A Donation of Murder (3 page)

‘You were lucky to have been in a carriage and not a taxi. From a motorised taxi you might have sustained serious injury.'

‘Indeed. I picked myself up from the ground. The carriage stopped. The passenger door opened and out stepped John, calling to me, telling me to stop being so bloody stupid — excuse me, Doctor, but that's what he said — and get back into the carriage. His words got me all the more fired up. I wanted to teach him a lesson. I made myself visible under a street lamp, and then, when I was sure he had seen me, I ran off in the direction we had just travelled, sure he would follow. I wanted him to worry, I wanted to give him a fright, make him realise how much he loved me . . .' Margaret Doyle paused to dash away angry tears with the back of her hand. ‘But he didn't follow. He just left me there.'

Dody rubbed her patient's arm. ‘Miss Doyle, I'm so sorry. If you find this too distressing, you don't have to tell me any more. The police and I only need to know if a crime has been committed.' It depends on one's definition of a crime, though, Dody thought to herself. Leaving a woman alone at night in the middle of a snowstorm
was
a crime in her book, but the legal system might not agree, especially if the abandonment had been initiated by the woman.

Dody rose from the bed and began to inspect the bundle of clothes Nurse Little had found. Despite Fisher's plea, and her own eagerness to hear the story, she did not wish to exert unnecessary pressure for fear of causing her patient a relapse. She busied herself with unfolding then shaking out a plain tweed skirt.

‘Will this do, Miss Doyle?' Dody asked, holding the skirt up for inspection. The fabric was thinning, but clean.

‘Perfectly, thank you. It will do nicely until I get the chance to return to my own home.' And then her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, God!' The colour she had gained since ‘being brought back to life' leached from her face.

Dody put the clothes down and moved back to take her hand, worried the relapse she'd been concerned about was happening now.

‘Miss Doyle, what is it? Please, you can tell me.'

The woman shook her head. ‘It's John. He'll probably be waiting for me there. He'll be furious with me, he'll probably . . .' She was unable to finish.

Dody pre-empted what Margaret Doyle was about to say. ‘Does he often strike you?'

She nodded. ‘And for lesser things than this. You see, after I ran off, I stumbled about for a while, getting colder and colder until I came upon the Anchor and Whistle. It's an awful place, but I had no choice, it was that or die. Some of the men there were acquaintances of John's. They recognised me and bought me drinks — quite a few, I'm afraid. I think I might have said a few demeaning things about him, some not so complimentary things. He'll be mad as a bull when he hears what I said, especially as it was me that ran out on him.'

‘Do you have any friends or family who can put you up for a few days while John calms down?

‘No.'

‘But if you came upon friendly company in the public house, how did they allow you to end up in that alley?' Dody asked, not voicing her other query, that being why a woman of Margaret Doyle's class was apparently so comfortable as to have more than a few drinks with the male patrons of a public house? Let alone one as notorious as the Anchor and Whistle. She could only surmise that John had dragged Miss Doyle down in society.

‘The men were generous with their drinks, as I said. After a while I needed some air. I stepped out into the snow, and that's the last thing I remember. I don't even remember getting lost. I suppose I must have collapsed. You know the rest of the story better than I do.'

While one side of Dody's brain had been listening to the conclusion of Margaret Doyle's story, the other side of her brain whirled in all directions. Feeling a good deal responsible for the woman's condition, she felt a pressing need to make things up to her. She wondered what Pike would say if she offered Miss Doyle a room in her
house until it was safe for her to return to her own. He would be horrified at first, but she felt sure Margaret Doyle would win him over. There was something about the woman that Dody felt drawn to, a strength of character perhaps, and she was sure that Pike would feel it too. While jumping from a moving carriage on a snowy night was not the wisest move, it showed that the woman had pluck, that she would not let herself be walked over by a man. What a pity her suffragette sister Florence was absent from home. Dody could see Florence and Margaret Doyle getting on famously.

Nurse Little pushed her head through the curtains, interrupting Dody's focus. ‘Meeting's about to start, Doctor,' she said.

‘Thank you, Nurse.' To her patient Dody said, ‘I won't be long, I hope. Rest if you can, or change into those clothes. I think I know a safe place where you can temporarily stay.'

