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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Lancashire Detective
- Sprache: Englisch
1893. Wigan is in the grip of a devastating national miners' strike and a harsh winter. Arthur Morris, a wealthy colliery owner whose intransigence on miners' pay is the main cause of the strike, is found brutally murdered in Scholes, a rough working-class district where he is universally hated and blamed for the grinding hardship the strike is causing. Detective Sergeant Brennan is tasked with finding the murderer and when a mysterious stranger is found bludgeoned to death, Brennan starts to unravel a twisted thread of interwoven clues that will lead to the murderer.
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Seitenzahl: 412
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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STRIKING MURDER
A. J. WRIGHT
Contents
For my grandsons, whom I love beyond measure
Olli, Harri and Freddie
‘Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burnt?’
Proverbs 6.28
‘He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it’
Ecclesiastes 2.8
‘When you strike at a king, you must kill him’
Ralph Waldo Emerson
PROLOGUE
Wigan, Lancashire 1893
He thought he heard something and looked round.
No one.
His imagination, then. The hiss of the gas lamp, perhaps. Or something beast-like slouching from beyond the closed doors. Carefully he made his way along the terraced street, thankful for the snow, still falling, that kept them indoors. Yet he cursed the bitter chill of the night, and thought enviously of the place he had left. His only comfort was that this wouldn’t take long.
He would make damned sure of that.
As he passed each window he caught glimpses, through the threadbare fabric of the curtains, of what lay beyond: a man slumped in a chair, head bowed forward in an attitude of sleep; a filthy child tormenting an even filthier dog; a wife stirring an earthenware pot on the range beside a feeble fire.
He smiled grimly. They had thought, if they could hold out until winter, he and the others would admit defeat and welcome them back with open arms. But winter was here, fierce and merciless, and it would keep them huddled close,likebears in a wintry cave, until they accepted the inevitable.
He gave an involuntary grunt at the thought of what they would do to him if they knew he was here, in this street, and moved quickly on, towards his destination.
Not far now.
And this time, there would be no mistake. He would settle this thing between them once and for all.
A few more yards, and the end was in sight. He saw the window and the shadow on the curtain.
But then something else caught his eye. A dark figure ahead, waiting in the mouth of a small alleyway on the far side of the street. It reached out a dark, gloved hand and beckoned to him frantically, a furtive gesture veiled by a gasp of breath cloud. He heard his name hissed urgently. What the blazes?
For a second he was afraid. And then, by the dim glow of a street lamp, he saw who it was, and his eyes narrowed in anger and confusion. ‘What the hellfire are you doing out here?’ he snarled, a feral whisper.
The figure said nothing, merely retreated into the darkness of the alleyway.
He glanced up and down the long terraced street. Not a soul.
He muttered a curse and entered the alleyway.
CHAPTER ONE
Father Kevin Brady had never been what you might call a man of fancy. He had seen too many sudden or lingering deaths to believe in anything other than what lay before his eyes. Tonight, in a bitterly cold, cheerless room, he had been in the presence of yet another expiry, this time the lamentable drawing out of a bundle of wasted bones that had once flexed iron muscles deep underground. He had known the old collier for nigh on thirty years, had listened to his confession and shaken his head many times at the grey and sad ordinariness of sin. Yet the cold glaze in the collier’s eyes as he gripped his hand like a drowning man had confirmed for him once more the chill finality of that moment. Even the man’s last discernible utterance, that had brought spiritual solace to his wife, carried an ambiguity not lost on the old priest: ‘Jesus!’
Now, as he made his way home, careful not to lose his footing on the thick, hard snow, he reached out to fumble against the chalky brickwork of the alleyway that ran at the back of the long row of terraced houses. His hand felt wet, and he remembered how, in summer, the walls often oozed slime, like pus from the crevices in the bricks, where the ordure from the pail closets beyond produced a sickly, rank-smelling dampness. From the muted stench all around him, he gathered the muck men were long overdue. It wasn’t a task he envied – especially in those hot summer months – and yet, with a wry smile, he reflected how, in the old debating classes he used to enjoy so much in the seminary, he’d have drawn some metaphysical link between the two callings of priest and muck man. Both deal with the filth of man, both get closer to it than they would like, and both help to clear the mess, leaving closet, or soul, clean once more.
He stopped to wipe a smear of slime down his topcoat.
The moon had long ago drifted behind thick cloud, and the subsequent gloom had settled on the place like a heavy shroud. Even the occasional screech from invisible windows a few yards away, as some marital dispute kept the combatants awake, seemed muffled, deadened by the density of an approaching storm.
Not more snow, surely? He leant his shoulder against a wall and allowed himself the sad luxury of a sigh.
‘Father Brady’s here now,’ the old woman had said to the dying man, as if somehow he carried with him the mysticism of revival.
He recalled the look in the children’s eyes, huddled in the furthest corner of the room, as far from the terror on the bed as they could get, yet fearful of what lay on the dark stairs beyond the door. Their eyes flickered with hope as they registered the white of his collar and the magic he performed every Sunday with a piece of bread and a goblet of wine. Perhaps, tonight, he could show them some more of that mystic art …
Suddenly, an oil lamp flared above his head and brought him back to the present. He looked up, saw the looming shadows of a bedroom, the curtains drawn back so that he could catch some of the light from the lamp. A black, monstrous shape moved grotesquely along the bedroom wall, distorted even more by the swirls of ice that had laced themselves along the window. It stood upright, its elongated head held high. He recognised the attitude and smiled, hearing the faint sound of the piss rattling in the pot.
