A Donation of Murder Page 3

  Three children, an older boy and two tiny girls, sat huddled in the stairwell.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m a policeman — you must come with me.’ Pike picked up the youngest girl, not much more than a babe in arms, herding the other two towards the door. He poked his head through the crack and called out to Singh, ‘All clear?’

  Singh raised his thumb. Several policemen covered Pike, their pistols and rifles pointing at the shattered window, now bright with flames.

  ‘I’m going to count to three, children. On the count of three, we run towards the policemen on the other side of that wall. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the boy answered solemnly.

  ‘Good lad. One, two, three!’

  Out they ran and into a hail of bullets. The barrage was not coming from the top floor with the shattered window as Pike had anticipated, but from several storeys down, closer to the ground.

  The young girl running beside him tripped and fell, her cry of pain and terror shattering Pike’s mind more painfully than any bullet. Singh zig-zagged towards him and reached the girl, picking her up and cradling her limp body in his powerful arms. And then Singh spun around, propelled by a bullet to the shoulder. As he fell, he stretched himself on top of the injured girl, shielding her with his body.

  The gunfire stopped. An eerie silence descended upon the scene.

  Pike handed the baby to a policeman who’d dashed from the line to help, and then ran back for the older boy who lay on the cobbles, curled like a shrimp. Pike could see no sign of blood on the boy’s body. He was probably in shock.

  Several other policemen converged on Singh and the precious bundle he had shielded, dragging them to a safe spot about fifty yards away where several ambulances stood waiting.

  Pike did not know who was shaking more, himself or the young lad whom he led by the hand to join his sisters.

  The ambulance attendants were treating the injured girl.

  ‘She’s still alive, but I don’t fancy her chances,’ one of them said.

  Pike passed his hand over his mouth. He drew his eyes away from the little girl’s rag-doll form and met Singh’s. The Sikh sat on the ground, slumped against the wheel of the ambulance while an attendant fashioned a sling around his arm.

  ‘Thank you, Singh, that was a brave act,’ Pike said.

  With his good arm, Singh pointed to the tenement from which clouds of smoke bellowed. ‘You’d better be getting back, sir.’

  His words broke through the fog of Pike’s emotions. Good God, of course he should be getting back! There’d be plenty of time for self-reproach once he’d got the last of those murdering bastards.

  Pike raised his hand in acknowledgment to his second in command, grateful for his grounding influence, and ran back in the direction of the tenement.

  ‘Any more signs of life inside?’ Pike asked the most senior man flattened against the wall, holding a rifle.

  ‘Not a thing, sir.’

  ‘Hum, maybe that cowardly attack was a last hurrah.’

  Pike ordered one of the men to call the fire brigade over. So far the fire had been contained to one room in the fifth storey. The snow had helped, but he could not risk it spreading to the buildings standing cheek by jowl on either side. He made his way through the evacuated tenement next door, into the backyard and across to the yard of the building where the villains were holed up.

  A group of police was lounging against an outhouse wall — the privies, if the smell was any indication. The snow had ceased falling and visibility had improved. Frozen washing creaked in the wind from lines hung but a few feet away from a stinking midden.

  The men straightened when Pike made his appearance.

  ‘Report,’ he said to a red-faced sergeant.

  ‘Nothing to report, not even a rat,’ the sergeant said, tossing his cigarette into the slush beneath his boots.

  ‘Straighten up, be on your guard. Once the fire is under control we’ll be going in through the front top window. If there’s any of them left, they’ll probably attempt to bolt off this way.’

  ‘Shoot to kill, sir?’ the sergeant asked with a disconcerting gleam to his eye. Pike’s mind flashed to the dead shop girl, the injured child. It was tempting.

  ‘No.’ He paused. ‘Aim at the legs.’

  Pike returned to the front of the building. The crews from two fire engines were setting up their equipment. The men moved with caution, every now and then glancing towards the top window. The fire did not seem as ferocious as before, more of a gentle glow than a raging inferno.

  ‘Are they dead, sir?’ one of the brass helmeted men asked him.

