CHAPTER 1
December 1928
The two bodies lay about twenty feet apart on the mud flats. The receding tide had dropped them unceremoniously on the shoreline further up towards the mouth of Otterham Creek and, according to the sailorman who had spotted them and dragged them to this end of the creek, beyond the reaches and the tidal flow, it was likely that they'd been dumped in the Medway further upriver. The ebb and flow of several tides had probably brought them to rest on that bend, in the shallows at the edge of the water. The man gave his name as Frederick Garth. He and his boy, he said, had been unable to haul them safe to shore where they had first been spotted. They had used their tiny boat and, with the man handling the single oar and the boy keeping tight hold of the boat hook looped and twisted into clothing, brought them laboriously further into the creek. Eventually they had found a spot where they could bring the bodies ashore and had hauled them out with boat hooks; the mud showed clearly their passage through the stinking silt. But, the skipper told the silent and rather austere looking policeman, he'd tried not to disturb them more than he had to, grabbing the dead men by their belts and pulling hard in to shore. He'd touched nothing else and neither had the boy. He'd spotted them floating, he said, adding more detail in a vain attempt to elicit a response. He and the boy had dropped anchor, got themselves into the boat, and the boy had caught hold with the boat hook while he'd hauled in to shore. Then they'd gone back for the other. Two trips they'd made in as many hours, the bodies dragging in the water something fierce and the boy, not having the strength of a grown man, had struggled with the task.
'And no blame on him for that,' the man said fiercely, the lack of response rousing him to anger. 'He almost lost hold, so we drifted a little off course on the second run.' He spread his arms wide to indicate the distance between the two bodies on the foreshore. 'But he did his best, the lad did.'
Getting very little response from the man he understood to be a detective inspector, he turned to the shorter, broader and more forthcoming companion.
'It was hard to hold our course. You c'n see that for yoursen. So one ended up there and the other over yon.'
'You did a fine job,' Mickey reassured him. 'I wouldn't have known how or where to begin. Neither of us would, not having your skills.'
The sailorman clearly had no doubt of that. He nodded rapidly. 'Then we had to go to the farm for help. They sent to the constable and he had a telephone and brought you here, but if you've done with us, suh, we'll be going. I've got the load to deliver and the wind is shifting. I'll be losing pay.'
Mickey Hitchens, detective sergeant with His Majesty's Metropolitan Police, nodded agreement. 'You'd best be going.' The man had already been delayed for too long, waiting for Mickey and his boss to make their slow way from London to Rainham and then from Rainham to this godforsaken spot.
The man stomped off and the boy, about ten or twelve years old, Mickey judged, made to follow. Mickey beckoned him over. He slipped a few coins into the boy's hand. 'Give these to your master,' he said. 'Compensation for his lost time.'
The boy clenched his hand around the coins and ran off to join his elder. Mickey watched him go and then turned his attention back to the two bodies.
His boss, Chief Inspector Henry Johnstone, had bent from his great height and crouched over the closest of them. 'You should have told him to fill out a compensation form,' he said wryly.
'And have them wait six months just to have the claim rejected? They say no good deed goes unpunished. He could have left well alone and we'd have been none the wiser. As it is, he's lost time, and time means pay.'
Henry considered and then nodded slowly. He stood, drawing his heavy coat, a recent gift from his sister, tightly across his chest. The hem had dragged in the mud and Henry flicked at it ineffectually with a gloved hand. A damp and bitter wind blew in across the water, loaded with moisture from way out at sea, and the gathering clouds, Mickey thought, presaged an equally cold and bitter rain.
'We should get them moved,' Mickey said. 'Soon as we can before the weather turns. If they've washed down from upstream, there's not much we can learn from here.'
'If,' Henry said, but he nodded. The boatman knew the river; chances were he was right. Henry too looked up at the sky, black clouds roiling and twisting into thunderheads. 'We'll get them packed up and into the wagon and we'll head back. You recognize him?' He gestured towards the body he had been examining.
'I do indeed,' Mickey said. 'Billy Crane, one of Bailey's men. I'm guessing the other will have a similar provenance.'
He extended a hand to his boss and hauled him back on to the firmer ground of the bank. They had brought wellington boots with them and Henry's were caked in foul smelling mud, almost to the tops.
Mickey beckoned to the local constable and gave instructions for the removal of the dead men. The man looked worried.
'You need extra hands,' Mickey told him. 'We'll gladly lend them.'
The constable looked even more troubled at the thought of his superiors helping out. 'Thank you, sir, but my lads can manage that. Trouble is, if we load both bodies into the cart, I'm not so sure the horse can handle them as well as your two good selves, not over such sucking ground. I can send one of the lads to rustle up some extra transport?'
Mickey shook his head. 'It's only a mile or so back to the road, Constable. The inspector and I, we're well used to walking. You see to the dead; the living will make shift for themselves.'
