The Butcher's Block Read online

  The Butcher’s Block

  Chapter One

  Dan Foster took the pistol stamped with the words “Bow Street” out of his coat pocket and placed it on the desk. Perkins, the night clerk, picked up the weapon. He held it close to his long, thin face, which was grotesquely up-lit by the lamp on the desk.

  “It hasn’t been fired?”

  “Didn’t need it,” Dan said, putting the powder flask and cartouche of shot next to the gun.

  Perkins laughed and winked at the blood-soaked handkerchief tied around the knuckles of Dan’s right hand. “Wish I’d been there to see you.”

  Dan grunted. The night clerk would not have been too pleased if his wish had been granted. Earlier that evening Dan had been called to a burglary in King Street. An elderly couple had been tied, gagged and beaten. All for the pleasure of it: they had not resisted. The old man had handed over the key to his money chest at first demand.

  It was that sheer, pointless brutality that had given Dan the clue to who had committed the crime. A few foul taverns and quaking informants later his hunch had been confirmed: a known low-life was back in town and as mean as ever. Dan had tracked his quarry down to the Old Alehouse in Chick Lane, on the edge of St Andrew’s Parish, one of the most dangerous streets in London. The Old Alehouse was its foul heart, the place where all its wickedness concentrated, the haunt of the most vicious thieves, murderers and prostitutes.

  Not a place a lone principal officer of Bow Street could safely venture into. Dan had waited for the man to leave, staggering arm in arm with a woman, and followed them to a little-frequented, stinking alley before making his move. When the fighting had started the female had abandoned her companion and stumbled away. Dan had been thinking of the old woman’s lined, fragile face, a mass of blood and bruises, as he drove his fist into the burglar’s jaw.

  Now her assailant was locked up in the cell which the landlord of the Brown Bear, the tavern across the road from Bow Street Magistrates’ Office, provided for the use of the principal officers. He would be brought before the magistrate when the daily session opened at eleven in the morning, be in Newgate awaiting trial by the end of the day, and swinging before the year was out.

  Perkins took a bunch of keys from the hook on his belt, unlocked the gun cupboard and placed Dan’s service-issue weapon inside. Dan yawned and glanced down at the young patrolman who sat on one of the office chairs, hunched over a bucket swilling with the sour-smelling contents of his stomach.

  “What’s up with him?”

  “Jones?” Perkins locked the cupboard and replaced the bunch of keys on his belt. “Had a bit of a nasty surprise.” He jerked his head at the large laundry basket which stood on the floor by the desk.

  “What’s inside it?”

  Perkins grinned. “Take a look.”

  Dan frowned at the clerk. It was nearly midnight, he was tired, he had no patience for stupid games. He clicked his tongue and lifted the lid.

  At first he thought he was looking at a limp doll or huddled marionette, its face pale and chiselled, its half-lidded eyes exposing a line of white. It lay on a darkly stained cloth, and there were what looked like two little animals curled up on either side of it. It took Dan a minute to realise that he was looking at a human head and hands.

  “Jones here and Captain Ellis stopped a pair of suspicious-looking fellows carrying this basket on Holborn Hill, close to St Andrew’s churchyard,” Perkins said. “Turns out they’d bagged a couple of resurrection men on their way to St Bartholomew’s dissection room. Ellis’s locking them up now.” He sniggered. “He’s put ’em in the basement with the darkness and the rats.”

  A measure of how detested body snatchers were. Dan’s burglar was better off. He at least had a bed, though he was chained to it.

  “Did they find any grave goods on them?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Perkins said.

  Sometimes, Dan thought, the law he was expected to uphold was exceedingly stupid. According to the learned justices, no one owned a dead body so it could not be stolen. It was only if the resurrectionists took something else from the grave, such as a shroud, keepsake or even the coffin itself, that they could be charged with theft. The obvious result was that most body snatchers took care to leave all but the corpse behind, knowing that if caught, the most they would get was a few weeks in Bridewell for vagrancy.

