Praise for Mick Finlay

‘Arrowood is a flawed but engaging hero and the plot spins from peril to twist and back with real panache’

The Times

‘A fantastic creation’

The Spectator

‘Compelling’

Seattle Times

‘Strongly reminiscent of Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike novels…a memorable detective who can stand among the best’

Harrow Times

‘Mick Finlay’s atmospheric, detailed, singular London is a terrifying place I hope to return to again and again’

Ross Armstrong

‘If you ever thought the Sherlock Holmes stories might benefit from being steeped in gin, caked in grime and then left unwashed for weeks…Mick Finlay’s 1895-set detective debut is for you’

Crime Scene

‘A book with enough warmth, charm, humour and intrigue to signal the start of an excellent new series’

Vaseem Khan

‘Readers of historical detective fiction will enjoy this well-set, darkly humorous addition to the canon’

Historical Novel Society

‘Another brilliant read from Mick Finlay … even better than [Arrowood]’

B A Paris

‘Gripping’

Daily Telegraph

‘Astounding … If you crave Victorian age murder mystery, love darkly gothic atmospheres and want your detective rather tattered and torn at the edges Arrowood is your man’

SHOTS

‘Enthralling’

Publishers Weekly

MICK FINLAY was born in Glasgow but left as a young boy, living in Canada and then England. Before becoming an academic, he ran a market stall on Portobello Road, and has worked as a tent-hand in a travelling circus, a butcher’s boy, a hotel porter, and in various jobs in the NHS and social services. He teaches in a psychology department, and has published research on political violence and persuasion, verbal and non-verbal communication, and disability. He now lives in Brighton with his family.

Arrowood and the Thames Corpses

Mick Finlay

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © Mick Finlay 2020

Mick Finlay asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780008324537

Version 2020-03-10

Note to Readers

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 Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008324520

Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Historical Notes and Sources

Acknowledgements

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

South London, Summer, 1896

We were playing cards in the parlour when the captain and his daughter arrived. It was late morning, the flies drifting around the guvnor’s knuckle head in the midsummer heat. For the last few days we’d been waiting on a case from the lawyer Scrapes, but he kept delaying and the longer it went on the longer we weren’t earning. Arrowood was vexed: he hadn’t been sleeping too well since his sister Ettie returned from Birmingham with the baby, and he was suffering a rash under his arm. Each hour that passed worsened his temper.

‘A bit of breeze, is that too much to ask?’ he grumbled, throwing his cards on the table in frustration. As he pushed himself up, the back of his britches clung for a moment to the damp chair. He stuck a finger in his waistcoat pocket and hooked out a coin. ‘Get me a kidney pudding will you, Barnett? You won’t be hungry, I suppose. It’s only eleven.’

I got to my feet. It was an errand I’d run hundreds of times before, and I knew how it went with him. Money was tight between cases. Always was. Maybe one day it’d be easier, but I wasn’t holding any hope on it.

The guvnor’s rooms were behind the pudding shop on Coin Street. It was hot as a foundry in there, the long black range baking with all its might, pots boiling away on the top. A couple of sweaty customers stood in line waiting to get served by Albert, who seemed to be the only one in the family still working. Mrs Pudding was bent double over the counter, her face resting on a cloth. Little Albert stood wheezing on the doorstep, staring at his boots in a fug. Next to him on the pavement sat a couple of little monkeys, no more than six or seven years old, their hands out in the hope some punter might give them a bit of food.

‘Lucky you come in just now, Norman,’ said Albert in his usual glum voice. ‘These folk were just asking for Mr Arrowood.’

The captain was solid and square-faced, about forty or fifty I supposed, his eyes shaded by a battered riverboat cap. He grasped a small packet of meat in both hands. Behind him was a girl of fourteen or fifteen, her shoulders wide and strong, her face covered in freckles. A thin bonnet, its edges dark with sweat, was tied tight over her head.

‘I’m his assistant,’ I said, offering each my hand. ‘Come through.’

I led them back up the dusty corridor lined with sacks of sugar and flour and into the parlour. The guvnor looked at us in horror as we stepped through the door. A little groan came from the girl.

In the short time I’d been away he’d taken off his britches and shirt, and now sat at the table wearing nothing but his drawers and vest, a piece of bread and butter in his hand. His stumpy legs were white as lard, hairy here and bald there, and his drawers were stained in the most shameful way, the sagging lump between his legs like a clutch of baby mussels.

‘Oh, Lord,’ he muttered, grabbing his britches from the floor and trying to shove his bloated feet through. ‘Excuse me, please. I was just …’

As he fumbled with his shirt, the man and the freckled girl stood in the doorway, silent and still.

‘This is Mr Arrowood,’ I told them.

The boatman nodded, a grim look on his square face. Doing her best not to see the writhing spectacle before her, the girl’s eyes travelled over the gloomy little parlour, the flies circling in the centre of the room, the bare floor, the stacks of newspaper against the walls. By the open window was a shelf holding his books on emotions and the psychology of the mind, but her eyes lingered longest on the orange cat sat like a sentry on the mantel. The man seemed to fix on the sticky tabletop with its melting packet of butter, its ragged Allinson’s loaf, its wild scatter of crumbs.

‘I’m so very sorry, miss,’ said Arrowood, tucking in his shirt. ‘I can only hope the sight of the good Lord’s creation hasn’t caused you any spiritual distress.’

The young woman dropped her eyes and smiled.

‘Now,’ he said when all was right again. ‘Please have a seat. What did you want to see me about?’

‘Name’s Captain Moon,’ said the bloke when they were sat down at the table. He twitched his head at the girl. ‘This here’s my daughter, Suzie. We’ve a problem and hoped you could help.’

The captain pulled off his cap and wiped the sweat from his brow. His eyes were small, his jaw and mouth hid beneath a bush of orange and grey hair. His suit was too thick for such a warm July, its elbows a little over-polished.

‘We run a little pleasure steamer, sir. The Gravesend Queen. Take folk up to Gravesend every Saturday and Sunday for the pleasure gardens. Anyways, there’s a fellow been damaging the boat when she’s moored overnight. It’ll put us out of business if it keeps on. Summer’s when we make our money, see.’

‘Polgreen’s his name,’ said Suzie. ‘Ain’t it, Dad?’

Moon gave a nod.

‘What sort of damage have you suffered?’ asked the guvnor.

‘First it was rocks through the windows,’ answered Moon. ‘Next thing I turn up one morning and me lamps is all gone.’

‘The fish guts, Dad,’ said Suzie. She looked at me stood by the door, her eyes strong and hard.

‘Aye. That was the first, the windows was after.’ He jumped up from the chair, pacing over to the door, his hands in his pockets. ‘He dumped a load of old fish guts in the saloon! Disgusting it was, like the devil himself’d spewed all over the place.’

‘Where’s the boat moored, Captain?’

‘We had her just off the old pier by Victoria Bridge when it started. We moved her since.’

‘Any other boats there?’

‘Five or six, but he’s careful. Nobody’s seen anything.’ He pointed at the guvnor’s pile of books. ‘You read all that?’

‘They help me do my work. Are you interested in the psychology of the mind, Captain?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Dad went to the police but they won’t do nothing,’ said Suzie. ‘Told us to moor her somewhere else. Hide her, like. So we move her up to Bermondsey and what happens, we turn up this morning and the awning’s sliced to ribbons!’

‘We paid four quid for that awning,’ said Moon.

‘Can’t afford to get another, not right now, and the customers ain’t going to be too happy with no shelter on deck,’ said Suzie.

‘The Old Bill told us to put the deckhand on board overnight,’ Moon went on. ‘But what if they scuttle her? He’d be killed. That you, is it?’

Moon was pointing at the photographic portrait of the guvnor above the little fireplace.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said the guvnor, a contented smile coming over his face. The photographer’d told him he looked like Moses and he couldn’t help but think that maybe there was something in it. He gave the hot rash under his arm a rub.

‘Very striking,’ said Moon. ‘Very good.’

‘Thank you, Captain. Now, are you sure it’s this fellow Polgreen?’

‘We know it’s him, sir,’ said Suzie. She sat forward, her arms on the table. ‘He’s the only one runs a steamer on our route to Gravesend. Takes the day-trippers, same as us. He’s trying to drive us out, ain’t he, Dad?’

Her old man nodded.

‘But you’re not so sure, Captain?’ asked the guvnor.

‘No. Yes. Yes, I am sure.’ He nodded. ‘I am sure.’

‘We been running up there since more ’n thirteen, fourteen year,’ said Suzie. ‘Tell him, Dad.’

‘Used to be quite a few boats on the route afore they built the railway out that far. We was the last one left and what happens this time last year? Only this blooming foreigner Polgreen comes along with an old bucket of a boat and starts taking passengers. Same piers, same route.’

‘Which piers d’you use?’ asked the guvnor.

‘We pick up at Old Swan Pier by London Bridge and take them to Terrace Pier in Gravesend.’

‘You don’t use the pier at Rosherville?’

‘Too dear, Mr Arrowood. The customers don’t mind walking to the pleasure gardens if it saves them a few coins. I told Polgreen Gravesend can’t support two boats, but he won’t listen.’

‘So now we’re taking half the money we took before,’ cried Suzie, her face red with it all. ‘We can’t hardly get by, but those foreigners seem to live on half what we need.’

‘Eat rats, I heard,’ declared the Captain. ‘Live on the boat too, like bargees.’

‘He’s trying to make it that bad for us we pack it in.’

‘Have you actually seen Polgreen damaging your boat?’ asked the guvnor.

‘We ain’t seen him, but it’s him all right,’ answered Suzie. ‘Ain’t it, Dad?’

Moon nodded.

‘Who else works on your boat?’ asked Arrowood.

‘Only Belasco, the deckhand,’ said Moon.

‘D’you trust him?’

‘He’d never harm the boat. Been with us since the start.’

Just then, the guvnor’s sister Ettie called out from the bedroom upstairs. ‘William! I need some help!’

Arrowood winced. ‘Carry on, sir,’ he said, rubbing his forehead. ‘What else can you tell us?’

‘I ain’t so sure Polgreen’s a captain neither,’ said Moon. ‘Don’t seem to know the rules of the water.’

Now the baby started to cry. A moment later we heard the door at the top of the stairs creak open, and Ettie’s feet coming down the steps.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize,’ she said, startled to see the Captain and his daughter there. She looked worn out, her face pale, her hair loose and falling over her shoulders. There were baby stains on her blouse. She wasn’t used to caring for a child, wasn’t the sort of woman who could be contained inside a little place like this for long, and it was getting to her.

‘I’m in a consultation,’ said the guvnor.

She shot me a tired smile, then nodded at our two guests.

‘I won’t disturb you.’ She looked at the guvnor. ‘The curtain’s come down again, William,’ she said, turning to climb the narrow staircase at the back of the parlour. ‘The child won’t settle.’

The guvnor raised his eyes to the ceiling, muttering to himself as the crying continued. There was only one bedroom up there, and Arrowood shared it with his sister. He pushed himself to his feet with a groan and waddled over to the mantel, where he collected his pipe. He smiled at Moon. ‘Please, sir, continue.’

‘When he turned up, his boat was Barley Belle,’ said Moon. ‘Then, a week after he starts taking our custom, he goes and names his boat the same as ours. Rosherville Queen she was then. I tried to get him to change it. The Company of Watermen tried, and the Conservancy officials, but he wouldn’t do it so we had to change our name! Didn’t want the punters confusing his old bucket with ours, did we? Our boat, what’d been there first! That’s how she became the Gravesend Queen.’

The guvnor shook his head as he lit his pipe. ‘The fellow sounds difficult. He’s determined.’

Moon sighed. ‘It has wore me out, Mr Arrowood. I own it.’

‘Have you considered changing your destination? Hampton Court or Southend or somewhere?’

‘But it’s our route.’

‘All those other routes got bigger boats than ours,’ said Suzie. ‘With food and music and such. We can’t take them on. Gravesend’s the only place we can go with a little old boat like ours. The punters who still like Rosherville Gardens ain’t too choosey, and that’s the truth of it, sir.’

‘I’m sorry for you,’ said the guvnor, shaking his great ox’s head. ‘This isn’t right. Tell me, how did you hear of us? Was it the Catford Inquiry?’

‘The salt thieves,’ answered Moon. ‘That’s what we heard about.’

‘Salt thieves?’

‘From the barges,’ said Moon. ‘Deptford, was it?’

The guvnor looked at me, a puzzle in his eyes.

‘That’s not one of our cases,’ I said.

‘Perhaps you read of the Fenian case?’ asked the guvnor.

‘Sorry, sir,’ said Moon, shaking his head. ‘I ain’t a reader.’

‘The gas pipe affair?’

‘You never caught the salt thieves?’ asked Moon.

‘No. You’re not confusing me with Sherlock Holmes, are you?’ asked the guvnor.

‘Well, now I ain’t sure about those cases, Mr Arrowood, but I can’t see anyone confusing you with him.’

‘Can we help him, sir?’ I asked, seeing the guvnor starting to lose his good temper. He always thought we should be known more than we were, and it upset him to find almost nobody’d ever heard of us. The only private enquiry agent the papers ever seemed to cover was Sherlock Holmes, and just reading about the fellow’s cases upset the guvnor worse than sour beer. Arrowood was an emotional fellow, and it was one of my jobs to keep him on the level. That and a bit of strong-arm business from time to time.

Upstairs, the baby’s crying got quieter, till it was only a whimper. Arrowood glanced up at the ceiling and sighed.

‘I’d like to do something for you, Captain,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid we’re about to start on an important case with a lawyer. I’m not sure we’ve enough time to do yours justice.’

Moon looked at the guvnor like he didn’t understand.

‘Why didn’t you tell us that at the start?’ asked Suzie, her eyes lit up. ‘Is it because we never heard of your cases?’

‘Of course not. I didn’t know how long yours would take until you explained it.’

‘But can’t you do anything?’

The guvnor thought for a moment, his fingers tapping away at the table. Through the open window we could hear the hens in the yard next door.

‘We can go and have a talk with this Polgreen,’ he said at last. ‘Mr Barnett’s rather good at persuading people to stop doing things, as you might guess from his appearance.’

‘Well, he’s big enough,’ said Moon, looking at me.

‘He’s more than that, Captain. He’s an expert negotiator.’ The guvnor winced as the wailing started again upstairs.

‘We’ll warn him off,’ I said. ‘You’re sure it’s him though, are you?’

‘We told you,’ said Suzie. ‘It’s him.’

The guvnor gave me the nod and rose from the chair. ‘I must attend to my sister, Captain,’ he said. ‘Mr Barnett will deal with the arrangements. We’ll visit Polgreen and call on you later this evening.’

He waddled over to the stairs and took himself up to face the fallen curtain.

‘Ten shillings for half a day’s work,’ I said. ‘In advance.’

