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Authors: Paul Finch,Neil Jackson

BOOK: Craddock
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Wigan was never a tranquil place at the best of times. Only one of numerous smoky citadels in the Lancashire heartland, where cotton and coal vied for kingship, it bred social turmoil as a by-product. But now an entirely new shadow lay over it.
The first murder had occurred in the mud and rain of late October.

 

 

Every peeler in town knew James O’Hare, the burly, two-fisted Irishman of St. Patrick’s Road, Scholes, the low-rent and lodging-house district, the worst slum, in fact, in the entire slum-ridden town.
O’Hare was a legend even in that neighbourhood, and there were few sorry that sodden morning, when a patrolling constable emerged from a rubble filled alley on the bank of the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, to find the dangerous individual floating face down. By the time Craddock arrived, the body, its clothing heavily waterlogged, had been hauled out and now lay on its back on the tow-path. Its brutish face was alabaster white and fixed in a frozen scream, the eyes starting from the sockets. Its hands were rigid claws.
Craddock stood by indifferently, drawing his cloak around him in the thrashing rain, as a local doctor, complaining bitterly at having been called from his bed, knelt down to examine the victim.
“
Drunk?” the major asked.
“
Probably,” the doctor replied, water streaming from his beard. He took off his spectacles and cleaned them. “He usually was.”
“
Slipped off the lock gate on his way home?” the major wondered.
The doctor knelt back. “More like thrown, I’d say.”
Craddock glanced at Munro.
“
He was strangled,” the doctor added.
“
James O’Hare, strangled?” Munro hardly believed it.
“
Extremely forcefully.” The doctor yanked open the collar of the Irishman’s shirt. Beneath it, the flesh on his throat was scored and black with bruising.
He rose to his feet, water dripping from the brim of his hat. “His larynx has been crushed. We’ll find cracked vertebrae too.”
Craddock stared at the body. He was familiar with stranglings; as a young subaltern, his first posting on the sub-continent had been Bombay, where remnants of the Thuggi cult were still active. He’d seen enough then to conclude that damaged neck bones meant manual strangulation rather than by ligature, which in this case implied great physical strength.
The doctor blew his nose loudly. “Suppose I shouldn’t say it, but it couldn’t have happened to a nicer fellow.”
The major nodded, then turned to Munro. “Secure both canal banks. The whole distance between here and the next set of lock-gates.”
The inspector nodded, and immediately began delegating to the constables in the alley, huddled under their helmets and capes.
“
And get Sergeant Repton to commence house-to-house enquiries,” Craddock added, indicating the tenements backing up to the tow-path.
“
In hand, sir.”
Again, the major nodded. “In that case, you can make your way to O’Hare’s lodgings. Inform his next of kin, if he has any. Search it while you’re there. Anything of relevance, I want it preserved for exhibit. Speak to his neighbours as well – let’s get to know him.”
The inspector moved away.
“
Sergeant Rafferty!” Craddock shouted.
On the far side of the canal, a bulky officer, crammed so tightly into his blue serge uniform that the tunic buttons looked ready to pop off, turned from where he’d been speaking to the lock-keeper, slid his notebook into his breast-pocket, and made his careful way across the slippery timbers of the gate.
“
Major Craddock, sir?” he said, alighting safely. His face was weathered red and fringed by grey mutton-chop whiskers. When he spoke, it was a hard Munster brogue.
“
Line-search, if you please,” the major said. “Both banks. You know what we’re looking for – any odd items, scraps of clothing, bootprints, a splash of blood. Anything to indicate there was a struggle. Chop chop, sir, the weather’s against us.”
Rafferty nodded and hastened away.

 

It wasn’t the first unlawful killing Major Craddock had investigated in his fourteen years as chief inspector in the town. He’d dealt with fifty at least. Most, however, had been domestic tragedies: the slaying of wife by drunken husband, or even drunken husband by vengeful wife. There’d been one robbery-stabbing, though the itinerant responsible in that case had been apprehended and hanged within the year, while the rest were mainly manslaughters, the result of pub-brawls at night or criminal negligence in the foundries and coal seams.
This case, he felt, was different. The very fact that James O’Hare had been strangled sent a chill through him. Men shot or bludgeoned each other; if they strangled, it would be a woman or child. Not another man. Certainly not a man like James O’Hare, a raging human buffalo from the backstreets of Dublin.
He sat back behind his cluttered desk, a cigar between his fingers. Jim Craddock was fifty-five that year, but reasonably robust. His snowy white hair and trim white moustache gave a false impression. Beneath his crisp shirt and silver-flowered waistcoat, his frame was strong, hard-muscled from years of front line duty. His skin, once brown as leather, may long have faded back to an ashy English hue, but it was still tight, still wizened, still marked here and there by sabre cut or powder burn.
The cool grey eyes, with which he wore down even the most stubborn suspect in the interview room, were his best asset. They gave little away, neither emotion nor thought. Certainly nothing of the razor-edged intellect behind them. When Craddock had returned to Horse Guards in 1850 and promptly resigned his commission for a post in the recently formed civilian police service, the best they’d said of him was that the premature death of his wife had unhinged him. Others had been less kind: he’d lost his nerve in the savage fighting at Goojerat; he was secretly a coward and now unable to conceal it; he lacked ambition; he was a fool, a traitor, an agitator even – after all, his father, a philanthropist and lay-preacher, had been a great advocate of the reform movement. The truth was, of course, that nobody really knew. They never did where Jim Craddock was concerned. And he never told them. He never told them anything. Not that he was always sure, himself. That dull October afternoon at his desk, he pondered the murder of James O’Hare, and found it perplexing.
Cigar smoke wafted around him, further browning the low ceiling, the heavy book spines lining the shelves. Outside, the icy downpour continued, thundering on the tiles and window panes, plunging like a cataract into the flooded barrack yard.
At length, Inspector Munro entered, unbuttoning his coat. He hung his drenched bowler on the rack by the door, then tossed a notebook on to the major’s desk.
“
James O’Hare was not a popular fellow,” he said.
Craddock nodded. “You
do
surprise me.”
Munro dragged up a chair and sat. “Quarrelsome, especially in his cups, which was most of the time. He was also in money disputes with several different firms. Once, he had to be ejected from the premises of Balder & Sons for making a nuisance of himself. Said they owed him wages. They denied it.”
Craddock considered. “Criminal associates?”
Munro gave his senior a blank stare. “Surprisingly, none known.”
Equally blank, the major stared back. “Tell me another one, Jack. He was a carter, for God’s sake. He must at least have had form for handling?”
Munro shook his head. “None known, as I said. All previous convictions drink related.”
“
Domestic situation?”
“
Unmarried. Single child. Parents sent him over here with his uncle in 1845. Uncle’s been dead nine years.”
The major drew on his cigar. “Any intelligence on who he might have been socialising with last night?”
The inspector shrugged. “Still working on that one.”
“
I want names, Jack. Any you don’t like, lock ‘em up. We’ll speak to them in here.”
“
Sir. “ Munro nodded, rose to his feet.
“
Jack?”
The inspector turned as he opened the door. “Sir?”
Craddock fixed him with those cool grey eyes. “What does it take to snap a man’s neck?”
Munro considered. “Brute strength, I suppose.”
“
And?”
“
Skill, maybe.”
“
More skill than the average railway worker or collier?”
Slowly, Munro nodded. “Possibly. Couldn’t rule them all out, though.
There are some very strong working men in this town. Some of them will have had military training.”
The major nodded, then waved the inspector away. Much as he’d thought. It wasn’t going to be an easy enquiry.
He was certainly right on that score, because enquiries were still going on a week later – when the killer struck a second time.

