The Detective Branch (54 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 can’t do this any more,’ Clare Lewis said, as soon as she’d taken the chair opposite Pyke and removed her headscarf. She had sent a note to his room that morning, asking Pyke to meet her in a tavern just around the corner from her brothel.
‘Do what?’
‘This. All of this.’ She looked angry.
‘Tell me what’s happened.’
‘Nothing’s happened. Nothing and everything.’ She managed a thin smile. ‘I’m not making much sense, am I?’
‘Why did you ask to see me, Clare?’
She turned and surveyed the faces in the taproom. ‘I don’t want to see Culpepper ever again. Is that clear enough for you?’ Pyke saw that her hands were trembling.
In the end, it was easier than Pyke could have imagined. A few hours later, Culpepper arrived on Great White Lion Street and left two of his mob guarding the front entrance. He was escorted up the rickety stairs to the prostitute he liked to see, a strong, big-boned woman who called herself Emerald. All Pyke had to do was wait. As he did so, he imagined the scene unfolding in the room: Culpepper removing first his shoes, then his waistcoat, shirt, trousers and socks; Culpepper, naked; Culpepper, waiting for Emerald to do what he paid her to do; Culpepper, oblivious to what was about to happen to him.
As Emerald passed Pyke on the landing, she didn’t even acknowledge him. Perhaps, he thought later, she had come to like the man she was paid handsomely to service.
Pyke entered the room quietly and closed the door behind him. Culpepper made an odd, unedifying sight: a sinewy, almost emaciated figure curled up on a bed of crisp, white cotton. Emerald had blindfolded him and tied his wrists and ankles with a silk binding to each of the bed’s four posts. To Pyke, he looked older and more wizened than he’d been expecting, and it took some of the sting out of his anger, until he remembered what Culpepper had done.
The first thing he did was check that the binds on Culpepper’s wrists and ankles were tight. Culpepper sensed his presence for the first time and, thinking he was Emerald, said, ‘Are you going to punish me? I think you should. I deserve to be punished.’ Pyke looked at him and noticed his shrivelled penis had begun to stir.
‘I have to agree with you there, Georgie. I’m not sure I’ll live up to Emerald’s standards but I’ll do what I can.’
Pyke waited for Culpepper to flinch or struggle but the man remained absolutely still. Perhaps he was trying to place the voice or maybe he thought he could talk his way out of the situation. Pyke didn’t allow him the luxury of thought. Swinging the hammer he’d brought with him, he aimed a blow at Culpepper’s kneecap and felt the joint dissolve under the force of the impact. Culpepper’s cry put Pyke in mind of a cow being crushed under the wheels of a train.
‘You should understand, Georgie, that no one is going to come to your rescue. Not the men you left outside on the street nor any of your mob, who, as we speak, are being routed by Conor Rafferty.’
Culpepper’s body had gone limp and Pyke noticed that the man had soiled himself.
‘You’re finished, Georgie. You know it and I know it. But you still have a choice. I can act humanely and slit your throat with a single draw of my razor or I can set to work on you with my hammer the way you did to poor Johnny Gregg.’
‘At least take off this blindfold so I can see you,’ Culpepper said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
‘What’s it to be, Georgie? Are you willing to tell me what I want to know?’ Pyke reached down and yanked off the blindfold.
Culpepper’s eyes were tired and bloodshot. ‘I knew I should’ve killed you when I had the chance.’
‘I want to know why you carried out the murders of Johnny Gregg and Stephen Clough five years ago.’
Culpepper lifted his head off the pillow for a moment and tried to assess the damage to his kneecap. ‘I didn’t think that bitch had the guts to cross me.’
‘Well, I suppose this is her way of repaying you for rearranging her face.’ Pyke walked around to the other side of the bed, the hammer still in his hand, and gestured at Culpepper’s other kneecap. ‘I asked you a question, Georgie.’
‘There was a house on Cheapside, I think.’ Culpepper shut his eyes and winced. ‘I sent the boys there to turn it over. They saw this man leave, a gentleman, and thought he was the owner of the house. One of the boys chose to follow him, probably intending to pick his pockets. The other one broke into the house and found a body in the living room - turned out to be the nephew of the former owner, who’d left the place to the Church in his will. The cull was dead but still warm; he’d been strangled. The lad stripped the place of anything he could stuff into his pockets, brought it all back to me. Meanwhile, the other lad had followed this gentleman he saw leaving the place to a church in Aldgate.’
‘St Botolph’s.’
Culpepper wetted his lips and nodded. ‘That’s the one.’
‘Go on.’
‘I waited to read about the murder in the newspapers but there was nothing. Nothing about the robbery either. By then we knew the gentleman one of my boys had followed was a rector by the name of Isaac Guppy. So I paid him a visit, told him what I knew, what one of my lads had seen. The body and him scampering down the front steps. I told him I wanted to be properly recompensed for my silence.’
‘You didn’t know for certain whether Guppy had strangled this man or not?’
‘That didn’t matter to me. He’d left the scene of a crime without reporting it. It meant he was involved.’
‘Did Guppy tell you what had happened?’
Culpepper shook his head. ‘I never talked to him after my first visit. But about two days later I had a visit.’
Pyke nodded, trying to speculate about what may have happened: Guppy and the nephew arguing over the uncle’s will. Perhaps the nephew had threatened to go to the police, or the newspapers. Perhaps the argument had turned violent.
‘Who from?’
‘One of yours.’
Pyke felt his throat tighten - but he already knew what Culpepper was going to say.
‘Wells.’
Pyke nodded. ‘And he offered you a deal?’