The captain flitched when he heard the price, but he fished in his pocket and pulled out a purse. When the money was handed over, I took down his address and the mooring of Polgreen’s boat. It all seemed pretty straightforward. Little did I know that I’d soon come to wish I’d never met Captain Moon, nor ever heard of the Gravesend Queen.

Chapter Two

After lunch, we took the train to Queenstown then walked across Battersea Park to Ransome’s Dock. It was a long, deep creek, with a wide basin at the end, a foundry on one side and an ice warehouse on the other. A bloke hoiking bales of hay from a barge pointed us past a row of lighters to where Polgreen’s boat was moored, a small paddle steamer, old but well kept. The funnel and paddle boxes were yellow and black, the awning bright and stripy. A saloon with windows along its length took up half the boat, with a wheelhouse at the front and a sundeck on its roof. A boy with a bare brown back stood up there polishing the brass.

‘Captain Polgreen around, lad?’ asked the guvnor.

‘In the saloon, sir.’

A woman of middle age rose from the deck behind him, a scrubbing brush in her hand. Her face was dark as a Hindoo, and she watched us close as we climbed aboard and made our way along to the door. Inside we found an older bloke fiddling around under the drinks counter. He stood when he heard us, a heavy wrench in his hand. He was a strong fellow, a bit battered, an ugly burn running the length of one arm. Like the lad, he wore no shirt.

‘What can I do for you, gentlemen?’ he asked, coming out from behind the counter.

There was a heavy accent in his voice, Cornish or something I supposed. He had the same thick black hair as his son, his brow low down his sun-tanned face. He breathed heavy.

‘Captain Moon’s engaged us to discover who’s been damaging his boat,’ said the guvnor. I watched Polgreen real careful as he talked. ‘He says it’s you.’

‘Oh, that’s the game, is it? And who may you be?’ He had the look of a smuggler about him, with mean, darting eyes, his whiskers stiff and tight like black gorse. Tattoos ran up and down his arms, most of them smudged and stretched out of shape.

‘Mr Arrowood. This is Mr Barnett. We’re private enquiry agents. So, was it you?’

‘Well, he thinks it was. Accused me of it in front of my customers as well. Bloody wild, he were. Shouting at me. Cursing me. Shouldn’t be in charge of a boat, that bloke. Need a calm head to steer a steamer on a river as busy at this one, and Moon ain’t got one.’

The guvnor smiled and cocked his head. He laughed.

Polgreen’s face fell. ‘What’s funny?’

The guvnor laughed some more. I did too, just like he’d taught me. Polgreen scowled. Finally, the guvnor leant in to him and whispered: ‘You didn’t answer my question. Did you damage his boat, Captain?’

‘I didn’t touch his blooming boat.’

‘Did you arrange for someone else to damage it?’

‘No. And I don’t suppose he told you he threw all my lifebuoys in the current? And the cushions off my benches?’ Polgreen looked from the guvnor to me. His knuckles were white as he gripped the wrench. ‘No? Well, he did. In Gravesend, it were. He waited till I’d gone off for my lunch and he shoved my lad out the way and threw them all in the water. That’s two quid, more or less. Two quid! I got the police onto him. They took him up before the beak. Got fined ten bob for it and had to pay me back.’

‘Why did he attack your cushions, Captain?’

Polgreen brought his face up close and spoke real slow, like the guvnor was stupid, ‘’Cos he thought I’d damaged his boat.’

‘He thinks you’re trying to drive him out of business.’

‘I am trying to drive him out of business.’

‘Why’d you set up on the Gravesend run when every other boat’s given up?’

‘Folk from the East End still go there. Folk who can’t afford to go anywhere else. Listen, Moon don’t own that route. He’s got no right to it.’

‘He was there first,’ I said.

Polgreen scratched his sun-scorched belly. ‘But I want it,’ he said.

The guvnor looked at him for a while. ‘If it wasn’t you, then who’d you think’s been doing it?’

‘There was a fellow asking after his boat a few week since. Asking where she was moored.’

‘Did you tell him?’

‘Don’t know where she’s moored, do I?’

‘Really, sir?’

Polgreen shrugged.

‘Did this fellow say anything else?’ asked the guvnor.

‘No.’

‘What did he look like?’

Polgreen frowned. His eyes moved from the guvnor to me. ‘A bit like him,’ he said, twitching his head at me. ‘Big, eyes far apart too. Made you queasy just to look at him. But it was dark. I didn’t get a good look.’

‘Clothes?’ asked the guvnor.

‘Checked shirt. Not so well off.’

‘Hair?’

‘Brown or black, and a moustache.’

‘His voice?’

‘London, I’d say.’

The guvnor looked at him for a while without speaking.

‘Just like Mr Barnett, then,’ he said at last.

‘That’s what I said,’ answered Polgreen. ‘Now, get off my boat.’

The guvnor looked over at me, twitched his eyebrows, and stepped back. I moved in, taking the bloke by the throat and pushing him back towards the bar.

‘Leave off!’ he growled. He didn’t shout; I guessed he didn’t want his family to hear. He tried to break free, but I had hold of him tight. I caught his arm as he swung his wrench at me and threw him onto the floor. Soon as he landed I had my boot and all my weight on his wrist. He groaned.

I pushed down harder. He twisted, trying to hammer on my knee with his other hand, but it just hurt him more.

‘Any more damage to Moon’s boat and I come back for you,’ I told him.

His face was screwed up in pain. ‘And I’ll be waiting, you prick,’ he hissed.

We walked back through Battersea Park, the guvnor tapping his stick on the path as we went. It was a fine old day. The lawns were dotted with folk enjoying the sun: couples murmuring soft to each other, old codgers nattering on benches, little gangs of kids shouting and showing off. Along the path people sold lemonade and ginger beer, ice cream and oranges, and everybody had a smile on their face.

‘You didn’t have to hurt him,’ said the guvnor. ‘Not with his lad on the roof.’

‘I didn’t hurt him.’

‘All you needed do was threaten him.’

‘A man like that’d need more than threatening,’ I said. ‘If it was him.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘Do you?’

We stepped onto the grass to get round a nanny trying to settle a little lad with a great gash in his knee. Two young ladies on bicycles came directly towards us. They didn’t seem to see us, so wrapped up were they in their conversation. We stepped further from the path to get out of their way, and they passed without even a nod.

‘I just don’t know,’ he said as we approached the little row of caged birds at the far side of the park. ‘It’s clear the two men have confronted each other, but Suzie was more certain it was Polgreen who’d damaged the boat than her father. Moon only confirmed her when pushed, and even then he wavered. D’you remember how he spoke? And as for Polgreen, well, it was too convenient that the fellow he says was asking about Moon’s boat looked like you. I know it’s difficult to invent a story on the spot, but he was almost telling us he was deceiving us. On the other hand, when he described Moon throwing his cushions in the water his anger seemed real enough. Did you see how his eyes widened, how his jaw stuck out? Everything Darwin says about anger was there.’

‘It doesn’t mean he didn’t damage Moon’s boat.’

‘True, but his denial was convincing. There was no slight twitch or hesitation. Nothing. So I’m wondering why he’d invent this mystery man if he didn’t have something to hide?’ He grunted and shook his head, pausing a moment to examine a peacock in one of the cages. ‘What did you think of Captain Moon, Barnett?’

‘I liked him.’

‘I also. He seems very worn down. I wish I could believe that’s the end of it, but I’m afraid whatever’s going on is more complicated than it seems.’

Chapter Three

We visited Moon to tell him what had happened, shook hands, and hoped that was the end of it. When we got back to Coin Street, a message from Scrapes had finally arrived asking us to start on his case. A letter had gone missing from a fellow’s house, one that might have caused a scandal if ever it should get out. Took us a day to track it. A bit of easy money for a change: no freezing nights on the watch, no getting stamped in the face, just a lot of questions, a bit of walking, and a little righteous housebreaking.

It was turning into a hot summer, so I treated myself to a nice straw boater from the pawn shop, with a green and yellow band and a good brim to shade the sun. I’d had my eye on it for a while, but this was the first time I had a few spare coins to buy it. Wearing it felt like a bit of success: it made me feel a happier man.

It was the day after Scrapes’ case that Captain Moon found us again, this time in Willows’ coffeehouse on Blackfriars Road. We were at lunch; the guvnor had took all the Thursday papers and shoved them under his thigh so none of the other punters could get at them. He was reading them through one by one, catching up on the cases as were going on in other parts of town. All the windows were open and the door wedged ajar, but it was still hot in there with the kettles and the great vat of soup aboil on the range. We were both in our shirts, our sleeves rolled up, our chests there for all to see.

‘Miss Arrowood told me you’d be here,’ said Moon, lowering himself onto a stool opposite. He wore a stained canvas shirt, a blue handkerchief around his neck. His boatman’s cap was on his head. ‘He’s been at it again.’

‘You want something, mate?’ asked Ma Willows, coming over to the table. Her red hands had swelled up as they always did on a hot day. She was breathing heavy.

Moon ran his tongue over his dry lips. He shook his head.

‘Another for me, Rena,’ said the guvnor, holding out his empty mug. ‘And a bit of seed cake.’

‘You got anything for that rash?’ asked Rena, her nose wrinkling as she watched him itch away at his oxters.

‘I’ve been using Whelpton’s. Doesn’t seem to do anything.’

‘Try Elliman’s Universal. That’s a better one.’ Her eyes fell on the jacket hanging from the back of my chair. She pointed at the patch I’d sewn on it the week before and laughed. ‘Who put that bloody thing on?’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Couldn’t you have got one the same colour?’

‘It’s almost the same.’

‘You must be blind,’ she said, turning to collect the mugs and bowls from the table next to us.

‘I never been in this place afore,’ said Moon, looking around at the food on the other tables. ‘You from around here, Mr Barnett?’

‘Born and raised in Bermondsey,’ I told him. ‘What about you?’

‘From up country,’ he said. ‘What about you, Mr Arrowood?’

‘I’ve been here since I was twenty,’ said the guvnor. ‘How about you tell us what happened, Captain?’

‘Belasco and me kipped on the boat last night.’ Moon’s mouth was dry as flour, and his tongue made a clicking noise when he spoke. He scratched his wild orange beard. ‘Been sleeping there all week. Something woke me, maybe the good Lord himself as if he hadn’t I might have rose with the angels this morning. There was a little launch right up aside us, and two big blokes making ready to board.’

Moon stopped when Rena Willows came over and dumped the coffee and cake on the table. As the guvnor took a bite, she patted his shoulder and rubbed his back, looking down on his uneven hair and red scalp beneath. She seemed to appreciate the guvnor eating more than anything else in that coffeeshop; sometimes she’d put her elbows on the counter and just watch him gobble down a beef sandwich or shovel great spoonfuls of porridge down his hole. And the messier it got, the more she seemed to like it.

A rabbitman came in the shop and went to the counter. Rena gave the guvnor’s neck a little tickle, then lumbered over to have a look at what the fellow had.

‘Belasco gave the first one a wallop with the boathook as he tried to get aboard,’ Moon went on. His eyes seemed to crackle with anger. ‘We were shouting away anyways. When they saw there was two of us they pushed off and raced away downriver.’

‘Did you pursue them?’

Moon shook his head, his eye on the guvnor’s coffee. ‘Takes too long to get the steam up. Coffee good in here, is it?’

‘It is,’ said the guvnor. ‘Are you sure you don’t want one?’

Moon shook his head. The guvnor looked over at Rena. ‘Mug of ale for our friend, Rena, if you will.’

‘What d’you think they were going to do?’ I asked.

‘Who knows? Could put me out for good if they broke in the engine room. It’s a bad lot, Mr Barnett, it truly is.’

‘Was it Polgreen’s boat?’ asked the guvnor.

‘No. One of them new electric launches, about twenty-five foot. Brown. Name covered over with a blanket.’

‘Can you describe the men?’

‘They’d caps and scarves over their faces. I did go to the coppers again this morning. Told me to hire a guard. Seems to me they don’t want to know about half the crimes in London. Not interested least happens right in front of them.’

Rena came over with the ale: Moon drank it down in one swallow.

‘Cheers, mum,’ he said, handing the mug back to her.

‘You didn’t see Polgreen, then?’ asked the guvnor.

He shook his head.

‘You’re not as sure as Suzie that it’s him, are you, Captain?’ asked the guvnor. ‘Why?’

It took a moment for him to reply. ‘I do think it’s him,’ he said.

‘But you’re not certain. Tell us why.’

Moon shook his head. ‘I am sure. Suzie and me both.’

‘Well, if you want us to help we can. The other case is finished.’

‘Thank you, Mr Arrowood.’ Moon reached over and took the guvnor’s hand, shaking it, squeezing it. ‘You’re a gent.’

‘It’ll be twenty shillings a day,’ I said. ‘Three days in advance.’

The guvnor cleared his throat, looking out the window. Though he was greedy for money, he never liked to bargain, never even liked to ask for payment. He saw himself as better than that. He picked up his mug and blew on the coffee. He slurped it in.

Captain Moon took off his boating cap and wiped the wet from his forehead. He looked at the guvnor. ‘Any chance I could give you ten now and the rest in two day? Tickets’ve been down since this business started.’

‘Talk to me about the money, Captain,’ I said. ‘I do the bookkeeping.’

‘I will get it you,’ he said, turning to me. ‘I swear I will.’

I held his eye hard for a time.

‘You got my word, Mr Barnett,’ he said. ‘Please. It ain’t just for me, it’s for Suzie too. We rely on that boat.’

‘Ten now, another fifty in two day,’ I said at last. ‘No delay.’

Moon put his fingers in his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. He dropped them in my hand: it was exactly ten bob.

The guvnor put down his mug. ‘Now, there’s no point us threatening him again, Captain,’ he said. ‘If it didn’t work last time, there’s no reason it’d work this time.’

‘You going to hurt him?’ asked Moon.

‘That’s not how we work.’

‘It’s the only way he’s going to stop. He won’t be reasoned with. I’ve tried hard enough.’ He looked at me again. ‘Just break a bone in his arm, Mr Barnett. That’d finish it.’

‘Is that what your daughter’d want us to do?’ asked the guvnor.

‘She’s young. She don’t understand folk as we do.’

‘Is that why you came alone this time, Captain Moon?’

Moon blinked and was silent for a few moments.

‘Leave her out of this, Mr Arrowood,’ he said at last.

‘If you want us to help, you’ll have to let us do it our way,’ said the guvnor. ‘Now, when’s your next trip?’

‘Got two Gravesend runs, one on Saturday, the other Sunday. I lay her up by London Bridge tomorrow night to get an early start Saturday, then again Saturday night for the Sunday trip.’

The guvnor raised the saucer and tipped the cake crumbs into his mouth. As he sucked on them, he looked out the window at the carriages going past, pondering.

‘If he wants to drive you out of business, he’ll try to stop you going out this weekend,’ he said at last. ‘But I don’t think he’ll do it tomorrow night. It’s too busy by London Bridge. No, the chances are he’ll get to you while you’re still in the dock, and that means tonight. Since he knows you’re sleeping on the boat, he’ll no doubt bring more men this time.’

