From Chapter One

Friday, 26th June, 1857, London

NOT MANY MEN know where and when they’ll die. I did. And I knew how.

I watched them build the gallows from my cell in Millbank Prison. Three men arrived this morning with a handcart full of timber. It’s a simple affair, a gibbet on a high table with a trap door. Banged together with nails. At 6am they’d tie my hands and ankles, put the noose around my neck. Slip the bolt and let me drop. Last thing I’d see were the Houses of Parliament, smoke from factories south of the River Thames.

In theory the drop would break my neck, what they’d call a civilized execution.The first of my people I saw hanged by the British were lynched from a Banyan tree near a silk factory in the Bengal jungle. They were dead, turning like game in the summer breeze. My mother said they’d refused to plant indigo instead of rice. I was seven years old. It wasn’t the worst thing I saw that day.

My cell’s small and sparse with a vaulted ceiling like a crypt. My ankles are shackled to a chain that’s fixed to the wall. So I’ve nothing to do but look out the window. Listen to a clock in Westminster chime the quarter hour, like a death knell. And think.

Whoever wanted me to hang had done a good job. No doubt about it. They’d fixed the police. Fixed the judiciary. Even fixed the Home Secretary, Sir George Green. What kind of man could do a thing like that? And why? That’s what I was thinking about. Because once that rope snapped tight around my neck everyone would think I’d murdered Henry Bullock.

And not just murdered him. Beaten him. Tortured him. Wrecked his shop. I didn’t do any of it. I told them that. I’ve knocked a few men senseless in my time, but I’ve never killed anyone.

The thing was, Henry owed me ten guineas. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t about the money. He was a friend. But Henry took liberties. Give him the idea I’d work for nothing he’d never pay me again. And I’d bought a ticket to Handel’s Messiah at St Paul’s Cathedral. I’m no Christian, but we Santals have our own messiah, Thakur Jiu, and the Hallelujah Chorus works just as well for him. I’d be humming for days on end, ‘Lord of lords … Hallelujah!’

Anyway, Henry was a druggist. Had a shop in Ivy Lane near St Paul’s. If I called in before the concert, took him for a couple of pints in The Ship, he’d pay up sweet as a lamb. But when I got there the shop was dark. A printed card in the window said ‘Closed’. I cupped my hands to the glass. No sign of Henry at the counter so I took out a copy of the unpaid bill to post through the letterbox. For some reason I tried the door handle, found it wasn’t locked, which was odd. I stepped inside.

Henry sometimes mixed medicines in a back room but when the doorbell jingled, he’d pop out like a jack-in-the-box. Not that evening. I called his name. No reply. Then I heard a noise from the basement, like a groan. Went down the stairs to take a look.

That was my first mistake.

The room’s chilly, gloomy like basements are. And the air’s a bit ripe. Henry’d left two buckets of dung uncovered in a corner. Typical. A street-finder told him he made fifteen bob a week collecting ‘pure’. That’s dog shit to you and me. It’s called ‘pure’ because it purifies things like leather. So Henry hatched a plan to get it direct from the dog kennels, set up a sort of refinery south of the river, sell ‘fortified-pure’ to the tanners in Bermondsey. There was always a scheme about to make him rich.

Two half-light windows were set near the top of the front wall, both thick with grime and cobwebs, heavily barred. You could see people’s feet as they walked by. An oil lamp hung over the worktable, or what’s left of it. Someone had hurled it on its side, scattering kit across the room. Cases of books and chemical apparatus the same. The floor was chaos.

In the middle a rotund figure lay flat on its back, half buried in the wreckage. I unhooked the lamp, climbed over the table and crunched through the broken glassware.

What I saw when I held the lamp near the body turned my stomach. I’ve seen plenty of messed-up dead’uns in my time, some so bad it took a while to realize they’d been human. But it’s different when you know someone. Henry could be difficult all right. Thought everyone was out to rook him, even when they weren’t. And when his temper flared he’d shout accusations, vicious stuff. I told him more than once to mind his tongue. But when I first came to London, had nothing, he put some work my way. Lent me bits of apparatus from this very room. I hadn’t forgotten, never would.

It looked as if he’d gone fifty rounds with Bill Perry, the Tipton Slasher. His head’s beaten to a pulp, swollen half as big again as normal. One eye’s so bloated you couldn’t see the eyeball. Blood had crusted round his broken nose. More than a few teeth were missing, a couple poked through his top lip. But when I looked closer I saw it wasn’t just a beating. This was surgical violence, calculated to cause agony. The teeth had been torn out with pliers, tongue crushed. Ears twisted half off his head. I’ll spare you the rest.

