Cribb upended his tankard. Then he withdrew a handkerchief to wipe the corners of his mouth. The bar parlour was less crowded than usual. Ada at the counter was flirting with one of her regulars, a stocky pawnbroker whose professional indiscretions were unforgivable if his endless patter could be believed. At the end of the room a group of navvies clustered around a bagatelle board, and to their left a pair of shabby professional men-solicitors’ clerks, perhaps-hungrily bolted thickly sliced bread. Bread and cheese always sold well here, day and evening. A plateful of heart-shaped cakes, topped with cherries, under a glass dome on the counter, never seemed to sell, except when customers took them to their children waiting outside.
“Jumped-up beat pounders.” Cribb grunted audibly at the memory and thrust the handkerchief deep into his trouser pocket. There were sixteen divisions in the Metropolitan area, excluding A Division, which was Central Office. Fourteen of them were headed by inspectors. Two sergeants with divisional responsibility, and he had to be one.
An engraving of a bull terrier hung over the piano to Cribb’s left, an ugly, bowlegged brute, mainly yellow, but once white, with a smear of black across the haunches. On Saturdays and bank holidays singers would group around the piano, facing old Patch as they chorused by the hour. Few ever read the small print beneath: “Mr. Howard Shore’s champion dog, Leamington, which caught and killed 302 rats in one hour at the Hare and Billet, Wimble-don, 7th May 1863.” The Sergeant scanned Leamington, and pondered his secret. Inspiration, intuition or flair? Science, anyway, had never bothered him. Cribb stood up to leave.
“Mr. Cribb, sir. Can you spare a moment? This gentleman wants a word with you.”
The Sergeant did not like his name bandied in public. He had not realized before that Ada knew it. Barmaids are intuitive detectives.
It was not the pawnbroker who had asked for Cribb but an old man, lean and nearly toothless, wrapped in an ill-fitting overcoat. It smelt of fish.
Cribb asked what he wanted.
“It’s worth a drink, mister.”
“It had better be. Two more pints, Ada.”
He carried the drinks back to his table, with the old man shuffling behind. Both took a long drink before anything was spoken.
“What’s your business, then?” Cribb asked sceptically.
Bloodshot eyes studied him as the old man took his drink.
“You’re a blue, ain’t you, mister? You don’t wear the jacket, but you’re one of ’em, ain’t you?”
The Sergeant confirmed that he was.
“Well then, bobby. What’s a corpse worth to you?”
“Depends,” answered Cribb. “What’s the game? If it’s bodies you’re trading in, then you won’t want the police.”
“One body, that’s all. I found it.”
“Where?”
“Five bob.”
“Man or woman?”
“Man, if I ain’t mistaken. Not ten minutes from ’ere.”
Cribb, who had met casual informants before, drew out his watch. “Sorry. Must be going now. We’ll find your corpse if it’s that near.”
“Four bob, then,” suggested the old man.
Cribb walked to the bar and returned his tankard. The informant left his drink to intercept the Sergeant as he made for the door.
“Three bob?” he pleaded.
Cribb looked down witheringly. “Three bob for what? It don’t need a sharp nose to tell me you deal in cockles and whelks, and the only stalls I know hereabouts are in Stamford Street, near Blackfriars Bridge. And I’ve worked long enough in these parts to have fished a few drowned corpses out of the mud along there. They jump off Waterloo Bridge at the rate of three or four a month. It’s got a powerful attraction for desperate men that can’t swim a stroke. No, old friend. One body washed downstream to Blackfriars doesn’t excite me overmuch. Now will you let me pass?”
The swift deductions silenced the old man, but he followed Cribb into the street, trying to re-engage his attention as he looked about for a cab.
“What if it was a murdered corpse, bobby?”
Cribb ignored him.
“You can’t by-pass a murder.”
A cab was approaching.
“ ’E were murdered, bobby.”
Cribb relented. “How do you know?”
The informant cackled.
“ ’Cause ’eadless corpses don’t jump off bridges.”
