Pyke hailed a pot-boy and asked him to refill Saggers’ glass, but as soon as the full wineglass materialised, Pyke stood up. ‘Drink up. We’re off to find an editor.’
‘So you’re proposing we run a leader in tomorrow’s edition attacking the police for their failure to adopt sufficiently robust measures for detection in cases of murder and other violent crimes?’
The office occupied by the bespectacled editor of the Morning Examiner stood at the top of a flight of creaking stairs in a building in a narrow courtyard just off Fleet Street. The editor, a man called Jeremiah Spratt, had his shirtsleeves rolled up and he wore an apron heavily stained with black ink. Around him were stacks of newspapers, books still waiting to be reviewed and, on the surface of his desk, waxy pools of dried ink.
‘In part, yes. The Times and the Morning Chronicle have made similar arguments.’
‘In case you haven’t noticed we are not The Times nor the Chronicle.’ But Spratt looked around his office without embarrassment. ‘You said, in part?’
‘One justice system for the rich, another for the poor. That’s what you lead with; that’s what’ll grab your readers’ interest. Two murders on the same day. A team of the New Police’s best detectives is instantly sent to find the killer of the aristocrat; meanwhile the corpse of the poor, mulatto woman is left to rot and, more than three days later, a team still hasn’t been assigned.’
With his patrician air and his mop of slightly receding grey hair, Spratt looked more like an eccentric headmaster than the rapacious, sales-obsessed editor Pyke had been promised. Still, he hadn’t yet declared himself either way, regarding Pyke’s proposal, and as he pushed his spectacles farther up his nose, and glanced across at Saggers, who could barely contain himself, Pyke tried to work out what his concerns were.
‘How do you know all this?’ Spratt smiled awkwardly. ‘That’s to say, how do I know it’s all true?’
‘I know because I was approached by a senior figure in the Metropolitan Police to run the investigation.’ Pyke hesitated and thought about how the story he was trying to sell would affect Tilling. ‘Still, I don’t want that fact to appear anywhere in your newspaper.’
‘And now you’ve been relieved of your duties. Can I ask why?’
Pyke looked across at Saggers. ‘That’s personal, I’m afraid.’ It was late in the afternoon and Pyke wondered what time they put the morning edition to bed.
‘Yet you expect me to take your word for all of this?’ Spratt ran his fingers through his thinning hair. ‘And in return you want me to lampoon the police and turn them into a laughing stock?’
‘I don’t want you to turn them into a laughing stock. I just want you to draw attention to the different provisions made for the rich and the poor, call for the establishment of a new detective squad and lay down a challenge; in effect, that a dedicated team of your very best men — that’s to say, Saggers here and myself — will hunt down this woman’s murderer before the police do.’ Pyke took a moment to arrange his thoughts. ‘Think of it as an act of public service. If we’re successful, a murderer will be arrested, tried and punished. And if we’re not successful, the New Police will be forced to re-examine the way they privilege prevention of crime over detection. Who knows? Perhaps a new detective squad will arise from your campaign. And think of the additional newspapers you’ll sell. People always love a murder, but I promise you, they’ll love reading about the progress of your intrepid detectives even more, especially if we find the killer before the police do. Everyone likes to cheer for the underdog. If this thing catches on, people will be queuing at the news stands to read the latest instalment.’
‘Truly, it’s a monumental idea,’ Saggers said, oozing insincerity. ‘One of breathtaking originality that befits a great man such as yourself and a paper of this calibre.’
Pyke glared at Saggers for his syrupy intervention; they were winning Spratt over already and didn’t need to resort to sycophancy.
‘You reckon a leader and a daily column ought to do it?’ Spratt asked, inspecting an ink stain on his fingers.
‘Perhaps not a daily column. But at least every other day, or when there’s something to report. And we can ask your readers to help us with our enquiries. We could ask anyone who might have known or seen Mary Edgar to contact us. A small reward could be made available.’
‘Rewards cost money and money’s something I don’t have.’
‘Then we’ll just appeal to the goodness of your readers’ hearts.’
That drew an approving nod.
‘Of course, I’ll need some money for the investigation. Twenty pounds ought to do it to start off. And for the column itself, Saggers will want to be paid twopence a line rather than the usual one and a half.’
‘Twenty pounds, you say?’ Spratt sucked the air in through his teeth. ‘I might be able to raise such a sum but it’s not a bottomless well, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘You’ll do it, then?’ Pyke swapped a quick glance with Saggers, who looked as if he might explode with happiness.
‘Indeed I will,’ Spratt said, ‘but on one condition.’
‘Oh?’
‘To give the story credibility, I’ll need to include the name of this senior figure in the New Police who approached you to run the investigation.’
Pyke felt a sudden tightness in his throat. ‘Why’s that?’
Spratt shrugged. ‘His name corroborates the story.’
‘For what it’s worth, he’s a friend of mine.’
‘Then you have a difficult choice to make.’
‘It might seem odd to you but the idea of humiliating this person strikes me as wrong.’
‘Then you can find yourself another newspaper.’
Pyke wetted his lips. ‘What if I told you he gave me the work as a favour, because he thought — rightly as it turned out — that I needed something to do?’
‘So you don’t want to hurt someone who’s given you a helping hand. That makes you a fine human being. Now take off your halo and see things from my perspective. Paying civilians from the public purse to do the work of the police is wrong.’
‘It’s your job to see things in terms of right and wrong. For the rest of us, fault isn’t so easy to apportion.’
‘Listen, Pyke, I don’t have time to debate the ethics of journalism. Either you agree to my condition or we shake hands and go our separate ways. Which is it to be?’
Pyke stole another glance at Saggers and briefly weighed up his debt to Tilling against his desire to find Mary Edgar’s murderer and vindicate himself in his son’s eyes. ‘His name’s Fitzroy Tilling.’ Pyke hesitated, still contemplating his betrayal. ‘He’s the deputy commissioner.’
Outside Spratt’s office, Saggers turned to him and whispered, ‘For a moment I thought you were going to piss our deal up against the wall for the sake of, what, a friendship?’
Pyke had to fight the urge to grab the fat man by his neck and squeeze it until he choked.
Pyke sat at the counter in the smoky confines of Samuel’s taproom drinking rum and water. As the man had predicted, the atmosphere of the place was different. Perhaps it was the babble of different languages which made it so: Scandinavians drunkenly toasting each other and dark-skinned Italians smoking their pipes and cheroots. The rest of the faces belonged to Negro and Lascar sailors, each keeping to their own, the different nationalities and races in the cramped room rubbing shoulders with one another, but never mixing.
A part-time dock labourer called Johnny — a man in his forties with blue-black skin and forearms as thick as sapling trees corded with veins — recognised Mary Edgar from the charcoal drawing. He told Pyke he’d seen her in the window of a gentleman’s carriage on Commercial Road about two or three weeks earlier, coming from the direction of the West India Docks. He didn’t recognise anyone resembling Arthur Sobers’ description but told Pyke that a ship from Jamaica called the Island Queen had docked there around the same time.