Craddock (26 page)

Authors: Paul Finch,Neil Jackson

BOOK: Craddock

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He kept a calm, measured pace. It was the old thing – policemen were only human, and suffered the same fears as everyone else. The fact that they weren’t supposed to didn’t matter a damn. The one thing they had to avoid was
showing
those fears. That was why Craddock continued walking in idle fashion; that was why he refused to stop and turn around – even though the could now
hear
the creaking of the pithead machinery, could
hear
the distant whistle of a steam engine pulling over the wasteland on rails that were rusted and broken.

He was almost at the gate, and counting the yards he had left. Thirty, perhaps forty – it suddenly seemed a long way. As a combat soldier, he’d developed a crucial ability to sense when something was going on behind him. It was working overtime at this moment. He imagined the whole pit coming down in pursuit, half expected to see a gargantuan shadow fall across him. Ten yards remained. The urge to run was overwhelming, but peelers did not run. Not from their imagination, anyway.

His horse was watching idly over the gate, giving no indication of alarm – that was surely a good sign. Lord-God though, it was suddenly cold. And that damn pitter-patter again, this time to the side of him – a thrashing in the undergrowth along the drive.

And what a thrashing!

Craddock looked sharply round, but the foliage was still.

He reached the gate. It was made of heavy planks and bound with chains. At first he wrestled with the padlock, then, marking himself for an idiot, he turned and strode to the railings at the side, where a gap had first admitted him. He ducked back through it and untied his horse from the post. Only now did he deign to glance towards the colliery. As he’d expected, all was still; no spectral locomotive was pumping steam in the sidings, the fly-wheels were not mysteriously turning. It was a dead and decrepit sprawl, nothing more. However, he’d felt an inexplicable dread in those last few minutes, and, before climbing into the saddle, he looked again at the black apertures in the buildings, and imagined some nebulous thing lurking in the shadows behind them.

“
Damn nonsense,” he muttered.

And a shoe scraped the ground behind him.

Craddock swung round like lightning – and found himself eyeball-to-eyeball with a brutish, near-Neanderthal visage. Eyes like dark jewels regarded him; a thick black beard grew around a wide, ape-like mouth filled with ivory teeth.

The major just managed to resist stepping back. Instead, he cleared his throat, and tapped his boot with his riding-crop. “Mr. Krueger, I presume?”

“
Here to show you off this property, sir,” the burly Boer said in his guttural Afrikaaner accent.

“
You are? I see.” Craddock thought on this as he mounted up. “I wasn’t aware you possessed ownership rights.”

Krueger took hold of the horse’s bridle. He looked strong enough to wrestle the animal to the ground. “They’re my master’s. He charges me to see off all intruders.”

“
Then I’ll take it up with him,” Craddock replied, snatching the bridle back with a force that surprised the brutish servant. “Lead the way, if you please.”

The Reverend Pettigrew had taken up residence in the old vicarage on the eastern edge of Top Lock, a rambling but dilapidated house set in a grey wilderness of slag and straggling weeds. Close behind it lay the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, and beyond that more mountainous heaps of rubble and clinker; fall-out from the pits at Aspull and Hindley.

The Anglican Church had done poorly in the turbulent years of industrialisation. Revolutionaries had openly decried its ministers and bishops as princes without portfolio, as men of pomp and privilege who dined well, slept well, defended the abusive rights of the masters and threw all manner of calumny down on the heads of the starved and grovelling populace. In 1831, the Reform Bill had been rejected in the House of Lords after twenty-one bishops voted against it. In such circumstances, the Marxist accusation that religion was an opiate of the masses seemed highly perceptive. In any case, life as it already stood was more Hell than Earth; surely nothing after death could be worse than this? The result might not have been empty chapels – folk still attended services through entrenched personal conviction – but dissent was rife, and the more posturing a churchman, the greater the irritation. Understandable that the Reverend Pettigrew had yet to find himself a loving flock.

The closer Major Craddock drew to the old vicarage, the more it seemed to suit the person who dwelled there. ‘Darkness’ and ‘disintegration’ were two words that sprang immediately to mind. The structure had distorted through underground sinkage, so its lintels were lop-sided, the bricks below its bay windows had bellied outwards, and many of its stained-glass panes had cracked or fallen loose. A massive growth of ivy up the building’s gable-wall looked repulsive rather than pretty; casements were blocked by it, gutters infested. It hung from the eaves in lank green tendrils.

Before knocking on the heavy front door, Craddock glanced back along the stone-flagged path. His horse was tied up at the gatepost, and beside it stood Krueger, watching intently. The fellow apparently had no desire to come inside.

Only after Craddock had swung the knocker several times, did anyone answer. It was a woman, small and thin, with a pinched white face and wearing a black muslin dress, which did nothing for her slight figure. Recognising her as Martha Pettigrew, he took off his topper and introduced himself. She stood there, never once saying a word, and, a few seconds later, still without speaking, admitted him to the house and led him into a maze of dank, musty passages. Everywhere, the lamps were turned low, the windows curtained. What little light there was revealed sparse, shabby furniture, and a carpet that was worn to threads. Mrs. Pettigrew glided through it like a shadow, her footfalls scarcely making a sound. After showing him into a chilly reading-room, she withdrew just as quietly, just as unobtrusively.

The reverend gentleman was present at a lectern, leafing through what appeared to be a book of psalms. Beside him, the grate was filled with cold ashes; there was only one chair in there – a canvas-covered armchair, which looked damp. Pettigrew was a tall, lean man, with a ravaged face and a powerful gaze. Grey hanks of side-whiskers hung from either cheek. His sermons were entirely as unforgiving as his appearance; the major had only heard one, and remembered it being filled with references to brimstone and damnation.