‘Want me to move her?’

Arrowood thought again.

‘No,’ he said. ‘If he can’t find the boat we’ll never get evidence it’s him. We’ll wait on board with you tonight. I’ll bring a pistol. If Polgreen isn’t with them, we’ll catch one of the men. I’m sure we can get a name out of him.’

We got the new mooring off him and arranged to meet at nine that night.

Chapter Four

The light was just starting to fade when we reached St Saviour’s Dock. On one side was a jumble of wharves, on the other a row of sooty warehouses rising straight from the brown milk of the Thames. The dock was still busy: barges queued down the neck of the inlet to unload grain at the New Concordia; lighters at the crooked landing stages were dumping their cargoes of tea and tapioca, straw and stone. Porters and carters lifted and winched and strained at trolleys, their chests grimy and wet from a long day’s work in the sun.

The Gravesend Queen was moored at a little repair yard where the neck of the inlet opened into the dock’s basin. It was a fair bit smaller than the pleasure steamers that worked the river these days, and an awful lot older. Still, it was a boat that was cared for: the brass rails and lights were polished, the hull painted a thick red, the funnel a deep green. Captain Moon stood on the sponson deck in his shirtsleeves, smoking his pipe and looking out of the dock to the busy Pool of London beyond, his face carved deep with worry. He didn’t notice us till the guvnor called his name.

He led us up to the sundeck, where he passed around a jug of ale while we talked a bit about the river. Moon tried his best to make conversation, but something was distracting him. The spark we saw that first day was gone, and he seemed blue. The guvnor lit up a cigar; I rolled a smoke. When we were all puffing away, Moon broke the silence with a long sigh. He looked at me with a nod, his mournful eyes a mess of blood vessels. He nodded again and looked away to the river.

I stood and stretched, then rested my elbows on the balustrade and looked down into the creek. The dirty streams from Jacob’s Island on one side and Horsleydown on the other opened into the dock, and the water was thick and greasy, slopping up and down the slimy bricks of the embankment walls. Around the boats floated turds and papers, dead gulls and bones. A couple of swans, too white for the dirty docks, drifted out towards the river like lost princesses.

After some time, a bloke climbed the stairs to join us. He was small and stocky, with a tattoo of crossed hammers on his arm. His eyes were too close together, and the thick tousle of brown hair on his bonce stood up straight like a hedge.

‘Belasco,’ said Moon, the relief clear in his voice. ‘Meet Mr Arrowood and Mr Barnett.’

‘These the private agents, Captain?’ asked Belasco with an odd smile across his face. He took the guvnor’s hand, then mine. His voice was high like a woman; his grip was strong.

Moon nodded.

Belasco looked us up and down. ‘Like Sherlock Holmes only cheaper, that right?’

‘Not like Sherlock Holmes at all, sir,’ said the guvnor with a twitch of his nose.

‘That’s a shame,’ said Belasco. He leant back against the balustrade, folding his arms over his chest.

‘Holmes doesn’t always solve his cases, you know,’ said the guvnor.

‘He’s solved every one I ever heard about,’ replied Belasco as Moon handed him the jug.

‘They don’t report on the ones he fails to solve. He didn’t solve the case of the Stockbroker’s Clerk. Or the Adventure of the Yellow Face.’

‘I doubt that.’

‘Watson says it himself,’ said the guvnor.

Belasco seemed to lose interest. He looked at me.

‘You’re a big bloke. You his helper, are you?’

‘Help him with his bootlaces. When he can’t reach.’

Belasco grinned. ‘Same with me and the captain, so he don’t fall in the water.’

‘Now, here’s the plan,’ said the guvnor, uninterested in our conversation. He brought out one of his friend Lewis’s pistols from his pocket. ‘We’ll hide. If they come, we wait until the first one’s on board then you two capture him. I’ll use the pistol, order the rest to unmask.’

‘What if Polgreen ain’t there?’ asked Belasco.

‘We’ll still have our prisoner. We’ll make him talk then hand him over to the police.’

‘Could get nasty,’ said Belasco, his smile widening. I couldn’t make out if he was happy or nervy.

‘Are you willing to fight, my friend?’ asked the guvnor.

‘Blooming right I am,’ answered Belasco. ‘But what if the one we capture don’t know who’s behind it?’

‘He’ll know who’s paying him at least,’ said the guvnor. ‘We’ll pick up the trail there.’

‘Here, you ain’t kin to Belasco the prize fighter, are you?’ I asked.

‘My old man.’ As he spoke, his arms hardened, his tanned chest puffed out. ‘You heard of him, then?’

‘’Course. He ever taught you to fight?’

Belasco smiled. ‘Reckon you’ll find out tonight, mate.’

I offered him my baccy pouch.

I liked Belasco.

Captain Moon got a packet of potato and onion from the engine room, and we had dinner there on the deck. He was still blue; he’d answer your questions all right, but after that he’d dry up, looking out over the water, puffing away on his pipe.

‘Where’s Suzie tonight?’ asked the guvnor, after a long stretch of silence. A warm drizzle had started to fall but we stayed out on the deck: it was a relief from the heat.

‘At home looking after the birds,’ said Moon. ‘Didn’t want her here if there’s trouble.’

‘D’you have other children?’

A long pause.

‘Had three. The Lord took them, one after the other. And the wife.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the guvnor, patting Moon’s knee in the gloom.

The captain cleared his throat and spat over the railings into the water. A couple of bats swooped and twisted above us. ‘If there is a God he’s a bad ’un, that’s for sure.’

Further up the dock, someone emptied a bucket into the water. A seagull cried on the roof of the boatyard shed. Moon got to his feet with a groan and walked over to the far side of the deck, where he stood alone at the balustrade, his back to us.

‘He lost one as a babbie,’ said Belasco real quiet. ‘Weak blood. Then another, little Katie, she had typhus. The oldest, Annabel, was took away in the fire at their rooms.’ We watched Moon’s dark silhouette, his hands gripping the rail. Belasco whispered now: ‘Mrs Moon, well she finished herself off. Couldn’t take it no more. Drank down a whole jug of paraffin.’

‘Oh, Lord,’ murmured the guvnor.

‘Suzie’s the only one he got left, see, her and his bloody birds.’

As darkness fell, the wharves started to wind up. Some of the boats drifted past us back to the river. Others laid up for the night. All around we could hear the voices of the lightermen and porters having a drink. A concertina started up over the other side, and we listened as the music filled the darkness. Then Moon, alone on the other side of the deck, began to sing. His voice was deep and handsome.

‘Oh, Reuben was no sailor

Ranzo, boys, ranzo

He shipped aboard a whaler

Ranzo, boys, ranzo

‘They took him to a gangway

Ranzo, boys, ranzo

And gave him forty lashes

Ranzo, boys, ranzo.’

As he sang, voices began to join in from the barges and lighters moored around the dock. Soon, we three also joined in, singing out to the river and the sleeping city. Though the guvnor’d been having singing lessons over the last few months, he was the only one flat, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered those few minutes was being part of that great dockside chorus.

At the end of the song the concertina went silent and the voices disappeared back into the night. Though the sky was still covered with a murky brown cloud, the rain had stopped. We had a few more swigs of the rotten ale, a few smokes, listening as hatches were shut, pisses were taken into the stinking water. After an hour or so the place was quiet.

‘Come,’ said the guvnor, climbing down the stairs. ‘Let’s get ready.’

We followed him as he inspected the main deck. The middle of the boat had a small saloon, with a walkway on either side. In front of it was the wheelhouse, and at each end of the boat were benches.

‘The two of you need to be on the water side so you can seize the first fellow who comes aboard,’ he said to Belasco and me. ‘Best sit here, against the saloon wall. Have you something we can put over you?’

‘There’s what’s left of the awning aft,’ said Belasco.

‘Fetch it, will you?’

‘Might be an idea to get a weapon too, mate,’ I said, pulling my neddy from my jacket.

Belasco came back a few minutes later dragging a heavy canvas sheet behind him, a scaling hammer tucked under his arm. We got down on deck with our backs to the low wall of the saloon and they covered us with the awning. Through the rips in the fabric I’d just be able to make out an invader on the bow; Belasco was to watch the stern. The guvnor and Moon went off to wait in the wheelhouse.

We sat there on the deck for a long while, listening to the water move around, to the clink of the boats and the rats padding about on the path. After an hour or so, Belasco whispered, ‘Can’t keep my eyes open.’

‘Nor me. What’s wrong with the captain? Something happen this afternoon?’

‘Sometimes he’s blue. Sometimes he ain’t. Just comes over him like that.’

We talked on, quiet as we could, trying to keep each other awake. He asked me where I came from. I told him about the workhouse and the court on Jacob’s Island I lived in with my ma, just up the road from where we were that night. I told him how the guvnor and me met when I worked in the law courts and he was a reporter for Lloyd’s Weekly, and about how I started helping him after we’d both lost our jobs. He told me about growing up in Wapping, about his old man, the bare-knuckle fighter Aby Belasco, about how life goes when you’re the son of a champion. I didn’t tell him how well I knew Wapping myself, just as I’m sure he didn’t tell me about those parts of his life as needed most explaining. But I knew that if we got to know each other one day we would; we came from the same world, Belasco and me.

I asked him how he started working for Captain Moon.

‘Had a job at Thames Ironworks before,’ he whispered. ‘There was a bit of trouble, a strike and all.’

‘I remember.’

‘It was a bad time, mate. Anyways, I was fitted up for thieving and out the door.’

‘Fitted up by who?’

‘Story for another time, Norman. But they put the word about to all the other shipbuilders, all the repair yards. I had my ma and uncle back at home, and me the only one able to work. Tried the docks too but there was nothing for me. We were close to losing our room. That’s when Captain Moon took me on. Didn’t know me from Adam.’

‘Did he know about the thieving?’

‘He knew.’

‘Why’d he hire you?’

‘I do not know, mate, I do not know. Perhaps he believes in giving a bloke a chance. He had the boat in the repair yard when I came in asking for work. He saw the shipwright send me packing and offered me this job there on the spot. Been working for him ever since. Thirteen or fourteen year.’

We were both tired, and the chat dried up. I must have dozed off as the next thing I knew I was woke by his hand gripping my arm.

‘They’re here,’ he whispered.

Chapter Five

Through the holes in the canvas I could just make out a dark boat moving up alongside us. All we could hear was the slip of oars through the water, then the softest thud as its side touched ours. On its deck were five figures, scarves over their faces. I gripped my neddy and held my breath.

One of them struck a match and lit a torch. A black claw rose over the gunwale and hooked itself on the top rail. The boat tipped a bit, then a dark head rose over the side. Hands appeared, and the figure hoiked itself up and onto the deck. As it stepped toward us, another head rose over the balustrade.

Belasco leapt out from under the awning. The first bloke grunted in surprise, then turned back to his boat, scrambling to get over the rail. I flew at him and grabbed his arm but the skin was all greased up and I couldn’t get a hold of him. He pulled away; I stumbled, dropping my neddy and falling to the deck as the bloke jumped over the side and into the electric launch, crashing down onto one of the men below. Yelling to rouse the guvnor, I jumped to my feet.

There was another bloke in the launch using the torch to light a rag stuffed in a bottle. Belasco was reaching over the side, cursing and shouting. He had one of them by the hair, but as he tried to pull him aboard the bloke with the bottle hurled it. It smashed against the saloon wall behind us, exploding into flames. The sky lit up, and I caught a glimpse of the men, all bare-chested, greased black and holding more bottles stuffed with rags. One of them brought down a club on Belasco’s arm, while the other three lit their bottles from the torch. As one, they launched them at us.

The guvnor burst out of the wheelhouse at the same moment one of the bottles smashed on the sun-deck above. Paraffin. Another bottle flew at the saloon windows, crashing through and spraying the floor inside with fire. The last came hurtling through the air towards me. I knew at that moment I had to get out the way but I was frozen: I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Then I felt myself knocked to the floor, with Belasco on top of me and the bottle of paraffin exploding in the pile of awning aside us.

‘Fire!’ cried Moon, ringing the bell again and again. ‘Fire! Fire!’

The flames were all around us, growing and spitting. Shouts were coming from the other boats around the dock. We got to our feet to see the villains pushing the launch away with their oars, their torch doused, the deck black again. Its engines rose; its propeller ground the water; its speed picked up.

As Moon rang the bell over and over, Belasco raced over to collect buckets from the bow, tossing them to the guvnor and me. Cinders burnt all along the deck as smoke drifted from the doors and windows of the saloon.

The guvnor held a bucket, staring up at the sun-deck where the fire was lighting the sky. I shook him hard. ‘Water! Now!’

We dropped the buckets in the creek, hoisting them them up by their ropes and turning to throw them onto the flames, Belasco and Moon doing the same up by the prow.

Watermen and bargees were climbing aboard from all parts of the dock, each with buckets of their own. Some went up to the sun-deck, others to the saloon, organized in silence like it was born into them. Chains of men and women and children passed buckets to each other, coddled in smoke and lit by the yellow of the flames. Orders were given, and the air was filled with the sound of shouts and curses, coughing and choking, the hiss of water on heat, the splash of buckets.

‘Man down!’ came a cry. A couple of women rushed past me to the prow. Through the smoke I saw them lifting Moon to his feet and putting him on a bench as he gasped and retched. While they helped him recover, I hauled up more water, chucking it onto the flames behind, the guvnor doing the same on one side, a boy wearing only a pair of shorts on the other. We worked for ten, fifteen minutes, emptying bucket after bucket, choking as the smoke ripped at our throats. My muscles ached, my eyes were blurred and flooded, yet still we hauled and chucked, hauled and chucked.

Then, slowly, it all ceased. We stood, our eyes sweeping the decks for sparks and smoulders. The air was thick with the smell of burnt wood and sewage; the decks and benches were slick and charred. I patted the boy’s back and held out my last bit of toffee for him.

‘Thanks, lad,’ I said.

His face was streaked with wet and soot.

‘Cheers, mister,’ he said, his voice quite hoarse. ‘Saved her, didn’t we?’

He limped off past the engine house to find his family.

Those who were working nearest the flames were heaving and retching with the smoke, bent double on the seats while others poured bucket after bucket of water over them, cooling them down.

‘Who was it?’ asked a grizzled old fellow in only his drawers. ‘Saw a launch tear off.’

‘Covered the name,’ answered Moon. He sat heavily on a bench, the river people all around listening. ‘Covered their number too. They tried to board last night and all.’

‘Anybody else have trouble?’ asked the guvnor through his coughs.

Nobody had.

‘Anybody see who they were?’ I asked.

‘They went past us,’ said a well-fed woman whose fellow was clutching her arm while he retched over the side. ‘Had their faces covered.’

Nobody knew anything. They stood around talking for a while, cooling down, then they shook Moon’s hand and went back to their boats.

