Carver's Quest (20 page)

‘You going to join ’em?’ Quint asked.

‘Curiosity dictates that I must. But, equally, I must first rid myself of these pestilential clothes of yours and take a bath.’

A
sergeant ushered Adam into Room 311. Inspector Pulverbatch was sitting at a large, baize-covered desk in the middle of what proved to be a
comfortably furnished office. On the wall behind him was a portrait of the queen, looking much younger than the middle-aged widow of Windsor she had become. Little more than a girl, she nonetheless
stared down at the inspector with an air of faint disapproval. Carver approached the desk.

‘How are you today, Inspector?’

A touch liverish, Mr Carver, if truth be told, but I have news as makes a dicky liver seem a trifle. You got my telegram, I’m reckoning.’

‘I did, indeed. And hastened to follow your instructions and present myself here at the Yard.’

‘Not every day as I send out a telegram to all and sundry in a case. But, with a gent like yourself, I thought I’d make an exception.’ Pulverbatch, beaming with
self-satisfaction, now looked anything but liverish. He seemed in the peak of health.

A gent like myself?’

A gent who has been making his own enquiries. On the sly, you might say, if you was so inclined.’ The inspector continued to smile broadly. ‘Not that I am so inclined. But I’d
hate to think of you toiling away at your investigations for no reason, Mr Carver.’

‘I am not sure that I take your meaning, inspector.’

Adam was wary in his reply. How much, he wondered, had the police officer learned of his recent activities? According to Sunman, a gentle word had been dropped into Pulverbatch’s ear that
he should share information with him, but there was no reason to believe that the inspector would relish doing so. However, Pulverbatch seemed to have decided to adopt an attitude of benevolent
bonhomie. He wagged his forefinger at Adam in mock admonition.

‘I ain’t such an ass as anyone can ride me, Mr Carver. I know you’ve got friends in higher places than what I get to visit. But I also know what you’ve been a-doing of
late. I know you’ve been speaking with that fat fool Jinkinson. Much good it’ll do you.’ The inspector settled his hands comfortably on his embonpoint. ‘Because I know one
more thing. I know the man as killed your friend Creech. So you can stop ferreting around like Paddington Pollaky on the case.’

‘I’m not certain that I could say Creech was ever a friend,’ Adam said. ‘And I know of Mr Pollaky and his private enquiry office only through the newspapers. But I am
delighted to hear that you have learnt the identity of the murderer.’

‘We’ve not just learnt about the villain,’ Pulverbatch declared. ‘We’ve got him. Got him sitting in a room not five yards from where the two of us is having this
little chat. Clanking his cuffs and brooding on his misdeeds.’

‘I congratulate you, Inspector.’

Pulverbatch inclined his head, as if to demonstrate a modest conviction that congratulations were entirely in order.

‘I don’t mind admitting it to a gent like yourself, Mr Carver, who won’t hold it against a man, but there’ve been times in the last few days when I’ve been well and
truly fogged.’

‘We have all been fogged, Inspector.’

‘That’s as may be, Mr Carver, but I’m the man as is paid
not
to be fogged.’ The inspector leaned across the desk and pushed a pile of papers to one side. He took
a small pistol from his pocket and placed it on the green baize. ‘And I’m happy to report that I
ain’t
fogged now.’

‘That is the murder weapon, is it?’ Adam looked at the small gun with distaste.

‘That is, indeed, the pistol as blew out a portion of the poor gentleman’s brains. We found it in a hedge further down Herne Hill.’ Pulverbatch picked up the pistol. He pointed
it briefly in the direction of the ceiling and then replaced it on the desk. ‘Don’t look much more than a toy, do it?’

‘And what about the man who used it? You say you have him in your custody?’

By way of reply, the inspector stood up and beckoned Adam to follow him. He made his exit from Room 311 and walked along the corridor outside. Adam was just behind him as he opened a door into
another, smaller room where a uniformed constable stood guard over a shabbily dressed man, sitting at a desk. At a gesture from the inspector, the constable left the room. The man behind the desk
stared vacantly into the middle distance. There were two other wooden chairs in the room and Pulverbatch, waving Adam into one, settled himself into the other. He pushed it back on to its rear legs
and pointed across the desk.

‘This is the cove as killed Mr Creech. This is Thomas Benjamin Stirk, of Monmouth Street, Seven Dials. Take a bow for the gentleman, Stirk.’

