The Detective Branch (3 page)
Read The Detective Branch Online
Authors: Andrew Pepper
Tags: #London (England) - History - 1800-1950, #Mystery & Detective, #Pyke (Fictitious Character: Pepper), #Pyke (Fictitious Character : Pepper), #Fiction, #General, #Mystery Fiction, #Historical, #Traditional British, #Suspense, #Crime
‘I heard he’s given up his apartment in Camden and moved in with you,’ Saggers said.
‘That’s right.’ Pyke hesitated, wondering whether to voice his concerns about his uncle. ‘How did Godfrey seem to you, the last time you met for lunch?’ In Pyke’s opinion, his uncle’s health had deteriorated since the start of the year but he didn’t want to articulate this to Saggers. He didn’t even want to acknowledge it to himself. Although Godfrey was in his seventies, the notion that the old man’s health might be failing was too much for Pyke to bear.
Saggers considered the question. He was wearing a tweed coat and matching trousers that had been made for him and which he rarely, if ever, changed out of. ‘Between the two of us, he didn’t finish his wine.’
Pyke nodded. It confirmed what he’d suspected for a while. The idea panicked him, as much for Felix’s sake as his own. His fourteen-year-old son was devoted to the old man. It was also true that Godfrey was the only father he, Pyke, had ever known.
Saggers gestured at Cullen’s shop. ‘I heard there are three dead including the owner. Shot by a person or persons unknown.’
‘What else did you hear?’
Saggers let his gaze drift over Pyke’s shoulder. ‘Hard to understand ’em, to be honest.’ He stared up at a soot-blackened building. ‘This place shouldn’t be called Little
Dublin
. From the accents I’d say Little Cork would be more accurate.’
Dublin
. From the accents I’d say Little Cork would be more accurate.’
‘People gossip,’ Pyke said. ‘You must have overheard something.’
‘Have you heard of the Raffertys?’
That got his attention. ‘No. Should I have?’
‘Three brothers from County Cork, or so I gather. Talk is, they’ve started their own gang.’
Pyke looked into Saggers’s eyes; they were almost translucent in colour, half buried in two deep pits of flesh. ‘Do people think they might be responsible for the murders?’
‘I’ve been standing here for about an hour and I’ve heard the same name whispered three or four times. Draw your own conclusions.’
Ned Villums was sitting at his functional desk in his plain office in a residential street in the middle of Clerkenwell. He barely looked up when Pyke was ushered into the room by one of his assistants.
‘I’m here about the Shorts Gardens robbery.’
Villums finished what he’d been reading and raised his eyes. ‘I’ve already heard about it. Three dead, if my information’s correct. Nasty business.’ He waited for a moment, then added, ‘For what it’s worth, Cullen was a stupid, shambling wreck of a man.’
Pyke wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Ned, but Harry Dove was one of the victims.’
‘Harry? You mean . . .’ Villums struggled to come to terms with what Pyke had just said.
‘Shot in the back.’ Villums’s eyes shifted focus and instinctively he gripped the desk. ‘Like I said, Ned, I’m sorry. I know how much the lad meant to you.’
To look at, Villums was as insignificant as the next man. His greasy hair had no particular style and his ill-fitting jacket and matching corduroy breeches made him look more like a costermonger than one of the shrewdest, most revered men in the city’s sprawling underworld. That was exactly why he’d risen to the position he had when others had died or gone to prison. He didn’t draw attention to himself; he was a good judge of character; he dealt only with people he knew and trusted; and if crossed, he could be as ruthless and cruel as the worst of them. Pyke had known and traded information with him for more than twenty years, and while he didn’t exactly consider Villums to be a friend, there was, Pyke felt, a mutual respect. Knowing what they were both capable of, they had been careful not to antagonise one another. Villums was certainly not the kind of man you wanted to turn your back on.
‘Jesus Christ. Sit down and tell me what happened.’ Villums fetched a bottle of whisky from the shelf behind his desk and poured them both a glass.
Pyke did as Villums asked, leaving nothing out. Villums didn’t interrupt. Even after Pyke had finished, he just sat there quietly, assessing what he’d been told. Pyke didn’t know how Dove had first come to Villums’s attention but he had become one of the man’s most trusted associates.
Eventually, after rearranging some items on his desk, Ned sat forward. ‘I’ve heard about the men you’re interested in. The Rafferty boys. Nasty types. I’m told they sometimes play cards in the King of Denmark but more often you’ll find them at the Blue Dog on Castle Street.’
‘But are they capable of walking into a pawnbroker’s shop in broad daylight and killing three men?’
Villums shrugged. ‘Rumour has it they hung a police informer on a meat hook, slit open his stomach and pulled out his intestines inch by inch.’
‘Why haven’t I heard of them?’
‘They do robberies, mainly. Houses, shops, warehouses, even banks. They’re careful, though. Makes me wonder whether they would walk into a pawnbroker’s shop in the middle of the day like that.’
Pyke picked up the whisky glass Villums had filled for him. ‘The bodies of two as-yet-unidentified men will be laid out for public viewing. Sooner or later someone will recognise Harry.’
Villums nodded. ‘And you think I’ll be dragged into the investigation?’
‘Your connection to Harry isn’t exactly a secret.’
‘But you’re in charge of the investigation.’
Now they were getting down to it. Pyke sat back in his chair and drank some whisky. ‘You’re asking me to keep your name out of it?’
‘If people know about my connection to Harry, they might find out about my association with you. If that becomes public knowledge, it wouldn’t be good for either of us.’
