Blackstone and the Heart of Darkness (26 page)

‘Yes,’ Blackstone said.

‘So it’s normal?’

‘I don’t know whether it’s normal or not, but I think it’s how all decent, ordinary men
should
feel.’

‘That feeling must go away in time, mustn’t it?’ Drayman asked hopefully.

‘Not so as you’d notice,’ Blackstone said.

Nine

Hubert Robertson was sitting in the chair that had once been for the exclusive use of his late—and very unlamented—employer. He was handcuffed to the arm of it, but even if he hadn’t been, he looked too terrified to move. In fact, Blackstone thought, glaring down on the clerk, he looked terrified enough to soil himself.

‘I’m…I’m innocent of any of this,’ Robertson jabbered. ‘I’m just a clerk. I kept the books and wrote the letters. I…I had nothing at all to do with what was going on down in the mine.’

‘Just a clerk,’ Blackstone repeated, contemptuously. ‘A clerk who saw everything that was happening—because he couldn’t have missed it, even if he’d tried—and yet still did nothing about it.’

‘I didn’t
dare
do anything about it,’ Robertson moaned. ‘Mr Bickersdale was a very frightening man. I’m still afraid of him, even though you say he’s dead. You’ve no idea what horrors he was capable of.’

‘Can you imagine being so frightened of anybody that you’d completely abandon any idea of normal human decency?’ Blackstone asked Drayman sceptically.

‘Indeed I can’t,’ Drayman answered.

‘It’s easy for you to say that!’ Robertson whined. ‘Because you don’t
know!
You just don’t
know!
’

‘What don’t we know?’ Blackstone asked.

Robertson gulped in air. ‘Bickersdale used to tell me about the days when he was a soldier of fortune in the Congo Free State,’ he said shakily. ‘He ran his own private little army. He was the only white man in it. He…He told me that he didn’t want his nigger soldiers wasting ammunition, so he counted the number of bullets he issued them with before he sent them off on a raid. And when they came back…Oh God!....’

‘When they came back
what?
’

‘They’d…They’d have to prove to him that they’d used the ammunition properly, by bringing him a human hand for every bullet they’d fired. And if they didn’t, then he’d have
their
hands cut off instead.’

‘That’s just a
story
,’ Blackstone said dismissively. ‘Something he told you just to frighten you.’

‘It was
true
,’ Robertson protested. ‘It
had
to be true. And even if it wasn’t, I saw what happened to Clem Davis.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘He was one of Mr Bickersdale’s narrowboat men. Mr Bickersdale accused him of stealing the petty cash from the office and got the other men to tie him up. Then he went to work on him. With a knife! He didn’t make any of the cuts deep enough so that Davis would bleed to death right away, and when he’d finished slashing away at him, he just left him where he was.’

‘For how long?’

‘For how long do you think? Until he died! The other men wanted to help Davis, but Mr Bickersdale had ordered them not to, and they were too scared to disobey him. It…It took the poor swine two days to die, and for most of that time he was begging us to do something for him—even if it was only to put him out of his misery.’ Robertson gulped in more air. ‘And the truly awful thing is that Davis hadn’t even done it.’

‘Hadn’t done what?’

‘Stolen the money.’

‘Then who had?’

‘Nobody had! All the time he was being tortured, Davis was screaming that he was innocent. The other men thought he must be lying, but later—when he was dead—Mr Bickersdale told me that what he’d been saying was quite true. No money ever
had
gone missing.’

‘So Bickersdale had made a mistake?’

‘No! It was a demonstration! Mr Bickersdale wanted to show the men what would happen if anyone ever
did
steal from him.
Now
do you see why I didn’t dare say anything? The man was a complete monster. You
do
believe me, don’t you!’

Blackstone nodded. ‘Yes, I think I probably do.’ He lit up two cigarettes, and handed one of them to Robertson. ‘Why don’t you tell me how it all began?’ he suggested.

It began, the terrified clerk told Blackstone and Drayman, when Bickersdale had been forced to accept that he’d been duped into buying the Melbourne Mine, and that all it would do would be to cost him money.

