The Hangman's Child (9 page)

She would be the last up the King's Head Stairs by ten or twenty yards, easily intercepted as the rest fled. They came in a rush, panting and laughing. Scattering down College Street, they were lost in the commercial bustle of Belvedere Road. Suzanne trailed well behind. Verity waited, hidden from her as she came under the stone quay and began to climb the steps. When she reached the top, he took her arm from behind and felt her start with shock.

'A word with you, miss!' he said magisterially.

She went limp in his grasp, winded and defeated. Alone among the thieves, she was carrying nothing.

'You needn't be handcuffed, so long as you act sensible,' he said reassuringly. 'You ain't got nowhere to run from here.'

She responded with a whimper of submission and despair.

'I'm so 'ungry!' she sobbed.

'Well,' he said encouragingly, 'if you was to be an evidence against the rest, you might have nothing to answer for.'

She looked up into his face, wanting to believe in his goodness and his promise. She even drew a little closer as if to confide in him, and then spat with great accuracy into his eye. Half-blinded for an instant, he felt her bony knee come up sharply between his legs.

'Stinking jack!'

Then, as she twisted away, there was a rending of cheap cotton. Verity, wiping his eye, held nothing but a wet and slimy rag that had been the sleeve and shoulder of her ragged dress.

He sprang after her. His hat had gone in the struggle, rolling on the edge of the stone stairs. He would find it later. Like many fugitives, Lambeth Sue underestimated his speed. He cornered her at a riverside wall of the Military Stores. In a pantomime dance, she made to dive past, first on one side, then on the other. Verity stepped left, guessing she would run for the alley on his right.

She did as he expected. The alley was formed by five storeys of the Red Lion Brewery facing a high wall that protected the unfinished railway bridge. At the top of the brewery wall was a wooden hoist with iron chains dangling from it. This was a side route into Belvedere Road. But it was the dinner hour and there were no drays entering or leaving the brewery yard. Plate-iron gates had been locked across the alley, turning it into a cul-de-sac. His fugitive was trapped.

For all her nimbleness, she was winded, hovering with the brick wall behind her, dodging from side to side. In a last trick of her trade, she bolted at him on one side, swerving at the last moment to the other. As she swerved she lost her footing and fell with Verity on top of her.

That's enough!' he said furiously. 'Ain't you got more sense?'

A fist hit him on the eyebrow. She panted, clutching at his hair, gathering spittle. He had one arm pinned, her other waving free. He snapped a metal cuff on the captive wrist. Then, to his dismay, the fugitive began to scream. He gripped the arm that was still flailing.

'Dirty brute!' said a deep voice behind him.

He did not dare to take his eyes off the captive.

'Police officer,' he said breathlessly to whoever was standing over him. 'And if I should require your assistance, you'll be legally obliged to render same.'

'Dirty brute!' said the voice again. Someone scuffed a boot on the ground beside him but he snapped the second cuff on his captive's other wrist and got to his feet.

A large man in red plush waistcoat and knee breeches, his legs the size of balustrade pillars, stood behind him, feet planted astride and arms folded. A thin companion in a high battered hat was leaning against the brick wall, picking his teeth with a straw. The man in the waistcoat gestured at the kneeling girl.

'Get those darbies off her, you poxy jack!'

'You keep out of what don't concern you,' said Verity grimly, 'else there'll be another pair for you.'

But he was the one now trapped in the alley. With a chill at his heart, he knew there was only one way out.

'Right!' he said, facing the pair of them, 'oo's first?'

The man with the straw straightened up from the wall, as if suddenly interested in the exchange. The large man in the waistcoat came forward, fencing for a grip. Verity side-stepped, caught his antagonist's right arm in a lock and spun the man by his own momentum. The large man hit the brick wall with a bellowing gasp. But he straightened up and came back, no more troubled than by falling on a feather mattress. His shoulders were hunched, fists moving. Verity clamped his teeth hard, knowing that a loose jaw more easily becomes a broken jaw.

His opponent lunged twice but Verity dodged back, so that the fists merely patted his cheeks. He kept his guard up. The man lunged again. Verity went back with the blow, then came forward with one knee going straight to his attacker's groin. The bruiser in the red waistcoat lost his balance, recovered, backed to the wall and picked up a short wooden spar. He advanced with it, driving Verity back by jabs to the face. At the next thrust, Verity grabbed the wood and hung on, twisting and bending with his assailant until both men lost their footing.

In a flailing of arms, clutching and snatching, they fought half-kneeling and half-standing. With a crash of glass they went sprawling over a crate of bottles by the brewery wall. Dogs began to bark. Suzanne was screaming again. They struggled to their feet, grappling, while the onlooker who had been picking his teeth with the straw fenced round them, for a chance to intervene. Snatching the fallen spar, he ran in and hit Verity behind the knees. Verity tried to face both men and tripped. He caught his foot on the stone edge of a deep gutter, an outlet from the brewery wall to the river. There was sufficient discharge in the drain to soak his black trousers as he fell, tearing the elbow of his frock-coat.

Shaken by the fall, he got to his knees, preparing for battle again. But his assailants now stood back and he saw a newcomer above him. Looking down was the soft smile and dark pompadour hair of Bully Bragg. Over Bragg's shoulder, stood the newly made-up Inspector Fowler, exquisite in fawn summer suiting and royal-blue cravat.

'Why, Mr Verity!' Bragg's quiet smile conveyed bewilderment. 'Whatever has happened? Let me give you a hand up, my dear fellow!'

'I'll thank you to stand out of my way . . . .'

'Mr Fowler! This way, if you please. My poor Mr Verity!'