In the still night, the captain made his way around the wet, charred boat, taking in the damage. It was hard to see just what it was like in the lamplight, but it didn’t look good.

‘That’s it, then,’ he said when he sat back down on the benches with us. He coughed. ‘We’re finished.’

‘No, Captain,’ said Belasco. ‘This ain’t going to stop us. I’ll fix her up the best I can tomorrow and we’ll take her out on Saturday just as we always do. We won’t be beat by that prick. He won’t drive us out.’

Captain Moon didn’t reply. He bent over, his elbows on his knees, and covered his face with his hands.

Chapter Six

I didn’t get back to my room in the Borough till seven that morning. The sun had already been up for a few hours and I was tuckered out, the taste of smoke still in my mouth, my eyes blurred and weeping. Mr Askell, the rent collector who lived in the ground floor rooms, was in the hallway when I opened the front door. I gave him a good morning but he ignored me: he never spoke least he was asking for money.

I paid a visit to the outhouse, then climbed the stairs, wanting nothing more than to get some kip and hoping that Lilly was really gone this time. I’d only met her a few nights ago, but she’d somehow got herself attached to my bed and I wanted it back to myself. That one room was the only place I had. But soon as I opened the door I saw her there, laid out asleep on the bed, the chamber pot full to the brim on the floor. Draped over her was Mrs B’s shawl.

I snatched it off her.

‘I thought I told you to leave.’

She opened her eyes slow, blinked, and gave me a smile.

‘Don’t go on, Norm,’ she murmured, shutting her eyes again. ‘I’ll go later.’

She turned to face the wall.

I was too tired to argue. I pulled off my boots, my stockings, my britches, and lay down next to her. For a few moments my mind turned over what had happened that night, then my eyes became heavy. Just as I started to drop off, I felt her fingers on my drawers.

I was back at Coin Street about five that afternoon. Ettie answered the door looking fed up. Her usual tight bodice was hanging loose from her skirts, the long brown hair that was always up in a knot before the baby came falling ragged down her back. There was something about Ettie that got to me, even in a state like this. I felt good just seeing her. Behind her in the parlour the child was asleep in a wooden box on the table, and by the open window sat Mrs Campbell, a friend of hers from the mission. Before Ettie went away she was one of the deaconesses working for Reverend Hebdon’s lot. She was always busy at meetings, visiting the slums of Southwark and Bermondsey, helping in the women’s sanctuary and teaching in the ragged school. But since she came back from her cousin’s with the baby, she’d been too busy to go back, and the guvnor told me that the other ladies there had cut her off. They were too proper, that was the problem. Wouldn’t have been the same where I came from, but that’s the type of lady the mission attracted. Except for Mrs Campbell, it seemed.

‘He’s not here, Norman,’ said Ettie, holding my eye in the unsettling way she always did. ‘You won’t believe what’s happened.’

She took a telegraph from the table and handed it to me.

SIR. NEED YOUR ASSISTANCE ON URGENT CASE. MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH. COME TO THE ANGEL, COVENTRY IMMED. S. HOLMES.

I read it again. It didn’t make sense.

‘Why’s Holmes asking him for help?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Ettie. ‘But the minute he read it he had his coat on and was out the door. Wouldn’t even go upstairs for an overnight bag.’

We laughed. The guvnor’d never met Sherlock, but he’d read every story Watson had written and followed all the cases in the papers. Not because he was an admirer: the fame of Sherlock Holmes made him spit and curse. He’d pick faults in every deduction that bloke made, and had bilious attacks whenever he heard his name.

‘I like your boater,’ she said. ‘Green and yellow suits you. But you must let me do that patch, Norman. It’s the wrong shade.’

‘It’s not that bad. He leave any message for me?’

‘You’re to go to the boat by yourself. He says the visit to Polgreen will have to wait until he returns.’

I wasn’t too happy to hear that. Moon and Suzie were going to a wedding party in Lewisham tonight, and the guvnor was supposed to be guarding the boat with Belasco and me. It meant it’d just be the two of us, and that wasn’t enough. It was clear after last night that this case wasn’t just about a bit of property damage; if we weren’t careful, someone would be killed protecting the Gravesend Queen.

‘Will you have some tea with us before you go, Norman?’ asked Ettie.

I sat down at the table, glad to spend a few minutes with her. She’d been away six months or so, and I’d missed her more than I had a right to. I only wished Mrs Campbell wasn’t there;

I hadn’t seen Ettie on her own since she’d come back, and I had questions to ask her. She’d refused to explain to the guvnor where the baby came from, but I wondered if she might tell me. He reckoned it might be hers; she’d been away long enough for it not to be showing when she left. If that was right, he believed the father had to be Inspector Petleigh, since he’d been courting her just afore she left. I never thought she liked the inspector much, so to me it seemed more likely it was an orphan Ettie’d taken pity on, or maybe the child of a young girl who couldn’t look after it. The guvnor’d asked her over and over, but she just wouldn’t say. It was driving him wild, and I had a feeling that somewhere in her heart she enjoyed that just a little.

Mrs Campbell smiled. ‘Are you on an interesting case, Mr Barnett? Something about a boat, I hear?’

Ettie handed out the tea while I told them about the fire the night before.

‘He looked and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed,’ said Mrs Campbell in her low, Scottish voice. ‘Exodus.’

‘Each one’s work will become manifest for the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done,’ added Ettie, a pleased sparkle in her eyes for having thought up a verse about fire in the midst of her exhaustion. ‘Corinthians.’

‘Those who do evil fear the light, Mr Barnett,’ trumped Mrs Campbell. ‘Be strong in the Lord and his mighty power.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, taking one of the ginger nuts Ettie offered me and hoping the versing was over.

Mrs Campbell was neat and proper, her blouse and skirt not long out the shop, her boots clean and polished, and she watched me close as I ate the biscuit. Colouring, I tucked up my jacket, hiding the patch.

Ettie bent over the baby and stared at it sleeping. It clucked and raised its hand. Ettie tensed. Then the hand fell. She straightened with a sigh and went over to sit at the table.

‘How is she?’ I asked. Ettie still hadn’t found the baby’s name.

‘She does what she’s supposed to.’ She smiled. ‘Quite often. Oh! There was something else he wanted me to tell you.’ She looked at Mrs Campbell. ‘Please excuse me, Mary.’

‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ answered her friend, picking up a tract as was sitting open on her lap.

Ettie cupped her hand round her mouth and whispered, ‘You’re to go to Lewis’s shop and borrow a …’ She glanced back at Mrs Campbell, who was pretending to read the tract, then made a pistol sign with her thumb and forefinger. It made me grin; she pursed her lips, trying to stay serious, and whispered again: ‘You’re to shoot in the air if the men come back. Scare them off. And you’re not to try to catch one, not until William’s back.’

I finished off my tea and stood. ‘Anything else?’

‘No, but be careful, Norman.’ She held my eye and I felt a sudden anger that Mrs Campbell was sitting there, her face now upturned. ‘Please. Don’t take any risks.’

‘I’ve the deckhand with me. He knows how to look after himself.’

There was a knock at the door. Ettie opened it to find Reverend Hebden stood there.

He removed his fine topper and greeted us, then glanced at the infant sleeping in the box. He frowned, as if he didn’t expect to see her there. His eyes fell to the floor, then rose to look at the child again.

‘Sit, please,’ said Ettie, pulling a chair from the table. ‘Would you like some tea?’

‘No, thank you. It’s only a brief visit. I … uh …’ He was staring in my direction like he wanted something out of me. He was a bit younger, though not a lot, with a fine, strong build. His topper was on his knee, his finger picking at the weave. ‘Is your brother here?’ he asked at last.

‘No,’ replied Ettie. She stood by the fireplace as if in alliance with me. ‘You said there was a matter you wanted to discuss with us?’

‘Yes, yes of course.’ He lifted his glorious head and straightened his back. ‘The mission’s grown since you’ve been away, Miss Arrowood. The men’s side is bringing in a few hundred more, and the school’s added an extra class. Pleasant Sundays have been a great success. Mrs Campbell might have told you.’

‘Yes,’ said Ettie with a tired smile. ‘Praise the Lord.’

‘We also have some new benefactors, and they’re keen to begin a medical mission.’

‘That’s wonderful,’ said Mrs Campbell, clapping her hands together.

‘You always wanted one, Reverend,’ said Ettie.

‘For His glory.’ He looked from one woman to the other. ‘I was hoping, that is the committee were hoping, that the two of you would take charge of it together. There’d be no salary at first, but when we find more subscribers we’ll be able to offer you both a stipend.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Campbell slowly, her eyes fixed on the tract in her hands. She seemed uncertain. ‘There is such a great need.’

‘You’d train the deaconesses and send them out. Ensure they had medical provisions and so on. They’d serve the area north of Paradise Street in Rotherhithe to Marygold Street in Bermondsey. You both know those parts well. We could do so much good, and bring many more back to the church. I’m truly hoping you’ll agree. You with your nursing experience, Ettie, and you with your way with the poor, Mary. You’re my most capable ladies.’

‘We’re not your ladies,’ said Mrs Campbell.

‘No, of course. I didn’t mean … I meant only—’

‘And when did you hope this would begin?’ interrupted Ettie.

‘We hope to begin training the ladies in September.’

‘I have a child to look after,’ said Ettie sharply.

Now the Reverend was surprised. He blinked and drew his head back.

Ettie raised one eyebrow and pointed at the table. ‘Or are we pretending that little thing in the box doesn’t exist?’

Mrs Campbell now coloured. She brought her teacup to her lips and had a swallow. The holy man nodded, but he didn’t look at the box.

‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘I thought a wet nurse.’

‘I’ve no money to pay for a wet nurse.’

‘Perhaps one of the girls from the sanctuary?’

‘Without being paid?’ demanded Ettie, glaring at him. ‘How dare you suggest that!’

Mrs Campbell put her cup and saucer back on the side table but missed somehow, and the cup clattered to the floor. The baby squawked.

‘Ettie, I’m so sorry,’ said Mrs Campbell, jumping from her seat. ‘I’ll get a cloth.’

The baby’s little foot jerked up above the edge of the box as it started to make unhappy noises.

‘Oh, not again, please, darling,’ said Ettie, getting to her feet.

Reverend Hebden also rose from his chair.

‘Perhaps we can discuss this another time,’ he said, just as the baby started to bawl.

On the way to the pier, I picked up a little pistol from Lewis’s shop on Bankside. It was the same one he’d given me before, battered and silver, cold in my hand and strange in my pocket. I got a bit of bread and watercress from a woman outside St Saviour’s and crossed London Bridge, through the crowds of folk chewing straw and watching the ships. It was another still, muggy evening, the sky covered with a golden cloud. I found a place to stand halfway along the bridge and watched the river as I ate, the sailing ships from all over the world anchored on both sides, their masts and rigging filling the sky in a haze of rope and wood. It was busy tonight, a line of low barges labouring upstream, the steamboats hurrying past, burping out clouds that disappeared the moment they formed. To my left the bawleys and smacks queued for Billingsgate, the seagulls flapping and crying above them. Up ahead, Tower Bridge rose like the entrance to a blue and enchanted land. The entrance to the rest of the world, I used to say to my old darling Mrs B. How she used to love coming here of a summer’s night to see all the business of the Empire and the ocean laid out before us. I shoved the last of the watercress in my gob, and just as I chucked the paper over the side I fancied I heard her laugh from somewhere in the crowd. A smile came to my lips, then just as quick I remembered the cuckoo in my room. Mrs B’d forgive me, I knew it. But I had to get that woman out of my bed.

Chapter Seven

Evening was falling when I got to Old Swan Pier. It was on the other side of the bridge, right next to Fishmongers’ Hall, and I sat on a crate by the steps as I waited for the Gravesend Queen to arrive. The pier was busy. Paddle steamers were arriving from Essex and Kent. The Clacton Belle, the Koh-i-noor, the Oriole, the Glen Rosa. Just as Suzie said, these were bigger and better boats, and I watched them dump their passengers, the children tired and complaining, the unsteady, sun-faced men, the ladies with parasols and fans.

At the top of the steps stood an old soldier playing ‘God Save the Queen’ on a tin whistle, blasting it out as he tried to be heard over the honks of the oompah band drifting down from Swan Lane. Beside him a crippled boy sat begging on a crate. His face was burnt and peeled, his eyes too big and one lower than the other like it had melted. Both arms were twisted and bent, held upwards across his wide chest, the hands drooping and useless. He wore a pair of torn shorts, his legs bare. A cap lay on the floor. When someone threw him a coin, he’d pick it up with his toes and drop the money in a bag as hung over his shoulder. He didn’t thank them, didn’t smile, just sat there gazing at the river as the children slowed to stare.

The tired families trudged up to the embankment, into the moving horde of river-people, merchants, hawkers and chancers. Among these was a little gang of dippers following a well-to-do gent who was tacking badly from the refreshment he’d had on his outing. Easy to spot for me who’d lived close to that life, but the weary day-trippers could hardly see them. The youngest was maybe six year old, a little girl wearing a ragged dress, the oldest eleven or twelve, dressed posh and in full mourning: black coat and trousers, shiny boots, a silk tie and beaver hat. The gent’s family hurried ahead, keen to get to the cabs on Upper Thames Street, leaving him staggering and stranded. The lad in mourning stood a few yards ahead, pretending to search the crowd for someone, while his gang laughed and wrestled behind the gent. When the man got near, a little boy in white britches pushed one of his mates right into the gent, who stumbled forward into the older lad. In a flash the kids disappeared, dissolved into the crowd like they were never there. That was it. The gent’s watch or purse would be gone.

The traffic was dying down when finally I saw the Gravesend Queen poke its head out from under the bridge, dodging a tug pulling a string of barges upriver. At the helm was Captain Moon, his jacket off, while Suzie stood on deck. She gave me a wave, and the boat slowed as it approached the pier, pulsing with the heavy chug of the engine. I caught the rope that Suzie threw and tied it off on a bollard. She dropped the gangway and stepped ashore.

‘Have you seen Belasco?’ she asked, retying my knot. Her dress was marked all over with soot, her hands black. Her hair was wild and tangled.

‘He ain’t with you?’

‘Dad sent him home for a rest.’

Moon appeared at the rail, his pipe in his mouth. ‘Where’s Mr Arrowood?’ he asked.

‘Called away. He sends his apologies. He’ll be back tomorrow.’

Moon frowned at Suzie. A bigger paddle steamer, approaching from the other direction, gave a long ring of its bell. ‘Shut it,’ growled Moon, glaring at it.

‘Did you manage to fix up the boat?’ I asked Suzie. It looked seaworthy enough to me, but there was no mistaking there’d been a fire. Charred stains ran up the side of the saloon wall, and the paint on the balustrade was black and bubbled.

‘Good enough, I reckon. Been cleaning all day.’

‘Could do without that wedding party tonight,’ muttered Moon. ‘Lewisham and all.’