Pyke tried to assess whether this constituted a threat or not. He had traded information for money with Villums and subsequently a pickpocket ring and a gang of housebreakers had been tried and convicted. He had also been paid for arresting Villums’s enemies. Pyke was happy to leave the ethics of his actions for others to worry about: the convictions had put men who stole for a living behind bars and had been instrumental in consolidating Pyke’s status in the Detective Branch and the New Police. It was also true that Pyke had plenty of enemies, men who had opposed his appointment and who would dearly love to expose him as a liar and a criminal.
When he’d first found out that Pyke was going to join the Detective Branch, Villums’s reaction had surprised him. Pyke had expected suspicion, even hostility, but Villums had welcomed the news. ‘Don’t you see?’ he had said. ‘You’ll be on the inside. I’ll finally have someone on the inside.’ At the time, Pyke didn’t try to dampen Villums’s enthusiasm. He’d certainly profited from the information Villums had passed on to him but he had also tried to distance himself a little from his former associate.
‘Do you know what business took Harry to Cullen’s shop in the first place?’ Pyke asked, deciding to change the subject.
Villums didn’t seem to have heard the question. Instead he picked up the whisky bottle and poured himself another glass. ‘Harry was no fool,’ he said eventually, his calloused fingers wrapped around the tumbler.
‘I didn’t say he was.’
‘You want me to be blunt, Pyke, I’ll be blunt,’ Villums said, suddenly. ‘You’re a policeman now. Keep Harry out of the investigation.’
Pyke looked into Villums’s slate-grey eyes and held his stare. ‘As I said, someone will recognise him sooner or later. It’s inevitable.’
‘Then just make sure my name isn’t brought into the conversation, ’ Villums said.
‘I’ll do what I can, but I can’t make any promises.’
Villums sat forward, drumming his fingers on the edge of his desk, his eyes glowing. ‘We’ve had a good understanding for a number of years. I might even count you as a friend. But rest assured, Pyke, if I was ever faced with the choice of protecting you or saving myself, I’d do whatever was needed.’
‘Then we both know where we stand.’
Villums stared at him, contemplating his next move. ‘I’ll ask around about Harry.’
Standing up, Pyke felt a rush of blood to his head. Or perhaps it was just the whisky. He walked to the door, then turned around. ‘Ned.’ He waited for Villums to look up at him. ‘We’ve always got along by respecting each other’s privacy and not interfering in each other’s business.’
‘So?’
‘This is
my
investigation, Ned. I’m a policeman now.’
my
investigation, Ned. I’m a policeman now.’
Villums seemed disappointed by this response. ‘You’re your own man, Pyke. Always have been, always will be.’
When he got home that evening, Pyke ate the supper left for him by his housekeeper, a middle-aged spinster called Mary Booth, and looked in on his son, Felix, who was asleep in his room. For a while, he lay on his bed reading, but sleep was beyond him so he put on his boots and let himself out into the garden of his Islington town house. It was a cooler night than the previous few and the wind was now coming from the west, carrying the hint of rain. He wandered down to the bottom of the garden where the sty was located and saw that one of his pigs, Alice, had escaped and was rooting around in his neighbour’s vegetable patch. Pyke was joined by Copper, a three-legged mastiff and former fighting dog he’d acquired and now kept as a pet, and between the two of them, they managed to herd the long-bodied pig back into the sty.
A year earlier, Pyke had employed Villums to dispose of thirteen gold bars he’d illegally acquired from the bullion vault of the Bank of England and he’d used the proceeds to buy the house where his family was now living. It was a stout, respectable terrace in Islington; strangely only a few streets away from the house on Cloudsley Terrace that his deceased wife, Emily, had inherited from her father and where they had lived in the first years of their marriage. Pyke had wondered about the wisdom of buying a house in an area that held so many memories for him but Felix had been insistent, for although he had been too young to remember the old house, he had liked the idea of living in a part of the city his mother had known.
It had almost been ten years since her death and they hardly ever talked about her. Perhaps this was as it should be, Pyke thought, as he climbed the stairs. Perhaps you ran out of things to say about someone who had been dead for so long. But late at night, when he couldn’t sleep, Pyke would lie in his bed, staring up at the ceiling, and he would think about their time together, trying to remember the small details; the shape of her mouth, the touch of her fingers, the crease just above her nose that deepened whenever she became irritated or angry. Sometimes his thoughts would also turn to Jo, Felix’s nursemaid and then his nanny. Pyke had had a brief and unsuccessful dalliance with her a few years earlier, and he would wonder where she was now and what she was doing. In the end, his mind always wandered back to Emily, and as Pyke lay there listening to the shutters rattle against their jambs, he thought about what had been lost and what he would never get back.
TWO
G
rief affects people in different ways but Pyke had always thought that it was a luxury of the indolent. The next morning, he found Cullen’s wife at the front of the shop. On her hands and knees, and wearing a tatty apron, her hair tied up in a bun, she was scrubbing the floor with a wire brush. Her face was rigid with concentration as she drew the bristles back and forth across the dark stains, as though the act itself could somehow erase the memory of what had happened. Pyke let the door close behind him and coughed. She looked up, startled, and then allowed her gaze to return to the stain in front of her. ‘What do you want?’
rief affects people in different ways but Pyke had always thought that it was a luxury of the indolent. The next morning, he found Cullen’s wife at the front of the shop. On her hands and knees, and wearing a tatty apron, her hair tied up in a bun, she was scrubbing the floor with a wire brush. Her face was rigid with concentration as she drew the bristles back and forth across the dark stains, as though the act itself could somehow erase the memory of what had happened. Pyke let the door close behind him and coughed. She looked up, startled, and then allowed her gaze to return to the stain in front of her. ‘What do you want?’
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