For days Bickersdale had been in a black fury, and then a change had come over him. He’d sat down—very calmly—and started to think of ways in which he could not only regain the small fortune he’d lost, but make it grow into an even bigger one. And that was when the idea had come to him.

‘He’d travelled all over the world, and met a great many men with more money than they knew what to do with,’ Robertson said. ‘And he’d seen for himself just how much some of those men were willing to pay for a virgin.’

‘But not all virgins are worth exactly the same amount, are they?’ Blackstone asked.

‘No. Like any other commodity, the better the quality, the greater the cost,’ Robertson agreed. Then he saw the look of anger growing in Blackstone’s eyes, and quickly added, ‘I’m talking in commercial terms, of course—the way Mr Bickersdale would have talked. I’d never have thought that way myself.’

‘I’m sure you wouldn’t,’ Blackstone growled.

‘You have to understand that while Turkish virgins are not quite ten a penny, there are still plenty of them around, and each one is only worth a few pounds to a rich Ottoman merchant. But any girl with a paler skin can command much more. And a girl who’s actually been brought up to be a lady is worth a great deal.’

‘How much?’ Blackstone asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘How much!’

‘I...I believe that Mr Bickersdale charged nearly a thousand guineas for one particular girl.’

Even though the very thought of it made Blackstone want to heave, there was a colder, more analytical part of his brain that could understand how the buyer’s mind might work. Men like them would enjoy the sense of power they obtained from deflowering virgins—and the more the girls hated it, the greater would be the men’s satisfaction. And that, of course, was why girls from a genteel background were so highly valued.

A poor girl would undoubtedly find the whole experience horrendous, but she would have grown up knowing that life is
never
fair and can often be extremely unpleasant. But a young lady, who had been brought up to believe that she was one of the chosen ones—that she would always be protected from the uglier side of life—would find it almost unbearable.

‘At first, Mr Bickersdale took young girls from the orphanage and trained them to pretend they were young ladies,’ Robertson continued. ‘But that turned out to be very unsatisfactory.’

Yes, it would have, Blackstone thought. In just a few short weeks, it would be impossible to cram eleven or twelve years of breeding and assumptions into anyone, and the girls trained in this way would never have been able to sustain the illusion.

So Bickersdale had soon come to realize that, in order to be successful, he would have to be able to offer the real thing.

‘Why did he go to all the trouble of faking the deaths of the young ladies he kidnapped?’ Blackstone asked, though he’d already worked out the only possible answer for himself.

‘Mr Bickersdale thought that if a girl of good breeding went missing, the police would never give up searching for her until they’d finally found her,’ Robertson said.

And he’d been right about that. The fathers of the missing girls would use their influence on men with even
more
influence—and, working under such pressure, the police would make a much greater effort than they’d ever have done if it had been a girl of a lower class who’d been abducted.

A reward—large enough to turn half the population of the country into police agents—would be posted. The girl’s picture would appear everywhere. Extra officers would be drafted in to search all ports and railway stations. And that would only be the beginning.

‘But if the police believed she’d been murdered, they wouldn’t be looking for
her
at all,’ Blackstone said. ‘They’d only be looking for her killer—and, unlike the girls, they’d have no idea what
he
looked like.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Robertson agreed.

‘So Bickersdale took these poor bloody girls out of the workhouse, and passed them off as the girls he’d kidnapped.’

‘Yes.’

In order for the trick to work , he’d had their faces hacked at beyond recognition, and their hands—made rough by scrubbing and cleaning—cut off. He had had their feet amputated, too, because, even at that young age, those feet would already have been deformed through wearing boots that didn’t quite fit. The girls’ clothes had played an important part in this illusion. What grieving parents, seeing a horribly mutilated body wearing their daughter’s dress,
wouldn’t
assume it was their child?

