Pastworld (14 page)

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Chapter 25

Catchpole hovered among the crowd near the rendezvous point for the bootleg murder tour at Spitalfields market. It was conveniently placed for the mortuary. Here there was a properly festive atmosphere. One of Pastworld’s regular Dickensian Christmas days, Catchpole thought. A group of early carol singers were gathered below the great porch of Christchurch, and Catchpole listened to them as the snow fell gently on the crowds. It was a pretty picture if you didn’t know any better.

Catchpole observed that a line had formed behind a shifty-looking plump man dressed as a policeman. He was holding his truncheon up in the air. The policeman blew lightly on his whistle and started to talk to the group around him in a low insistent voice, a voice imparting confidential information, dark secrets. Catchpole was too far away to hear, but he knew the excited Gawkers were here to see all the gruesome evidence at a terrible murder scene.

Catchpole strolled over, one hand behind his back, his face fixed and serious. The fake policeman watched him suspiciously as he approached. Catchpole quickly pulled a five-pound note out from his coat pocket, much more than the normal fee for an illicit murder tour. He slipped it to the constable, who tipped his helmet, as Catchpole joined the group.

‘Glad to have you with us, sir,’ the guide said quietly. Then to the line of excited Gawkers: ‘We can’t stand here all day chit-chatting, there’s murder afoot. This way now.’

The group moved off in an orderly crocodile, the guide at the front, Catchpole a few paces behind him. The guide stopped near the pub on the corner and raised his truncheon again.

‘In a moment we shall all go through this public bar and out into the backyard. A man was found dead this morning. I am told that he had been beaten. He was also mutilated, cut open and the internal organs disturbed. It may well be the work of a madman, but if this is anything like some similar cases that have occurred over the years then he is a madman of some medical skill. No doubt you have all read about these cases and the criminal known as the Fantom. You will have seen the engravings in the newspapers, and on the Wanted posters, and perhaps even the pictures of the victims of his crimes? Of course that will be nothing like the sight that will greet us today. Be prepared to be shocked and disgusted. You must not touch anything nor disturb the site in any way.’ They were led into the noisy public bar.

The pub had a low ceiling and the interior was stuffy and dark. The people crowded in the bar were for the most part men, dressed in dirty workclothes. One or two women sat on the benches around the walls, holding flagons of beer and laughing with the groups of the men. One of them called out ‘Happy Christmas’ to the Gawkers as they walked nervously through the bar.

They all went out into a dingy little yard, where the festive snowfall had hardly penetrated. The light was squeezed between the back of the pub and the nearby spire of the great church, and although the little patch of sky that could be seen was a bright picture-book blue, by the time the light reached the yard it had somehow clocked in as grey and dismal.

The group of Gawkers were formed up by the fake constable in a line against the far wall of the yard. Even on a cold frosted morning the bricks smelled of stale urine.

Something was bunched up under a blanket against the outside wall of the yard. Catchpole, having paid the most, was at the front with the guide near the blanket. The other Gawkers settled into an expectant silence. This is what they had paid their money for, the real gruesome authentic thing.

‘This body, this poor individual,’ said the guide, ‘is more than likely another victim of the famous criminal known popularly as the Fantom.’

With a flourish the constable pulled back the blanket.

There was a sudden gasp from the Gawkers. Someone put their hand up to their mouth and stifled a scream, another turned away to face the back wall. The guide knelt down and tugged at the lifeless head which was twisted away towards the bricks. He pulled it up by the hair.

‘See here,’ he said, ‘you will notice that the throat is cut through so deeply as to almost sever the head from the body.’