The bell sounded again from the other paddle steamer.

‘Move off, will you!’ called out one of its deckhands. ‘We got that docking!’

‘Give us a bloody minute!’ shouted Moon, suddenly angry. He turned back to us. ‘We got to go get cleaned up, Suzie. We’re already late.’

‘What about Belasco?’ she asked.

‘He’ll be along soon. Katie’ll take him over.’

Suzie untied the rope from the bollard.

‘You best get on, Mr Barnett.’

Moon went to the helm while we pulled up the gangway, and soon we were moving to a mooring about a hundred yards out in the river. We dropped anchor next to two barges, and Suzie tied the boat to an iron piling jutting out the water. When Moon had the engines shut down, he gave a whistle and a wherry pushed off from the pier. A woman was at the oars.

‘Shame your guvnor ain’t here,’ he said as he climbed onto the little boat. ‘You’ll take some money off the fee, will you?’

‘We’ll give you an extra day, Captain. You sure Belasco’s coming?’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Suzie, already sitting in the boat. ‘He oversleeps sometimes. His missus always makes sure he gets here.’

‘Let’s get off, Katie,’ said Moon to the woman in the wherry. She cast oar and they set off toward the pier.

‘You look after our boat, Mr Barnett,’ Suzie called out. ‘And look after yourself!’

‘Just make sure you enjoy yourselves,’ I called back.

‘Oh, blimey, I wish you hadn’t said that,’ she cried over the water. ‘There’s always trouble when Dad enjoys himself!’

She had a good laugh at that.

When they were back ashore, I had a look round the boat. They’d done a fair job of cleaning it up, but there were burns on some of the benches, and the paint had been scorched off the deck. You could still smell the smoke, though maybe that wouldn’t matter tomorrow when the engine was on and pumping out black steam.

When the light began to fade, I found a jar of paraffin and lit all the lamps: one at the stern, one at the bow, two on each side. I wanted them to know there were people on board. In the saloon I found a pot with a bit of cold porridge in it. I took it on deck and ate as the darkness crept up, looking out onto the grey outlines of the wharves and warehouses lining the river. The two barges we were moored next to were derelict and we formed a little bobbing island with me as the only inhabitant. If anything happened I wouldn’t be able to get to the bank; I was never a strong swimmer, and the currents this side of the bridge were lethal.

After some time, I climbed up to the sun-deck and sat there watching out for Belasco arriving at the pier. Every time I saw a boat on the move I stood, showing myself on board, feeling the river bounce and rock under my boots until the boat passed and the water settled again. The stars came out, adding to the dim twinkle from the lamps of London Bridge.

At some point I realized Belasco wasn’t coming. I wasn’t too happy being out there on the river knowing what those blokes were capable of, not too happy at all. But I’d be all right. I’d show them the gun, fire into the air. They wouldn’t come on if they thought they’d be shot. I lit a smoke. The thing was to stay awake.

I paced the deck, examining the London skyline. On north side St Botolph’s spire, the dome of St Paul’s, the Monument. On the Surrey side Hibernia Wharf, the church of St Saviour’s, Pickford’s still working by torchlight, unloading bricks and gravel from low-slung barges, the shouts of the stevedores and bargees carrying over the water to me. Behind it would be Coin Street, where Ettie’d be sleeping with the baby in its box, I thought. And there, across London Bridge and down Borough High Street was my room, empty now, I hoped.

I lit another smoke. What was the guvnor thinking? We were in the middle of the case, for Christ’s sake. He knew it was turning out a dangerous one and the minute Holmes calls he just ups and leaves. How many times had he raged about the man’s infernal logic? How many times had he cursed Watson and his stories that he just couldn’t believe made sense? The damn fool. Holmes always made him lose his balance. He thought it’d get him in the papers, that’s why he raced off to Coventry. That’s what he always wanted, all these years we’d worked together. He wanted to be known. I hurled my butt in the water, cursing him for leaving me alone. But it wasn’t doing me any good getting vexed. I’d get through tonight. With Lewis’s pistol, I’d get through. And where the hell was Belasco? I stamped my feet and shook my head, trying to put away these thoughts running around inside me, but I was chafed, and they kept returning.

I went back to the saloon and brought up a few bottles of beer from the bar. The bells of St Saviour’s rang midnight. The moon was out now, the warehouses all shadow and glimmer. I pulled my jacket close, lit another smoke and brought the pistol out my pocket. As I held it, I remembered Ettie making the gun shape with her hand that afternoon, her face so serious. I smiled. Time passed. I must have fallen into myself a bit, as I was suddenly brought to by a loud rending noise and men shouting. Fearful the boat had been damaged, I ran to the other side.

I saw it straight away: between me and the pier was a lighter almost split in half and sinking fast. Two blokes held onto the sides, their bodies in the water, crying out. I pulled a lifebuoy from the rail and hurled it, but it didn’t get halfway. Jumping down to the main deck, I rang the bell, hoping to rouse someone from the embankment. I dashed back to the gunwale, shouting for help. One half of the lighter tipped up straight, then was sucked under by the black water. It was then I saw a third head in the river, drifting away with the current. I rang the bell over and over.

Shouting now came from the piers and a police galley pushed out, its long oars chopping the river. Bells began to sound ashore too, raising the alarm. I heard the grunt of a steam engine downriver and ran to the stern, waving my arms and yelling. A little boat lit by three silver lights was coming under the bridge, heading upriver. For some moments it kept on course, then I saw it turn towards me. A fellow appeared on deck and waved. I beckoned the boat over, watching as it turned just too late to catch the lone person drifting in the current. I yelled at them, pointing, and saw the steamboat turn again, slow, too slow, then picking up speed and chasing after the bobbing head as it passed through the bridge and into the Pool.

The other half of the lighter was gone underwater now, and the two blokes wailed as they swam in the black ooze. Their arms were heavy and slow, and for every stroke they took towards the bank the current took them further downriver. The ogglers in the police galley were heaving at their oars, moving out into the stream as the two blokes were pulled by the current towards the arches of the bridge, where water jumped and foamed at the buttresses. I shouted at the coppers; the patrol boat turned to try and cut them off, but it was clear it’d never reach them fast enough.

Seconds later the two men were carried under London Bridge by the rushing tide, past the steamboat that was stopped still now, the folk on board yelling and holding torches out over the water. But the lone head had gone, disappeared into the thick water. The cries of the other two men were weak and pitiful now, like they’d just about given up.

Then, as bells rang out from every wharf and pier around, a dredger came lumbering out from Billingsgate. I watched through the arches as it moved side-on into the current like a great, drifting wall, the folk on board leaning over the side with boathooks, angling to catch the two men. Finally, just before the boat disappeared behind the arches of the bridge, they snagged them.

I fell onto a bench, a great tiredness come over me. Feared I’d fall asleep, I rose again and took up my weary march.

Chapter Eight

I walked up and down that boat all night. The bells rang the quarter hour, the half-hour, the hour. I filled the lamps with paraffin and lit them again. The tide went down, making the air heavy with mud stink, then crept up again. Sometimes a boat would drift past, and each time I tensed and gripped the gun. When the sun finally warmed the sky over the Monument, my body was heavy, my spirit in a daze. Quickly, the river got busy again, and by the time the five o’clock bell rang at Billingsgate the eel-boats and shrimpers were already bobbing on the other side of the bridge, waiting to unload. Only then did I sit down to rest.

Just after seven, Suzie and Captain Moon pulled up in the wherry and climbed aboard. Suzie was fresh, her eyes bright. She drew a carrot and a couple of rusks from her basket and handed them to me. The captain looked like he hadn’t slept: his broad face was grey, his eyes yellow. His trousers were creased and stained.

‘They come?’ he growled, his face screwed up against the pain of the sun.

‘No,’ I told him. ‘How was your do?’

Moon ignored me and shuffled off to the engine house.

‘Too much brandy last night,’ said Suzie, watching his sorry shape clutching the rail as if he’d unbalance. ‘Couldn’t lie down without holding on.’

‘Can he take the helm like that?’

She shook her head as she lowered a bucket over the side. ‘Belasco’ll take over if he gets wretched.’

‘He never came last night.’

‘Oh, Lord. Sorry, Mr Barnett. He’s never done that before.’ She pulled up the rope. ‘You go and rest. Have your breakfast.’

She threw the water over the deck, then pushed it back and forth with a broom. I sat up on the sun-deck and had my breakfast. Barges and lighters were queuing at the wharves on the Surrey side, while a few early steamers heavy with day-trippers headed up to Hampton Court and Windsor. I watched the piermaster carry a crate from his cabin, climb the stairs, and put it down at the pier entrance. He came back down to talk to one of the captains. A few minutes later the crippled boy limped over and sat on the crate. He let his cap fall off his head onto the floor, moving it into place with his toes. Soon after, the piermaster climbed back up the stairs. The crippled boy bent his leg up and poked about in his shoulder bag with his foot, pulling out a muffin between his toes. Without a word passing between them, the piermaster took it, nodded, and ate it as he climbed back down to the pier.

When I’d finished my own sorry meal, I lay down for a snooze, only waking when the paddles started to turn below. Suzie raised the anchor and the boat began to drift towards the pier, where there was an empty space next to a steamer twice the size of ours, its red and black funnel spitting out steam. A queue of well-dressed families waited in line to board her.

Suzie threw the rope down to a bloke who was waiting by the bollards. As he tied off the boat, she let out the gangway and stepped down to talk to him. He was fifty or so, a pair of long pointed shoes on his feet but his britches too short, a solid round belly, a pink and green waistcoat with pictures of the hunt on it. Half his collar had come loose from his shirt.

‘This is Ken, Mr Barnett,’ said Suzie when I’d climbed down. ‘He sells our tickets.’

‘You’re the private agent, are you?’ asked the bloke as we shook hands. He was clean-shaven but for a long, curled moustache. He spoke loud and bold like he owned the place.

‘One of them. You got many passengers today?’

‘Twelve. But there’s still two hour. Any bother last night?’

I shook my head.

A cry came from the other side of the boat, then a great splash.

‘Dad!’ yelled Suzie, turning and bounding up the gangway with us close behind. ‘Dad!’ she shouted again as she leapt aboard and raced through the saloon.

When we reached the other side, we found Moon sat on a bench, his mouth open, his eyes wide with fear.

‘What is it, Dad?’ asked Suzie, taking his shoulder.

He pointed at a thin rope tied to the balustrade, his hands wet with black ooze.

The three of us peered overboard into the thick brown water, where the rope disappeared. Suzie frowned and looked back at her old man.

‘That ain’t our rope,’ she said. ‘You pull it up?’

Moon shut his eyes and burped. He bent forward, resting his arms on his knees, moaning under his breath. His cap slipped off and fell at his feet.

‘You going to be sick?’ demanded Suzie, her voice harder than I’d heard it before.

Moon shook his head.

She looked over the side again. ‘There’s another up there,’ she said, pointing towards the bow where a thicker rope stretched down the hull and into the water. She took the thin rope in her hands.

‘You put that down!’ barked Moon.

She stopped, staring at him, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I was only—’

‘Down!’ he bellowed.

‘Let me, Suzie,’ I said, taking it from her. The rope was slick, covered all over with a stinking, tarry mud. I pulled it hand over hand until something burst out the water. It was a brownish, yellowish thing like a big egg, the rope tied through a hole in the shell.

‘What the hell is that?’ asked Ken.

I kept pulling. Then, as the thing rose up the boat, another one appeared in the brown water, tied a few feet further down the rope. As it broke the surface, it rolled on its side.

Suzie gasped.

I stopped pulling and stared.

It was a skull. The eye holes were plugged with black mud, the teeth little and bright. The rope ran through where the nose should be. Only now could we see that the first one was also a skull.

‘Oh, Christ,’ murmured Ken.

Suzie’s fingers dug into my arm. ‘Dad,’ she whispered.

I pulled again. After a few more feet of rope another skull appeared, this one a bit bigger. I felt like I was floating somehow, that I was outside my body looking on. I paused to steady myself, then pulled again. A couple of feet later another appeared. Then another. When the first skull reached me, I lifted the little thing over the rail. It was light and cold, its jaw broke off, a brown stain covering one side of its dome.

Suzie stepped back, her hand covering her mouth. It was a child. I placed it on the deck and drew up more of the rope, feeling a cold fury fill me as skull after skull came up from the water.

Finally, I laid the last one down and stood back, the grey Thames slick pooling at our feet, the coil of filthy children’s skulls like a monstrous necklace. I looked at them each in turn, wondering who they were, those little, dissolved lives. I thought of my sister, dead at five, my niece Emily whose dress caught fire when she was four and burned her black, and the twins we shared a room with, taken by the river at three. In the workhouse and the courts of Jacob’s Island, little nippers were just queuing to join the angels. I turned away.

Moon’s jaw trembled as he looked at the chain of skulls. His eyes were shot through with blood. His mouth hung open.

‘You were here,’ said Suzie to me, her voice quiet.

‘Nobody came near.’ I rubbed the greasy black ooze on my britches, my voice rough and cracked. ‘I was awake all night. Walking up and down.’

‘Well, it weren’t here last night,’ she said. ‘I cleaned that rail.’

‘You must’ve fallen asleep,’ said Ken.

I shook my head.

‘This side was next to the barges,’ said Suzie. We all looked out into the river to where the Gravesend Queen was moored the night before. The two barges were still there, rocking gentle in the wake of a tug chugging upriver. ‘Ain’t nobody on them overnight, is there, Dad?’

Moon didn’t seem to hear. His eyes were fixed on the skulls, his trembling hands gripping the sides of his head.

‘I suppose someone could’ve been hid in one of the cabins,’ I said after a while. ‘Wouldn’t have taken long to tie the rope on when I was on the other side of the boat, but I’d have heard them leaving. I’d have noticed.’

‘They might be still be there waiting for us to go,’ said Suzie.

We watched the sleepy black barges rolling up and down with the lap of the water. Gulls stood about on the furthest one, but there was no other sign of life.

‘I’ll get out there and have a look,’ I said. ‘But first let’s get the other rope up. No point in drawing this out.’

I walked alone down to the rope at the bow. There I shut my eyes and breathed in slow. I would have prayed too if I thought it’d make the rope disappear. I took in another deep breath, hardened my heart, and pulled.

It barely moved. I pulled again, this time with my whole body. It rose a few inches, no more. Whatever was on the end of this rope was heavy. I wiped the sweat from my face, cursing Belasco for not being here to help. Where was that prick? Why the hell hadn’t he turned up? Suzie came over by my side. I braced and pulled again. The water below was thick and brown, bits of paper and sticks and sewage bobbing and drifting in it like workhouse soup. Suzie got her hands on the rope and we pulled again.

We pulled again.

There was something just below the surface now, a mess of bladderwrack, its tangle drawn by the current. Something blurred and yellow was below it. We pulled again. The thing broke the surface and a groan fell out of my mouth. It wasn’t bladderwrack, it was hair. Long hair floating in the water.

