary in a pub off the market-square.

Other books

At Home in France by Ann Barry
Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky
Sweet Tea and Secrets by Nancy Naigle
Animal Orchestra by Ilo Orleans
Ice Diaries by Revellian, Lexi
Death at Daisy's Folly by Robin Paige