Chapter 3 #2
It had been that way from the beginning when he joined the foot patrol of the MET and first worked with Jimmy Conner, had supported him through the difficulty with Burke, and several years after.
No matter that he had made inspector and was Jimmy’s superior. He still called him that—lad.
He finally reached the office with some time before he intended to go to the Old Bell. Mr. Cavendish nodded a greeting as he rolled up at the sidewalk, the hound with him.
“Miss Mikaela returned earlier and was up in the office for a time, then set off for Sussex Square.”
Brodie nodded and took the stairs up to the second-floor landing. She had spoken about wanting to show that gold button to Lady Montgomery, who might recognize it.
He glanced at the chalkboard, then took a closer look. She’d added notes. One in particular stood out—the laundry receipt, and she’d managed to learn that it was delivered in Southwark?
End of day traffic in that part of London had thinned when he returned to the street and had Mr. Cavendish wave down a driver.
“The Old Bell, ye say guv’ner?” the driver replied. “A round or two to end the day?”
He nodded as he climbed into the cab.
“Right yer are,” the driver added as they set off.
It was well into the evening when he signaled for the driver to stop short of pulling up before the pub and he stepped down. A ‘worker,’ dressed as he was, wouldn’t pay for a driver when the coins could be spent on ale.
He pulled the billed cap low, walked the length of the street, then entered the pub.
It was the same as a hundred more across the city.
The sounds, the smells, the smoke that filled the air from a pipe or cigarette.
And the woman who cut through the tables with years of experience in the balance of a tray, a laugh at something that was said, and the way her gaze lingered longer than necessary as it found him.
He nodded a greeting and made his way to the bar. And she was there, with that look and a hand on his arm.
“Wot can Mac get for you?” she inquired with a look over her shoulder at the man behind the bar.
He picked up the Scots accent as Mac finally made his way to the end of bar.
Brodie nodded in that silent language of places like this—ale usually the first choice, as it was cheap and there was no doubt an ample supply in the back room.
A frothy brew in a tankard arrived, and he took a long drink as his gaze swept the pub for the worker Mr. Dooley had described who had seen the murderer. He found him across the smoke-filled room at a table playing a game of dice.
There for a bit of the drink after workin’ on a London street, the day’s work caked on the man’s shirt with sleeves rolled back, coarse pants with suspenders and hair that had been plastered to his head with sweat and then dried.
He didn’t approach him straight off, but watched him, the table, and the others gathered there. It appeared the man was having a run of luck as he shouted with laughter, then swept the coins he’d won into the palm of one hand. Enough for the next round.
Bets were made as more ale arrived, and the game began again.
Brodie stayed at the bar and ordered another, then struck up a conversation with the woman as she filled her tray with drinks, then returned a short while later with empty mugs.
“A bit of a ‘stramash’ here the night before,” he said to give the impression that he had been there, another face in the crowd, and was merely making a comment.
“Aye,” she replied with an inviting smile.
Her name was Meara.
“Emptied the place, it did, and cut the evenin’ short and me pay, when the police arrived.” She threw a look of open invitation over her shoulder as she picked up another tray of ale.
“Got to make up for it tonight.” She wound her way through the tables, picking up empty tankards along the way and delivering full ones, at the same time escaping just out of reach of a wandering hand.
She made her way back to the end of the bar.
“I heard a man got himself knifed?” Brodie added to the conversation as she sidled up beside him, fanning herself with a bar towel as Mac loaded her tray once more.
“That’s what I heard and sent off to hospital,” Meara replied. “It was that newspaper fella wot comes in regular, right Mac?”
Mac grunted. “Looking for information, stirrin’ up the customers with stories about himself. It was a bloody mess out the sidewalk. The police carried ’im off in their van.”
“Disgusting little man,” Meara added as she picked up the filled tray.
“How is that?” Brodie asked.
She dispensed fresh tankards and returned.