It was a head.

A woman’s head.

‘Help us, Ken!’ snapped Suzie.

He stepped over and took the end of the rope. We hoisted again.

The rope formed a noose around the dead woman’s neck as she rose inch by inch from the water, her head tipping down, her arms hanging heavy at her side.

‘Oh Lord, no,’ murmured Suzie. I could feel her arms shaking on the rope behind me. We heaved again and again, the body inching its way up the gunwale, Ken grunting with each pull. The higher it got, the heavier she became.

We heaved again, but the weight was too much now and the rope slipped from my hand. Suzie and Ken couldn’t keep hold either, and the body fell back into the water.

‘Get help, Ken,’ I told him.

He ran off. Suzie stood staring at the body floating just under the surface, her breath short and fast. Her face was rolling with sweat, her eyes pink like she had a fever.

‘You go sit down,’ I told her. ‘Look after your old man.’

She nodded and stepped back, sitting down next to Moon. He sat hunched over, his elbows resting on his legs, watching the floor. She touched his hand but he made no response. She stood again, stepped over to the rail, wiped her hands on her dress.

‘This is my boat, Mr Barnett,’ she said at last.

We stood by the rope saying nothing until Ken came back with the piermaster. The four of us took up the rope and heaved. The head broke the surface again, and we worked the body up the side of the boat, pull after pull. The woman wore a long brown nightdress, torn and tattered. When she was almost clear of the water, I saw there was something tied to her ankle. We pulled again and her foot broke the water. It was a hand. A hand tied to her ankle.

‘No,’ whispered Suzie. ‘Please, God, not another.’

‘Let it go,’ said Ken with a cough. ‘We need the Old Bill.’

‘Keep pulling,’ I grunted, wanting it over now. ‘Let’s get them out.’

Again we heaved at the rope. The woman’s head was now level with the rail. Her hair was long and curled, soaked in the filthy water. Her face was white as goose fat, her tongue grey and poking out her mouth like a third lip. She glared at me with crimson eyes, as if it was me who’d done this to her.

We could now see the freckled arm of a second woman rising out the water. We pulled again. Her head broke from the water, her face tipped down, her hair tufted and short, her neck bruised black. The undershirt she wore was made for a man, both its sleeves torn off.

As the other three took the strain, I grabbed the first woman under the arms and pulled her sodden body on board, feeling her cold skin on my hands, her dead meat. She slid onto the deck and rested there on her back, her head tilted to the side. The water streamed out of her. The front of her nightdress was ripped, the wet fabric around it stained pink. Though the folds and ruck of the material covered most of the damage, I could see her belly’d been cut open. The second woman was bent double over the rail now, her undershirt snagged on a curl in the ironwork. Suzie, Ken and the piermaster came over to take the rope at the balustrade, where it led back into the water. I freed the second woman and she fell aboard, her head resting upon the first woman’s belly. Quick as I could I pulled her torn shirt tight over her body, hoping Suzie hadn’t seen the skin slashed open on her belly too, her muscles and innards purple and grey, washed and bloodless. She was smaller, three-quarter size. Her starry eyes looked up at us, an uncertain smile on her face like she’d just done a joke and wasn’t sure we’d laugh.

‘Help us, Mr Barnett,’ said Suzie. Tears ran down her cheeks as she and Ken and the piermaster strained to keep hold of the rope. It was looped around the first woman’s neck, then around her ankle and the second woman’s hand, and from there fell taut into the water. We pulled again. A bald man’s crown now rose from the river, a great, bruised dent across the back of his head. His ears were gone, and in their place were ragged wounds, pink and white and brown. Though he was heavy we pulled quicker: he was the last.

When his shoulders were level with the balustrade, I hauled him over and he fell in a ball, his bruised yellow head on the floor like a Mohammedan at prayer. He wore nothing but a long white shirt.

Suzie was on her knees, panting. Ken dropped onto a bench, his eyes fixed on the bodies, convulsions running through his limbs.

‘I’ll find a copper,’ said the piermaster, his voice dull. He shuffled off through the saloon.

I held on tight to the rail, trying to catch my breath, unable to take my eyes off the three slippery bodies sleeping on the deck. They hadn’t been in the water long. I’d been there when my Uncle Norbert’s body was pulled from the river back when I lived on Jacob’s Island, and they didn’t look anything like him. I looked over at Moon, still hunched over, still refusing to look.

‘Who are they, Captain?’ I asked.

He made no reply.

‘You’ve got to tell me now,’ I said, the anger rising in my voice. ‘What’s going on? Who are those people?’

‘Dad?’ asked Suzie.

Moon shook his head, covering his face with his hands.

‘Suzie, what do you know about this?’ I asked, turning to her. ‘Who are they?’

‘I don’t know, Mr Barnett. I swear it. I don’t know anything about this.’

For some time nobody spoke.

‘Look,’ said Suzie, climbing to her feet. She was pointing out into the stream.

Out near last night’s mooring was Polgreen’s boat, its engine chugging, its paddles holding it still against the current. On its deck stood the foreigners. And they were watching us.

Chapter Nine

The father, the mother, the son, all in a row, their hands on the rail. Suzie and Moon did nothing. They just sat there on deck watching the Polgreen family watching them.

‘Were they at the barges?’ I asked.

Suzie shook her head. ‘They come from upriver just now. Stopped when they saw us.’

Polgreen took his wife’s arm and pulled her into the wheel room. The lad stood frozen, unable to take his eyes off the bodies. We heard their engines change gear; the paddles started to churn the water. The boat moved off.

‘I need to check the barges,’ I said. ‘Ken can come with me. Suzie, pull up the gangway and don’t let anyone on board until the coppers come.’

She wiped the tears from her face and nodded. ‘Wait here, Dad,’ she said, patting Moon’s knee. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

The pier was even more crowded now: families were queuing for the Koh-i-noor, the women in frilly lace dresses and bonnets, the children running around laughing, excited to be getting on the water. The men wore boating jackets and straw hats and white britches, while a few dogs stood panting by their owners. A bloke who looked a bit like Ken went between them selling parasols and cures for seasickness.

Another shorter queue was starting to form by the Gravesend Queen. These were the East End day-trippers. Their bonnets were simpler, their dresses coarser and less frilled, their suits old and plain, and not a white trouser-leg to be seen. Their kids laughed and ran too, but the two sets of children kept away from each other, already knowing their place.

Ken and me got Kate, the wherry woman who’d taken Moon and Suzie the day before, to row us out to the barges. They were empty, stripped of sails and rigging, boughs and booms. The only sign of life was the gulls who’d claimed them as their shit-spattered slum. Just as we were climbing back onto the pier, the guvnor came shuffling through the crowds.

‘Ah, there you are, Barnett,’ he said. He was tired, a defeated look on his face. His cheek glistened with damp. Noticing my shirt and britches wet and messed with river mud, his brow wrinkled.

‘You’d better go aboard and see what we just pulled out of the water,’ I said.

Usually he’d ask what was going on, but seeing my face so grim he simply turned and picked his way through the queues. I followed him aboard, then waited by the gangway while he disappeared into the saloon. I rested my hands on the rail, watching the crippled boy sat on his crate at the top of the embankment stairs as he picked up a coin with his foot and dropped it in his bag. He was some kind of contortionist, that was sure. The boy pickpocket in full mourning dress came along and started to talk to him. The little dipper slapped the cripple’s twisted arm. The beggar kicked out at him. They laughed like it was the best game in London.

After five minutes, the guvnor returned to my side of the boat. He looked at me, the colour gone from his face.

‘What the hell are we dealing with here, Norman?’

He listened careful as I told him about the night before, asking about everything, every little detail. I knew he would, and I’d tried to repeat as much of it back to myself so I wouldn’t forget. He didn’t try to explain why he’d left the day before, and I didn’t ask him what he’d been up to. That could wait.

‘There’s something more behind this, Barnett,’ he said. ‘Why would Polgreen commit three murders just to put Moon out of business? Easier to sink the boat.’

‘It’s a police case now, sir.’

He nodded, his eyes scanning the pier. Spotting Katie lounging in her wherry, he climbed down and approached her.

‘Have you been here all morning, ma’am?’ he asked.

‘On and off,’ she said sharpish. Her tattered purple hat was pulled low over her eyes. She looked bored.

‘Did you see anything unusual? Anyone suspicious?’

She shook her head. ‘Pier’s always packed at the weekend. I just let them get on with it.’

‘What about last night?’

She nodded at me. ‘Saw him get aboard. Saw the Moons leave.’

‘Did you see anyone else approach the boat?’

She shook her head. ‘I went home soon after.’

The piermaster was coming down from Swan Lane with two coppers. I led them up the gangway to the saloon, where Moon sat next to Suzie. When I’d answered his questions, the sergeant sent his constable off to find a detective.

‘You all stay in here while I inspect the boat,’ he told us, and for fifteen minutes we watched him through the window as he stood looking at the bodies, wandered up and down the deck, rested his arms on the balustrade and inspected London Bridge. Then he lit his pipe and sat on a bench, staring out over the water at the wharves and warehouses of Southwark. As he was inspecting it all, the young copper returned.

‘I’ve brought the detective, sir,’ we heard him say.

‘Good Christ,’ said the guvnor. ‘What the hell’s he doing here?’

In the saloon window had appeared Inspector Petleigh of the Southwark Police. There was a lot of history between the guvnor and him, some of it good, some of it bad. For the moment, what with the chance he was maybe the father of Ettie’s baby, he was one copper we took no pleasure in seeing.

The sergeant led him round to where the bodies lay on the bow. After they’d had a good look, Petleigh nodded, turned, and came into the saloon.

When he saw us, he groaned.

‘I knew it was you two,’ he said in his clipped, nervy voice. ‘As soon he told me there were private agents I knew it.’

I glared at him.

‘How’s your wife, Petleigh?’ demanded the guvnor. ‘Happy? Well fed?’

‘She’s fine, since you ask.’

‘Did you ever get that divorce you were talking about?’

‘I’m not here to talk about my marriage,’ snapped Petleigh, his cheeks colouring.

‘What the hell are you doing here? This isn’t your parish.’

‘I’ve been assigned to the City Police for a few months. Both of their detectives are out of action.’

‘Why the blazes do we always get you?’ exclaimed the guvnor, throwing his hands in the air. ‘We might as well give up now!’

Petleigh’s eyes narrowed. He stroked his neat, waxed moustache. ‘Control yourself, William. Now, tell me what you’re doing here. What case are you working on?’

The guvnor glared at him.

‘Well?’ demanded Petleigh.

Finally, the guvnor explained it to him. As he spoke, Petleigh wrote notes in a little blue book. When he’d finished, he looked at Moon.

‘So you think it’s this Polgreen chap, Captain?’

Moon blinked like he was startled by the question. Then his face darkened. He looked at Suzie.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said when it was clear her old man wasn’t about to speak.

‘D’you recognize the bodies, Captain?’ asked Petleigh.

Moon shook his head and sighed deep.

‘He’s in shock,’ said the guvnor.

‘Miss Moon?’ asked Petleigh, looking at her with his sly eyes.

‘No, sir.’

‘What about the children’s skulls, do they mean anything to you?’

It was hot in the saloon, and Petleigh seemed to have a kind of skin-coloured powder caked on his forehead. Little cracks were appearing in it, where wet came out and ran down to his eyebrows.

Suzie shook her head.

‘Captain Moon?’ asked Petleigh.

Moon was still as a statue for a moment, then he shook his head. He didn’t look up.

‘Dad?’ asked Suzie.

Again he shook his head.

‘The sergeant says the deckhand’s gone missing,’ said Petleigh, tapping his pencil on his teeth. ‘D’you have his address?’

Suzie gave it him. He wrote it down, then looked out at the pier. ‘Ah. The police surgeon’s here. Please remain inside until we’ve finished.’ He looked at the guvnor. ‘All of you.’

Arrowood waited a few moments while Petleigh showed the police surgeon the bodies. Then, having lit a cigar, he got up and went out on deck, watching as the doctor did his work. After a few minutes, he came back into the saloon.

‘Well, they didn’t die by drowning. Both women were stabbed in the belly and chest. The man has head injuries from a blunt instrument.’

The guvnor took Moon by the shoulder. ‘Captain. Listen to me.’

Moon didn’t seem to hear him.

‘Captain Moon!’ The guvnor gave him a shake.

At last Moon looked up.

‘What do those skulls mean to you, Captain?’

The black of Moon’s eyes shrunk, and for a moment there was hatred in his wind-burnt face.

‘Fourteen skulls. Tell me what they mean.’

Moon shook off the guvnor’s hands and stood, walking to the open door facing onto the pier. There he brought out his pipe, his hand shaking. Four times he broke his match trying to light it. In a howl of despair, he wrenched the pipe from his mouth and hurled it off the boat.

Petleigh stepped back into the saloon.

‘We’ve sent the constable for a cart,’ he said. ‘This is a police matter now, William. Find yourself another case. If I have further questions I’ll send for you.’

‘We’re still engaged by the Captain to find who’s been damaging the boat,’ said the guvnor. ‘You cannot object to that, surely?’

‘You’re off the case and that’s final. Now, please go ashore.’

The guvnor puffed furiously on his cigar as he glared at Petleigh. ‘Are you the father?’ he asked at last.

‘That what?’

‘The father! Don’t act dumb, Petleigh. Are you?’

‘The father of who?’

‘Just tell me.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Ettie’s child! Are you?’

‘What d’you mean, Ettie’s child?’

For some time they glared at each other.

‘What child are you talking about?’ asked Petleigh again.

‘That’s the way you’re going to play it, is it?’

‘Oh, I can’t be bothered with this,’ said the inspector with a wave of his hand. ‘Get off the boat. Now!’

‘Ettie’s well,’ said the guvnor. ‘Fine and healthy the both of them, Inspector, in case you were wondering.’

Petleigh blinked. He touched his moustache. His face loosened.

‘That’s good,’ he said, and stamped back out on deck.

Chapter Ten

We walked down Lower Thames Street, through the mayhem of porters and wagons outside Billingsgate, past Custom House and around the great grey walls of the Tower, the guvnor wheezing and complaining about his feet all the way. After the bridge, we wound our way through St Katherine’s Dock and over the basin lock. The deeper we went into Wapping, the darker it became, the high walls of the dockyards rising over the slouching buildings, shutting out the sun. As we marched down the busy high street lined with provisions shops, ship chandlers, missions and pubs, we could hear languages from all the continents of the world. I’d spent a lot of time in these streets when I was sixteen or seventeen, trying to earn a crust when my ma was laid up at home. It was a seafaring neighbourhood, and money ran through its calloused hands like water. Money I’d do just about anything to get my own hands on.