  ‘Not all of them,’ Pike replied. ‘I think at least one might be alive somewhere between the fifth and first floor. We’ll have to drive him from the top and push him down. Armed police will climb the ladder and enter the window first. When we confirm it’s safe we will give you the signal to commence your work. What is your assessment of the fire?’

  ‘It could have been a lot worse, sir. If this was summer I reckon the whole street would’ve been up by now. The weather’s been on our side at least.’

  Thank God something was on their side, Pike thought as he climbed aboard the fire engine and tested the rigidity of the long extendable ladder.

  *

  Pike put one foot on the window ledge and eased the other over the frame of jagged glass. He knew what he should be doing: using the element of surprise. He should dive through the window, somersault across the floor and then leap into a firing position. But a defective knee — sturdy enough to walk on, thanks to Dody, yet decidedly not strong enough for acrobatics — limited what he could do these days.

  He picked his way as rapidly as he could over the glass and pushed through a handy smokescreen into the one-roomed flat. A wall of heat forced him back. He ordered the fireman, who’d been behind him on the ladder, to do his best from where he stood. Pike could not risk allowing the firemen into the building until he was sure the villains could cause them no harm.

  The fireman called down to his mate manning the steam pump. The pump engaged with an explosive force that would have knocked an inexperienced man off the ladder. The man held his ground and dowsed the flames with his brass fitted hosepipe.

  Pike lifted his hand to indicate ‘pump off’, and made his way through the steam that had now replaced most of the smoke, one hand on his pistol, the other pressing his handkerchief to his mouth and nose. He trod cautiously, testing the floorboards and joists before applying his full weight. The source of the flames turned out to be a stack of smouldering wooden furniture, topped by a cheap mattress. The smell of burning horsehair was sickening, and took Pike back to places he wished to forget: the African war, all those dead men and horses.

  An empty can of kerosene lying beside the pile explained the thick greasy smoke. It was hard to imagine men attempting to burn themselves alive. It must have been a planned diversion, Pike decided. Perhaps the noxious smoke had overcome them before they could make their escape.

  ‘Police. Show yourself!’ he called into the gloom.

  No answer.

  Through the poor, smoky light, Pike caught a metallic gleam. He whirled towards it, his finger split seconds away from pulling the trigger of his pistol.

  ‘Can we come in now, sir?’ the brass helmeted fireman asked.

  Idiot. Pike had almost shot him. ‘No. Stay where you are,’ he barked.

  He continued to make his way through the haze. A Remington rifle lay beside the body of a man stretched face down upon the floor. Pike kicked the rifle away and bent to check the pulse at the man’s neck, as Dody had taught him.

  No sign of life from this one.

  He moved deeper into the dwelling, finding two more dead men, one in the flat and the other on the landing. Were their deaths an accident, or had they hoped the smoke or fire would kill them before the police did? Perhaps they’d decided this was a better alternative to the gallows — at least they had been in control to t
he last. Or had they?

  Witnesses to the robbery at the jewellery shop had said there’d been a group of men, four at least. Where was the fourth? Pike wondered as he moved about the creaking landing. He checked all ten rooms on the floor and found no sign of life, though plenty to suggest these were the homes of overcrowded family groups, living hand to mouth. In one room he found a drawer improvised into a baby’s cradle. A one-eyed doll stared at him from the floor, its china head a mosaic of cracks. Was this the flat where the terrified children he had tried to rescue lived? Did the dolly belong to the injured little girl? Best not to think about that.

  A few flames were smouldering their way through the paper-thin walls to the flat next door. Pike called the firemen in, warning them not to touch the bodies and to confine their activities to this floor only until further word from him.

  And then he heard a sound: footsteps on the floor below.

  ‘You! Stop right there, police!’ he cried as he set off in pursuit. Looking down the stairwell, he glimpsed a small man in a cloth cap. The man was a lot more nimble than Pike, bolting down the stairs three at a time and swinging through the air at each turn of the banister.