  There was no need to voice his opinion: Perkins was doing it for him. “Now, I says, it’s the family as owns the corpse, and it’s the family as suffers when a loved relation is dug up and snatched away, and so it ought to be treated as a theft like any other. Even worse nor any other. Don’t you say so, Mr Foster?”

  Dan gazed down at the remains, not listening. He was about to replace the lid when something caught his eye. He snatched up the lamp and held it over the basket, stooping so low that his own head was almost inside with the grisly remains. Perkins’s voice was a muffled drone somewhere above him.

  “I do wish the captain would hurry up. I’m ready for my bed.” The night clerk had apartments at the top of the house so that he was on call in case of emergencies. He chuckled. “Might have a bit of supper first. Pigs’ trotters, perhaps. Or a bit of tripe and onions.”

  Jones retched and released a stream of stringy vomit into the bucket. Dan straightened up, the lamp shaking in his hand. Perkins winked at him. But Dan was not interested in his clowning.

  “Hell,” he said. “It’s Officer Kean.”

  Chapter Two

  Captain Sam Ellis appeared in the doorway rattling a bunch of keys and chuckling to himself.

  “Dan, how are you? Got a couple of –”

  “Give me the keys.”

  “Here they are. But –”

  Dan snatched the key ring out of Ellis’s grasp and sprinted down the stairs. Behind him he heard Perkins’s husky voice, “He says it’s Officer Kean…” and Jones’s wavering, “How can he be sure in this light?” Dan did not hear what Ellis said in reply.

  It was dark in the passageway, smelt of damp, drains, and rats. He should have brought a light; he had run down here without thinking. But there was no need to go back: Ellis was not one to waste time standing around exclaiming. A yellow glow appeared at the foot of the stairs, the patrolman’s bulk behind it. It was enough for Dan to find the lock and insert the key by. He swung open the door, by which time Ellis was at his back shining the light into the cell. The prisoners sat on the floor, one with his head sunk on his knees, whimpering. The other scrambled to his feet. He was a tall, sinewy man with an aura of dung about him.

  “About bleedin’ time,” he said. “You ain’t got no right to leave us down ’ere like this.”

  Dan charged into the cell and grabbed him by the throat. “Where’s the rest of the body, you whoreson?”

  “Dan! Dan! Let him go, for Christ’s sake. You’re throttling him,” Ellis cried.

  The man’s eyes bulged, spittle oozed from his slack mouth. His cries of pain and protest were no more than a desperate gurgling, and his hands flapped uselessly at his sides.

  More footsteps, more voices, the light danced crazily over the shining walls. Perkins grabbed Dan’s right arm and tried to pull him off. “Stop, Mr Foster, stop!”

  Ellis thrust the lantern into Jones’s hand, moved to Dan’s left. His low voice penetrated Dan’s understanding as Perkins’s frenzied yelling did not. “We’ll never find Kean if you don’t let go.”

  Breathing heavily, Dan stepped back, pushed the body snatcher away from him. The man pressed his back against the wall and sidled away, his eyes rolling, head lolling.

  “He belongs in Bedlam! Keep him of
f me!”

  “Shut your noise, Reynolds,” Ellis said.

  The patrol captain pressed one hand flat against Dan’s chest to prevent him going for Reynolds again. Dan wiped his hand across his face. The makeshift bandage had gone and his knuckles had started to bleed afresh. He prowled back and forth, clenching and unclenching his fists, pivoting around Ellis’s arm as the captain shadowed his pacing, holding him at bay. Dan flung back his head, flexed his shoulders, glared at the body snatcher who shrivelled into his corner. But by now Dan was in control. The threatening attitude was deliberate: the pre-fight poise of a man in the boxing ring. Ellis sensed this and relaxed his arm. Dan nodded at him: It’s all right. Ellis stepped out of his way.

  “I’ll ask one more time,” Dan said. “Where is the rest of the body?”

  “How should I know? I never seen it,” Reynolds answered.

  “Do you know who he is, the man in your basket?”

  Reynolds shook his head, winced at the pain. “It’s just a Thing. We was going to sell it, that’s all.”

  “He’s a Bow Street officer.”