Now, as he looked down the alleyway, thanks to the dim yellow cast by the lamp, he could see the curve in the wall that led to a narrow ginnel – the one he’d missed in the darkness.
With a shivered nod of gratitude to the unknown source of light, he pushed himself from the wall, felt once more the slithering wetness of slime against his flat palm, and walked quickly towards the narrow gap that led to the terraced street.
As he was emerging onto the long sweep of terraced houses, he heard something, a faint gnawing that somehow repulsed him. Then there was a skittering and a squeaking behind him. In the blackness of the narrow archway he had just traversed, he must have disturbed a nest of rats – all along the tunnel-like gap, there were obscure cancerous cavities in the walls, some as small as the palm of his hand, and others large enough for a grown man to hide in. Now, disturbed by his intrusion, it would take them a while to settle, and they could well spread themselves along the low channels below the kerbstones, slithering in and out of the mounded cobblestones looking for scraps of waste in the covering darkness.
‘You’ll be lucky,’ he said aloud.
To his right, he saw the dull haze of a gas lamp. Slowly, he made his way down the deserted street, his bearings recovered now that he could see at least some signs of where he was. The uneven flagstones were treacherous, and he reached out to steady himself against the jagged sills of the houses.
What time would it be now? He had arrived at the old miner’s home as the clock in the front room had struck twelve. That had been a good two hours ago. He reached the glare of the gas lamp and put his hand beneath his coat, to the small waistcoat pocket where he kept the fob watch his da had given him so many years ago, as a gift for entering the priesthood.
It was as he pulled it out, and peered down to register the time, that he caught his breath. His right hand was wet, glistening in the light from above.
A cold shiver ran down his spine.
He remembered the slime on the alley wall.
Since when has slime been red, Kevin? Sure an’ it isn’t slime at all.
He swallowed hard, threw a horrified glance back the way he had come. In his mind he retraced his steps, back down the dark ginnel, left into the alleyway, a few yards further back – to a wall covered with blood.
And he called to mind something else. Something he had heard.
The gnawing of rats in the blackness.
The gunshot cracked the crisp morning air, like a bone snapping.
‘That bugger’s mine!’
‘We’ll see then!’
The two boys, no more than ten years old, hared off towards the bank of the canal, their heads held far back and their arms pumping the air like pistons. Some of the men turned from the pigeon shoot to watch them race across the field, their breath freezing in the grey air.
‘Little ’un, for a bob!’ one man shouted, raising his bowler to show himself in the crowd.
‘I’ll have yon lanky ’un!’ shouted another, who pushed past those beside him and shook hands with the first.
‘Done!’
And so the wager was made. More of the men swivelled their gaze round, ignoring the rasp of the wooden slats, the laboured flap of pigeons’ wings and the next crack of gunshot, to watch the two youngsters race to the canal bank. Although their pace was slowed by the thick snow, they moved with all the eagerness of both youth and hunger, and, urged on by the ironic cheers of the spectators, the smaller of the two boys reached the bank first, where, with a wild whoop of victory, he hurled himself over the edge. The spectators heard the dull clang as his iron clogs landed on the thick ice.
‘It’s not done yet,’ yelled the supporter of the ‘lanky ’un’. ‘Not till he has it in his hand.’
‘’Course,’ said the other. The smile on his face held the confidence of a man about to become a shilling richer.
The taller boy now leapt over the edge of the bank, and for a few seconds the tension among the watching men grew. Some coughed, some gave encouraging cries, and some even thought of breaking from the others and rushing over to see just what was happening. It was more entertaining than the pigeon shoot.
Then an arm appeared above the bank’s edge. The taller boy was clambering up, and the cheering that greeted his appearance was quickly replaced by a communal groan when he pulled himself fully up onto the bank. Both hands were empty.
Then, to his left, a small arm was thrust into the air, the hand clutching the dead pigeon, whose head flapped loosely to and fro in the boy’s excitement.
‘The little sod!’ the second man said. He took out a shilling and slammed it down into the upturned palm of the grinning victor.
The men cheered as the small boy struggled to negotiate the steep bank, but eventually he made it, holding the dead pigeon close to his chest now.
‘I slurred too far,’ grumbled the taller boy. ‘Yon ice is bloody thick.’
‘That’s three of ’em I’ve got,’ said the other as they made their way back to the semicircular crowd watching the pigeon shoot.
Another shot tore through the air.
‘Me mam’ll be pleased. Pigeon pie, eh?’ Tommy Haggerty pulled open his threadbare jacket and stuffed the bird close to his chest, along with the others he had already bagged.
The sideshow over, the men turned to the real business of the morning, and watched impatiently as the two armed combatants continued with the pigeon shoot. There had already been too many grumbles about the unfairness of the day’s competition – pigeons’ wings tended to freeze in the cold air, and when they flew from the boxes their flight was slow and laboured, rendering them the easiest of targets against the white roofs of the nearby streets and the grey skies beyond.