 

Once again the victim had been manually strangled, with terrifying force. Once again the victim was Irish, and a drinker to boot. Once again the foul deed had been done in the deprived Scholes district, the broken corpse left where it had fallen. There, however, the similarities ended.
Kathleen McConnolly, to begin with, was female – and when a female died at the hands of a maniac, there was usually only one reason for it. By the same token, this slaying had occurred in the early evening, and had been discovered no later than nine o’clock. Not that Major Craddock was convinced by these arguments. In fact, even before he arrived at the crime scene, he had a gut feeling he’d be surveying the work of the same ruthless hand.
He made his way there in company with Inspector Munro, through a maze of squalid backstreets, some so narrow that two men couldn’t walk abreast. All manner of refuse strewed the muddy footways – waste paper and rags, rotted food, broken bricks, human slops. Everything, it seemed, was caked in soot, while some alleys ran under railway lines, becoming pitch-black tunnels alive with rats and cockroaches. On all sides, doorways gave in to dens of misery and degradation. Flickering candles showed damp and tiny rooms, where emaciated children, clad in tatters, huddled together for warmth. In others, men doused in coal dust slapped at their women or slumped at tables, drinking from bottles. Others stood on the step, glaring out. Even in the chill October night, the cloying air stank of coke and sweat and human faeces. It rang with coarse Irish accents, many in the tongue of their native homeland. Most, it seemed, were swearing, or laughing drunkenly, or sobbing aloud.
“
Why do these people live like this?” Craddock said under his breath, pushing with his stick at a ragged shape lying in their path. “Out of the way, or I’ll arrest you for vagrancy!”
Muttering guttural threats, the drunk hauled himself to his feet and shambled into the shadows. More laughter came cackling down from above. Munro looked up nervously. Open windows overhung them at many points. At any moment, the contents of chamber pots could hurtle down.
He didn’t bother to reply to his superior’s question, for two reasons:
Firstly, because they both knew the answer. It was now nearly twenty years since the potato blight had bitten into rural Ireland’s economy, condemning the population to death if they didn’t seek their fortune elsewhere. Thousand upon thousand had taken that desperate option, arriving in England via the port of Liverpool, intending to find ship to America, but eventually being farmed out through their old foe’s industrial north, where there were canals to be dug, pits to be sunk, looms to be worked.
Secondly, because the senior officer didn’t mean it as harshly as it sounded. Inspector Jack Munro, once Captain John Munro of the 14th Light Dragoons, knew his commander’s temperament well; knew that the major’s ‘Chartist’ upbringing on a modest estate not many miles from another woebegone Lancashire town, Blackburn, had made a deep impression on him; knew that once his wife had died and his purpose in India ceased to be, the much decorated soldier had taken this post as police chief for no other reason than because he felt he could do some good. In many ways, though, Craddock was still a warrior. He sympathised with the struggling and downtrodden, but not with the abject surrender so many of them showed. ‘Fight back’ was his motto.
“
I’m going to enjoy delivering this bastard to the Assizes,” the major said, gazing down on the strangled woman.
The lanterns of two constables cast a wavering glow on her filthied corpse. She was sitting against a wall at a junction of two alleyways, her head hanging at a hideous angle. Her ragged dress was in disarray, her greying hair in matted locks. Once again, the neck was blackened and torn by fingers of steel. The expression on her muddied face was almost too ghastly to look at.
“
Has she been used?” Munro asked of the various constables gathered there. “Has anyone looked?”
Tough and granite-faced as they were, they shrugged sheepishly. It was easy to understand their dilemma. A multitude stared out down from surrounding upper storey windows; in all adjoining passages, dark groups were being held back. It wasn’t really the done thing for peelers to be caught peeping under a woman’s skirt, even if she had just been slaughtered by some demented person.

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