The vacant stare told me he was dead but I crouched down to make sure. That’s when I saw the bottle. Henry’s right arm was thrown out perpendicular to his body. The bottle lay in his palm as if he’d held it tight as he died. I set the lamp down, picked up the bottle. The label said, Poison. Prussic Acid. His left arm lay at his side, fist clenched.

I laid the unpaid bill on his chest and prized the fingers open. There in his palm was the stopper belonging to the bottle. I gave the body a quick onceover, wondering what to make of it.

Then the bell upstairs jingled and someone shouted, “Shop!”

“Down here,” I called.

That was my second mistake.

A MAN TROD cautiously down the stairs, wrinkled his nose at the stink. The uniform said a sergeant in the City of London Police, but I’d seldom seen a man looked less like a copper. You’d think he was an actor in costume. For a start he’s too young, mid-twenties at most. His face was fresh, cheeks pink, more like a writer or a professor. The eyes were big and curious, lips full. His mutton-chop whiskers ended in a shaved vertical line below the corners of his mouth.

What I saw was a handsome young man, strongly built but trying to look older than his years, wanting some social gravity. When he saw me, he stopped and drew a truncheon from his belt. Then he crouched a little, held out the weapon and crept on down. At the bottom he crunched forward trying to make sense of the scene. A couple of paces from me he stopped.

“Get up!” he said, in curt Glasgow Scots.

I knew the accent from British soldiers in Calcutta. A policeman there would’ve questioned a Santal with a kick, a beating with his lathi, a bamboo cane. I got up, lifting my hands to show I meant no harm.

“What happened?” I said.

The sergeant’s wary, waving the stick like he’s ready to use it. Which I didn’t doubt. He’s on his own in a dark cellar with a dark-skinned man and a dead body. He might’ve hit me already but for two things. I dress like an Englishman, and I speak like one, more or less. A little slower perhaps, more clipped, more nasal, with just enough of my native Bengal accent to remind me who I am. But tailored cotton and a schooled tone make a difference. He waved me back a pace and stared down at the body.

“It’s Henry Bullock,” says I. “Dead.”

“I can see that,” he grunted.

He nodded at the bottle in my hand. “What’s that?”

“Prussic acid. Cyanide.”

He drew back a fraction, eyes wide. “That a threat?”

I shook my head.

He tugged a pair of Darby handcuffs from his belt. “Turn around,” he said. “Hands behind you.”

I wasn’t being cuffed. Not by him. So I stood my ground, arms still raised, and stared him in the eye. I’m tall for a Santal, lean and well built.

The sergeant stood his ground too. “You resisting arrest?”

They wouldn’t have asked that in Bengal. Just thrashed you senseless with the lathi. “No need for arrest,” I said. “I came to collect a debt, that’s how I found him. The bill’s there on his chest.”

Now the sergeant’s uncertain, eyeing the bottle of cyanide. What if I throw it at him? The floor’s littered with pots and pans, furniture, shards of broken glassware. It’s no place for a violent struggle. He tucked the Darby’s away and drew his rattle. It’s a stick with a sprocket on one end, a hardwood clacker that chatters over the teeth when it’s whirled. Makes a hell of a row.

“I can have half a dozen men here in two minutes,” he said.

And the rest. The alarm would bring every copper, every do-gooder, every busybody for a quarter mile, running. I didn’t want that. So I thought about what I had. A young sergeant who seems intelligent, ambitious, in a hurry. I re-stoppered the cyanide bottle and held it out like peace offering.

“That’d be a pity,” I said.

He made a curious frown, said nothing.“You’ll lose your lead.”

“What lead?”“Knowing how Henry Bullock died.”

“You know something about it?”

“It’s my business, forensic medicine. Look at the bill”

The sergeant glanced at the paper on Henry’s chest. Then he jabbed the stick like a warning, ducked down and picked up the bill. My name and business were written at the top. He read it, tucked the sheet in his tunic.

“That’s mine,” I said.

“It’s evidence.”

“Of what?”

“Murder.”

I shook my head. “Suicide.”

“Suicide! You’re pulling my pisser. Look at him, man!”