Bickersdale, always the planner, had not stopped even there. Though he had seen to it that their skin was softened by the application of lotions for several weeks before they were murdered, there was always a chance that a doctor or an undertaker might take a closer look at that skin than the distraught mother and father had, and notice it was still a little rough. But such an examination was less likely when his men had finished slashing at the bodies, for not only were there no large areas of skin
left
to examine, but the horrendous effects of their work would turn all but the strongest stomach. And that particular plan had worked perfectly. Not one of the surgeons or morticians who had seen the first nine bodies had made any comment on the skin—though Blackstone was prepared to wager that when he spoke to Ellie, she would have something to say about the skin of the tenth victim.

‘The young ladies were all brought here by narrowboat, were they?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

That, in itself, had been a brilliant idea, Blackstone was forced to admit. Because there was a natural association, in most people’s minds—and most
people
included most
policemen
—between crime and speed. Who would ever have suspected that the criminals would make their getaway using a mode of transport that was no faster than the horse—pulling a large weight behind it—could walk?

But there was one even greater advantage Bickersdale had gained from using the narrowboat to do his dirty work—and that had been anonymity.

The police investigating the murders had been able to find no witnesses who reported seeing strangers in the area, but the narrow-boats, while not being local, were not completely alien, either. They were just part of the scenery—something to be taken for granted and not even commented on. And though Blackstone didn’t have the details of all the kidnappings in his head, he was prepared to bet that none of them had taken place too far away from a canal.

He picked up a piece of paper that had been lying in front of him, and slid it across the desk to the clerk.

‘This is a list of the members of the gang we already have in custody,’ he said. ‘Are there any names missing?’

Robertson scanned the list. ‘No.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Well, there is one name missing—but he’s dead.’

‘And what name is that?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Tom Yardley’s name,’ Robertson told him.

Ten

Henry Knox-Partington had the reputation of being one of smartest lawyers in London, and it was said that, whilst he would never actually step across the line into
provable
illegality, he would certainly do everything else he possibly could to get his clients off the hook.

At that moment Knox-Partington was sitting in the police interview room, with his client, Miss Latouche, beside him. He seemed calm, confident, and in no hurry to start the proceedings at all. And why should he have been in a hurry, when, every few minutes, the mental meter in his head clicked up another guinea in fees?

Opposite the madam and her attorney sat Sergeant Patterson and Inspector Maddox. Maddox had been in an excellent mood ever since he had received warmest congratulations from the Home Office on the arrest, and even the arrival of a dangerous shark like Knox-Partington seemed to have done nothing to dampen his good humour.

‘My client, Miss Latouche, wishes to begin by making a statement,’ the attorney said. ‘Once she has completed it, she will be more than willing to answer any questions you might care to put to her. Do you have any objections to that procedure, Inspector?’

‘None at all,’ Maddox said affably. ‘Let her say whatever she likes. It doesn’t really matter, because—when push comes to shove—we’ve got her bang to rights.’

The solicitor raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Bang to rights?’ he repeated. ‘We’ll see about that.’

‘We certainly shall!’

Knox-Partington turned to face his client. ‘Please start when you’re ready, Miss Latouche.’

The madam picked up the type-written sheet of legal paper in lay in front of her. ‘A few days ago I was approached in my home by a Detective Sergeant Archibald Patterson of the Metropolitan Police,’ she read.

‘But you didn’t know he was a police sergeant at the time—or you’d never have let him through the door,’ Maddox said sneeringly.

‘That is totally untrue,’ the madam said. ‘Sergeant Patterson identified himself to me immediately.’

‘I most certainly did not!’ Patterson protested.

‘If you are not prepared to let Miss Latouche finish her statement without further interruption, then this interview will be over,’ Knox-Partington said.

Maddox chuckled. ‘Fine! Let her get on with it.’

‘Sergeant Patterson informed me that there was some concern being voiced in the upper ranks of the Metropolitan Police about very young girls being sold into prostitution,’ the madam continued.

‘I never—’ Patterson began.

‘I’m warning you, I’m perfectly willing to instruct my client to say no more,’ Knox-Partington said.