‘A blind man wi’ palsy could get fifteen out o’ fifteen in this bloody weather!’ one disgruntled spectator had observed.
Tommy, content with his haul for the day, ignored the communal gloom of the men, bade a cocky farewell to the taller boy and walked quickly through the mounds of snow to the main road. He tried to picture the smile on his mam’s face as he pulled out the three birds, one after another, just like the clown they’d seen at the circus last summer.
Before the strike.
Tommy skipped past the crowd huddled outside the entrance to the alleyway. He barely noticed the two policemen in their great coats and helmets standing on guard, rubbing their hands furiously, and keeping the more curious away from the alley. He felt the still-warm feathers of the birds safely tucked away inside his jacket. Pigeon pie. His favourite.
‘Mam!’ he yelled as he burst through the front door. ‘Mam! Guess what I got!’
Silence. Only the tumble of glowing coals settling in the grate, sparks soaring upwards in a crazy spiral as they caught the draught from the closing door. He ran into the kitchen, but she wasn’t there, either. Now where could she be?
He shook the question from his head, pulled out the pigeons and laid them carefully on the kitchen table. She’d only be next door, or next door but one. When she eventually did walk through the door, the birds would be the first things she would see. He stroked them as if they were merely sleeping, smoothing out the feathers to cover the tiny holes where the shot had entered, and sat on the chair, swinging his pale, scuffed legs and sitting on his hands to ward off the chill.
Hurry up, Mam.
Michael Brennan sat at the kitchen table, warming his hands on a mug of strong tea while his wife, Ellen, swept away the crumbs that were left from breakfast. She glanced at him and smiled with just a hint of censure as their five-year-old son, Barry, stared in wonder at the frosted art on the kitchen window.
It had been in the early hours when he had walked into their room complaining of the cold and rubbing his eyes.
‘Why are you fightin’?’ he had asked.
‘We’re not fightin’.’
His dad’s voice had sounded strange in the dark.
‘You was. I ’eard me mam cryin’.’
Then he’d heard his mam giggle and knew she was all right now.
‘Come on, buggerlugs,’ said his dad. ‘Hop in.’
Now, Brennan took a sip of tea and gave a grunt of pleasure, wiping the moisture from his thick moustache.
‘Can we go to the park today?’ the child asked.
Ellen Brennan turned from the sink and frowned. ‘It’s bitter. Best build up that fire and stay in. We’ve enough coal for that, at any rate.’
‘Dad?’
Brennan looked across at those sparkling blue eyes. ‘Well, I reckon if we wrap up properly …’
Ellen wiped her hands on the tea cloth. ‘And if he catches a chill you’ll be up all night damping his brow no doubt.’ Her tone belied the rebuke in the words.
Barry clamped his hands together, his usual display of delight.
The harsh knock on the front door froze his smile. Knocks like that took his dad away from him.
‘Who on earth?’ Ellen gave her husband a sharp look, as if somehow he had orchestrated both the promise and its imminent breach.
Brennan rose, ruffled his son’s shock of hair, and went to the front door. A large uniformed constable stood on the pavement, his helmet clutched to his breast as if fully expecting to be invited in. The red flush on his cheeks suggested an urgency that made Brennan’s heart lurch.
‘What?’
‘Beg pardon, Sergeant. Only you’re needed, like.’
Brennan could feel his son’s disappointed gaze between his broad shoulder blades.
‘I’m not on shift, Constable Jaggery. Or don’t you check the duty roster?’
The constable shifted uneasily and looked down at his boots, at the scuffed snow stubbornly refusing to melt. ‘I did, sir. Only it’s Captain Bell hisself, like.’
Brennan frowned. ‘Well come in, Constable. Come in. You’re turning the whole house into a meat safe!’
Once inside the Wigan Borough Police Station, Detective Sergeant Michael Brennan removed the thick woollen muffler and his greatcoat, thrust them unceremoniously into the arms of Constable Jaggery, and made his way past the duty desk, where a uniformed sergeant was busy scribbling something into a heavy ledger.
‘His lordship’s in his office, Michael,’ he said without raising his head.
Brennan saw his mouth twitch in scorn.
‘Looks like he’s had his arse stung an’ all.’
Brennan smiled, more in acknowledgement of the lurid image that flashed in his head than in any sense of anticipation at meeting the chief constable.
Captain Bell was one of those men who rarely smiled. When he did it was usually the harbinger of something singularly unpleasant. He had spent many years in the army, and had seen service in what might be regarded as the social extremities of the Empire, India and Ireland. As an ex-military man, he had brought a rugged efficiency and respect for uniform to the police force. It was therefore beyond doubt that he took his duties seriously, and had a genuine belief in the efficacy of policing and the almost biblical necessity for the rigour of punishment; but somehow, in his steadfast pursuit of a social and moral rectitude, he seemed to have lost something on the way – a warmth, a softness, a humanity. Some wag had once described him as possessing all the flexibility of a narrow gauge tramline.
Brennan walked quickly down the long corridor. The room at the end – the one with an ornate smoked-glass window subtly tinctured with reds and greens suggestive of a miniature cathedral – belonged to the chief constable. He knocked and waited, feeling almost like a recalcitrant choirboy about to face the minister.