“It’s the way he has of puttin’ his hands on a woman,” she said, with a look at Mac as he wiped the bar and then went to greet a customer at the other end.
“Like he owns ’em just for the price of ale. Get my meanin’?”
He did. He’d seen it hundreds of times.
“I say who gets to put his hands on me, and not that slimy bugger,” she added as she leaned in closer, the roundness of a breast pressed against his arm where he sat at the bar.
She was pretty and smelled of soap along with ale. In another place, another life, he might have taken her up on the obvious offer...in that other life.
“It’s a pity that a man canna enjoy a drink. Did anyone see who attacked him?” he casually asked.
“It was when the man left. They were outside. Someone said that the newspaper fella said he was meeting someone here. Seems like it went bad.
And Mikaela had been the person he was to meet.
“If it’s not one of the regulars, then it’s the ones just returned from outta the docks,” Meara commented. “Smellin’ like it too.”
There was that invitation again in her smile as she reached out and stroked his beard. “I like ’em clean, not smelling of swill or the bottom of a fishin’ boat.”
“We got other customers, Meara!” Mac reminded her from the other end of the bar.
She smiled again and picked up the tray of mugs filled with ale.
As she left to take the next round to those who waited, one of the players at dice table stood.
“I’ve enough to pay for one more, then I’m for home, gentlemen.”
He made a grand gesture of pulling coins from his pocket, almost went over, then straightened himself.
“Meara, darlin’, I’ve a need for one more, if you please.”
Brodie left the bar taking the mug of ale with him as he approached the table. He took an empty chair.
Over the next hour, the dice changed hands several times as conversation and bets rounded the table.
The man called Fitch groaned as he lost.
“That was new shoes for me boy.”
When the dice came back round, he bet again, rolled and won. He grinned.
“Now I won’t have to listen to me missus complainin’ about them shoes.”
As the evening wore on, Brodie bet, lost as the dice and cup were passed round, and struck up the usual sort of conversation found at a table with those were who were regular patrons.
“There was a dust-up here the other night,” he commented. “That newspaper man, accordin’ to the word on the street.”
Fitch nodded. “Not that anyone here thinks much of him, buyin’ drinks, askin’ his questions, then hearin’ about it wrote up in the daily sometimes different than was told.”
Such was Burke’s reputation, according to Mikaela and others Brodie knew. The man was notorious for twisting a story about.
“Attacked just outside the other night, I heard.” Brodie shook his head as if simply sharing what he had learned on the street.
Fitch tossed the dice, lost then passed the cup. “He had it comin’, if you ask a lot of them here, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
“I heard ye saw it,” Brodie shook the cup and tossed the dice down onto the table.
Fitch nodded. “Afterward, when the man was layin’ there.”
“And the one who done it was a rough sort, accordin’ to wot I heard.” Brodie passed the cup to the man on his left.
Fitch shrugged. “The man just stood there in his fine clothes.” He frowned. “Come to think on it now, that seemed outta place here, you know? Them that come here don’t have such finery.”
That was something that hadn’t been in Dooley’s report.
“And the bloke just stood over him for a few moments, lookin’ satisfied instead of takin’ off like most would have."
Fitch was thoughtful as he took the cup and shook it.
“It was the same look from me supervisor when we finish a section of roadwork by end of day. Satisfied over wot we done. It gave me a cold feelin'. Then he left and got into a coach down the way.”
Fine clothes. And a coach. Two more pieces of information not in the report. It told Brodie more about the man who had attacked Burke.
“A private coach?” he commented then to draw more out of Fitch. “Not something ye see around here.”
Fitch tossed the dice, won, and scooped up coins that had been bet against him. He shook his head as he set out his next bet.
“Not private. It had one of those metal plates on the back that the city gives to drivers.”
A rented coach. Another piece that could be useful.
The game continued as the cup was passed round, the players changing from time to time as bets were won, then lost.
Stragglers wandered into the Old Bell, then thinned as the evening wore on. Brodie watched from the table over ale that he drank sparingly.