Catchpole watched the faces of the Gawkers as they craned forward for a better look. Although they seemed genuinely horrified, they kept looking. He turned his attention back to the guide. He was holding the head up, his gloved finger pointing at the gaping wound in the throat which flapped open like a second mouth, edged with dried blood. The victim on such a tour was usually some poor, worthless illicit, who somehow was supposed to deserve all he or she had got, or if the victim was female, a so-called common prostitute. The guide looked round the dismal yard, into the furthest corners where one or two of the more squeamish Gawkers had taken themselves. They stood staring, shocked and fearful, looking like trapped animals. The guide then laid the murder victim’s head down with some gentleness on to the cobbles. With another flourish he pulled the blanket down to reveal the hastily stitched up abdomen. Other Gawkers looked more alarmed now. One of them suddenly let out a piercing scream. At the same time there was a burst of laughter from inside the pub.

Catchpole crouched down beside the body. He noticed the sticky trail of thick brownish red fluid which had seeped from under the blanket. It was dark and oily-looking and he could smell the telltale tang of iron, the iron of pooled blood, the iron in the soul. The body had been simply dumped on a murder tour site, an act of provocation that looked like nothing more than an advertisement for what the Fantom could do and get away with if he wished. Gawkers pressed against Catchpole and the guide, trying to get close. The guide held out his hand in a stop gesture, and motioned the group back again to the far wall.

‘Please, ladies and gentlemen,’ the guide said, ‘you are damaging the integrity of a crime scene, the clues are being trampled, and may be lost. Please stay well back.’

‘How come he’s allowed close?’ one Gawker called out pointing at Catchpole.

‘He paid more,’ said the guide matter-of-factly.

Catchpole looked down at the neat gash in the blind man’s throat. He felt suddenly nauseous and very hot despite the snowfall. It was rare now for anyone from the Outside to see the result of savage violence of this sort. This was a very dead, very sad person, as real and as dead as that head left on the ruins of Tower 42. Catchpole’s whole bearing changed, now he was a modern professional police detective. He elbowed the guide aside and produced his warrant card and held it close to the guide’s face.

‘Get them out,’ Catchpole said under his breath. ‘I’m sealing this crime scene now, take them somewhere else, go on quickly.’ The guide whispered, ‘Bastard copper,’ and then said loudly, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this visit will have to be cancelled at once, I’m afraid.’

The guide ushered the complaining Gawkers back through the dark and noisy pub. They were confused. Some offered to pay more or started to demand a turn to look at the body. The guide silenced them and at the mention of ‘an unfortunate official police interest’ the Gawkers dispersed, grumbling, into the surrounding crowd.

Catchpole replaced the blanket and walked back through the dismal pub. He found a bobby on routine patrol outside. He showed his warrant card, and the bobby saluted him.

‘Go for an ambulance,’ Catchpole said, ‘at once, please.’ The constable set off.

Catchpole did not have to wait long. A horse ambulance arrived in minutes. Two uniformed men climbed out of the back, they carried a stretcher with them as they crossed over to the pub. A crowd soon gathered outside the pub in Commercial Street. More police arrived to empty the pub and form a line barring entry. A muffin man walked straight through the line of policemen, as if they weren’t even there.

Catchpole turned his back on the Gawkers. What he had seen had indeed been horrible; he wouldn’t wish it on anyone. The thought that this was one of the reasons that some Gawkers visited Pastworld in the first place made him feel disgusted. He tried not to think of his churning stomach. The police emerged from the pub along with a stretcher with the covered body on it. A path was cleared through the groups of Gawkers. For a moment he looked at the empty place where some children had been playing snowballs. They were all busy now watching the ambulance as it crossed the piazza in a flurry of snow.

Catchpole looked around at the crowd. The ghoulish Gawkers had all but melted away. The rest of the street was on the move, bustling and busy, hurrying about their business. All except one, a lone woman stood motionless on the busy pavement. Everything and everyone flowed past her but she stayed still like a statue. She seemed to be scanning the street. It looked as if she were waiting for someone. Catchpole, curious, walked over to her.

‘Takes me back to my own childhood,’ he said, indicating the boys back at their snowball fight, and speaking in what he hoped was a friendly voice, ‘except that there never was this much snow and it was never so clean.’