‘Come in!’ snapped a voice from within.
Captain Bell was seated behind his immaculately polished desk. Once again, Brennan was struck by the fleeting impression of death as he contemplated his superior’s gaunt features. A pallid hue suffused his skin, which appeared to have all the consistency of rather thin vellum, stretched taut over cadaverous cheekbones. His eyes were cast down in the attitude of close reading, his pince-nez perched on the extremity of a hawk’s beak. The man was a living memento mori.
After a few seconds he looked up. ‘Please accept my apologies, Sergeant.’
‘Apologies, sir?’
‘For disturbing your Sabbath. Believe me, I wouldn’t have done so if it had been anything less … disturbing.’
‘Disturbing, sir?’ He saw the tic in Captain Bell’s cheek at the unintended echo of his words.
His superior gave a sigh and steepled his hands. ‘Constable Jaggery told you there’s been a murder?’
‘Yes, sir, body found in Scholes in the early hours by a priest, but he said he hasn’t been told who the …’
‘Indeed he hasn’t. This needs to be handled with discretion.’
‘Sir?’
‘The victim,’ said Captain Bell, with a dramatic sigh, ‘was one of my closest friends.’
Brennan waited for a name, his deductive powers being somewhat hampered by the unfortunate circumstance of his never having realised the good captain had any close friends.
Bell shook his head. ‘It was Arthur Morris, Sergeant.’
Brennan flinched as the implications swarmed round his brain like angry wasps. It couldn’t have been worse. ‘I see.’
‘He has, according to Genesis, “returned to dust”.’ Bell paused, weighing his words carefully. ‘He appears to have been stabbed. Apart from the tragedy for his family, you will, of course, realise what this could mean for the whole town?’ His eyes reflected the note of fear in his voice. He picked up a small envelope and handed it across.
‘This was found in his inside pocket. Curious, don’t you think?’
Brennan looked down at the crumpled and stained envelope. It was addressed to A. Morris. Quickly, he took out the filthy scrap of paper that lay inside and read what was written, his frown increasing as he did so.
The writing was clumsy, spiderish, its scrawl rendered more vile by the soiled quality of the paper. Whoever had written this, thought Brennan, hadn’t sat at a desk armed with crown vellum notepaper and a blotter.
‘Any ideas?’
Brennan gave a shrug. ‘Doesn’t look like a calling card, sir, does it?’
The snarl forming around Captain Bell’s mouth made him devise a less impertinent observation.
‘It’s quite plainly a threat, Sergeant, is it not?’
Brennan looked down at the writing:
His hand shal be agenst evryman and evryman’s hand agenst him.
Strike causes hell – O Lord end suffrin
Or die
‘Sounds familiar,’ he said. ‘The first line at any rate.’
‘Genesis. I think the sentiment is self-evident.’
‘Have you any idea what he was doing in Scholes, sir?’
‘A complete mystery. Smacks somewhat of Daniel in the lions’ den, does it not?’
It did indeed.
The miners’ strike was now in its fifth month, and feelings around the town were running higher than ever since the rumour that Morris and his fellow colliery owners had threatened to bring in blackleg workers from south Wales. The last time that had happened, twenty or so years ago, pitched battles were fought in Standishgate between strikers, police, blacklegs and even the militia sent from Preston. It had been enough to ensure the newcomers were prevented from taking up their work, and the miners had declared it a historic victory.
A subsequent gloom had settled on the town and its inhabitants like a pall, soup kitchens a common feature now of life in the borough. The sprawling area of Scholes on the edge of town was home to many colliers who would have welcomed the opportunity to impress upon Arthur Morris – literally – how they felt with the help of their size ten clogs. It was chiefly his intransigence that had brought about the strike in the first place – as the owner of the largest collieries in the whole of Lancashire, he was the most vociferous and influential supporter of the coal owners’ insistence in imposing a national twenty-five per cent reduction in the miners’ wages in an attempt to reduce costs. Now, the spectre of starvation haunted almost every home in the borough and throughout the coalfields of the North and Midlands.
‘This morning,’ continued Captain Bell, ‘Arthur Morris was reported missing by his son, Andrew. By all accounts his father dined at home last night, then received a mysterious letter …’ He threw a nod at the paper on the desk. ‘And left immediately despite the bitterly cold weather. That was the sum of what he had to tell us.’
Brennan frowned. ‘Perhaps he was transported to Scholes.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Well, sir, if he were dispatched elsewhere, then conveyed to the alleyway …’
Captain Bell leant forward. ‘“Transported”? “Dispatched”? “Conveyed”? You speak as if the man was a parcel!’
‘Sir.’ Brennan lowered his head respectfully.
‘Besides, according to the preliminary report I have here, it was evident the brutal assault took place where he was found. A single stab wound, the man’s life blood splattered around the walls of that … loathsome place. His innards molested by vermin, for God’s sake!’
He broke off, allowing the blasphemy, the silence and the venom in his eyes to conjure up what he thought of the Scholes district. ‘Knowing Arthur Morris, he would never shirk a challenge. If someone sent him that note he would never rest until he hunted the man down like a wild animal.’