‘You are a saint, Doctor. Thank you so much.'

‘Please stop calling me that,' Dody said, with an embarrassed smile. ‘I just want to make things up to you. I owe you that much at least.'

‘No,' the flame-haired woman said in a barely audible whisper. ‘No, I assure you, Doctor, it is I who owe you.'

Chief Inspector Pike held his breath and peered around the corner of a rough brick wall. A shot cracked and whisked the bowler from his head. He flattened himself against the wall, batting out his arm to Sergeant Singh to hold him back. A ripple of excitement passed from Singh to the man behind him, and so on down the line of policemen. All were armed, some with rifles, others with pistols.

‘Are you all right, sir?' Singh asked.

Pike wiped brick dust from his face. That was his second ruined bowler in as many years, damn it. ‘Yes, thank you, Sergeant Singh,' he said, a light fluttering of snow making his neck and the tips of his ears tingle. He adjusted his scarf, pulling it up to just below his mouth. He'd miss that bowler.

‘What now, sir?' a man further down the line asked.

‘We wait for them to make the next move,' Pike said.

‘Are they all still there, sir, or is it just the one shooter?' the same man piped up again.

‘Not sure. No reports of anyone having escaped through the back.' Pike had assigned the same number of men to the back of the tenement as he had the front.

‘Does this remind you of anything, Chief Inspector?' his turbaned sergeant asked.

Pike took his eyes off the Brushfield Street tenement, its sooty lines softened by the gently falling snow. ‘Yes it does, Singh,' he replied. ‘Sydney Street, 1911. Anarchist police killers holed up in a tenement building after robbing a jeweller's shop.'

‘Are these anarchists, sir?' a man asked.

‘German spies?' offered another. ‘Irish?'

One of the men leaned away from the wall. ‘Suffragettes?' he deadpanned, causing the men to guffaw.

A shot rang out. The man who'd made the remark cursed.

‘You all right, mate?'

‘Bloody hell. Nicked me in the bloody arm.'

‘Take him to the hospital,' Singh ordered. ‘And let that be a lesson, men. Don't lose your focus, and stay as flat against the wall as you can.'

‘Sorry, Sergeant,' the wounded officer muttered.

‘Thank you, Singh,' Pike said, pleased to see that since his sergeant's long overdue promotion he was at last commanding some respect from the men. It had been a weary climb for Singh, the turbaned foreigner with the bushy black beard, impeccable English and faultless manners. His acceptance by the men had been as difficult as Pike's had been.

A small orange flicker from one of the tenement's windows caught Pike's eye. ‘Good God, look at that,' he exclaimed, dread causing his gut to clench. ‘They're setting fire to the tenement.'

This
was
Sydney Street all over again. But while anarchists, the Irish, and the suffragettes fought for causes they believed in, the men in the tenement were willing to fight and die for no greater cause than the feathering of their own nests. He had never before come across a more ruthless or well-organised band of jewel thieves.

Pike looked to the furthest man down the line. ‘Tell the fire brigade to stand by, but for God's sake, keep them out of the firing line. Then get one of the men to send this message to Superintendent Shepherd — there should be a telephone in the pub on the corner of the street.'

Pike handed Singh his pistol. Holding his leather gloves between his teeth he removed his notebook and wrote to Shepherd.

Situation escalated. One man wounded. Tenement burning. Request troops as marksmen and for crowd control.

Pike thanked God that Churchill was no longer Home Secretary. With news like this, he'd have been down in a flash and getting in everyone's way, just as he had at Sydney Street.

He handed the note to the police messenger then turned his attention back to the tenement. Until now, the thieves had been allowing residents to leave the building, but no one knew how many had been in it in the first place, so it was unclear if all had been evacuated. With the advent of the fire it was paramount that no innocents were left inside. During his earlier brief dialogue with the thieves there had been no mention of hostages, but who knew what was on the minds of these desperate men? They'd already murdered one shop girl and there was nothing to stop them from taking a few more lives. Any remaining people must be got out before the building went up in flames.

The battered front door opened a peep and a small, tousled head peered around the gap. At the sound of gunfire it quickly withdrew.

‘God in heaven, there are still children in there, Singh.'