“You look. Cold blue sheen on the skin, visible eye glistening. Lips reek of bitter almonds. It’s a text-book case of cyanide poisoning. His torturers knew their business, how to cause agony without risk of death. None of the injuries are fatal, I checked.”

“So they finished him off with poison.”

They … not me? I shook my head, explained how the bottle and stopper were gripped in Henry’s hands.

He looked down, screwed up his face in disgust. “Dear God,” he said, “why beat a man like that?”

I pointed to the rough brickwork in the front wall.

“That might be your answer,” I said.

The sergeant followed my finger, nodded slowly. Then he came to some kind of decision. He tucked the rattle back in his belt and waved me towards the brickwork with the cosh. I went ahead, took up the lamp as I passed the body.Behind me I heard him stop. When I turned he’d crouched over what looked like a crumpled sheet of butcher’s paper on the floor. For a moment he poked at it with a finger. Then he rolled it into a rough tube, folded the ends and slipped it into his pocket. He nodded me forward.

I’d pointed to a safe on a stone plinth under a half-light window, set deep in the brickwork. Not any old safe. It’s a Price’s Double Door, best money could buy. Henry’d told me about it. Pickproof. Fireproof. Gunpowder proof. Kind of thing you’d find in a City bank. It’s a yard tall, a yard wide, weighed more than half a ton. Henry must’ve had it built in. Try to pull it out you’d bring down half the house.

The sergeant followed my line of thought. You want to get inside a safe like that, well, there’s only one way. You need the key. Actually you need two keys because a Double Door has two locks, one for each door.

“Jesus,” he said. “What’s he got in there, the crown jewels?”

Now I happened to now there’s a lot of cash in that safe. Henry told me himself. We’d had a skin-full of Hanbury’s ale in The Ship one night, just after he came back from India. He didn’t often drink but when he did he took it like medicine, a tumbler of whiskey with every pint, chucked back in one. After five or six he’s tight as a boiled owl, started sharing confidences. Mostly he wanted to tell me about a safe he’d bought, the Price’s Double Door.

“New design,” says he, “George Price challenged the locksmiths to pick it, or blow it open. Couldn’t do it!” he spat in my ear. “Wrote a book about it, Price did.”

Then he began a long explanation of the safety features, like the locks are such you can’t pour in any quantity of gunpowder. As it happened I knew all about Price’s safes but I let Henry rabbit on.

“You might wonder,” he slurs, “why I’d spend forty pound on a safe. Me, who’s careful with every farthing.”

I’d had five or six myself so I just sipped my beer, inquisitive.

“Banks!” says he, suddenly angry.

“What happened?” I said.

“Never trust‘em”, he growled. “Take your money but they don’t want to give it out. I’m keeping mine in that safe. I don’t need banks, not me.”

Then, quieter and sort of nasty, he said, “There’s something in there you’d like to know, Baboo. Wouldn’t you just.” He called me Baboo when he was drunk so people wouldn’t think he’s too friendly with a black. Not even one in a nice suit. Henry knew at once he’d said too much about the safe. Told me to forget it. Got up, lurched out. I sat wondering what he meant while I finished my pint. We never discussed it again.

I wasn’t telling the sergeant that story. Instead I set the lamp and the bottle of cyanide on top of the safe. The sergeant tried both handles. Locked. He patted the top.

“There’s something in here worth a man’s life,” he said.

“Seems like it,” I replied. But I thought, there’s something in there Henry’d rather die than hand over. Which is a very different matter.

“You say you knew Bullock?”

I nodded.

“Any idea where he kept the keys?”

“Nope.”

He picked up the bottle of cyanide. “Poisoned,” he said. “Suicide, eh?”

I read his mind. What I’d said could be true. Except it might be me who wanted those keys, who tortured Henry, who poured cyanide down his throat.

The sergeant gave the bottle a thoughtful stare. “Look,” he said, “you’re the expert on poison. Will you not come to Old Jewry, write down what happened? The Super won’t believe me.”

I looked at my pocket watch. Nearly half past six. I’m supposed to meet Bea – Beatrice – on the steps of St Paul’s at seven thirty. She’s not the kind of woman you kept waiting. If I didn’t hurry I’d miss her. And I’d miss the concert, Hallelujah and all. But the sergeant’s right. No one would believe how Henry died. Not unless I laid it out in black and white. I owed him that. And I’d a feeling the sergeant might use the rattle if I didn’t cooperate.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll come.”

That was my third mistake, the big one.