Brennan examined the letter and the crumpled envelope more closely. ‘There’s no address, sir.’
‘What?’
‘There’s no address on the envelope, for one thing. Just the name – A. Morris. So I presume it was delivered by hand.’
‘Is that relevant?’
Brennan shrugged. ‘Possibly. But neither is there an address on the letter itself.’
‘So?’
‘It’s curious, that’s all. If Morris was in Scholes as a result of this letter, how did he know where to go?’
‘The letter may have nothing whatsoever to do with his presence in that godforsaken place.’
‘But he left immediately after receiving the letter. It’s a fair assumption.’ He read the letter’s contents once more. ‘And perhaps there is an address of sorts here.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The second line, sir. “Strike causes hell – O Lord end suffrin”.’
‘What about it?’
‘It makes a veiled reference to Scholes.’
‘Does it? I fail to see …’
‘That’s because you are failing to see, in the true sense.’ He spoke quickly, to remove any hint of accusation. ‘If you were looking at the words, it would, of course, strike you at once. The initial letter of each word, sir. They spell out Scholes.’
With a flourish, Captain Bell grabbed the paper and looked at the words once more. Then he glanced at his detective sergeant with an expression of pique and admiration. ‘It could be coincidence, you understand, Sergeant?’
‘It could indeed, sir. But if, as you say, this letter was delivered last night, prompting Mr Morris to leave hastily, then it’s highly probable he saw it as some sort of message, or threat from Scholes. It may be that he recognised the handwriting.’
‘Hardly likely, Sergeant. Scrawl like this …’ he slapped the paper as if crushing lice. ‘Nevertheless, it was well spotted. Well spotted.’
He placed the letter on his desk and smoothed it out with his left hand for a few seconds before speaking once more, this time in a low voice. ‘And now you have a painful duty before you, Sergeant. You need to call upon his widow and break the news to her.’
‘She hasn’t been told?’
Captain Bell visibly blanched at the implied rebuke. ‘The man was found in the early hours by a priest. It was naturally assumed the victim was from the area.’
And therefore the process of identification would have followed at a funereal pace, Brennan thought. Death, too, has its social hierarchy.
‘After the report of him missing, our desk sergeant, showing an uncharacteristic talent for arithmetic, put two and two together, recalled the remains of the victim lying in the infirmary morgue, and for once got four. He saw fit to send for me. I myself had the unenviable task of viewing the remains. Gruesome, ghastly business that was.’ He shook his head. ‘Although as for formal identification, that melancholy duty must fall on a member of the family.’
Brennan stroked his moustache and grunted.
‘Yes, Sergeant, what is it?’
‘The words may give us the district, sir, but they make no reference to a particular address, not even a name. How would he know where exactly to go? I wonder who he went there to meet – or to confront?’
Captain Bell, who had clearly grown weary of his sergeant’s musings, could barely conceal his impatience. ‘That is for you to discover, Sergeant. Or do you wish me to do all the work of the detective branch while you stay here and enjoy a steaming hot mug of tea?’
He heard her coming. When the back door opened, Tommy was standing by the table, his small chest thrust forward proudly.
Bridie Haggerty closed the door softly behind her.
She was in her mid-thirties, and had once been comely, her jet-black hair the envy of many, yet the careworn expression she always seemed to bear these days, and the wisps of a premature grey in her hair, aged her ten years. Thin lines stretched from the corners of her eyes, and her cheeks were sunken, seeming to depress even further the downward turn of her narrow lips. She removed her shawl and the long coat she wore, hung them with a slow deliberation behind the door, and placed her head against the rotting door frame, alarming her young son.
‘Mam?’
Bridie turned round and gave him a weak smile.
‘What d’you reckon, Mam?’
He nodded to the table. She moved slowly towards him, placing a hand on the table top to steady herself. For a few seconds, she stared at the dead pigeons, a joyless and stony expression on her face, before reaching down to pull him to her.
‘Ee, love,’ she said with a long, slow sigh. Her fingers were cold and damp against his skull.
He could feel her heart beating fast – thump-thump, thump-thump. She must be more grateful for the birds than even he’d expected.
‘Mam. You’re hurtin’.’
Her arm was forcing his head against her breastbone, making him feel dizzy. When she let go, he looked up at her, and saw the tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘There’s enough for all three of us,’ he said proudly. ‘That’s why I wouldn’t come ’ome till I got three. One each, eh, Mam? What’ll our Molly say, eh?’
He’d heard mothers, and women in general, cried when they were happy. Perhaps his sister would cry too when she saw the booty he’d brought home. It was a man’s job, to provide for his womenfolk, and he was the only man in the house now.
‘Aye, lad,’ she sniffed. ‘You’ve done us proud.’
Tommy smiled as she reached out and gently stroked his ruddy cheeks.
Two miles to the north of Wigan, on the edge of the small village of Standish, Arthur Morris’s house lay in its own grounds overlooking – some would say overseeing – the valley where the Morris Colliery had been, until recently, the most productive pit in Wigan.