  Reynolds sucked in his breath. The man on the floor flung his hands protectively over his head and rocked back and forth, wailing.

  Dan glanced down at him. “Get up.”

  “No…no…leave me alone…I never done nothing.”

  Ellis reached down and hauled him up by one arm. “My friend’s not in a very good mood, Wallace. I’d do as he tells you, if I was you.”

  Wallace was bigger and stronger than Reynolds, but he hadn’t a fraction of the other’s bravado. Didn’t look like he had a fraction of the other’s sense either. He reeked of the gin that had half-rotted his brain and guts, his little eyes were dim, and his speech and movements were slow and lumbering.

  “Which of you killed him?” Dan demanded.

  Wallace shrieked, “It wasn’t us! We just had the Thing in the basket. We had no idea he was one of your lot or else we’d never have touched it.”

  “So if you didn’t kill him, where did you get the remains?”

  “Off a man in a tavern,” Wallace answered eagerly. “Said he’s a porter at Guy’s Hospital, said they had some parts left over, said if we wanted ’em we could have ’em.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “He never said.”

  “What tavern?”

  “The Black Raven.”

  “In Chick Lane?” Chick Lane again: the corruption at the centre of the metropolis. “When was this?”

  Wallace’s face puckered with the strain of trying to remember. “Not yesterday. Could have been the day before.”

  “It was last night,” Reynolds said. “We paid ten shillings, could have got a guinea. Heads always bring a good…” He saw the dangerous look in Dan’s eye and his voice trailed away.

  “So this man you’d never met before came up to you on Saturday night and offered you some body parts.”

  “That’s right.” Reynolds again.

  “Doesn’t sound like much of a story to me.”

  “But it’s true,” Reynolds insisted. “I swear on my mother’s grave.” He licked his lips, realising how foolish the oath sounded coming from him.

  “What did he look like?”

  Reynolds shrugged. “Ordinary.”

  “I said, what did he look like?”

  “He wasn’t much to look at,” Reynolds said. “Medium height, brown hair, wore a blue coat.”

  “A white cravat,” Wallace put in.

  “What else?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Was he young? Old?”

  “No. I mean, he wasn’t one or the other,” Reynolds said.

  “What did he sound like?”

  “Sound like?”

  “Was he from London? Was he a Welshman, an Irishman, a Yorkshireman, the man in the moon?”

  “I don’t know. He spoke ordinary.”

  Dan turned to Ellis. “Anything you want to ask?”

  “I think you’ve covered everything.”

  Jones cleared his throat.

  “What?” Dan asked.

  “Where did they pick up the…the basket?”

  “Good question. Go on, answer Patrolman Jones.”

  Reynolds did so. “From off the back of a cart in Liquorpond Street.”

  A street of breweries not far from Holborn Hill, where a laden cart would not attract much attention.

  “And the driver?” Dan did not expect the answer to be anything other than what it was.

  “All wrapped up. Never saw him.”

  “I’m done,” Dan said to Perkins. “You can lock them up again now.”

  The police officers filed out of the room, taking the lamp with them. Perkins shut and locked the door.

  “Hey!” Reynolds bawled. “Leave us a light!”

  As they walked away, Dan heard Reynolds snarl, “Shut your blubbing!” at his cellmate.

  Upstairs, Ellis glanced apprehensively at the basket. “You really think it’s George Kean?”

  “I know it is. There’s a scar by his left eye. I was with him when he got it. We were in the Lord Rodney’s Head in Chequers Alley after a couple of street robbers. They put up a fight and Kean got hit with a broken chair.”

  Perkins, meanwhile, had gone into the chief clerk’s tiny room where they could hear him opening a cupboard and moving bottle and glasses. He came back to the main office carrying a tray on which there were four brimming glasses of brandy. He offered one to Dan, who gave him a withering look. As if Perkins did not know he never drank spirits. He had never got into the habit; he had seen what drink did to other men, how it turned their muscles slack, blurred their vision, slowed their reactions. He had seen what it did to a marriage too, but that was something he buried deep when he was working.