Belasco’s home was on a dirt alley behind the High Street, two doors down from a pub where red-faced Russians stood sweating and swearing on the street. It wasn’t such a well-off alley but not a slum either. Kids were everywhere, hanging out windows, sitting on doorsteps, running up and down after a ball of paper and string. A few old folk sat on stools, watching the nippers. Through the windows you could see women working: sewing collars and sacks, pressing clothes, gluing matchboxes, boiling up shrimp and sheep’s trotters.

The door to Belasco’s building was open. Inside, the corridor was dark, the floorboards bare and dusty. Just past the staircase was another door, also open, and there was Belasco, asleep on a mattress on the floor.

We walked in. He had a poultice tied to his head with a bit of rag, dried blood crusted round his ear. His thick brown hair was hard and stuck together.

‘What d’you want?’ asked a woman coming out from the gloom at the back of the room.

She was maybe ten year older than Belasco, with a growth on the side of her chin and a hard look in her eye.

‘Mrs Belasco?’ said the guvnor. He gave a bow. ‘I’m Mr Arrowood. This is Mr Barnett. We’re here to see your husband.’

She nodded, the hardness in her face turning into a smile.

‘I heard of you.’

‘Your husband didn’t arrive for work last night. We were worried.’

‘And you can see why,’ she said with a nod. ‘Got clouted, didn’t he?’

Belasco slept on.

‘When?’ asked the guvnor.

‘On his way home yesterday afternoon. Been drinking, of course. Mate of his brung him back. Didn’t Captain Moon get my message?’

‘No, ma’am,’ I said.

‘I sent a boy. Paid the bloody rascal.’

I dropped to my knee and gave Belasco a poke. He grunted, so I poked him harder. ‘Wake up, mate.’

His eyes opened. It took him a few moments to see straight, then he raised himself on an elbow.

‘Norman. Mr Arrowood.’

‘What happened to you?’ I asked.

He sat up proper, leaning his back against the wall. I could see one of his arms was bruised and swollen. He felt the bandage on his head, wincing.

‘Blimey, that hurts.’

I pulled out my box of Black Drop and tossed it to him.

‘Cheers, Norman,’ he said, dropping a few of the pellets in his mouth and swallowing. He spoke slow. ‘I was just leaving the pub. Some bloke come up behind and coshed me.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Didn’t see him. I was out like a lamp. Lucky my mate came out else I don’t know what else the bloke would’ve done. He ran off, anyways.’

‘Did your friend see him?’

‘Only from behind.’ Belasco shook his head. ‘Bughunters. They work the area. I’d had a few mugs of gin. Weren’t too steady on my feet.’

Mrs Belasco brought over four mugs of tea and handed them round. There were only two chairs. A little table was piled high with lengths of cotton and half-made shirts. Another straw mattress was leant against the wall.

‘Something else happened to the boat last night,’ said the guvnor, having a swallow of his tea. ‘Someone tied two ropes to the gunwale. One had children’s skulls knotted on.’

‘What?’ asked Belasco.

‘Children’s skulls. Fourteen.’

Belasco shook his head, his face pale. His wife stared at the guvnor, her mug of tea frozen in the air just before her open mouth.

‘The other rope was tied to three corpses. Two women and a man.’

‘Come off it, Mr Arrowood.’

‘The police are there now,’ said the guvnor.

Belasco looked at him for some time. Several times he seemed about to say something, but each time he didn’t. Finally, he asked, ‘Suzie didn’t see it, did she?’

‘She saw everything.’

‘So it’s murder now,’ said Belasco, pushing himself to his feet. ‘Jesus bloody Christ.’ He found his britches and pulled them on. Seeing him struggle with only one good arm, his wife went over to help him.

‘The skulls must mean something,’ said the guvnor. ‘Can you remember anything you’ve seen, anything you’ve heard? It doesn’t matter how obscure. Something the captain might have said. Or Suzie.’

Belasco shook his head. ‘It don’t make sense. Lord, they must be out of their minds about it. Where are they? Still on the boat?’

‘Yes,’ said the guvnor, slurping his tea. ‘The police want to speak to you.’

‘’Course.’ Belasco took his shirt from the floor. ‘I’ll go now.’

‘You ain’t well enough,’ said his wife.

‘Captain needs me.’

‘Wait a moment, my friend,’ said the guvnor. ‘There’s more to this than just driving the Gravesend Queen out of business. If it is Polgreen then there’s something else behind it, something more personal. He wouldn’t risk being hanged just to gain the Gravesend run for himself. Can you remember anybody who might have a feud with the captain? Anyone at all?’

Belasco stuck his feet in his boots and bent to do up the laces. ‘I been thinking about it since this thing started, but there’s nobody. He talks away with me and Suzie when he’s not blue, but he keeps his distance from just about everyone else. Most folk don’t even notice him.’

‘What d’you know of his life before he took you on?’

‘He never talks about it. I only know about his wife and kids from Suzie.’

‘Did you ever ask him?’

‘Few times, but he don’t like to look back, he says. I know he had another steamer, but that’s all.’

‘The name?’

‘I don’t know.’ As he talked, Belasco struggled to get his swollen arm into his greasy shirt. His wife helped him get it on, tuck it in. He picked up some coins from the table, spooned a bit of porridge in his mouth. ‘Don’t even know the route. I did ask him but he always says the past’s the past.’

‘What about his friends?’ asked the guvnor. ‘D’you know any?’

‘There’s a fellow in Gravesend he sees when we’re waiting for the return trip. Has his dinner with him. Curtis. Lives somewhere near the high street.’

The guvnor scribbled it in his notebook.

‘Any others?’

‘I never heard him mention anyone else.’ Something came over him as he spoke and his eyes did a flutter. He clutched the doorframe. I got up to help him, leading him to my chair where he sat heavily, holding his head in his hands.

‘What is it, darling?’ asked his wife, laying her palm on his back.

‘Just come over dizzy,’ he mumbled. Then, real quick, he reached for the chamber pot and spewed up the tea he’d just swallowed. Then came another spurt of a different colour.

Mrs Belasco gave him a rag for his mouth. ‘You’d better stay home today, mate.’

Belasco shook his head. Holding the back of the chair, he rose slowly. ‘I’m all right now. Must’ve needed to get that out.’ He leant over and kissed her.

‘You be careful,’ she said.

‘’Course,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the detectives with me, ain’t I?’

Chapter Eleven

It was midday when we got back to the pier. On the boat, we found the Moons still sitting in the saloon, while Petleigh and the constable waited on deck, guarding the bodies against the gulls circling above. Belasco strode over to Suzie and gripped her arms.

‘Suzie,’ he murmured.

Her eyes glazed like tears were about to come. They didn’t. She pulled away.

‘Where was you?’ she asked sharply.

He pointed to the grey bandage on his head. ‘Got knocked out last night. Don’t know who by.’

‘You was drinking.’

Belasco looked at Moon, who sat staring out the window. ‘How is he?’

‘He won’t talk. His nerves is gone.’

Petleigh poked his head through the door. ‘Are you Mr Belasco?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Could you come over here and look at the bodies?’

We followed Belasco onto the deck, where the three corpses had been laid out on their backs. A seagull stood on the smaller woman’s arm, trying to pull out a little purple sweetbread from the wound in her belly. Petleigh yelled and clapped his hands. Vexed, the gull beat its monstrous wings and rose, hovering above the bodies and shrieking back at the copper. Then, in an instant, it twisted and shot off across the river.

The guvnor turned away, his belcher to his mouth. The tall woman still had the bit of rope round her ankle where she’d been tied to the other one. Her bloody eyes, dried out in the sun, stared dully into the blue like week-old herring. Over the deck spread her tangled hair, run through with sticks and straw, knotted with bits of black river grease. They’d closed her nightdress over her belly, giving her a bit of dignity. The guvnor coughed, then turned back. Next to the big one the little one was laid out, her undershirt ripped almost in half. This hadn’t been arranged for her modesty, and we could see her belly torn open, the ragged purple muscle and pipes washed clean of blood by the river and now baking in the summer heat. Her innards seemed to be full of animal parts, sheep’s ballocks and pigs’ livers and bits of calves’ brains. On the deck next to her lay the sweetbread the gull had been trying to pull out, a spleen or something, a thin blue tube leading back inside her. Her hands were open on the deck, the palms facing the sun and one finger sticking up queer like a prick. Her head twisted towards the other woman, her starry eyes bright, her lashes glinting with river salt.

Next to her the man lay on his back. His head was clean-shaven, smooth and yellow like he was made of butter, spoiled only by the ragged wounds where his ears should be.

‘They call those butcher’s earmuffs in the criminal world,’ said Petleigh.

A long shirt covered the dead man down to his thighs; below that he was bare. Petleigh nudged a baby eel twitching on the floor next to him.

‘We pulled that out of his backside.’

The guvnor flitched.

‘D’you know these people, Mr Belasco?’ he asked.

‘No, Inspector.’

‘Customers?’

‘Can’t remember ever seeing them.’

‘Acquaintances of Captain Moon?’

‘No, sir.’

‘What did the surgeon say about the skulls?’ asked Arrowood.

‘Children, all different ages, died anywhere between five and a hundred years ago, he thinks.’ Petleigh brought out his snuff box and had a toot. His eyes watered. He sneezed. ‘Dug up from somewhere. Though why anyone would do that I do not know.’

‘It’s a message, for goodness’ sake,’ snapped the guvnor. ‘A child could’ve worked that out.’

‘I know it’s a damn message, William.’

‘It didn’t sound like it.’

‘Why are you so short-tempered today? Haven’t you been sleeping well?’

The guvnor glared at Petleigh: it seemed like the inspector was provoking him.

‘I’m short-tempered because we’ve just discovered fourteen children’s skulls and three corpses,’ said the guvnor through clenched teeth, ‘and this family are being ruined by somebody. My Lord, you’re a cold fish, Petleigh. Where’s your damn heart?’

‘I keep it at home when I’m called to a murder. Otherwise I couldn’t do this—’

‘At home!’ barked the guvnor, stiffening. His damp brow drew down over his eyes, his swollen nose flushed with blood. ‘With your wife who you told us you were divorcing?’

I took the guvnor’s arm to calm him. ‘What will you do now, Inspector?’ I asked.

Petleigh continued to hold the guvnor’s eye. ‘Investigations, Norman.’ He turned to Belasco. ‘I need you to come to the station, sir. I understand this is the first time you’ve ever deserted the boat.’

‘I got coshed last night,’ protested Belasco, pointing at the bandage on his head. His eyes were still on the bodies. ‘Knocked out cold.’

‘Fetch the captain too. His nerves have the better of him at the moment, but he’s going to have to start talking soon.’

‘You want Suzie?’

Petleigh looked at her through the saloon window. He shook his head. ‘I’ve already spoken to her.’

Belasco helped Moon up, then climbed off the boat with Petleigh. Arrowood fell onto a bench, his red face throbbing with heat and vexation. He pulled off his boots with a gasp, and we sat there with Suzie until the police wagon arrived, then watched as the coppers packed the ropes and skulls in canvas bags and carried away the bodies on three battered old gurneys. A crowd had gathered to watch, packed onto the pier and the Swan Stairs.

Suzie had one more look round, then locked the saloon, the wheelroom, the engine. She pulled on a simple brown bonnet and tied it under her chin. The piermaster stood by the gangway waiting for us.

‘Terrible business, Suzie,’ he said, a briar pipe hanging from his lips. Behind him, the crowd was following the coppers off the pier and up toward Thames Street. ‘But they oughtn’t to have left the boat here. I’ll need this space later.’

‘Sorry, Mr Wellersby,’ she said. ‘I’d have moved her if he’d let me.’

‘Not your fault, my dear. And can you tell your father the fees are overdue?’

Suzie nodded, a great sigh drifting from her pale lips. I didn’t think her grim face could have got any grimmer.

‘You need anything?’ asked the old fellow.

‘A bit of luck is all.’

He shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘You get some rest. I’ll watch over her.’

We walked with Suzie to the bus stop by the Monument.

‘D’you have any idea who those people might be?’ asked the guvnor as we waited.

‘No, sir. I never seen them.’

‘The skulls were a message, and I think your father knows what they mean.’

She spun round, her eyes fierce. ‘No, he don’t! He’d have said if he did.’

‘But he hasn’t spoken more than a few words since Norman pulled them up, Suzie. Something’s shaken him.’

‘’Course he’s shaken! Someone’s killed those people. ’Course he’s blooming shaken up – his nerves is gone!’

‘But yours haven’t. Norman’s haven’t. Your father’s been sitting there since this morning looking into the distance, his mind closed in on itself. That’s what people do when they’re remembering something difficult. What could it be, Suzie?’

Her brow was drawn low, her lips tight. ‘Go after Polgreen,’ she said.

‘Was he being threatened by creditors?’

‘We owed a bit, but they wouldn’t do this, would they?’

‘Did your father tell you of any other trouble he’s had? Now or in the past?’

‘He don’t talk about his past. Never has done. Ma didn’t neither.’

‘What about his work? Did he tell you about what he did before the Gravesend Queen?’

‘No, he never talks about it.’

‘Didn’t you ever ask?’

‘Don’t keep going on with the same question, Mr Arrowood. I don’t know, but you got to see Polgreen again. He’ll be back about seven tonight. It’s him that’s behind it. He’s a bad heart. A nasty and evil heart.’

The bus arrived and we watched Suzie as she was swallowed by the press of people climbing aboard.

Chapter Twelve

Upper Thames Street was crowded out with carts and trollies and sweaty nags pulling rickety wagons to and from the warehouses. Little groups of kiddies dashed here and there, begging and nicking from the carts as they rattled along the road. Servants on errands pushed their way through the bustle, glad to get out of the house for a few hours, while dawdlers dawdled, chatting to neighbours and getting in every bugger’s way. The first pub we reached was the King’s Head and Lamb. Inside, the porters from Billingsgate were shouting and swearing, drinking hard with their white coats hanging open and their wooden hats by their feet. I got us each a mug of porter and a pot of eel jelly while the guvnor took a space by the door.

‘No spoon?’ he asked.

‘None left.’ I took a long swig. Once the beer hit my belly I felt the weariness come over me and remembered I’d only had an hour or so’s sleep since yesterday. I lit a fag; the guvnor got his pipe going.

‘I’m worried about that girl,’ he said as he blew out a long cloud of silver smoke. ‘If they’ll kill two women they’ll just as easily kill her.’

I finished my porter and held out my hand. Sighing, he dropped me a sixpence, then looked back in his little cotton purse. He gave it a jiggle and cursed under his breath.

I went and got us two more.

‘Change, please!’ he barked before I even had a chance to put the mugs down. When he’d put away the coppers, he took a swig. He burped. ‘We need those fifty shillings Moon owes us. Ask him as soon as he returns.’

‘Petleigh’s on the case now. The captain doesn’t need us any more.’

‘You know Petleigh won’t solve it without our help.’

‘And you know Moon can’t pay us.’