Only weeks before the dispute began, a huge block of cannel coal from the colliery had been transported across the Atlantic to become one of Great Britain’s star attractions at the Chicago World Fair, a source of wonderment to the thousands of visitors to the exhibition, whose fulsome encomiums had caused Arthur Morris’s chest to swell with pride at what his company had produced. In one of the many speeches he made during the exhibition, the Americans failed to grasp his humour when he pointed out that his gigantic exhibit was being shown in Chicago, a place where the burning of coal fires had been prohibited to prevent the white façades of the exhibition palaces being stained with smoke.
‘Bit late for the palaces in Wigan!’ he had quipped, thus giving his American audience a quite erroneous impression of the town.
It had been therefore ironic that the subsequent article in the Wigan Observer, in which his Chicago speeches expounding on the dedication and resilience of his colliers were quoted at length, was followed a week later with a report of another speech, this time to the South Lancashire Coal Owners’ Association calling for the same colliers to ‘share in the bad times as well as the good.’
Now, that Chicago triumph was a euphoria consigned to history.
From the extensive gardens that sloped at the rear of the house, one could see plainly in the distance the two giant chimneys that stood at either end of the colliery, tall and indomitable sentinels looming over not only the head frame of the pit but also – and more symbolically – the rows of terraced houses that spread outwards from the outer edges of the pit, like the strands of a spider’s web.
Strange, thought Brennan as he alighted from the hackney carriage, how fresh the air tastes up here, despite the bitter cold and the fading afternoon light.
‘Ten minutes,’ he barked to the cab driver who had brought him from the station, a pasty-faced walrus who scowled his response by blowing into his hands.
Brennan walked along the snow-crusted drive and came to the front door, where he lifted an enormous knocker curiously shaped like a Davy lamp in heavy brass and slammed it twice against its rest. The loud echo it produced slightly unnerved him, as if its weighty announcement gave rude notice of the tidings he bore. Seconds later, a maid opened the door and gave him a small curtsy as he introduced himself.
‘One moment, sir, if you please,’ she said with a second curtsy before closing the door again and disappearing. He could hear firmer, heavier footsteps from beyond the door, which now swung open with a far greater sense of urgency.
A young man stood on the threshold. He was tall, mid-twenties, Brennan guessed, with dark features and a heavy set of eyebrows. The firm set of his jaw suggested a resoluteness that was tempered somewhat by the mildness in his eyes. ‘I’m Andrew Morris, Sergeant. Have you found my father?’
The infinitesimal pause before the word ‘found’ imbued his question with a morbid prescience. He half-turned to acknowledge the presence of a tall, elegant woman behind him. Mrs Morris, Brennan presumed. She appeared to be walking with some difficulty, leaning on who he presumed was her personal maid.
‘My mother’s half-demented with worry. It’s so unlike him to stay out all night. If he’s been in an accident …’ He let his voice trail off, his eyes registering the sombre but steady gaze that bore down on him. ‘Please, Sergeant Brennan. This way.’
The young man led the way past his mother, who Brennan noticed was now trembling, her grip on the maid’s shoulder tightening and causing the poor girl to wince. Once they were all ensconced in the small morning room beyond the stairs, Brennan wasted no time, directing his words to the one he deemed strong enough to bear the raw force of their meaning. ‘It is my sad duty to inform you, Mr Morris, that your father has been the victim of a brutal assault …’
Before he could finish, he heard a muffled cough, then what sounded like a long, mournful sigh. He saw Mrs Morris grip her temples with both hands, every limb appearing to tremble with a growing lack of control.
‘Mother!’ Andrew Morris yelled.
She slumped forward, held steady by the alertness of her maid, who gently laid her onto a chair beside the door, her head lolling back loosely, like a rag doll torn by a child intent on mischief.
Molly Haggerty stood beneath the big lamp in Market Place. The yellow glow from the hissing gas cast a dim circle around her, affording light but no warmth. She held herself tight, pulling the flimsy shawl close to her head and burying her hands deep inside her skirt. Several beggars shuffled by, heads bowed, shoulders slumped, as they made their way home, the day producing the same meagre results as the day before, and the day before that. Curses drifted skywards.
Like some bronchial behemoth, a large double-decker bogie car rattled past, shunted along by the smaller engine in front. It was barely half full, the few passengers on the lower deck giving her no more than a cursory glance. She gave the driver, standing by the throbbing engine whose belly was bursting with fiery hot steam, an envious look.
‘Lucky swine!’ she whispered to herself, her teeth chattering.
The driver swayed from side to side as the tram made its way towards Standishgate, and Molly diverted her gaze to the road beyond.
Where was he?
She would recognise that confident, jaunty gait of his anywhere. But he was nowhere to be seen.
And yet last night … what had she done last night?
She shivered, casting the memory aside.
She glanced at the clock above the Legs of Man. Five-thirty. Half an hour late.
Molly bit her lip, a habitual action whenever she was worried, or nervous. She watched as the tram made a sudden descent, its squat chimney belching steam with a screech that made her jump, before it vanished over the brow of the hill. An agony of indecision swept through her. She needed to see him. To be reassured. A sudden fear swept through her, and she shivered once more.
What if she’d seen the last of him? There were men like that, she knew. Get what they want and then the thrill of the chase dies like a damp ember.
Was he capable of such falseness as that?