  The clerk shrugged: more for him. Ellis and Jones helped themselves.

  “So what now?” Ellis asked.

  “I’ll go to Guy’s first thing in the morning,” Dan answered. “See if I can track down their porter. And I don’t think we should tell anyone else about this until the chief magistrate’s been informed. I’ll be back here before Sir William gets in.”

  “You don’t think I should send for him now?” Perkins asked.

  “No point. There’s nothing to be done till the morning. Which isn’t that far off.” To Ellis and Jones he said, “You two better be ready to give your statements.”

  Silence fell between the four men, each busy with his own thoughts, none wanting to look at the basket, none able to forget it was there. It was Perkins who spoke first.

  “What shall I do with…?”

  “Put the basket downstairs, where it’s cool,” said Dan. “We’ll need a doctor to examine the remains in the morning.”

  “Someone will have to help me lift it.”

  Ellis and Jones exchanged appalled glances.

  “I’ll do it,” Dan said. “And then I’m going to get a couple of hours’ sleep.”

  The patrolmen put their glasses on the tray and rose to their feet. They shuffled towards the door, glad to be going, but ashamed of themselves for being so. Dan caught hold of one of the rope handles and signalled to Perkins to do the same. The basket creaked and sagged as they took its dreadful weight.

  Chapter Three

  It took Dan only a few minutes to walk to his home in Russell Street. Already he could hear the clatter of carts and babble of voices from the marketplace in Covent Garden Piazza as the first of the day’s traders began to arrive from the outlying market gardens. He let himself into the dark house and stood in the hall to listen for a moment, imagining he would catch the sound of Eleanor’s soft breathing. All he heard was his mother-in-law’s snoring. No sound came from the bedroom which he shared with his wife Caroline, Eleanor’s sister.

  Tell
ing himself he would only disturb Caroline if he went upstairs, he went instead into the kitchen and settled in an armchair by the hearth, which still gave out a residual warmth from a heap of grey ash. He pulled off his boots and sank back into the seat. Kean had been a police officer some years. He had been in the Army before that. He knew how to take care of himself. So how, Dan wondered, had he let this happen? To what trick or ambush or savagery had he fallen victim?

  Dan shut his eyes and saw Kean’s face staring up at him from the depths of the basket, the half-open eyelids exposing the whites of his eyes, the mouth gaping as if in a last cry of rage and despair. There would be no sleep for Dan while that spectre haunted him…

  He was woken by a flood of daylight and the bang of the window shutters over the sink. He sat up.

  Mrs Harper, his mother-in-law, turned round. “Dan, I didn’t see you there. We never heard you come in. You must have been very late. What time was it? Let me get that fire going and I’ll make some tea.”

  “Don’t worry about the tea. I’ll have something at the gym.”

  “Are you sure? I can do you a bit of breakfast. Won’t take many minutes.”

  “No, thanks. Have I got a clean shirt to take with me?”

  “Of course you have. They’ll be upstairs in your room.”

  “Could you look for me? I don’t want to wake Caroline. You’re lighter on your feet than me.”

  This was not true. Mrs Harper was a noisy, bustling woman, but she took him at his word and went upstairs. He put on his boots and was ready to leave when she came back.

  “She didn’t stir,” she said, handing him the shirt. “What time shall I tell her you’ll be back?”

  He bundled the clean linen under his arm. “I don’t know. Late. There’s a new case. Don’t wait up.”

  He walked down to the Strand and came out by Exeter Exchange. Cafés and restaurants were serving breakfast to men and women on their way to work, cab- and chairmen on their way home, dazed travellers who had been deposited at some nearby inn after a comfortless night’s journey. Coaches pulled in and out of yards thronging with stable lads, ostlers, porters, maids selling pies and drinks. None of the shops or other attractions were open yet, but the animals in Pidcock’s Menagerie on the top floor of the Exchange were restless as always. Here lions and elephants, tigers and zebras, apes and exotic birds, defeated in their attempts to pace or flutter around tiny cages, snarled, roared and grunted. When there was not much traffic, their bellows of rage and frustration would often be heard in the street.