‘He further informed me that the Metropolitan Police were intent on stopping this disgusting trade, and asked if I would be willing to give them my co-operation,’ the madam said. ‘Being of like mind with them on this matter, I readily agreed. Sergeant Patterson then asked me if I would attempt to buy an under-age virgin, whilst making it clear to the person from whom I was purchasing the poor unfortunate girl what a terrible fate awaited her. He said that once I had made the purchase, the evil man who had sold her to me would be immediately arrested, and so the world would be made at least a little safer for innocent young women.’

‘This is pure fiction,’ Patterson said.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, let her have her say,’ Maddox told him. ‘When all’s said and done, it’s no more than her swansong.’

‘I told the sergeant that, as a law-abiding woman of good character, I had absolutely no idea where one might buy a virgin,’ the madam said, ‘but he replied that presented no real problem, because he was more than willing to point me in the right direction. I purchased the girl as he had instructed me to, and asked him to collect her from my home at once.’

‘Why did you do that, Miss Latouche?’ Knox-Partington asked. ‘What was your hurry?’

The madam sniffed. ‘I found it terribly distressing—more distressing than you can possibly imagine—to have the poor girl under my roof. I wished her to be removed to some refuge which the police could provide, so that I could put the whole unpleasant and disturbing business behind me.’

‘I see. Kindly proceed.’

‘Sergeant Patterson duly arrived, but instead of removing the girl, as I’d fully expected him to, he said he wished to talk to her privately. Though uneasy about that, I agreed.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I was brought up to respect the wishes and requests of the forces of law and order.’

‘Of course you were.’

‘I can hardly find the words to express the shock and horror that I felt when several policemen arrived at my door and informed me that I was under arrest.’

‘Have you quite finished?’ Maddox asked.

‘I’ve quite finished,’ the madam confirmed.

‘Then I simply have to say that, though I’ve heard some amazing cock-and-bull stories in my time with the Metropolitan Police, that one tops the lot. You found it all terribly distressing, you say. You were shocked and horrified! You’re not a nun, madam! You run a brothel, for God’s sake!’

‘I provide board and accommodation for a number of young ladies,’ the madam said primly.

‘And all of these young ladies of yours are as pure as the driven snow, I suppose!’

‘I must admit, that some of them have been known to entertain their gentlemen callers in their rooms. I have asked them to cease the practice, but you know how wilful the young can be.’

‘When this case comes to court, we’ll produce at least half a dozen witnesses who’ll swear under oath that they handed over money to Miss Latouche in order to pay for sex with those girls,’ Maddox told the solicitor.

Knox-Partington smiled. ‘I doubt very much whether you’ll be able to produce a
single
witness who’d be prepared to admit that he went to Miss Latouche’s house for immoral purposes,’ he said. ‘The gentlemen callers at Waterloo Street have their
own
reputations to consider.’

‘Are you sure—are you absolutely convinced—that there won’t be at least one brave soul who is prepared to put his sense of duty above his own personal considerations?’ Maddox asked.

‘Yes,’ Knox-Partington said firmly. ‘But even if I’m wrong on that, what of it?’

‘What of it!’

‘Miss Latouche would then probably be convicted of keeping a disorderly house...’

‘Exactly!’

‘...and would no doubt be fined, as a result. But she has not been charged with that particular offence at the moment. What she
has
been charged with is procuring the services of an under-age girl for immoral purposes. And that is a charge we strenuously deny.’

‘Sergeant Patterson will give evidence,’ Maddox said.

‘And Miss Latouche will take the stand—dressed modestly and without a hint of paint on her face—and will strenuously deny what he has said. So it will simply be a case of her word against his. If you had
two
police witnesses, of course, it would be an entirely different matter. But you haven’t.’

‘How would it ever be possible for us to have two witnesses to such a thing?’ Maddox asked reasonably. ‘Miss Latouche would never have agreed to talk so openly with two men as she was with one.’

‘Whatever procedures you choose to adopt when conducting your investigations—and whatever restraints are inherent in those procedures—is a matter for you alone,’ Knox-Partington said airily. ‘My only concern is—and must be—whether or not you have sufficient evidence against my client. And in this case, you clearly do not.’