“
Major Craddock,” the minister said in his bass gravel-voice. “I trust you’re here to inform me that the hooligan Childs has been apprehended and now faces the full hand of the law?”

“
That’s one of the things I’ve come to speak to you about, sir, yes. Perhaps you could just remind me of the circumstances surrounding the incident?”

Pettigrew affected a look of bewilderment, as if this was surely now an irrelevance. “Your inspector took full notes, did he not? Well, the facts are simple. That scoundrel Childs stepped out into the road and called my carriage to halt. Whereupon, he produced a firearm.”

“
At which point, as I understand,” Craddock said, “your Mr. Krueger also produced a firearm?”

Pettigrew’s eyes widened further. “Would you have had me shot?”

“
Of course not, sir. But … neither would I have had you supervise the shooting of somebody else.”

“
I’m afraid I don’t understand ...”

“
I keep a register in my office of every gentleman in the borough who owns a firearm, or uses one in his day-to-day business. Most of them, as you probably imagine, are on the farms or on the estates as keepers. Unfortunately, and rather worryingly, your Mr. Krueger is not on that list.”

Pettigrew’s face had reddened. “Mr. Krueger is a native of the Transvaal. It’s his habit to go armed.”

“
Then it’s a habit he must break.”

“
Are you giving me instructions, sir?”

Pettigrew’s voice had risen to a shout, but Craddock was not intimidated. “Yes,” he replied, “which I trust you will relay to your man, Krueger.”

“
How dare you!”

“
I dare because I am chief officer of police in this town … and I will not have anyone threatening the peace here, no matter how God-fearing he or his master might be.”

Pettigrew slammed his psalm book closed. “I shall write to your superiors!”

“
Do as you wish. In the meantime, disarm your man … or I will do it for you.” Craddock replaced his hat. “Good day.”

He turned and strode out into the passage, but Pettigrew followed, his tall frame filling the doorway.

“
I suspect you are a man who has very little knowledge of the wider world, major,” he scoffed, “being, as you are, chief officer of police in this poor, petty, polluted backwater.”

The major turned to look at him, but the reverend’s face lay in deepest shadow.

“
In my ten years in the African bush, I came face to face with the rawest and most brutal of human emotions,” Pettigrew added. “In a barbarous land, I stood tall against barbaric men and beasts. What that I buried a son … a child no less? It didn’t distract me from my duty.”

“
Reverend Pettigrew,” Craddock replied, “in my
thirty
years on the plains and mountains of the North West frontier, during which time I was forced to endure the horrors of battle at Ramnagar, Chillianwalla and Goojerat, I too faced the worst of human emotions. What that I had to bury my wife … and over four thousand of my men? It didn’t distract me from my duty.” He nodded curtly. “Neither will it distract me now.”

(iv) Pamphobeteus and Grammostola will lead initially to hypersensitive itching of the skin, followed by nasal blockage, dyspnea, acute bronchospasms and fits of violent and unstoppable coughing. Eyes may run and ache, and there will be a general tenderizing of orifices. Intense bleeding is not uncommon. Occasionally, victims have been known to choke themselves to death; this outcome is by no means certain, but it is distinctly possible.

When Major Craddock returned to the police barrack later that day, he found the custody area in uproar. Five or six constables, most in plain clothes, were wrestling with nearly twenty juveniles, all ragged and thin but swearing volubly and shouting their rights. These were the market pickpockets, as villainous a bunch of urchins as the town could supply, a stinking, unwashed rabble, who, between them, accounted for perhaps fifty per cent of the average day’s thieving. Even now, as they were vigorously searched, a variety of wallets, watches and handkerchiefs were being laid on the charge-table.

The bulk of the children were boys, though there was one girl present, and she stood out clearly, being taller than most and with long straggles of dirty blonde hair. She was perhaps twelve years old, but well-proportioned for all that; she might even have been pretty had her attire not consisted of a grubby, torn petticoat, a flea-infested shawl and mud-caked boots which were several sizes too large.

“
Laura McKye,” said Craddock. “Still selling yourself for a farthing?”

The girl struck a lewd pose. “A bargain, I calls it.”

Craddock shook his head. “I don’t know what I call it. You ever heard of clap, Laura? Syphilis?”

“
There are worse things.”

“
Well
you’d
know, if anyone would.” He turned to Sergeant Rafferty, who was seated behind the table, attempting to list the prisoners’ names and particulars. “What exactly have we got?”

“
Nineteen in all, sir. Every one caught red-handed.”

Craddock nodded. “Usual faces, I see. Well … this time it’s the beak for them.” At that moment, he noted two boys who seemed different from the others. They stood against the wall and clung nervously together, the older one trying to calm the younger. Both had had their hair shorn to bristles, and wore parish smocks and clogs. Craddock pointed them out. “Who are those two?”

“
New to the game, I reckon, sir,” Rafferty said. “Workhouse runaways. Say they don’t enjoy it there one bit.”

“
Well, that’s something you don’t hear every day.” With weary familiarity, Craddock noted the boys’ pipe-stick limbs and emaciated ribs. “Sergeant Repton?”

Sergeant Repton, still in plain dress from the morning’s raid, ambled forwards.

“
Those two,” Craddock said quietly. “Separate them from the rest. Leather them, then let them go.”

The sergeant nodded. “Back to the workhouse, sir?”

“
I’m afraid so.”

“
They’ll have another leathering once they get there.”

Craddock glanced at him. “Well in that case, you must take them to your house. They can live with you.”

“
How’s that, sir?”

“
Just take them back where they came from, Repton!”

“
Sir.” The sergeant moved away.

“
And Repton …”

He glanced back.

“
The leathering … go easy.”