Suddenly she felt a hand rest itself on her shoulder, and warm breath on her neck. Her heart danced. Eagerly, she turned round.
But it wasn’t him.
CHAPTER TWO
Brennan sat in the Crofter’s Arms and stared gloomily at his frothing pint.
A few early customers were scattered around the long, narrow parlour room, but the atmosphere seemed muted, almost broody, as if the chill from outside had crept in through every crevice and settled itself on the room like a deadening frost. He knew why, of course. Normally, at this time, the place would be crowded with men, most of them miners and foundry men, who would see Sunday night as the last opportunity for a big drink before the monotony of work began again on the morrow. There would be yells, sudden bursts of chesty laughter, the occasional scuffle as a difference of opinion turned into something more physical, and he would even join in the banter himself, savouring their earthy, often lewd, humour.
Yet now the men who stood at the bar nursed half-pints and grievances, and spoke in low, conspiratorial tones, their heads bowed and ears turned to take in the whispered confidences. They cast their eyes around the room, surveying him with a frigid courtesy. The dispute had rendered him an outsider, a representative of the forces of law, order, and capital. A row of pewter tankards hung unused on a polished wooden rack above the landlord’s head, a sad reminder of their owners’ absence. Empty spittoons stood at each end of the curved bar.
He thought of the sad place he had just left.
The maid had been dispatched to the kitchen for smelling salts. Young Morris had fussed around his mother, the sad news about his father being momentarily superseded by a greater concern for the living.
‘Please, Mother,’ he had said while stroking her head gently, ‘please.’
Once the smelling salts had been successfully applied, the maid stood at a discreet distance and Mrs Morris finally opened her eyes.
‘Andrew? Did he say …?’ she stopped, giving her visitor a look of contempt for being the bearer of such awful news.
Brennan, who had been kneeling beside the prostrate woman in an almost reverential attitude and had felt the cold clamminess of her hands, stood up and took a deep breath. ‘I’m afraid I must be the bearer of tragic news, ma’am. Your husband was found last night.’
‘Found?’ In spite of the frailty in her voice, her tone implied rebuke, anger and even a scintilla of hope at his unfortunate and ironic choice of word.
‘The victim of an attack, ma’am. I’m afraid he is dead.’
She gave a short gasp, and held her hand to her throat.
‘Where was this, Sergeant?’ Andrew Morris glanced up.
‘Scholes, sir.’
‘Scholes?’ Mrs Morris stretched the syllable to emphasise her disbelief. ‘What on earth was he doing there …?’
Her son took hold of her hand, patting it gently to restore her circulation.
Brennan slowly shook his head. ‘At the moment we have no idea. I thought perhaps you or your son …’ He looked from one to the other, but registered only the mixture of grief and incomprehension on their faces.
‘My mother is obviously in great distress, Sergeant.’
He turned to the maid, whose pallid hue betrayed both concern for her mistress and horror at the mention of death.
‘Grace, stay with her. I won’t be long.’ Andrew Morris stood up. ‘Sergeant?’ He nodded to the door leading to the hallway.
‘Of course,’ Brennan said and turned to take his leave. ‘My condolences, ma’am.’
But Mrs Morris had once more closed her eyes as Grace held her hands.
Out in the hallway, Andrew Morris gently closed the door and turned to face his visitor. ‘You said an attack, Sergeant. Can you be more specific?’
Brennan held his gaze for a while before answering. ‘He was stabbed, sir.’
His eyes widened in horror and disbelief. ‘But … Scholes?’
‘Yes, sir. It does appear to be curious. Did he know anyone there?’
‘Hardly. As far as I know he’s never been to the place. It’s hardly … well, you know. We own several houses there, of course, pit houses, but my father wasn’t in the habit of playing rent collector.’
Brennan nodded. ‘Of course.’
He knew that many of the houses in Wigan, not only in Scholes but scattered around the entire borough, were either the property of the colliery owners or the mill owners. He’d always regarded it as a particularly convenient arrangement on their part. He paused before continuing.
‘When did you last see your father, Mr Morris?’
Andrew Morris blinked, as if he realised the sad innuendo in the word ‘last’. ‘Yesterday evening. Before I went out. He was dining with us – that is, with myself, my mother and my uncle. Ambrose Morris. I presume you know of him.’
Brennan nodded once more. Ambrose Morris was the town’s Member of Parliament.
‘He returned to London this morning. He left early, not knowing my father hadn’t returned.’ He broke off. ‘My God. He’ll have to be informed.’
‘Anyone else here last night?’
‘The Coxes. James and Agnes. They were guests at dinner.’
‘James Cox? The iron and steelworks owner?’
‘Yes.’
Arthur Morris. Ambrose Morris. James Cox. A powerful triumvirate indeed, Brennan reflected.
‘I don’t suppose you have any idea who might have done such a thing?’
‘It’s very early in the investigation, sir.’
‘You’ll have no shortage of suspects. Not in Scholes. At a time like this.’
‘No, sir.’
‘So what happens now?’
‘We’ll need someone to identify the body, I’m afraid.’
The young man visibly shook. ‘I see.’
