Blackstone and the Heart of Darkness (13 page)

‘The next time what?’

‘The next time some poor bloody girl is murdered. Because it will happen again, Jed, I can assure you of that.’

Four

When night falls over London, the mighty River Thames scoops up reflections as misers are popularly believed to scoop up their gold coins. Lights of all kinds bob on the water—the yellow light of the moon; the orange light of the gas-lit street lamps; the blue and green light that comes from the warning beacons of ships at anchor in the centre of the river.

It sometimes seemed to Archie Patterson—in one of his more fanciful moods—as if these small lights (buffeted by waves, side-lined by ripples), were engaged in a valiant struggle to stay afloat, but that, despite their noble efforts, they would eventually give way to exhaustion—and sink.

But they never
did
go under, as the more practical side of his mind always recognized. They stayed exactly where they were, surfing the water, until the sun came up again—and they simply faded away.

Patterson was not thinking about the lights on the water that night, as he walked along the Embankment. He was not even thinking about his fiancée, Rose, though the forceful way she was clinging to his arm must have made her hard to forget. Instead, much as he fought against it, his thoughts kept returning to the brothel in Waterloo Road.

He would make an arrest—he was sure of that. But to what end? So that the madam could pay a
fine
?

‘What are you thinking, Archie?’ Rose asked, poking him in the ribs with the index finger of her free hand.

‘I was thinking that, in this life, people don’t always get what they deserve,’ he said.

‘And what exactly is that supposed to mean?’ Rose wondered. ‘That you don’t deserve me? Or I don’t deserve you?’

‘Oh, that I don’t deserve you,’ Patterson said, taking hold of the hand with which she poked him, raising it to his mouth and kissing it lightly. ‘Everybody knows that. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.’

‘My nose isn’t plain!’ Rose said, with mock-indignation.

‘No,’ Patterson agreed. ‘It’s a wonderful nose.’

‘Tell me more,’ Rose demanded.

‘It’s a beautiful nose. A nose that easily caps all other noses that have gone before it. When I’m arrested for not being worthy of you—as I’m bound to be eventually—that nose will be one of the prime pieces of evidence to be held against me.’

Rose giggled. ‘Well, I’m certainly glad we’ve got
that
particular question straightened out,’ she said.

They walked a little further along the Embankment.

The madam
should
get what she deserved for ruining a young life even before it had time to properly get started, Patterson told himself She should be made to suffer as the girls who had passed through her hands had been made to suffer. But she was like one of those lights that never sank, whereas the girls were stones that went straight to the bottom.

‘I know they say that two wrongs don’t make a right,’ he said to Rose, ‘but do you think that’s always true? Aren’t there sometimes occasions when you need to turn the enemy’s own weapons on him, if you’re ever to defeat him?’

Rose giggled again. ‘Whatever are you talking about now, Archie?’ she asked him.

Patterson shrugged his beefy shoulders. ‘Nothing really,’ he admitted. ‘Or if it is something, it’s probably rubbish.’

‘That’s more than likely,’ Rose agreed. ‘You’re a sensible chap most of the time, but when you
do
talk rubbish, you’re really very good at it.’

*

Blackstone was enjoying his meal with Inspector Drayman, and the more he talked to the man, the more he found himself liking him. Drayman was not a brilliant copper, he’d soon decided, but he was certainly a conscientious one, and could probably deal more than adequately with any cases that were likely to come his way. But his strongest point, from Blackstone’s perspective, was that he was a nice bloke—a thoroughly
decent
bloke—and there were far fewer of them in the police force than the public ever realized.

It was as the meal was drawing to a close that Blackstone decided to be a little more open with the local copper.

‘Just before Torn Yardley died, he wrote me a letter,’ he said, ‘and in that letter, he hinted there was a jewellery-smuggling ring operating in his village.’

Drayman looked thoughtful for a second. ‘Well, that certainly clears up one mystery.’

‘And what mystery might that be?’

‘The mystery of how an experienced blaster somehow managed to blow himself up.’

‘You think he might have been murdered, too?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Too?’ Drayman repeated. ‘Why, who else do you think thinks that?’

‘I do.’

‘I’m afraid you’ve misinterpreted what I said completely. What I was meaning to suggest was that if Yardley thought there was some kind of smuggling ring in Marston, then he was clearly losing his mind in some way. And if he was losing his mind, that would explain why he made his fatal error with the explosives.’

‘So you dismiss the possibility of a smuggling ring out of hand?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Let me explain to you a little about robbery and fencing,’ Blackstone suggested. ‘It isn’t always
easy
to steal really valuable jewels, but it’s
never
easy to sell them on. Say you’ve got a diamond necklace, worth hundreds—or even thousands—of pounds. If it’s that expensive, it will also be that
well
known
, and there’ll be no market for it in England. So the thief’s faced with two options. Would you like to take a guess at what those options are?’

‘I suppose he could break up the necklace and sell the individual diamonds.’

‘He could, but if he does that, already he’s reducing its value—because the parts will never be worth as much as the whole.’

‘And his other option, I imagine, is to try and sell it abroad.’

‘Exactly! But he’s got to
get
it
abroad first, and the only way to do that is by ship. Now, at each and every stage of the journey, there’s the possibility of things going seriously wrong...’

‘I’m sure there is.’

‘...but the danger’s greatest at the British customs and the foreign customs. Because these customs officers are highly trained. They know all the likely places they’ll try to hide them—in suitcases with false bottoms, in hidden compartments in baby carriages which actually have a baby in them at the time, crammed up the smuggler’s own back passage...’