Adam looked doubtfully at the man who sat in cuffs opposite him. Stirk was round and red of face. He was wearing a dirty fustian jacket and a pair of dilapidated flannel trousers which might
once have been blue. At the inspector’s words, he ceased gazing into the air and concentrated on his two visitors. He nodded cheerfully at Adam, who turned to look at Pulverbatch.

‘He’s a lot like a winter’s day, ain’t he?’ the inspector remarked. ‘Short and dirty.’

‘He seems... ’ Adam was unsure what exactly to say. He was still trying to work out how much Pulverbatch knew about Jinkinson. Did he know about the blackmail? Was he aware of the
notebook with the names of Garland and Oughtred and Abercrombie in it? Of Euphorion? He realised that the inspector was waiting politely for him to finish his sentence. ‘He seems rather a
mild sort of fellow for a murderer, Inspector.’

‘Looks can be terrible deceiving, Mr Carver. He’s a villain, sir, a light-fingered rogue. Ain’t nothing and nobody safe when Stirk’s around. If his mother was a cripple,
he’d steal her crutches.’

‘Thieving is a long way from murder, though, Inspector.’

‘But he’s a pugnacious varmint is Stirk, sir. A very pugnacious varmint. You’d be surprised to hear what Stirk is a-capable of. He’d kick a man’s lungs out, soon as
look at him.’

Stirk was now grinning broadly. He looked as if he thought Inspector Pulverbatch was providing him with a particularly impressive character reference.

‘So, Mr Stirk is a gentleman you’ve arrested before?’

‘Oh, yes, sir. We’ve put our ’ands on Stirk more times than you’ve had kidneys for breakfast.’

‘But what would a man from Seven Dials be doing in Herne Hill?’

‘He’s a traveller, is Stirk, sir. He travels many a mile round London to perpetrate his villainies. Lambeth, Peckham, Hammersmith, Islington. Don’t matter to Stirk. Last time
we had him in here, he’d been putting his murderous thumbs round a man’s windpipe down Bethnal Green way. Flung his victim down on the cobblestones and kicked his eye out, sir. The eye
was a-hanging on the poor fellow’s cheek.’

Apparently enjoying this brief résumé of his recent career, Stirk looked across at Adam and nodded again, as if confirming Pulverbatch’s description of events. He seemed
almost to be expecting some kind of applause.

‘Gin is Stirk’s downfall.’ Inspector Pulverbatch now sounded almost sorry for his prisoner and his shortcomings. ‘He thirsts after gin like a tiger after blood. Look at
him now, sir. Like a lamb, ain’t he? But give him liquor and it’s a different matter.’ Pulverbatch shook his head and made a whistling noise. ‘Ferocious, he is, once the
liquor seizes hold of him. He’d sell his own mother for the money she’d fetch in old bones when the gin fever is on him.’

‘After he’d pawned those crutches of hers, I suppose,’ Adam remarked. ‘I have no doubt that this gentleman is the terror you describe. But how did you succeed in tracking
him down?’

Pulverbatch clasped his hands behind his head and leant back so far in his chair that Adam began to fear he was going to fall off it. He had the air of a grandfather about to launch on the
telling of a fairy tale to an admiring circle of grandchildren. As he leant backward, Stirk leant forward as if to catch every word the inspector might say. He continued to grin, as if enjoying the
performance of some music hall comedian. Adam was beginning to suspect that the man the police had arrested was little more than a simpleton.

‘Imagine London as a thick forest, sir,’ Pulverbatch said. ‘A villain may hide himself there, among the trees, like a wild beast in the jungles of Africa. And many of them are
just that. Wild beasts like Stirk here. But I’ve got the means to track ’em down, Mr Carver. I’m the hunter in the forest, sir. The hunter in search of his prey.’

‘But how do you know this particular prey is the man who killed Mr Creech? As I have said, he does not look the part to my eye.’

‘Ah, but if you’ll forgive my impertinence, sir, yours is the eye of the average man. Here at the Yard, we don’t see things like your average man. That’s what the likes
of you and Paddington Pollaky don’t seem to understand. We’re what you might call specialists, sir. We have to be in possession of special facts what the average man don’t have.
We have to be able to distinguish between a vast array of villainies.’

Pulverbatch, warming to his theme, was clearly enjoying himself.

‘The man’s a thief, your average cove says. Not good enough, says I. Not good enough at all. What kind of a thief ? That’s the question. There’s your cracksmen and your
rampsmen, your bludgers and your bug-hunters, your drag-sneaks and dead-lurkers, your till-friskers, toshers, star-glazers, snow-gatherers, snoozers, stick-slingers and skinners. Which variety of
villain is your man?’