With his pipe in one hand, the guvnor put the pot of eel jelly between his knees and dug in his fingers. He scooped the mess into his mouth, dropping a gobbet on his shirt front.

‘Well, we can’t just leave it,’ he said with his mouth still full. ‘Moon and Suzie might be next. Oh Lord, we can’t keep working without payment, Norman. Not with my sister and the baby.’ He wiped the gobbet off his shirt and licked it from his grimy finger. ‘Petleigh was acting suspiciously just now. I’m more and more convinced the baby’s hers. She’s ashamed, why else would she refuse to tell me? But she doesn’t seem to have an instinct for child-rearing, that’s what puzzles me. She stiffens when she picks it up.’ He puffed on his pipe and pondered. He shook his head. ‘Perhaps it is an orphan after all. But why she wouldn’t tell me that, I do not know.’

‘Maybe she thinks you’ll make her take it back.’

‘She knows I can never make her do anything she doesn’t want to do. She’s just bloody-minded, Barnett. She makes a decision and that’s it. Never changes her mind.’

‘That’s not true, William.’

We sat for a while thinking about it. We both understood that if it really was hers, then Petleigh had to be the father. He’d visited her so many times, brought gifts, played cards. It was that possibility that vexed the guvnor more than anything.

He cleared his throat. ‘Could you ask her, Norman? There’s too much anger between us for her to tell me. I think she trusts you.’

‘It isn’t really my place.’

‘Your place? What does that mean?’

‘You know what it means. I work for you.’

‘I don’t like it when you talk like that, Norman. We’re bonded, you and me.’

‘Maybe so, but we can’t change where we’re from. You may be a fallen man now, but you and Ettie came from a better place.’

‘You’re too sensitive,’ he said quietly. ‘You’re too caught up in your childhood.’

‘Look at me, William. I’ve a tear in my britches. A patch on my jacket. You really think I’ve left it behind?’

‘It won’t always be like that.’

‘I’m useful to you because of where I’m from, and you need to remember that.’

He frowned. ‘Anyway, I’m not a fallen man. I’m good at what I do. If any of our cases had been recognized half as much as that charlatan Holmes then—’

‘Look at how you live. You’ve lost almost everything you had when you left the newspaper. Your clothes are almost as shabby as mine. You always owe somebody.’

‘One of these days they’ll report our cases properly,’ he said. ‘We’ll start to get paid what we deserve.’

‘And then we wouldn’t be able to help folk like Moon and his daughter.’

‘We’d do both.’

I dropped my fag and ground it under my heel. ‘We can’t ask Moon for the money.’

He sighed. ‘No, you’re right. He’s already in debt.’

‘Didn’t Holmes pay you?’ I asked, suddenly remembering where he’d gone the night before.

His raddled eyes shut for a moment. He took a big draught of his porter, then spooned the rest of the eel jelly in his mouth. As he chewed, he picked up a paper from the floor and opened it.

‘Aren’t you going to tell me what happened, William?’

‘He wasn’t there,’ he said at last.

A laugh fell out my mouth afore I’d a chance to catch it.

‘Where was he?’

‘I don’t know!’ he barked, his fearsome nose-holes flaring. ‘The hotel said he hadn’t been there at all. I waited till morning and got the first train back. Four bob it cost me.’

‘You haven’t heard from him since?’

‘Not even a blooming note of apology. I’ve sent him a telegraph.’

I watched the side of his face for some time, the blood sausage nose, the fleshy ears etched with soot, the thin, greasy hair curled over his balding crown. He took another lug of porter.

‘Stop watching me!’ he hissed.

I put out my fag and stood.

‘I need a kip. You want me this afternoon?’

‘There’s nothing we can do until Polgreen returns at seven. Meet me then.’

I was just leaving when his hand reached out and gripped my thigh. ‘I shouldn’t have left you there last night, Norman,’ he said, his eyes cast down to the paper on his knee. ‘But you know I can’t think straight when it comes to that charlatan.’

I was tuckered out when I reached my room. The building was quiet, and I was glad I’d told Lilly to go. The door stuck a bit so I gave it a kick, no patience left in me for care. It jerked open and there she was, laid out on her belly on my mattress. The air was thick with heat, wet with her catarrh. I looked to the floor: the chamber pot was still full, still there by the foot of the bed, and now there was a jar beside it, half-full itself.

Her face was pressed against the grey sheet. She opened one eye.

‘Hello, Norm, darling,’ she mumbled. ‘I kept it warm for you.’

I threw open the window to the street.

‘You said you’d leave.’

‘I know, but where am I to go? And don’t we have a laugh together?’ She raised herself on her elbows and looked at me. Her stringy hair fell over her face. It was a face I liked well enough, it just wasn’t the one I wanted to see. ‘You didn’t come home last night,’ she said, covering her mouth as she yawned. ‘I missed you, mate.’

‘I was working.’

‘You look knackered.’ She patted the bed beside her. ‘Get your boots off. Come on. I’ll look after you.’

The anger had already left me, and all that was left was the tiredness. So off came the boots, the shirt, the britches. The mattress was a blessed relief, and even the sense of her body next to me was a comfort of some kind. I should have fallen straight off to sleep, so tired was I, but as my head sunk into the pillow I thought of the little dead woman, her head resting on the belly of the bigger one. What were the two of them to each other? And what was the man to them? I felt the greasy rope in my hands, the ache in my arms as I hauled up the chain of bodies. Their faces came before me again, wet and streaming. They were playing with me, stirring my brain. I gave a grunt of rage; I’d be up again in a few hours and needed to get some sleep. I tried to stop thinking, to listen instead to the noises of the street outside. I turned my mind to the fingers working their way under my vest, stroking the black hair of my belly, and the slow breathing in my ear.

Chapter Thirteen

Arrowood was already at the pier when I arrived that evening. Next to the Gravesend Queen, a big paddle steamer, the Clacton Belle, had just docked and her passengers were getting off. The guvnor stood at the side, waiting for them to climb the stairs up to Swan Lane. Among them moved the gang of dippers: the lad in the mourning suit, the little girl in the ragged dress, the boy with the stained white britches. I nudged the guvnor as they lifted a watch and chain off a city gent then disappeared like pipe smoke.

It was low water, and Polgreen’s boat was idling over by the barges, waiting for the Clacton Belle to give up its mooring. His decks were packed out with passengers, whose shouts and laughter came over the water: a good day for him with Moon’s boat out of action. We climbed aboard the Gravesend Queen and found Belasco in the engine room. His hands were dark with grease and oil; his face shone with sweat. He told us Moon was still at the police station.

‘Is he any better?’ asked the guvnor.

‘They let me go soon as I’d answered their questions so I reckon maybe he ain’t talking yet.’ He sighed and looked over at the Clacton Belle, at its shiny paddle box, the brass railings glinting in the evening sun. An African sweeping the deck shouted out a greeting. Belasco raised his hand and cried, ‘Aye aye!’ He dropped his voice again. ‘It’s hit him hard. Suzie gone home, has she?’

‘About midday,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘I’m going to keep a watch here till morning. Just hope that the inspector lets us take the boat out tomorrow.’

‘How much money does the captain owe, Belasco?’ asked the guvnor.

The deckhand scratched his tattoo. ‘Well, he owes the piermaster, and Suzie says they’re behind on rent. I ain’t been paid in a month neither. But it’s more than that. We had a visit a week or so since from a couple of bad types. Money lenders, I reckon. Came on the boat looking it over like he’d borrowed on it.’

‘Names?’ I asked.

Belasco shook his head. ‘Captain made me get off the boat when they come. One of them was big, bigger than you, Norm. Cauliflower ear, long moustache, bald. The other was a short fellow, built like a bull terrier. I didn’t hear what they said, but it weren’t friendly.’

‘Does Miss Moon know?’ asked the guvnor, turning to look up Swan Lane.

‘She weren’t there. Captain’s not the type to worry her neither.’

Arrowood nodded. ‘We’ll keep watch with you tonight.’

‘You don’t have to, sir,’ said Belasco. ‘Reckon the Old Bill’s looking into it now.’

‘I wouldn’t expect too much from Inspector Petleigh,’ said the guvnor, looking up Swan Lane again. He frowned. ‘You’d have thought he’d be here to interview Polgreen when he disembarks. Apparently he has more important things to do.’ Half an hour later, the Clacton Belle moved off to a great cheer from the crowd on Polgreen’s boat. When it took its place at the pier, his son jumped off and tied the ropes, while Mrs Polgreen let down the gangway. We waited till all the passengers had cleared off, then made to board the ship.

‘You stay where you are,’ said Polgreen, appearing on the deck next to his wife. He wore a loose checked shirt, a black bowler, his battered face handsome enough for an older bloke. His fists gripped the handrail.

‘We need to talk to you for a moment, Captain,’ said the guvnor. ‘It’s important.’

‘You can talk from there.’

‘D’you know who tied those people to the Gravesend Queen?’

‘No, and you’re a bloody fool if you think I’d risk murder just to get this route.’

His son sat down on the bollard, the rope in his hand. He was a strong lad, clear-eyed and brown. He pulled an onion from his pocket and had a bite.

‘Ah! So you have been intimidating him,’ the guvnor declared as if Polgreen had so much as said it himself. It was one of his little ideas, that if you treat someone as having already confessed something they’d be more likely to admit it.

Polgreen let go of the handrail. He scratched his stiff whiskers. ‘I did a few things to his boat, yeah. Smashed the windows. Threw some fish guts about. But it was his own fault, the miserable old prick.’

‘How so?’

Mrs Polgreen took his arm. She was looking at me steady like she knew me somehow. I was sure I’d never seen her before; I hadn’t met more than a few Hindoos in my life.

‘When we first started on the Gravesend run we didn’t know how it were. He could have explained there weren’t enough passengers for two boats. I’d have gone upriver. No skin off my nose. But he weren’t like that, started up cursing and swearing, calling my wife the worst things, even my boy. I wouldn’t stand for it.’

The guvnor looked over at Mrs Polgreen. ‘I’m sorry to hear it, ma’am.’

‘I don’t need your sorry,’ she said. Her accent was odd, like nothing I’d heard before. Wasn’t Cornish, that was sure. Her cheeks were chubby, her black hair tied back tight on her head. ‘I heard it many time.’

‘I wouldn’t take it,’ said Polgreen. ‘Made up my mind to drive him out. But I only did the guts and the windows, that’s all. When I heard there’d been other damage I reckoned I didn’t need to.’

‘Wouldn’t it have been easier just to leave him to his route?’ asked the guvnor.

‘I’m thinking that now.’

‘That’s what I say to him,’ said Mrs Polgreen. ‘He don’t listen. Big bloody ape he is sometime.’

‘Shut your face,’ barked Polgreen.

‘You shut your face,’ she said, pulling her arm away and flicking him on the ear.

Their boy was listening to it all in silence. There was something angry in his eyes that unsettled me, something that seemed directed at his old man. This was a queer family, all right. But there was nothing unusual about that.

‘I’d nothing to do with this morning, and you can tell the coppers that,’ Polgreen went on. ‘D’you know who those people were?’

‘Do you?’ asked the guvnor.

‘Do I?’ He was starting to get vexed again. ‘Haven’t I just told you it weren’t me?’

‘Cockles, mate?’ asked a ragged woman coming along the pier. ‘Winkles?’ She showed us her bucket. ‘Fresh as a daisy.’

‘Fresh as a turd, you old teef,’ said Mrs Polgreen from the boat.

‘You shut your hole,’ croaked the dirty woman.

‘I’m up all night with those you sell last before. She’s come out both me up and down.’

‘Aw, why don’t you learn to speak proper, Pocahontas?’ The ragged woman turned back to us. ‘What’ll you have?’

‘I don’t think I will, thank you, madam,’ said the guvnor.

She turned and showed me her bucket.

‘Cockles, sir?’ she asked me, shoving her finger up her nose. ‘Winkles?’

I waved her away.

‘I can see you’re a reasonable man, Mr Polgreen,’ said the guvnor, his voice now softer. ‘Something evil’s happened here. Wouldn’t it be better just to start another route now? This feud has gone far enough. Rosherville Garden’s dying anyway.’

Polgreen looked over at his wife for some time, exchanging whatever understandings or feelings passed between foreigners like them. He lifted his bowler and wiped his forehead. He nodded slow. ‘Been thinking that’s maybe best. Don’t know what’s going on with Moon and his old bucket, but I don’t want nothing to do with it.’

‘You’re giving up the run?’

Polgreen nodded. ‘I’m going down Windsor on Monday, see about getting a slot on one of them piers.’

I was watching his son as he spoke. For just a moment, the lad stopped chomping his onion. His eyes narrowed; a cloud passed over his face.

We watched the steamer push off. Its engines picked up and it moved away towards London Bridge.

‘D’you believe him?’ I asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ said the guvnor. ‘I’m inclined to, but did you see his boy when he said he was giving up the route?’

‘Something was up with him.’

‘I felt a prickle go through me. Anger.’

I nodded. The guvnor believed emotions were contagious, and if you opened yourself you could sometimes feel what another person was feeling. It was something to do with magnetism, he said, some kind of invisible fluid passing between us all the time. I wasn’t so sure about those fluids, but I thought maybe he was right about the emotions.

His belly made a low growl; he clutched himself. ‘I saw a fellow selling trotters up there on Swan Lane. Go and get some, Barnett.’

After our supper, we took turns pacing the deck and sleeping badly on the floor of the saloon. By midnight it was raining. The guvnor had the only two blankets, yet still he complained about his rash and the rock of the boat, and when he did fall off he snored loud as the Prince of Wales. It was a long night, but no boat came close, no figure tried to climb aboard.

Suzie arrived at seven or so the next morning. The Koh-i-Noor, one of the bigger paddle steamers, was tied beside us, and a few deckhands busied themselves preparing her for the day ahead. Kate stood by her wherry, waiting for custom.

‘Dad ain’t here then?’ asked Suzie.

‘Must still be with the coppers,’ said Belasco.

Her face darkened. ‘Why’re they keeping him so long?’

‘He was too shook up to talk yesterday. Maybe he needed to sleep it off.’

She nodded, wanting to trust him.

‘We’ll go without him if he don’t turn up,’ said Belasco. ‘We run her often enough when he’s jiggered.’

‘Right,’ said Suzie, her bottom lip trembling as she said it. She was a girl on the edge of a woman, and she seemed to flip between the two like a turn in the breeze. I could see she was trying to be strong, but she was only fifteen. She breathed in deep, drew down her freckled brow, and set her face. ‘Let’s get her ready, then. I’ll find Ken. See how many tickets he’s sold.’

The three of us watched her as she crossed the pier and marched up the steps to the embankment. As she passed the crippled lad begging at the top, she gave his shoulder a quick rub, then disappeared into the throng.

‘My Lord, I hope the Captain pulls himself together,’ said the guvnor. ‘This city eats girls like her.’

Belasco shook his head. ‘You don’t know Suzie too well, do you, Mr Arrowood?’

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