Last summer, Wells had joined the operation in Buckeridge Street to find the men suspected of carrying out the Shorts Gardens murders. But instead of carrying out that detective work, Wells and his men had spent their time clearing the surrounding slums in advance of demolition work to be carried out by the contractor, Palmer, Jones and Co. It all pointed to a long association, and Pyke was sure that if he dug around, he would learn that Wells was the one who’d first put Palmer in touch with Sir Richard Mayne.
‘If I made the problem go away, if I was willing to get my own hands dirty, he promised I’d be allowed to run my affairs without interference from your mob. He also said if any freebooter caused me aggravation, he’d personally make sure the cull was stamped on from a great height.’
‘What exactly did he order you to do?’
‘Later I worked out that he’d already planned for that cully to take the fall . . .’
‘Keate,’ Pyke said, interrupting.
Culpepper nodded. ‘At the time, Wells just said he wanted something to scare the rest of the boys, make sure none of them blabbed. Told me he wanted it to look like a religious lunatic had done it.’ His eyes were blank, as if he was just describing what he’d eaten for lunch. ‘I was going to nail them both to a door but then the older one, Gregg, got a bit uppity so I had to finish him with a cudgel. I reckon the other one, Clough, got wind of what was happening and went on the run. I found him in the end. I had to finish him off with a knife first, of course. Didn’t want to cause the lad any unnecessary pain.’
‘But they were both your boys.’
‘So what?’ Culpepper’s eyes were hard and small. ‘You think I’m attached to any of my boys? That I can afford to be sentimental?’
‘Sharp was one of your men, too, wasn’t he?’
‘He was a good boy but he was always a little too quick to reach for his pistol. I only used him when I had to.’
‘You sent him to Cullen’s pawn shop, to recover some goods that Walter Wells wanted back? The Saviour’s Cross, for a start.’
Culpepper shook his head. ‘Wells was never interested in that cross. He just wanted some ledger book. I could see he was desperate. For good measure, he arranged for one of his men to patrol the street outside the shop. A Peeler.’
This had been the man the crossing-sweeper had seen. Sergeant Mark Russell. Part of Kensington Division but formerly of A Division. Wells’s division.
‘Go on.’
‘Sharp had his orders but one of the culls in the pawnbroker’s went for his pistol and all hell broke loose. My lad had just got a new Darby, could fire five times without having to reload. Next thing, all of them culls were dead and Sharp scarpered out the back. He didn’t get the ledger; but he took the cross and a few things from the safe which was already open.’
This fitted with what Pyke had already worked out. Luke and Johnny Gibb must have suspected, or known, from the beginning that their half-brother, Morris, was innocent of the crimes he’d been accused of committing. Maybe they also suspected that someone had deliberately picked him out to shoulder the blame. Perhaps, over the subsequent years, they had followed a trail of evidence that led back to Guppy and Wynter, although at the time Wells’s identity must have remained obscure; maybe it was simply the case that someone had tipped them off about the Churches Fund. In any case, it now seemed likely that, having been alerted to the Church’s collusion in the matter of their brother’s execution, Johnny and Luke Gibb had broken into Wynter’s safe and taken the cross along with the genuine copy of the Churches Fund’s accounts ledger. The accounts, Pyke guessed, would have told them all they needed to know about the embezzling of funds and who’d been involved; the cross had just been an added bonus and Johnny had gone to see Cullen to arrange a quick sale. Cullen, in turn, had contacted Harry Dove as a potential buyer and all three men had met that morning in Cullen’s pawn shop on Shorts Gardens. Somehow Wells must have found out about the rendezvous. Doubtless he had been frantically scouring the city in the aftermath of the robbery, desperate to recover a set of accounts that set out, clearly and unequivocally, not only his own guilt but also that of Palmer, Guppy, Hogarth and maybe others. Pyke didn’t yet know whether Sharp or Sergeant Russell had been able to recover the accounts ledger, but Sharp had certainly made it his business to retrieve the Saviour’s Cross before he shot and killed Johnny Gibb, Harry Dove and Samuel Cullen.
‘And when Wells wanted someone to find and perhaps frighten Keate’s elderly mother and his family, he came to you again.’
‘Look, I didn’t ask questions or demand reasons. I just did what I was told. In return, Wells was supposed to step on the Raffertys for me. I suppose he did a good enough job on one of the brothers.’
‘That was Wells?’ Pyke didn’t bother to hide his surprise.
Culpepper laughed, in spite of his predicament. ‘You have no idea how deep this thing goes, do you? How many of your mob are involved.’
Pyke went over to the window and peered outside into the late afternoon gloom.
‘Untie me, Pyke. I’ll walk away and I promise you’ll never see me again. I’ll pay you five thousand.’
Pyke turned around and surveyed Culpepper’s naked form sprawled on the bed. It was a grotesque spectacle.
‘I asked folk about you. I was told you’re not opposed to wetting your own beak from time to time.’ Culpepper stared at him and licked his lips. ‘Ten thousand.’
Pyke walked slowly towards the door but he stopped just before it, his fingers resting on the handle. ‘You know I said I’d put you out of your misery quickly, if you talked to me. Well, I’m afraid I lied.’ He turned the handle and opened the door. ‘There’s a man waiting outside who wants to make your acquaintance. His name is Conor Rafferty.’
‘Untie me, you fucking coward!’ Culpepper suddenly bellowed, yanking on his bindings. ‘Do you know who I am?’
Outside on the landing Conor Rafferty was waiting. Pyke looked him in the eye. ‘So we’re clear now, you and I.’
Rafferty nodded, walked into the room and closed the door behind him.
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