Exhausted by his own eloquence and still rocking back on his chair, the inspector fell silent.

‘I can see that your profession is one that requires subtle discrimination,’ Adam said after a brief pause.

‘That it does, Mr Carver, that it does.’

‘And yet I cannot see the relevance here. We’re not talking about a bludger or – what did you say? – a tosher. We’re talking about someone who shot Mr
Creech.’

‘The same principles apply, sir.’

‘Has Mr Stirk admitted his crime?’

Pulverbatch allowed a brief grimace to pass across his features. He rocked forward again on his chair and his feet dropped to the floor. He crashed his fists on the table with a sudden force
that made both Adam and the man Stirk start in surprise.

‘That he has not. He’s as stubborn as an ox in denying it. But I’ll have the truth out of him.’

‘Perhaps you have already had the truth out of him, Inspector. Perhaps he had nothing to do with the murder.’

Pulverbatch glanced at Adam, as if to confirm that this was an average man speaking whose opinion was not to be compared to that of a specialist, and then turned to his prisoner.

‘Look at me, Stirk.’ At the sound of his name, Stirk, who had followed the conversation between Adam and the inspector with every sign of enjoyment, now shifted uncomfortably in his
chair. His eyes swivelled around the room, looking anywhere but at Pulverbatch. ‘I say, look at me.’

Very unwillingly, Stirk forced himself to return the inspector’s gaze.

‘Do you see any green in my eye, Stirk?’

The man made no reply.

‘Well, do you?’

‘No, Mr Pulverbatch.’

‘Don’t be giving me any more of this gammon you’ve been giving me so far, then. I know you broke into that house. I know you shot that poor gent when he come across you. You
know I knows. So let’s be hearing you say it.’

‘I can’t have kilt a gent in ’Erne ’Ill, Mr Pulverbatch.’ Stirk still looked surprisingly cheerful, considering the circumstances in which he found himself, but he
sounded puzzled. ‘I ain’t never been in ’Erne ’Ill. I ain’t even sure where ’Erne ’Ill is. Anyways, I told you. I was in The ’Are and ’Ounds
down Borough Market that day. There’s dozens can tell you that.’

‘You see, Pulverbatch, he has an alibi.’

The inspector snorted.

‘I’ve looked into this alibi of Stirk’s, Mr Carver, and it just won’t wash. It ain’t worth a jigger. The regulars in the Hare and Hounds all lie as fast as a horse
can trot. They’d swear the devil had been drinking with ’em and couldn’t have been in hell, if the fancy took ’em to aggravate us. I can tell you plainly, Mr Carver, Stirk
could have been in Herne Hill as easy as you or I.’

Pulverbatch sighed deeply as if distressed by the dishonesty of the Hare and Hounds’ clientele.

‘Now, I’m not claiming that he’s the chief villain of this piece.’ The inspector sounded indignant at the very idea that Adam might believe he was. ‘Of course I
ain’t. Somebody put him up to visiting Herne Hill, but Stirk ain’t saying who that somebody was.’

‘So, what do you propose to do now, Inspector?’

Pulverbatch made no reply. He left his chair and walked behind his prisoner who smirked uneasily and twisted his head to follow the policeman as he moved around the room.

‘Screever!’ Pulverbatch yelled suddenly. The door to the room opened and the constable appeared once more. ‘Take this rogue back down to the cells.’

Screever hauled the prisoner to his feet and the two of them left the room. As they passed down the corridor, Adam could hear Stirk, in a bemused tone of voice, repeating to the constable his
earlier assertion that he ‘ain’t never been in ’erne ’ill’. Pulverbatch sat himself down in the chair his suspect had just vacated and drummed his fingers on the
table. For a minute or two, he gazed into the middle distance as if he had just realised that Scotland Yard and the city were the very last places he wanted to be and he was dreaming instead of
green fields and shady woodlands. Adam was just beginning to feel slightly uncomfortable and was considering making his farewells when the inspector roused himself from his reverie.

‘Remember the old saying, Mr Carver,’ he said, with renewed energy. ‘The bird that can sing and won’t sing, must be made to sing. Never fear, sir. We’ll have Stirk
singing like a linnet before the day is out.’

‘But what if he’s singing the wrong tune, Inspector? Or just the tune he thinks you want to hear?’

‘He’s our bird, sir. Have no doubt about it. Never was such a one for villainy and violence, I do believe. No need for you to be a-chasing old Jinkinson halfway round town. That fat
fraud ain’t got anything to do with this case.’