‘Shall we say eleven tomorrow morning? At the infirmary?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course. It will be me, you understand, Sergeant? I couldn’t possibly expect …’
He let his voice trail off, turning slightly to the closed door behind him. Both men could now hear the slow regular pulse of sobbing, the early stages of grief that would soon lead to angrier, more universal proclamations when grief turns to grievance.
‘Well then, I shall intrude no longer.’
As he turned to go, Brennan paused. ‘Oh, just one thing, Mr Morris. Might as well ask now.’
‘Yes, Sergeant?’
‘You say you all dined together last night. I gather your father received an unexpected letter.’
‘So I’m told.’
‘You weren’t present when the letter arrived?’
Morris cast his eyes downwards. ‘I had left before then.’
‘Before your father?’
‘I felt in need of some air. This wretched strike has set all our nerves on edge. At times the conversation around the table reached Olympian heights, and I had had rather enough ambrosia and nectar for one night.’
‘Olympian heights?’
Andrew Morris blinked, as if he were suddenly conscious of a breach of etiquette. ‘I simply wasn’t in the mood for politics and business and the conflict they produce. So I left.’
‘I see. What time was this?’
Morris narrowed his eyes. ‘Is it important?’
‘Just trying to work out a sequence of events, sir.’
‘It must have been around eight-thirty.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘I’ve already told you, Sergeant. I went out.’
Brennan looked at him levelly for a few seconds, then told himself that now was not the time. ‘What time did you return?’
‘I really can’t say. Before midnight I expect. The servants had gone to bed and I let myself in. I went straight to my room. It was this morning when I heard the commotion downstairs and my mother’s raised voice that I realised something was wrong.’ He swallowed hard before adding, ‘Do you need to know what was served for breakfast?’
Now, as he sat alone in the Crofter’s Arms and watched the frothy head of the beer break up, Michael Brennan frowned, struck by a sudden thought. Why would someone leave a nice warm dinner to get some air, when it’s snowing and freezing cold outside?
‘Waitin’ for somebody, Moll?’
She gave a non-committal shrug and tried to hold his gaze. The glare from the gas lamp above them caused a tiny blue flame to flicker in his eyes, like the dance of a frenzied devil. The same intensity of passion was there, the same hunger in his eyes that was always kept at bay by some mastery of will, suffusing his features with a melancholy blend of loss and bitterness.
She had loved Frank Latchford, once upon a time.
‘I am. I mean, I was.’
‘Who?’
One of the qualities she had admired in him was his directness. Two years ago, before the strike and Frank’s part in it, the future had seemed as structured and as linear as the Leeds–Liverpool Canal, a course leading inexorably to marriage, children and a comfortable home. ‘It’s what I want,’ he had said with the same firmness and conviction of tone, the same underlying sense of passion, that he used when making his fiery speeches to thousands.
It had also been what Molly Haggerty had wanted, once.
She gave a furtive glance behind her, just in case even now hewas rushing past the beggars to take her in his arms with a kiss and a panted apology.
A romantic nonsense, she knew, for that was the one thing he wouldn’t or couldn’t do. The beggars shuffled down the street with their hunched shoulders, but there was no biblical parting of the waves as he came rushing through their midst. She smiled, but it was a self-mocking gesture, and turned her gaze back to Frank, holding his large, rough-hewn face in focus. He had stubble below his thick, dark moustache, and his heavy-lidded eyes were rendered even darker by the rim of his cap. There was no coal dust now flecking his features. He hadn’t seen coal dust in months.
‘Just a friend,’ she said, hugging herself to show that she wouldn’t be waiting much longer and it wasn’t of any great consequence anyway.
He was on the verge of saying something, but licked his lips instead, choosing silence over interrogation.
‘How’ve you been keepin’?’ She tried to keep her tone neutral, just in case he misinterpreted her question.
‘Badly. But not as bad as some. Fished another poor sod out last week.’
No further explanation was needed. The canal or the River Douglas – both of them had cold, welcoming depths.
‘Your friend,’ he said, looking over her head and scanning the darkening figures behind her, ‘she’s late. You’ll catch your bloody death out ’ere.’
Involuntarily she smiled at his presumption that her friend was a lass – perhaps an error calculated to elicit a correction. Instead, she said, ‘Aye. I’d best be off.’
‘I’ll walk you.’
Quickly, before she could protest, he had slipped an arm through hers and she allowed herself to be escorted at least part of the way. Besides, if the one she had been waiting for were to come tearing along right now and see them both arm in arm from across the street, why, it would serve him bloody well right, wouldn’t it?
‘You ill, Mam?’
Tommy Haggerty’s voice quivered. He had been five when his dad had died twice. The first time – the night he failed to come back from the pit – had been something that had transformed itself into the stuff of nightmares, and he often imagined, in the black quiet of the night, that he himself were down there in the dust-filled mine, although wherever he looked as he scrambled through the dust, no matter how many grinning corpses he turned over and lit with his lamp, he could never find where his dad was lying. He always had the feeling that he was just round the next corner, but when he scratched and dug his way round, more often than not the only thing he came across was the twisted body of a pit pony, its broad teeth bared wildly in a dreadful grimace of death. In the worst of the nightmares he could even hear its plaintive, pain-wracked whinnying and see the red gums clamping on black air, and blood, speckled with coal dust, slithering down its teeth.