The constable looked from Mickey to the senior detective and then back again. A more direct glance from Mickey prompted Henry, reminding him that he ought to make a response.
'Walking back will do us no harm, Constable. But you and your men had best make shift before the weather closes in.'
The constable, finally reassured, nodded and made off back to where the bodies lay, his three associates in tow.
'Best move ourselves, sharpish,' Mickey observed. 'We're in for a soaking, that's for sure.'
Henry nodded and turned away from the scene of activity by the river, settling his hat more firmly on his head. Over their serge uniforms the uniformed officers wore heavy oilskin capes which would hamper their movements in bringing the bodies to the cart but stand them in good stead for the walk, escorting the wagon back to the settlement of Upchurch where it had been arranged to lodge the bodies in the church overnight until proper transport could be arranged to take them to the railway. The farmer whose cart they'd borrowed would have a longer journey and the sacking he had used to swathe his head and shoulders would be soaked through by the time he reached home. They'd best give him something for his trouble as well, Henry thought.
A car, the one and only allocated to the Kent Constabulary, had been sent to fetch them from the station and had brought them to a point a mile outside Upchurch, but it had been obvious it would be of little use thereafter and they had left it and the driver back on what passed for a main road. Mickey, feeling the first drops of heavy rain sliding down the back of his neck, was relieved to think they'd not have to walk the entire way back. He fell into step beside his boss. His friend.
'So what are two of Josiah Bailey's men doing right out here, in the back of beyond?'
'Not so far from his usual ground, I suppose,' Henry argued. 'This might feel like the back of beyond but we're only a scant few miles from Rochester and Sittingbourne and Rainham, and those towns are only a train ride from the East End. Josiah Bailey has contacts and probably family hereabouts. Besides, we still don't know where they went into the water. The Medway is a powerful river.'
'And one I don't know so well. If they'd fetched up in the Thames, I could make a guess as to where they might have been pitched into the water. Bailey's not going to be too happy about it.'
'Unless he ordered it. He's known to have a short fuse, even with his own people. Even with his own kin, for that matter.'
Mickey nodded. Josiah Bailey had ordered his own cousin killed not six months before, or so the rumour mill had it. And over a woman ... though Mickey was inclined to take that part with a pinch of salt. New women were two a penny to a man like Bailey and anyone else who fancied their chances, so it was said, just had to wait in patience until Bailey grew tired of his latest. Bailey and his family had been ruling over their little bit of the East End since before the war. Gambling, women, protection money all added to the family wealth and, Mickey supposed, a kind of prestige. They certainly ruled their little kingdom with tight fists. Mickey and Inspector Johnstone had engaged in several run-ins with the Bailey family; the latest, only the previous autumn, had resulted in their taking Josiah Bailey briefly into custody. Now he was in the wind and neither Henry nor Mickey had heard news of him in several months.
The rain had started to fall and Mickey glanced back towards the river. From the look of it, they had one body in the cart and were bringing up the other. He turned up his collar and settled his hat more squarely on his head as the cold and heavy drops began to fall in earnest.
'Crane had a blow to the head, though that could easily have been post mortem, and a stab wound to the chest. I thought I discerned a bullet wound in the chest of the second body but there is so much mud it's difficult to tell. We will have to see if your photographs can tell us more.'
Mickey nodded. He glanced back once more towards the river. The rain was falling so viciously now that he could only just make out the cart and the constables moving up the path, heads down and shoulders hunched. Flat land, Mickey thought. Flat and bleak and sodden and, no doubt, dangerous too. They'd been warned to keep to the path. It was getting toward dusk and in the heavy rain it was easy to miss your footing and stumble into one of the many creeks and inlets that criss-crossed this landscape. It was definitely not to Mickey's taste.
At last, through the gloom, Mickey sighted the shape of a car. Spotting them, the driver leapt out and hurried to assist them. They stripped off wellington boots and dumped them in the duffel Mickey had used to carry them from London. This and the murder bag and his camera were laid hastily in the rear footwell and the two men scrambled to get out of the storm.
'So,' Henry picked up their earlier conversation as the driver sought to keep the car on the narrow and increasingly treacherous track. 'Two of Bailey's men, or so we assume. Both dumped in the river, so possibly some effort at concealment. Bailey has a tendency to display his dead, let them serve as a warning to others not to cross him. That, in my mind, lessens the likelihood of them being dead by his orders.'
'You're thinking about Albert Lines.'
Mickey nodded. Lines had been a pawnbroker, one of many who acted as fences and middlemen. He had tried to fiddle his payments to Bailey and Bailey had him killed. Sent his men to cut the hands off Albert Lines and leave him to bleed out in the street, threatening similar treatment to anyone who made to help the unfortunate man.
'Among others. Lines was unlucky. There are signs that Bailey's hold hasn't been as tight recently as it once was. Ted Grieves tried a similar trick and seems to have survived the exercise.'