“Headless?”
“From the neck upwards, bobby.”
“This had better be true.” Cribb drew a half crown from his pocket. “Get in the cab, then.”
“Barge ’Ouse Street,” the old man shouted to the cabman. “You know it? Off Upper Ground.”
“ ’Ere, just a moment, guv. Can’t take the likes of ’im. Got my other passengers to think of!” The cabby lifted his whip to move off.
Cribb snapped his fingers. “Police. No co-operation: no license. Follow me?”
The cabby grumbled copiously to himself as they climbed inside, Cribb taking a deep breath of fresh air before joining his fellow passenger. It would not be too long. Best, in the circumstances, to put his mind on more important matters.
He thought of Jowett.
“Forty-eight,” he said to himself glumly.
CHAPTER 2
Cribb’s guide led at a step brisk enough to be almost unseemly for one so elderly. They cut behind the few derelict buildings that fringed on the no man’s land of the river edge. Their arrival had already caused a stir in the neighbourhood. A hansom in Barge House Street was as rare as a porpoise upriver. Once it was established that the visitor was neither magistrate nor schoolmaster, a small train of curious boys hitched onto Cribb, with three or four muttering women at a discreet distance behind.
The object of their visit lay as the tide had deposited it, toes upwards in a small irregularity in the bank. Cribb turned abruptly on the children and ordered them back to the houses.
“You found this yourself?” he asked the old man.
“Yes. Not two hours back. Tide must have washed ’im up.”
“You didn’t touch him?”
“Nah. I wouldn’t do that. What’d I want to do that for? If ’e ’ad any money on ’im, I reckon the cove what lopped ’is head off ’ad that.”
Cribb admitted the shrewdness of this with a nod. Even so, he bent to turn out the sodden pockets. All were empty.
“Big fellow, I reckon,” observed the old man. “Take more than one to fell ’im, if you ask me.”
“Strong physique,” admitted Cribb, unbuttoning the shirt to look for tattooing. “No great height, though, even when he was complete. Five-eight, I’d say.”
“The ’ead shouldn’t be difficult to match up when you find it. There’s a good ginger thatch on ’is chest. My, that’s a fine show of muscle on them shoulders.”
Cribb stood up, nodding. “Unusual development. Firm deltoids. A workingman’s trade shows through his physique. Did you know that? Look at this now. A line like a tight-drawn cord between deltoids and biceps. Chances are that he’s one of three-tanner, puddler or brickie.” He bent down again. “Straight back, though. Puddling’s not this one’s trade. You recognize a puddler by the hump on his back, and that’s muscle not deformity. Newcastle’s full of ’em.”
The old man professed interest in the anatomy lesson with a grunt. In fact, his stomach was beginning to lurch.
“Equal development of both arms cuts out smith’s work or sawing,” continued Cribb. “But when a man spends his day scraping hides or moving them around in the pits, he might grow like this. Could be a brickmaker, though. Let’s look at the wrists. Moulding clay develops a brickie’s forearm beautifully. Ah. Now this looks conclusive. Scars on the palms-probably from brick edges, you see.” He turned the limb that he was examining and whistled in surprise. “Lord! Now this really is a symptom!”
Turning, he discovered his audience had abandoned him.
¦ Edward Thackeray, Detective Constable, was not squeamish. He knew the London mortuaries as intimately as the pubs. If any reluctance was betrayed in his stride along Stamford Street towards Blackfriars mortuary on Tuesday, it was not at the prospect of encountering the dead, but the quick, in the person of Sergeant Cribb. The order from the Yard to report to M Division headquarters had caught him unprepared the evening before. The news when he got there in the morning that he was to rendezvous with Cribb at Blackfriars confirmed his worst intimations. Barely eight months had elapsed since his transfer. Eight months of civilized service advising Hampstead stockbrokers how to secure their windows against burglars. The most taxing investigation of the period an inquiry into an abducted heiress. Regular eight to six and no night duties. An inspector who was often out of the station for a week.