‘They don’t really do that, do they?’ Drayman said, horrified. ‘They don’t really stick them up their own back passages?’

‘Indeed they do,’ Blackstone said. ‘You’d be surprised how much you can hide up an arsehole if you really want to.’ He paused to light a cigarette. ‘But we’re getting off the point. Let’s suppose that a group of very smart criminals put their heads together and come up with an
unlikely
method of smuggling—a method that the customs officers would never even think of.’

‘I’m all ears,’ Drayman said.

‘In a way, this new method is no more than a variation on the false-bottomed suitcase trick, but before they can implement it, they have to get the goods themselves to Marston.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ll come to that in a minute. Now, getting the jewels here
could
be a problem, because the chances are that they’ll have been stolen from houses and shops that are hundreds of miles from the village.’

‘I still don’t see—’

‘But it’s no real problem at all, when you think about it—because the goods can be brought here, quite safely, by narrow-boat.’

‘Good God, that’s a ludicrous idea!’

‘You’re wrong about that. It isn’t ludicrous at all. In fact, it’s a very sensible and a very practical plan, given that Marston is connected to large parts of the country through the canal network.’

‘But it would be so slow!’ Drayman protested.

‘That’s all to the thieves’ advantage, because no one—and that includes the police who are trying to track the jewels down—would ever
expect
them to move the goods slowly.’

‘So they bring the jewels to Marston and hide them in this new variation of a false-bottomed suitcase?’ Drayman asked sceptically.

‘That’s right. They take the jewels to the salt works—’

‘And hide them in at the bottom of a big pile of loose salt?’ Drayman said, chuckling. ‘And then, I suppose, they all go to church and pray that when they need the jewels again, they’ll be able to find them.’

‘They don’t hide them
under
a
pile
of salt,’ Blackstone said. ‘They hide them
in
a
block
of salt.’

‘What?’

‘They put the jewels on top of a heap of hot salt in a mould, pour more hot salt on top of it, and then let the salt set into a hard block. Once that’s done, they load the block—along with thousands of other blocks which are almost identical—on to a narrow-boat, which takes it to Liverpool, where it’s loaded on to a ship that is sailing to wherever it is they’ve got a buyer for the goods.’

‘It’s a very clever idea,’ Drayman admitted, ‘but it’s so incredible that I would have thought it belonged more to the realms of fiction than to real life.’

‘Ten minutes ago you thought it was incredible that smugglers would make use of their backsides to hide the goods, but you’ve come round to the idea now, haven’t you?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘So maybe in another ten minutes, the salt-block idea won’t look so fanciful, either.’

‘You’ve only got this Tom Yardley’s word that there’s a smuggling operation in the village.’

‘Tom Yardley’s word is all I need.’

‘Perhaps it is. But you knew him and you trusted him, whereas I never even met the man, so his word carries no weight with me at all.’

‘What are you saying? That before you’ll even consider taking me seriously, you’re going to need to see a lot more in the way of solid evidence?’

‘Yes,’ Drayman agreed. ‘I think that’s exactly what I’m saying.’

*

Though Jed Trent had tried to start up a conversation several times during the course of the meal, Ellie Carr had either not heard him at all, or—if she had—had grunted as few words as possible in reply.

Now, as the waiter cleared away the last of the dishes, Trent said in a very loud voice, ‘Would you like to tell me what the problem is, Dr Carr?’

Ellie jumped. ‘Do you have to shout, Jed?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I do—if I’m ever to get through to you,’ Trent told her. ‘I don’t know where your mind’s been all night, but it certainly hasn’t been here with me.’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Ellie said defensively.

‘I’ve worked that out for myself.
But
what
about!
’

‘About Emma Walsingholme’s corpse.’

‘Don’t start that again,’ Trent warned her. ‘There’ll be no breaking and entering while I’m around.’

‘Of course there won’t,’ Ellie agreed primly. ‘I would never suggest anything like such a course of action.’

‘But you did suggest
exactly
that course of action,’ Trent reminded her, ‘—just this afternoon.’

‘This afternoon, I was much younger—and much more foolish—than I am now,’ Ellie said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘For heaven’s sake, Jed, let’s stop talking about what
might
have
happened—but never did—and try to concentrate our minds instead on something that has actually occurred.’

‘All right,’ Trent agreed.

‘I’ve been looking at the police reports on the condition of Emma’s body when they found it, and it’s pretty gruesome reading.’

‘I imagine it is. There’s no pleasant way to describe a girl who’s had her hands and feet cut off, and her face slashed.’

‘Yes, that is pretty horrific,’ Ellie Carr agreed, almost indifferently, ‘but I’m much more interested in the rest of her injuries. There were cuts and slashes all over the body—and I’m wondering why.’

‘Do you really
need
a reason? The man who did it was a lunatic. Shouldn’t that be enough for you?’

‘It would certainly be enough—if he hadn’t been such a very
methodical
lunatic.’

‘What’s methodical about slashing a woman to pieces?’

‘Nothing at all. But if he’d done it while she was wearing her clothes, the dress would have been reduced to ribbons. And from what I’ve read, it wasn’t.’

‘So he took the dress off her. Maybe he got a bigger thrill out of killing her when she was naked.’

‘Maybe he did. But why did he then put the dress
back
on
her?’

‘It beats me.’

‘It beats me as well. What was the point of all those cuts?’