The woman turned to him with a distracted face. She wore a wide battered hat in black felt, and had a spotted fur tippet tucked round her throat. The fur around her neck suddenly moved, a spotted leg stretched out and the head of a cat emerged and looked at him.

‘Down then, Kitty,’ said the woman. The cat jumped down on the end of a black leash and rubbed itself against her legs.

‘A very tame animal,’ Catchpole said.

‘What happened in there?’ she asked. ‘Did they find someone? Was it a man or a woman?’ She gestured at the pub with her gloved hand.

‘As a matter of fact it was a man,’ said Catchpole.

‘Can you describe him for me?’ she asked. ‘Only it’s really very urgent, you see.’

Catchpole spoke quietly. ‘He was a shabby man, seemed to have almost no teeth, and very pale eyes, most likely blind.’

The woman looked down at her spotted cat. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I fear I might know who it is. I have been looking out for him for a few days now.’

She bent down and scooped up her little spotted cat in her arms. She buried her face in its fur for an instant, and then she raised herself to her full height. She spoke to the cat. ‘I fear it’s Jack, Kitty, isn’t it? Poor old Jack.’

‘You knew him well then,’ said Catchpole. ‘You could identify him perhaps?’

‘Oh yes, we knew him, not well, but we knew him, didn’t we, Kitty? We called him blind Jack – not quite true because he could see, just not well.’

‘The body will be taken to the morgue. I wonder if we might walk there and I could ask you to make a formal identification?’

‘I don’t really fancy it much, but if I can be of help then, I will do what I can. Poor old Jack . . .’

‘If it is him,’ Catchpole said.

They walked off together through the busy, jovial winter streets.

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Chapter 26

Caleb was prodded up the steps of a large red-brick building and through an arched doorway. A policeman and a cadet in a red uniform stood together inside the entrance. They both saluted, while the cadet held the door open.

The large entrance had a tiled floor all scattered with sawdust, as if it were a butcher’s shop. A gasolier hung over a tall sloping reception desk. From somewhere deep in the building, a drunk was singing, his ragged voice rising and falling along with all sorts of other shouts and screams.

A simple wooden bench ran the length of the tiled wall, and one or two people sat slumped on it, waiting. A group of Gawkers sat on along the opposite wall behind a red rope looped on brass supports; they were watching everything.

The pale man pulled Caleb up to the high reception desk. The police clerk behind the desk sat up straighter, tugged at his uniform jacket, adjusted himself. ‘Morning, Inspector Prinsep,’ he said. He held a pen ready in his hand, as if he had been waiting for just this moment. He inclined his head slightly and put the pen to the ledger.

Caleb stared at him.

‘First we need to record your name, as you have no papers of identification,’ said the pale-faced man. ‘Just tell him the name you go by.’

‘My name is Caleb.’

‘Aha, Puritan name,’ said the police clerk, ‘and have you a surname to go with it?’ he added pompously but with a friendly smile.

Caleb looked back at him blankly, narrowing his weary eyes. ‘Brown,’ Caleb replied.

The police clerk scratched the pen across the ledger.

‘Poetry and prose in the one name. Age?’ he said. ‘How old are you?’

‘Seventeen,’ Caleb said.

‘Record between fourteen to seventeen years approximately,’ said Inspector Prinsep impatiently.

‘I know exactly how old I am,’ Caleb said.

The clerk scratched the pen across the paper.

‘Have you ever attended a place of learning? Do you go, or have you ever gone, to a school or similar institution?’ Prinsep asked.

‘Of course,’ Caleb said.

‘Can you read?’

The police clerk looked at Caleb with the pen poised.

‘Yes,’ Caleb said, almost spitting out the reply.

‘Are you Corporation accredited and official?’ the clerk asked.

Before Caleb could answer, Prinsep said, ‘I think not. He claims he is a visitor, a Gawker, and that he has tickets, permissions and accreditation. But look at this.’ The man plunged his hand into Caleb’s coat pocket and pulled out a whole string of pearls and coins and jewellery. He flung them all down in a jingling heap on the open ledger.