‘Probably on their own, sir, while their parents are at work, so terrified they did not know what to do when the evacuation call came.'

Pike picked up the megaphone he'd been using for the earlier negotiations. From his heavy coat pocket he produced a white handkerchief.

He stepped away from the wall and waved the handkerchief. A bullet sparked off the icy cobbles about six feet from where he stood. He remained frozen to the spot. A warning shot — at least he hoped that's what it was.

He lifted the megaphone to his mouth. ‘You in there, there are still children inside. Please allow the children to leave the building.'

The thieves didn't answer, but the building did. The window where Pike had first noticed the fire exploded. He dropped to the ground. Glass shards pelted his back. Flames flickered and licked from the broken top floor window, but he saw no desperate, gun-waving silhouettes.

Some of the policemen were aiming shots at the flaming window. Pike would use that as a diversion and risk it.

He picked himself up from the cobbles and charged to the front door and through it to the sound of more gunfire. Inside the building, he heard the low crackle of flames from above. A canopy of smoke hung like a shroud at the top of the stairs.

Three children, an older boy and two tiny girls, sat huddled in the stairwell.

‘It's all right. I'm a policeman — you must come with me.' Pike picked up the youngest girl, not much more than a babe in arms, herding the other two towards the door. He poked his head through the crack and called out to Singh, ‘All clear?'

Singh raised his thumb. Several policemen covered Pike, their pistols and rifles pointing at the shattered window, now bright with flames.

‘I'm going to count to three, children. On the count of three, we run towards the policemen on the other side of that wall. Is that understood?'

‘Yes, sir,' the boy answered solemnly.

‘Good lad. One, two, three!'

Out they ran and into a hail of bullets. The barrage was not coming from the top floor with the shattered window as Pike had anticipated, but from several storeys down, closer to the ground.

The young girl running beside him tripped and fell, her cry of pain and terror shattering Pike's mind more painfully than any bullet. Singh zig-zagged towards him and reached the girl, picking her up and cradling her limp body in his powerful arms. And then Singh spun around, propelled by a bullet to the shoulder. As he fell, he stretched himself on top of the injured girl, shielding her with his body.

The gunfire stopped. An eerie silence descended upon the scene.

Pike handed the baby to a policeman who'd dashed from the line to help, and then ran back for the older boy who lay on the cobbles, curled like a shrimp. Pike could see no sign of blood on the boy's body. He was probably in shock.

Several other policemen converged on Singh and the precious bundle he had shielded, dragging them to a safe spot about fifty yards away where several ambulances stood waiting.

Pike did not know who was shaking more, himself or the young lad whom he led by the hand to join his sisters.

The ambulance attendants were treating the injured girl.

‘She's still alive, but I don't fancy her chances,' one of them said.

Pike passed his hand over his mouth. He drew his eyes away from the little girl's rag-doll form and met Singh's. The Sikh sat on the ground, slumped against the wheel of the ambulance while an attendant fashioned a sling around his arm.

‘Thank you, Singh, that was a brave act,' Pike said.

With his good arm, Singh pointed to the tenement from which clouds of smoke bellowed. ‘You'd better be getting back, sir.'

His words broke through the fog of Pike's emotions. Good God, of course he should be getting back! There'd be plenty of time for self-reproach once he'd got the last of those murdering bastards.

Pike raised his hand in acknowledgment to his second in command, grateful for his grounding influence, and ran back in the direction of the tenement.

‘Any more signs of life inside?' Pike asked the most senior man flattened against the wall, holding a rifle.

‘Not a thing, sir.'

‘Hum, maybe that cowardly attack was a last hurrah.'

Pike ordered one of the men to call the fire brigade over. So far the fire had been contained to one room in the fifth storey. The snow had helped, but he could not risk it spreading to the buildings standing cheek by jowl on either side. He made his way
through the evacuated tenement next door, into the backyard and across to the yard of the building where the villains were holed up.

A group of police was lounging against an outhouse wall — the privies, if the smell was any indication. The snow had ceased falling and visibility had improved. Frozen washing creaked in the wind from lines hung but a few feet away from a stinking midden.

The men straightened when Pike made his appearance.