The man with the straw and his companion with the red waistcoat had an unapologetic air. Bragg swung round on them.

'Mr Hardwicke! Mr Atwell! Can either of you explain this? Or the young lady?'

Fowler intervened, holding out his hand to Verity.

'We'd best have those cuffs off her. No call for them now.'

Verity handed him the key.

'She was on the ground and him on top of her,' said Hardwicke in the red waistcoat. 'Ravishing in an alley, it looked like.'

'You was told I was police!' said Verity ferociously.

'Told,' said Hardwicke reasonably. 'But telling and being is different things. You didn't look like police. You didn't act like police, neither. You fought like a brick. You could've been anyone. That's how misunderstandings d'come about.'

Fowler unlocked the cuffs. Suzanne set up a hooting cry. The dim light of the alley caught a slim, sun-tanned shoulder, where the dress had been torn from her.

'He tried to have me clothes off! See me dress!'

Fowler's enquiring glance at Verity invited an explanation, but Lambeth Sue had not finished.

'And he walloped me! Look at me arse!'

There was a respectful silence at the sight of a pink imprint.

'Indeed,' said Fowler quietly. He looked again at Verity.

‘I
never! What she got there come from the lighterman on the coal-barge and well deserved! You ask on the barge off King's Head Stairs. You'll see the truth!'

'Well,' said Fowler pleasantly, 'I'm glad of that.'

A few minutes later, Verity followed Fowler from the alley. The others walked behind. He sensed the
ir hidden smiles at his humili
ation. With Fowler and four known criminals in attendance, he left hatless, like a felon under escort.

When they were alone together, Fowler rested his thumbs under the lapels of his fawn summer suiting.

'Just 'cos a man's made up, Verity, he don't cease to be human. And I hope I don't.'

Verity said nothing. He noticed that Fowler now called him 'Verity,' rather than 'Mr Verity,' the familiarity of a superior with a former equal. Verity stood hatless in torn frock-coat and wet trousers. Fowler sat, or rather lounged, behind the duty officer's table, dressed more like the keeper of a Regent Street night-house.

The police ship was an old wooden frigate with masts cut down, moored just below Waterloo Bridge. Square stern-windows in its after-cabin reflected watery brilliance on low beams and whitewashed ceiling.

Fowler gave him a leer.

‘I
hope I'm human, eh?'

Verity nodded. He could not bring himself to answer.

'Nothing personal,' Fowler insisted. 'Nothing vindictive.'

‘I
did what was right.' He felt that the words were being torn out between his teeth.

Fowler's hand gestured, as if waving an invisible cigar.

"Course you did, Verity. And that little slut who made the trouble, she's well suited. Or will be at the next sessions. You and the lighterman, that's two witnesses to robbery of the barge. Industrial school for her, or some such reformatory as takes the court's fancy. She thinks her backside's smarting now, wait till she finishes twelve months there.'

‘I
did nothing wrong, sir! With respect, sir!' He made 'sir' sound like a reprimand rather than a term of deference. But Fowler treasured it smilingly.

"Course you didn't, Verity. Not wrong, but most unfortunate. What you have done, see, is wipe out months of surveillance that'll have to start all over again. 'Course, you hadn't been told about barges off Lambeth, your beat being down Bermondsey and the wharves. The coal-barge that caught your eye this morning has been watched for some time. So have four others.'

'They never have!' The full extent of his tragedy was becoming clear to him.
‘I
was never told!'

'On my manor, Verity, a man gets told what he needs to know, not what he don't.' Fowler's thumbs were still in his lapels. He seemed to be rolling the invisible cigar in his lips. 'Your job was the wharves, not lighters nor barges. Five of them been suspected of bringing contraband from the big ships. Lighters can come in close, discharge cargo, keep the contraband on board. Then, at night, or when no one's watching, it's got just a few feet to travel at low water. They can toss the packets down to someone standing in the water. Easy as that. See?'

'Robbery!' said Verity firmly. 'That's what I saw.'

A fly landed on Fowler's immaculately stitched lapel and he flicked it away.

'You got no evidence, my friend, beyond the lighterman cursing Lambeth Sue for a thieving little bitch and taking a swipe at her. That don't necessarily have to be because of robbery. Look! You been on a smuggling detail two months. Then you see half-a-dozen young villains passing ashore packages from a lighter. Didn't it never cross your mind what else they might be doing?'

'Robbing!' said Verity, desperate for the first time in their encounter.

'And you recovered any goods to prove it, have you?'
‘I
couldn't hold her and chase them!' Fowler shook his head, as if it were all beyond him. 'So, for all you know, each of the items stolen could have been stuffed with tobacco or anything else.' Verity stood his ground. 'No alternative but what I did.'

'Listen, Verity. You tell me, an officer of your experience, it never occurred to you to get help?'

‘I
'd have lost the girl.'

'But you knew who she was, old fellow! We could have got her any time. According to you, she wasn't carrying anything! But the others who had the goods, you let 'em all get away. Suppose you'd grabbed one of those little brutes and we'd found contraband in his packages. We'd be halfway to court now. Whereas, it's only the evidence of a lighterman that's stood between you and charges of attempted ravishing of her and grievous bodily harm all round. You'd have been off the Force and in Horsemonger Lane lock-up before tonight!'

Verity said nothing. He loathed Fowler. But Fowler was right.

'Whereas,' Fowler said quietly, 'the master of that barge now knows that the police saw everything that happened today. And the reason they saw it, he'll think, is because they were watching. And by now he's told his four friends on their other barges that he's been watched. So what do you suppose they'll do?'