  Pike did his best to follow him down five flights of stairs, but lost him on the first-floor landing. Pike stopped, listening to the sound of his own laboured breathing. The man could not have reached the ground floor so quickly unless he’d slid down the banister the rest of the way. Pike glanced at the dull wooden handrail. Strategically placed knobs put paid to that notion. And surely if the man had made it through the back door, Pike would have heard shots by now.

  He had to be somewhere on the first floor.

  Pike found him in the third flat he searched, hidden behind a wardrobe missing its door.

  ‘Out you come, lad,’ he said to the boy, fifteen years old if a day.

  The boy stepped out, wide-eyed and blinking. His Adam’s apple scurried up and down his scrawny throat as he faced Pike and tried to swallow. He had a small triangular-shaped face and the beginning of a downy moustache on his upper lip. Pike recognised him immediately.

  ‘Tommy “the Tadpole” Boo-champ.’ He pronounced the boy’s surname with the local accent. He doubted even Tommy knew the correct pronunciation of the name handed down to him by his Huguenot ancestors.

  The boy’s filthy hand crept towards a bulge in the front of his shirt.

  ‘Against the wall, Tommy,’ Pike said, slamming the boy’s body where he wanted it.

  But Tommy slithered from his grip, dropped to his knees and darted between Pike’s legs. Pike fired a warning shot into the air to alert the men outside, and dashed after the fugitive, down the remaining stairs and into the tenement’s backyard.

  ‘There ’ee goes!’ one of the policemen shouted, pointing his pistol at Tommy’s fleeing form. The bullet missed its target and splintered into one of the privy doors.

  Another man aimed a rifle. Pike got to him just in time, chopping the rifle downwards with his hand. The rifle discharged, hitting its prey in the lower leg, sending Tommy tumbling into a pile of dustbins.

  ‘I said aim for the legs, Constable,’ Pike said through gritted teeth. One injured child was enough for one day.

  A couple of constables approached the bins, picking over piles of frozen refuse. Then, like a jack-in-a-box, up Tommy jumped, clapping the closest constable around the ears with a pair of dustbin-lid cymbals. The constable collapsed in shock. The other dived for Tommy’s legs, but he was not quick enough. In the blink of an eye Tommy had scaled the wooden perimeter fence and was legging it down the back lane, pursued by two puffing policemen.

  Pike cursed under his breath. ‘They haven’t a chance,’ he muttered to the red-faced sergeant next to him.

  ‘You can see why he’s called “the Tadpole,”’ the sergeant said. ‘Slippery little bugger.’

  Pike could not but agree.

  The constable with the rifle scowled. ‘You should have let me take that shot, sir, I’d ’ave hit ’im in the noggin and that would-a-been that.’

  ‘As the only remaining member of the gang who robbed the jeweller’s shop, he’s more valuable alive to us than he is dead. And next time you disobey orders,’ Pike peered through the sleet at the numbers on the high collar of the policeman’s greatcoat, ‘PC 467, it’s the charge sheet for you. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Keep an eye on him, Sergeant,’ Pike said as he walked away from the group.

  A thin trail of red drips upon the slushy grey snow caught his eye. He began to follow it.

  Chapter Four

  The clinic was part of a scheme devised by Doctor Elizabeth Garret to turn disused buildings into places of medical care for disadvantaged women. It worked in a similar fashion to the casualty department of the London Hospital not far down the road. But While the London was much bigger, better staffed and better equipped, the women’s clinic offered something the larger institution could not — a refuge from ill-intentioned men.

  Many of the women who sought treatment were vagrants or prostitutes, working by night and sleeping by day in the graveyard of Christchurch Spitalfields, and controlled by dangerous and demanding pimps. Other patients, including children, came from tenements where families of up to fifteen people shared a room. In these places some men claimed unrestricted access to their daughters. Others expressed their misery and desperation through their fists.

  And such abuse was not limited to the poorer classes. Dody was on duty once when a Duchess was admitted through the front door with eight-year-old twin girls. The Duchess had surprised her husband in the nursery on Nanny’s day off. It appeared the Duke had a predilection for his own progeny.