‘Report,' he said to a red-faced sergeant.

‘Nothing to report, not even a rat,' the sergeant said, tossing his cigarette into the slush beneath his boots.

‘Straighten up, be on your guard. Once the fire is under control we'll be going in through the front top window. If there's any of them left, they'll probably attempt to bolt off this way.'

‘Shoot to kill, sir?' the sergeant asked with a disconcerting gleam to his eye. Pike's mind flashed to the dead shop girl, the injured child. It was tempting.

‘No.' He paused. ‘Aim at the legs.'

Pike returned to the front of the building. The crews from two fire engines were setting up their equipment. The men moved with caution, every now and then glancing towards the top window. The fire did not seem as ferocious as before, more of a gentle glow than a raging inferno.

‘Are they dead, sir?' one of the brass helmeted men asked him.

‘Not all of them,' Pike replied. ‘I think at least one might be alive somewhere between the fifth and first floor. We'll have to drive him from the top and push him down. Armed police will climb the ladder and enter the window first. When we confirm it's safe we will give you the signal to commence your work. What is your assessment of the fire?'

‘It could have been a lot worse, sir. If this was summer I reckon the whole street would've been up by now. The weather's been on our side at least.'

Thank God something was on their side, Pike thought as he climbed aboard the fire engine and tested the rigidity of the long extendable ladder.

*

Pike put one foot on the window ledge and eased the other over the frame of jagged glass. He knew what he should be doing: using the element of surprise. He should dive through the window, somersault across the floor and then leap into a firing
position. But a defective knee — sturdy enough to walk on, thanks to Dody, yet decidedly not strong enough for acrobatics — limited what he could do these days.

He picked his way as rapidly as he could over the glass and pushed through a handy smokescreen into the one-roomed flat. A wall of heat forced him back. He ordered the fireman, who'd been behind him on the ladder, to do his best from where he stood. Pike could not risk allowing the firemen into the building until he was sure the villains could cause them no harm.

The fireman called down to his mate manning the steam pump. The pump engaged with an explosive force that would have knocked an inexperienced man off the ladder. The man held his ground and dowsed the flames with his brass fitted hosepipe.

Pike lifted his hand to indicate ‘pump off', and made his way through the steam that had now replaced most of the smoke, one hand on his pistol, the other pressing his handkerchief to his mouth and nose. He trod cautiously, testing the floorboards and joists before applying his full weight. The source of the flames turned out to be a stack of smouldering wooden furniture, topped by a cheap mattress. The smell of burning horsehair was sickening, and took Pike back to places he wished to forget: the African war, all those dead men and horses.

An empty can of kerosene lying beside the pile explained the thick greasy smoke. It was hard to imagine men attempting to burn themselves alive. It must have been a planned diversion, Pike decided. Perhaps the noxious smoke had overcome them before they could make their escape.

‘Police. Show yourself!' he called into the gloom.

No answer.

Through the poor, smoky light, Pike caught a metallic gleam. He whirled towards it, his finger split seconds away from pulling the trigger of his pistol.

‘Can we come in now, sir?' the brass helmeted fireman asked.

Idiot. Pike had almost shot him. ‘No. Stay where you are,' he barked.

He continued to make his way through the haze. A Remington rifle lay beside the body of a man stretched face down upon the floor. Pike kicked the rifle away and bent to check the pulse at the man's neck, as Dody had taught him.

No sign of life from this one.

He moved deeper into the dwelling, finding two more dead men, one in the flat and the other on the landing. Were their deaths an accident, or had they hoped the
smoke or fire would kill them before the police did? Perhaps they'd decided this was a better alternative to the gallows — at least they had been in control to the last. Or had they?

Witnesses to the robbery at the jewellery shop had said there'd been a group of men, four at least. Where was the fourth? Pike wondered as he moved about the creaking landing. He checked all ten rooms on the floor and found no sign of life, though plenty to suggest these were the homes of overcrowded family groups, living hand to mouth. In one room he found a drawer improvised into a baby's cradle. A one-eyed doll stared at him from the floor, its china head a mosaic of cracks. Was this the flat where the terrified children he had tried to rescue lived? Did the dolly belong to the injured little girl? Best not to think about that.