The clerk let out a low whistle. Then he wrote something else into the ledger and as he wrote he said, ‘There’s been a report in already this morning, Inspector, a serious assault, a murder last night.’ The clerk blotted the paper with a rocking blotter. Caleb looked up, and over at the opposite wall. A set of Wanted posters hung in long glass-fronted frames. A cadet was adding a new one to the end of the line.

An engraved image of an all-purpose young man’s face was centred below the word ‘Murder’. It was not a good enough likeness to identify Caleb positively, but it gave him enough of a scare to realise that he was definitely being hunted. Now there was no question of attempting to give himself up, seeking official protection.

The clerk looked up and announced briskly, ‘Description, height?’ Prinsep pulled Caleb roughly over to the back wall, and stood him where a height chart was painted, the feet and inches marked off in dark green.

‘Five feet ten inches,’ Prinsep read off. The clerk wrote; the nib scratched.

‘Hair colour?’ Prinsep looked at Caleb with contempt.

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‘Dark,’ he called out.

‘Eye colour?’

‘Blue,’ he said, and the clerk wrote again.

‘Complexion?’

‘Light,’ he called out.

‘Place of birth?’ the clerk asked.

Caleb looked at the floor.

‘Put unknown, London district,’ Prinsep said.

‘Trade or occupation?’

Prinsep answered again. ‘Unlicensed or illicit beggar, certainly a thief.’

‘I’m not,’ Caleb said intently, quietly.

‘I saw you. You were clearly working in tandem with another felon. Wear those pearls often, do you?’

‘Poor boy, beggar boy, thief,’ said the police clerk, peering over his glasses at him. ‘Distinguishing marks?’

‘None visible.’ The man looked Caleb up and down.

‘Address at time of apprehension?’

‘Safest to put no fixed abode,’ said Prinsep.

Caleb let this go. At first he thought he should have mentioned the lodgings in Islington but something stopped him – some new fear even of the connection with his own father, with that reported killing.
It might be better
, he thought,
to confess robbery
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‘Offence for which apprehended,’ said the clerk.

‘Pickpocketing with another,’ Caleb said.

‘Ah, a confession suddenly,’ said Prinsep. ‘Add in unlicensed begging, as well as thieving, and illicit entry.’

The clerk looked over at Prinsep. He rested his pen on the desk and then wiped at the nib carefully with a piece of cloth. ‘I can only put the one official charge, sir,’ he said quietly. ‘Being an illicit here is unfortunate, but not actually criminal, yet.’

There was a pause; Caleb looked from one to the other. He heard the singing start up again, from the cells. Some of the watching Gawkers laughed. Caleb thought of dark brick cells full of rats somewhere below, deep in the building.

‘Well, sir?’ said the clerk

‘Put down pickpocket for now. Empty your coat pockets fully, young man.’

Caleb pulled everything he could find from his deep jacket pockets and scattered them on the desk.

‘Bag and log that lot,’ Prinsep said to the desk clerk.

The clerk sighed and dipped his pen back into the brass inkwell at the top of his desk, and wrote slowly across the paper.

‘Place and time of apprehension?’

‘Farringdon Road, London, Pastworld City, district one, eight forty-five a.m. on November 1st the year of our lord etc.’ said the man.

The clerk pushed the ledger across to Prinsep who took the pen and wrote something across the page. The clerk said, ‘Signed and witnessed by arresting officer in the presence of, etc.’ He blotted the signature.

‘Come with me,’ Prinsep called over a uniformed cadet and together they led Caleb through a door behind the reception area. They walked along a dark corridor lined with doors. The drunken singing was louder now, the gaslights were turned lower. There were worrying noises, apart from the wild singing. There were unexplained scuffles and thumps. The cadet knocked on a door at the end of the corridor. A woman in a starched apron and white cap opened the door.

‘Take him, and get him photographed,’ Prinsep said.

‘Yes, Inspector,’ the woman replied.