‘When my sergeant first saw the girl, she was wearing no more than a chemise,’ Maddox said. ‘That surely is clear proof of the purpose for which Miss Latouche intended to use her?’

‘The girl was wearing a chemise when—on police instructions—Miss Latouche purchased her,’ the attorney said smoothly. ‘Miss Latouche tried to persuade the girl to put on something more becoming instead, but she refused.’

‘She won’t say that in court.’

‘That’s possibly true. But, unfortunately, she is far too young to be a credible witness.’

Maddox smiled, and Patterson realized that his new boss had been really enjoying this verbal fencing with the lawyer. In fact, he had be positively
revelling
in it—playing with Knox-Partington in much the same way as a powerful cat might play with a helpless mouse.

‘What about the money?’ Maddox asked gleefully. ‘You hadn’t thought about that, had you?’

For the first time, Henry Knox-Partington began to look vaguely uncomfortable. ‘The money?’ he repeated.

‘When we raided your client’s house, we found over two hundred pounds in cash...’

‘And since when has that been a crime?’

‘…some of which had been handed to her by Sergeant Patterson, only minutes before the raid. Now if Miss Latouche’s story is true, why would Sergeant Patterson have given her money?’

‘There is a perfectly simple and straightforward explanation for that,’ Knox-Partington said, though it was clear from the expression on his face that if such an explanation
did
exist, he was still desperately searching for it. ‘Of course!’ he continued. ‘The money was to cover the expense of purchasing the girl, which purchase, I must remind you once again, Miss Latouche only became involved in at the specific request of the police.’

‘If that argument is to hold up, then the amount of money that Sergeant Patterson gave Miss Latouche should no more than equal the amount that it cost her to procure the girl, shouldn’t it?’ the police cat asked, dealing the legal mouse another powerful blow with its front paw.

Knox-Partington took out a silk handkerchief and mopped his brow.

‘Well?’ Maddox asked.

‘It should...er...be more or less the same,’ the attorney admitted. ‘Though, of course, we must also take into account the other expenses Miss Latouche will have incurred during the course of the operation.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as cab fares.’

‘Sergeant Patterson paid your client twenty-five pounds on his first visit, and seventy-five on his second,’ Maddox said relentlessly. ‘When we arrest the man who sold the girl to Miss Latouche, will he confirm that the fee she paid him was a hundred pounds, less the cost of the cab fares?’

‘I fail to see why you’re pursuing this particular argument at all,’ Knox-Partington said, getting his second wind. ‘We once more find ourselves in a “he said, she said” situation. Sergeant Patterson says he gave my client a hundred pounds, whilst Miss Latouche maintains that she only took
ten
pounds, because I now recall that she paid her cab fares herself.’ He turned to his client. ‘Isn’t that right, Miss Latouche?’

‘That’s right,’ the madam agreed. ‘I paid for the cabs out of my own pocket. It just didn’t seem right to charge the police for them, when they were working so hard to stamp out this venal trade in young girls.’

‘A nice try,’ Maddox said, almost admiringly. ‘But, of course, that argument would collapse completely if we could
prove
that one hundred pounds of the money we found in Miss Latouche’s house during the raid was, in fact, provided by the Metropolitan Police.’

Knox-Partington gulped. ‘But you
can’t
prove it,’ he said, somewhat weakly.

‘As a matter of fact, we can,’ said Maddox, who seemed to have grown tired of playing with the attorney and was about to deliver the
coup
de
grâce
. ‘The serial numbers of the banknotes that were paid over to Miss Latouche are to be found in a sealed envelope, which is currently residing in the safe in the Assistant Commissioner’s Office.’ He turned to Patterson. ‘Isn’t that right, Sergeant?’

Patterson made no reply.

‘I said, isn’t that right, Sergeant?’ Maddox repeated.

‘Not exactly, sir,’ Patterson said.

‘What do you mean? Not exactly?’

‘Writing down the serial numbers is the one detail that I appear to have overlooked,’ Patterson confessed.