  The poor woman had been in a desperate state. She had applied for a divorce but had been informed by her husband’s lawyer that a divorce would leave her destitute and destroy her daughters’ future. The Duchess had remained in hiding at the clinic with her daughters until arrangements were made for them to be taken in by a kindly uncle who lived on the continent.

  The lady would be aghast if she knew the place that had offered her succour in her time of need was threatened with closure due to lack of funds. Dody furrowed her brow as she joined the others in the clinic kitchen for the emergency meeting, wondering if the Duchess might be able to help.

  The kitchen was simple, but clean, much as the original warehouse had been before it was bought by the clinic’s original benefactor (since dead, alas) and rudimentarily renovated. Dody was acquainted with all eight women seated around the ringed table. Three were doctors like herself, who donated their services. Daphne Hamilton, Florence’s suffragette friend, was also present. Upon leaving school Daphne had helped at the clinic two days each week. Dody and the other staff had been so impressed with her natural ability that they had encouraged her to undertake nurses’ training. She had completed her course about six months ago and now spent more time at the clinic than she did away from it, acting as unofficial ‘matron’ and organising the voluntary nursing and cleaning staff. It would be a sad day for the clinic when Daphne hung up her fob watch to get married.

  The medical staff were very much at ease in the draughty kitchen, though Dody could not help but notice the ramrod backs and fidgeting fingers of the non-medical members of the board. Though none of them visited the premises often, all were indispensable to the clinic’s success. Mrs Lee and Mrs Purslowe managed the fundraising activities and Lady Lucinda Broome looked after the books and administration. She was the only one of the three who accepted tea from the tray of chipped mugs passed around by Nurse Little.

  They were kind women with the best of intentions, even the unpopular Mrs Lee had a good heart and meant well despite her sometimes harsh approach. All were wealthy and married to decent men who indulged their wives, encouraging them to pursue charitable causes. These men knew too well what happened to bored, wealthy women — they either indulged in romantic affairs or joined the suffragette movement — heaven forbid!
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  Lady Lucinda regarded the notes before her through a pince-nez balanced on a button nose not big enough for the job. She held the eyeglasses in place as she shook her head.

  ‘It’s not looking favourable, I’m afraid, ladies. Our fundraising over the last three months has been as follows: The jumble sale raised two pounds, nine shillings and sixpence. Christchurch Spitalfield donated five pounds, and, likewise, the Bloomsbury Suffragette Division donated five pounds.’ At this Lady Lucinda gave Daphne an appreciative nod. ‘And we’ve had an anonymous donation of one hundred pounds.’

  The women clapped and trilled ‘Bravo!’ until Lady Lucinda raised her hand for silence. ‘Generous as the donation is, we are still left with five hundred and fifty pounds of debt.’

  ‘Then we will be unable to meet our rental,’ Dody said, chewing on her pencil.

  ‘Indeed. Nor will we be able to purchase new linen. The money raised will cover a month’s worth of medicines at the very most,’ Lady Lucinda said.

  ‘And what good are medicines if we don’t have the premises in which to use them?’ Daphne remarked.

  ‘Our landlord has given us six weeks to pay or to vacate.’

  ‘But Lucinda, Mr Coppins was such a generous man, and a huge admirer of Doctor Garret’s,’ Mrs Purslowe exclaimed. ‘Why would he do this to us now?’

  ‘Mr Coppins passed away last year, dear. His son is in charge now, and not as sympathetic to our cause, I’m afraid.’

  The forgetful Mrs Purslowe lowered her gaze to gloved hands resting on the table.

  ‘Does anybody have any ideas?’ Lady Lucinda asked the gathered women.

  ‘What about the Duchess, surely she would help?’ Dody asked.

  ‘Alas, we seem to have lost contact. Happy as I am for her and her dear little girls, the rumour mill suggests she has met someone on the continent, a foreigner, and married him. She may well have moved. I received no Christmas card from her last year or this.’

  ‘Ungrateful. After all we did for her,’ snapped Mrs Lee.

  ‘Actually, I heard she’d died,’ Daphne said, bluntly. Daphne never did have the time for sour-faced Mrs Lee who was so thick-skinned she never seemed to notice.