“What’s going on here, then?”
Kingsley and Hammersmith turned to see Inspector James Tiffany peering in through the open window at them. Tiffany squinted at the small body on the floor and withdrew his head. A moment later he bustled down the staircase into the room.
“Inspector Tiffany,” Kingsley said, “the constable and I were just discussing venereal maggots and the importance of regular meals.”
“Lovely,” Tiffany said. He turned to Hammersmith. “Perhaps you would be so good as to tell me why we’re here, Constable.”
“Of course, sir.”
“And you, Doctor, get up off the floor. You look a fright.”
Kingsley frowned and clambered to his feet. He brushed off his shirt with both hands, smearing more soot down the front of it. The doctor didn’t touch his wild, streaky hair, and Hammersmith thought he might have given up on it in advance as a hopeless cause.
“Sir,” Hammersmith said, “I was passing by and saw the body of a child-well, his foot at least-hanging from the fireplace here.”
He had decided to leave Blackleg’s involvement out of it. Tiffany was the most rigid of the Yard’s inspectors, and Hammersmith suspected the detective would stop listening as soon as he heard that a criminal was involved in the body’s discovery.
“So you sent for an inspector.”
“Yes, sir. It all seemed very suspicious to me. The house is empty and there’s something-”
“And you sent for the doctor here, as well?”
“I did, sir.”
“Well, you’ve certainly been busy.”
“Sir?”
Tiffany sighed again and gestured at the floor. Hammersmith turned around and saw Kingsley crouched over the body, probing the boy’s throat and chest and armpits, his fingers darting here and there under the boy’s shirt. Kingsley angled a mirror so that it caught the dying sunlight in the room and cast it on the boy’s face, then he peeled back the boy’s eyelids and leaned in close. Twice he turned the boy on his side and pointed out some matter of interest to Fiona, who had her tablet open and was sketching furiously.
“Hammersmith, are you aware that Inspector Little was found dead today?” Tiffany said.
“I am, sir.”
“Do you feel that this is making good use of the doctor’s time, when he might instead be leading us to Little’s killer?”
“Sir?”
“You found this corpse in the chimney, correct?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“Do you have any doubt whatsoever that this was a chimney climber, engaged in cleaning out the flue? That he got himself stuck up there and suffocated to death?”
“I don’t see how-”
“Well, Doctor?”
Kingsley looked up from his exploration.
“This was most definitely a case of suffocation. I found fingernails embedded in the bricks in there, so I believe I can say that he struggled a good bit before succumbing. I’d guess the boy’s been dead for quite some time, but there’s very little insect colonization here. The conditions in the chimney have preserved the body and begun the process of mummification, rather than putrefaction. An exact day and time of death will be difficult to pinpoint, but I’m happy to take the body back to my lab for further examination.”
“No. Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” Tiffany said. “None of this is necessary in the least. Constable Hammersmith has exceeded his duties.”
“This boy couldn’t have been older than five or six,” Hammersmith said.
He didn’t look directly at Jimmy Tiffany and he kept his voice down. If he betrayed any emotion, he was sure Tiffany would see it as a sign of weakness.
“I appreciate your zeal, Constable. But surely you see your mistake here.”
“My mistake, sir?”
“You must stop thinking of this body as a boy. This is a laborer. A chimney climber, in the employ of a sweep, whose job it was to climb the inside walls of this chimney and clean it out. This person was doing his job, and he had that job because of his small size, not because of his age. His age is irrelevant here.”
“Surely not, sir.” Hammersmith was unable to rein in his temper any longer. “His size is directly related to his age. This is completely illegal. Small children are stolen from their parents by sweeps for this very purpose. They’re used and cast aside when they grow too large to do the job properly. This is not some instrument of service, as you say; this is a little boy.”
“No, this is a dead end. His employer didn’t care enough about him to pull him from the fireplace, nor did his family step forward to ask for help. Nobody cares about this body, and it is not our job to take up lost causes.”
“With all due respect, sir, I believe that is exactly our job.”
“Then I’m afraid you will not last long in the Metropolitan Police Force.”
Hammersmith had had enough of proper protocol. Tiffany had age and experience, but that didn’t earn him automatic respect from Hammersmith.
“If the job of the Yard is to look the other way when we encounter dead children, then I have no interest in lasting long. Sir.”
Hammersmith waited, braced for the dressing-down he expected would come next, but Tiffany’s expression softened.
“I’ve been at this a while now, Hammersmith. The job can wear you down if you let it. Look, I have twenty-eight open cases on my desk right now, and all of them come with family members who desperately want closure. They need justice, something they can hang their hats on. And I really do want to give them that justice. But I can’t, because there are too many of them. Most of the time, I have to hope for a lucky break. Put simply, our job is to uphold the law. We catch, or we try to catch, murderers because murder is against the law.”
He walked past Hammersmith and stood over the girl, Fiona, who had completed her sketch of the dead boy.
“It’s a good likeness,” he said.
He looked at Hammersmith, then down at his own shoes. Hammersmith noticed that Tiffany still hadn’t looked directly at the boy’s corpse.
“This boy wasn’t murdered, Hammersmith. He died. Everybody dies.”
Tiffany cleared his throat and stared at a point somewhere over the mantel.
“You said that it’s our job to chase lost causes. And I suppose you’re right. But every case that comes to us is a lost cause, because we can’t allow ourselves to care about a single one. The ones we care about are the ones that take the piss out of us. Them are the ones that kill us by degrees. The dead outnumber us, and we have no power over them. Our duty isn’t to these bodies, our duty is to the Queen and to the law. To the idea of the law. And to the living. Them’s the real victims, because they have hope, and they look to us.”
Tiffany was clearly talking about things that had weighed on him for a long time, and Hammersmith was afraid to interrupt. A window to Tiffany’s soul had opened, and anything Hammersmith said now might cause that window to slam shut again.
“This boy has no family asking us for justice. It’s horrible, but the reality is that no one really cares. No one at all. This is a lost boy, and nothing we do will change that fact. Our time and energy is best spent solving the cases that can be solved. I’m sorry, Hammersmith. But you’ve wasted my time and you’ve wasted the good doctor’s time. Have this room cleaned and go home. Get some rest. Tomorrow this hopeless job will begin again, and it will begin again for you every day until you quit it or retire from it. Unless it kills you first, as it killed Inspector Little.”
Tiffany walked to the stairs and hesitated, but didn’t turn around.
“Choose your causes more judiciously, Hammersmith.”
Then he took the steps two at a time up and out of sight.
Hammersmith stared at the Turkish rug as the other constables began rolling it back up against the wall.
“He’s wrong, you know,” Kingsley said. “About your duty to the living, I mean.”
The doctor had stood silent throughout Tiffany’s long speech, but now he stepped closer to Hammersmith and put a soot-smudged hand on his arm.