Arrowood. Mick Finlay
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and watch my fellow citizens larking about under the great looking glass as stretched the length of the ceiling. Later on, the match-seller trudged in. He looked at no one as he made his way across the syrupy floor, but held his face in a rictus in case he should launch into some anarchic pantomime. He paid, took his glass, and went to hide in his usual corner behind the glass panel.
When the crowd began to thin, Ernest stumbled in and stood at the same place at the bar as before. He took himself a gin and drank it quick, his back hunched over the counter. He wore the same thick clothes as before, and didn’t appear to see anyone around him except the barmaid, who slammed his drink before him as if he’d insulted her mother.
‘Good to see you again, my friend,’ I said, placing a second glass before him. ‘Come sit at my table. I could do with a bit of company.’
He looked up with confusion in his eyes. He glanced at the gin, then back at me. A trickle of blood from his gums ran down his single remaining front tooth.
‘Eh?’ he said at last.
‘We met the other night, Ernest. Here. Two nights ago.’
Slowly, his watery eyes cleared and he seemed to remember me. He pulled himself upright. Then he became suspicious.
‘I ain’t got no money,’ he declared, before quickly swallowing the whole glass in one.
‘Come over. I’ll get you some oysters.’
‘What is it you want?’
I lowered my voice. The cab driver I’d seen before was leaning against the bar in the corner, talking with the barmaid.
‘I want some information is all.’
He shook his head.
‘I don’t know nothing. I should never have spoke to you the first time.’
He turned away from me. From behind the glass partition an arm flailed, followed by an irritated growl. A group of young men, their faces and hands black with coal dust, came over to look at the source, and the sight of the tortured match-seller trying to suppress his mania made them laugh. They returned to their table, but the ruckus went on for minutes. From behind the screen came another strangled yowl and a foul curse from the ticcing man, which made the young men burst into a second, louder round of laughter.
‘Let me get you another drink,’ I said to the sculleryman. Before he could refuse, I gestured to the barmaid and placed a nice mug of gin in his raw fist.
‘Let’s sit. You look like you need to get the weight off your feet. You’ve been working hard, Ernest.’
He followed me meekly to the table.
‘Did you ever see Thierry’s sister at the Beef?’ I asked when we were sat down. ‘Good looker, dark hair? French, as you might suppose.’
He breathed in sharply, then quickly swallowed his gin.
‘Not as I ever saw. Never saw him with any woman but Martha.’
‘What about the American? What did you hear about him?’
‘You said oysters?’ he said, folding his arms over his matted coat.
I went to get him a bowl and another mug of gin. He’d got through half of it and survived a short burping fit before I asked him again.
‘Mr Cream has plenty of business acquaintances,’ he replied. ‘They was in day after day. Some of them you’d recognize, but this one I never seen before. Bald, with black hair around the crown. Black beard. Blue eyes that pierced you. I took them up some coffee and he almost stared right through me. There was an Irishman with him. I seen him in the place a few times before. Little fellow with a big voice. Stringy yellow hair. One of his ears was cut off. Horrible-looking he was.’
‘And you don’t know his business, I suppose.’
‘They talk business in the office, not the scullery.’
‘I need to know anyone else Terry was tight with, Ernest. Who did he talk to? Give me some names.’
‘I give you a name last time. Martha. Ask her.’
‘I need another name.’
‘I’ve given you a name!’ he protested, chafing now that he was flushed through with gin. ‘Ask Martha. If anybody knows anything, it’ll be her.’
I leaned in to him and whispered, ‘She’s dead, Ern. Murdered on her way to work this evening.’
His mouth fell open; he stared at me with his rheumy eyes. It seemed as if his pickled brain couldn’t absorb what I’d told him.
‘Did you hear me? Murdered. That’s why I need to talk to somebody else.’
Slowly, fear took him over. His arm trembled, his eyes blinked fast. He swallowed his gin; I gestured for another.
When it arrived he shook his head.
‘I got to go, mister,’ he said. His voice was strained. ‘I don’t know nothing.’
He made a move to rise; I held his wrist fast.
‘A name, Ern. One name. Someone he might have talked to. Who did he work next to? Who in the Beef did he spend most time with?’
‘I suppose Harry.’ He was talking quick now, looking around him at each noise. ‘You could try him. One of the junior cooks. He worked in the same part of the kitchen.’
‘And what does he look like?’
‘Very thin. Unnatural thin, he is, and his eyebrows are dark but his hair’s yellow. You can’t miss him.’
I let go of his wrist.
‘Thank you, Ernest.’
In a flash he was up and scurrying out of the gin-house. As I rose, I felt someone’s eyes on me. I turned. The bald head of the match-seller had appeared around the side of the glass partition, and he was staring at me with curiosity. He sniffed, his shoulders twitched, and he disappeared back into his hole.
The next morning, I found the guvnor alone in his parlour. His face was red and had a peculiar shine to it as if he’d been buffed by a cleaning maid.
‘She’s out,’ he declared the minute I stepped in from the shop. ‘She’s at an organizing meeting with the others.’
‘Organizing? What’s she organizing?’
‘They’re to visit the poor. Now, what did you discover last night?’
I told him about the junior cook, Harry. Since neither of us had any particular inclination to show our face in the Barrel of Beef, he summoned Neddy and instructed him to take a note. The note was signed ‘Mr Locksher’, the guvnor’s usual alias, and promised a reward of a shilling for ‘a very quick job indeed’. Harry was to come that night, after his work was over, to Mrs Willows’ coffeehouse on Blackfriars Road, the only one open until such a late hour. ‘Your friend from across the Channel suggested your name’ was all the explanation offered. Neddy was under instruction to hold tight to that note and not to give it to anyone other than the fellow called Harry. We told him to look out for the thin man with black eyebrows and yellow hair, and to walk direct into the kitchen and not to tell anybody who had sent him.
The boy scampered off while the guvnor refilled his pipe. When he had it lit again, he looked at me sadly.
‘What do you think about the girl’s death, Barnett? Do you think it was Jack on the prowl again?’
‘It doesn’t seem like it.’
‘Indeed. This murder wasn’t Jack’s work. His killings were all of a similar character. He did his work in solitary places. He preferred to butcher the bodies, and this takes time.’
I