Ted Grieves had been suspected of skimming a little too much profit. 'Ted Grieves has also dropped off the face of the earth. He could be dead as well, for all we know.'
'But not made an example of. Even before Bailey himself went on the run, there were indications that there was less iron in his fist.'
'And not a hide nor hair seen of him since October,' Mickey added ruefully. It grieved him severely that they'd had Bailey in their hands and then lost him. The last sighting of their man had been an unconfirmed report of him getting on a train at Paddington station. There had been no word of him getting off said train, and Mickey was now inclined to view the report as at best a mistake and at worst a case of mischief-making.
'We'll get a better handle on things once we know who the other fellow is,' he said.
They had reached Upchurch and the driver pulled in at the door of the Crown Inn.
'I drove back here while you were seeing to the bodies, sir,' he said, addressing Henry Johnstone. 'Sorted out accommodation for the both of you. The landlord, Mr James Falkner, he's getting two rooms ready for you, said he'd get the fires going and a meal for this evening.'
'Thank you for that,' Henry said. 'Constable Hargreaves and the rest of the men, do they have further to go?'
'Constable's local, sir. Lives in Upchurch. I've sorted out a van and driver to take the rest back. I hope that was appropriate, sir.'
'Very appropriate,' Henry told him. 'And the bodies will be taken to the church?'
'Room is being made in the sacristy,' the driver assured him.
Content that nothing more could be done, Henry helped Mickey with their bags and they hurried inside. He felt chilled now, his back aching and his hands numb, despite the gloves and the warm coat Cynthia had been generous enough to buy for him. He did not deal so well with cold and damp these days. Too much of it in the trenches seemed to have lowered his resistance and as he got older, so the damp seemed to settle further into his bones.
Older, Henry thought wryly. At forty-two he was hardly decrepit as yet, but there were days when he felt as ancient as Methuselah. Smaller and squarer than Henry, Mickey seemed as inured to the chill as the brick wall he resembled.
James Falkner came to greet them as they came into the bar. The Crown was not yet open for evening trade but Falkner had a fire going and offered tea and hot toddies, both of which Mickey accepted on their behalf.
'And I can rustle up some bread and cheese, maybe a bit of home-made pickle? It's a while till supper will be ready.'
Mickey thanked him. 'That would be very welcome,' he said. He steered Henry towards the fire and dumped their bags, removing his coat and dropping it over the back of a chair to dry. 'Off with your coat,' he told Henry, who had slumped down into one of the two wing chairs set beside the blaze and looked disinclined to move.
Henry, miles away, looked up in surprise.
'Your coat,' Mickey said. 'It needs to dry out, and so do you.'
Henry sighed and shrugged out of his overcoat. Mickey hung that beside his own, the steam already rising and a smell of wet dog permeating the air.
'How much sleep have you had this past week?'
'Enough,' Henry replied sharply. Then he relented. 'Not much,' he admitted.
Mickey nodded. 'Anniversaries are hard,' he said.
'And there are too many damned anniversaries.'
'Isn't that the truth.'
The landlord and a girl bustled in and set food and drink on tables beside their guests and then left them alone. 'Eat,' Mickey ordered. 'I'm bloody starved. You must be too.'
CHAPTER 2
1918
Rainham was silent as the strange little procession – an old, beaten-up cart following a brown Siddeley-Deasy coupé – rattled into town and turned into Station Road.
Tommy halted the cart in front of the station entrance. It was a spare, scant place, and looked deserted at this time of the evening. He helped the passengers down from the cart, just as a distant church clock struck nine. It was raining; cold, heavy drops mixed with halfhearted snow, and it was bitterly cold. The children shivered and Dalla hugged them close.
'I'll be leaving you here,' Tommy said. 'I expect there'll be someone in the ticket office who can help you ... Best I don't know where you're going.' He placed a bag at Dalla's feet. 'There's money in there. Enough to take you ... wherever ... and see you right until you can get back on your feet.'
'Blood money,' Dalla said flatly.
'Call it what you want, it'll still spend just as well.'
Dalla made no reply.
Tommy climbed back on to the cart and watched as Dalla and the children entered the station. She'd picked up the bag, he noted, but she was known to be a sensible woman and would be conscious of her duty to the living. There was no more to be done for the dead.
He felt a certain sympathy for her and a certain interest too. Dalla Beaney was a good-looking woman, despite the two kids and the man who had been a bit too handy with his fists at times. Tommy didn't hold with hitting women. Kids neither, if it came to that. He wondered if she'd miss her old man or if she'd be grateful that he'd gone. She'd thrived just fine while he'd been away at the war. Word was that he'd come back angrier and meaner than ever, though.
Tommy clucked his tongue at the horses and urged them on. He wrapped the oilskin more tightly around his shoulders and tugged his scarf more snugly beneath his cap and then turned the cart back in the direction he'd come, hoping to have the cart returned and be off home again before midnight.