Meara arrived at the table, cleared empty mugs, and exchanged a new round.
“There’s one for you,” she commented with a jerk of her chin toward the bar.
“Tight-fisted,” she spat out. “Pays only enough for the drink with no thought to them that needs a few extra coins to pay the rent. As if he can’t spare it. And he’s got an evil eye.”
Brodie looked past her to the man at the bar. He’d noticed him when he arrived, dressed in trousers with a black jumper beneath his coat, a billed cap pulled low.
The description that Fitch had given the police that night was there—compact body, thick-muscled at the shoulders, and the way he moved as if he might have just stepped off the boxing stage, wearing the fine clothes that didn’t belong in that part of London.
Brodie continued to watch him as the dice rolled. A spare movement, ale that went untouched as he spoke with Mac. The slow looks around the pub, pausing then moving on, eventually resting on the man across from him who pushed back his chair.
“I’m for home,” Fitch announced. “I’ve a bit more coin in my pockets than I started with.” He smiled as he stood. “The missus will be glad to see me.”
There was knowing laughter from the others at the table as Brodie continued to watch the man at the bar
“And here’s one for you, Meara darlin’.” Fitch tossed a coin onto her tray.
“You know that I love you,” she replied. “If you weren’t already married...”
It was the usual pub banter, yet Brodie noticed how the other man’s gaze sharpened on Fitch.
It might have been no more than a reaction to that parting bit of conversation, but there was something more behind that narrowed gaze as Fitch pocketed his winnings then emptied that last mug of ale.
“I bid you good night, gentlemen.” He made a sweeping bow with good humor, then pulled his worn work coat from the chair back.
Brodie watched as Fitch left, the pub door snapping shut behind him, as the man at the bar in that fine coat took a drink, then set his almost full mug back on the bar, and followed.
Brodie signaled to Meara.
“Are you leavin’ too?” she said with a disappointment she made no attempt to hide. “I was hopin’ we might share some of the good stuff later,” she said with a frown as he put on his jacket. “My room is just around the corner.”
There was no attempt to disguise the invitation.
He tucked two coins into the bodice of her gown. He knew well enough how it worked, had seen it dozens of times.
“Mac doesn’t need to know,” he told her.
She balanced the tray as she leaned in and kissed his cheek.
“’Tis a shame. You must have someone waitin’ home for you.”
Brodie slipped his hand into his pocket as he left the pub, the steel of the revolver cool on his fingers.
There was a single streetlamp at the end of the street that framed Fitch as he made his way home and suddenly exposed the man who followed.
The attack was powerful, meant to drive Fitch to the cobbled stones. But Fitch worked on the streets, not behind a desk, and fought back, grunting as a blow fell. Then another.
Brodie ran, throwing his shoulder into the back of the man with that fine coat.
He swore and lost his hold.
“Get out of here!” he shouted at Fitch, curses cut off, the revolver jarred from his hand from blows meant not just to chase him off.
He fought back, driving the man up against the wall of a storefront, with that instinct from the streets.
The man was strong, persistent, grunting when Brodie landed a blow, then forcing him back with a punch and then a second one.
His boots slipped on the wet stones and he went down. The next blow came from the man’s own boot to his ribs, driving the air from his lungs. He pushed back to his feet, the knife from his boot clenched in his fist. He slashed at the arm that would have brought the next blow.
His attacker cursed and clutched his arm. He glared at him, backed away, then turned and ran into the shadows, heading down the street in the opposite direction from which Fitch had fled.
Brodie winced at the pain that throbbed below his left eye, blood warm on his cheek.
He slowly straightened and cursed all over again at the pain in his ribs—likely broken and not the first time.
The man who had attacked him was experienced, not simply someone off the street. His clothes were not what those who frequented the Old Bell wore. And he had singled Fitch out.
He retrieved the revolver and slowly made his way to the high street, where he hoped to find a driver. Perhaps one foolish enough to be out after spending the last hours in a pub.