Blackstone and the Heart of Darkness (17 page)

Five

There was nothing he could have done to save the girl, Blackstone told himself, as he walked up Marston Lane. Nothing at all! She had been dead even before he’d known that she was missing.

Yet, despite the logic of the argument, he was still weighed down by a sense of personal failure. As if it were
his
fault that he was not godlike and all-seeing—as if he could have actually have done something to prevent the tragedy, if only he’d tried a little
harder
.

The numbing effect of the whisky he had drunk with Inspector Drayman in the Townshend Arms was already beginning to wear off, and what he needed most in the world, he decided, was to go straight to the Red Lion and get a top-up of the golden anaesthetic.

His heart sank when he saw Walter Clegg standing at the top of the alley that led to his back yard, the more so because Clegg wore an expression on his face which clearly stated that Blackstone’s return was just the event he had been waiting for.

‘You’ve timed that well, Inspector,’ Clegg called out, as Blackstone drew level with him. ‘The kettle’s just about to come to the boil. We can go inside an’ have a brew.’

In all probability the kettle had been on the boil for hours, Blackstone thought. It may even have boiled itself dry a couple of times, while Clegg waited for his honoured guest from London to return.

The problem with Walter, he decided, was that while he was a nice enough bloke, he worked far too hard at trying to be your mate, and the result was that you quite soon found his presence almost suffocating.

‘Yes, I could just fancy a cuppa,’ Walter Clegg said.

‘If you don’t mind, I don’t really feel like a cup of tea right at the moment,’ Blackstone said.

‘Fair enough,’ Walter Clegg agreed easily. ‘Now I come to think about it, I’m not sure I fancy one myself. But there’s still some whisky left in that bottle you bought the other night. We could put that to rest instead.’

What a persistent bugger the salt-miner was, Blackstone thought. ‘I’ve got some thinking to do, Walter,’ he said aloud, ‘and I’d really much rather do it alone.’

Walter Clegg looked crushingly disappointed. ‘But I’ve got something to show you,’ he said. ‘It may be important.’

Blackstone sighed inwardly. Clegg had taken him under his roof and entertained him as best he could, so he supposed he owed it to the man to spend a little time with him. But—with the image of the dead Margie Thomas still fresh in his mind—it would
have
to
be
a little time. Then he’d have that drink he had been promising himself—and when he did, it would be without Walter hovering at his elbow like a faithful puppy.

Walter Clegg seemed much happier once they were safely inside the house.

‘Well, what’s it to be?’ he asked. ‘Tea? Or whisky?’

It would be easier to make his excuses and leave if they weren’t drinking whisky, Blackstone thought.

‘Tea,’ he said.

‘Right-oh,’ Clegg agreed chirpily.

Blackstone sat down at the kitchen table that was the centre of Walter Clegg’s home, while Walter busied himself moving the hob back over the open fire and fetching the teapot.

‘I’ve had all sorts of people askin’ me about you, Inspector, but I promise you I haven’t told them anythin’ at all,’ Walter said, as the heavy iron kettle came to the boil.

‘No?’

‘No! I just said that you were up here on private business, and I couldn’t discuss it with them.’

Thus leaving them with the impression that I’d taken you into my confidence, Blackstone thought.

Walter brought two of the best china teacups from the sideboard and placed them on the table. Then he lifted the kettle off the hob and poured the scalding water into the teapot.

‘You said you’ve got something to show me that might be important,’ Blackstone said.

‘Oh, that’s right,’ Clegg agreed.

He said it as if it had slipped his mind entirely, but the inspector was not fooled. The ‘something important’ was his trump card—the hook on which he was keeping his guest dangling—and he was reluctant to give it up until he absolutely had to.

‘Well?’ Blackstone said firmly.

Walter Clegg sighed, walked over to the sideboard again, and came back with a sealed envelope.

‘It’s a letter of some sort,’ he explained.

The envelope was cheap and flimsy. Blackstone’s name was written on the front in block capitals. He slit it open and extracted the single sheet of paper that lay inside.

The note, like the envelope, was written in capitals, and though the writer did not appear to be an educated man, the message was clear enough:

WHY DON’T YEW ASK MISTER BICKERSDALE

WHY HE PAID MICK HUGGINS BALE.

‘Where did you get this from?’ Blackstone asked.

‘It was lyin’ on the mat. Somebody must have slipped it under the door while we were all out.’

‘Who’s Mr Bickersdale?’

‘Why? Is the letter from him?’ Walter asked, and he was almost bursting with curiosity.

Tom Yardley had been curious, too, Blackstone reminded himself—and that had probably cost the poor devil his life.

‘No, it’s not from Mr Bickersdale,’ he told Walter, ‘but it mentions him. So who is he?’

‘He’s a mine-owner,’ Walter Clegg said sullenly.

‘Where’s his mine?’

‘His
mines
. He’s got two of them. They’re about a mile an’ a quarter from the village.’

‘So he’s a local man, is he?’

‘No.’

He’d hurt the other man’s pride, Blackstone realized, which was something he’d never intended to do.

‘Listen, Walter,’ he said, ‘the reason I’m not telling you more is because, like Tom, I think there’s something nasty going on in this village—and I don’t want to get you involved.’

‘So you’re protectin’ me?’

‘That’s right.’

Walter puffed out his chest. ‘I don’t need your protection,’ he said. ‘I can look after myself.’

‘I know you can,’ Blackstone agreed, ‘but you’ve got your mother to consider. How would she cope if anything happened to you? Besides, Tom kept you out of it, and I think he’d want me to do the same.’

‘Well, if you’re sure that’s what Tom would have wanted...

‘I am.’

Walter Clegg nodded, and seemed to reconcile himself to the thought that he’d be kept in the dark.

‘Mr Bickersdale’s not from round here,’ he said. ‘He turned up out of nowhere, about two years ago now. People do say that, before he came to the village, he’d already made himself a fortune somewhere abroad. Anyway, he obviously wasn’t short of money, because the first thing he did was to buy himself a share in the Jubilee Salt Works. That was quite a smart move, because when there’s a demand for salt, it’s not a bad little business.’

‘I thought you said he was a mine-owner, not a
salt
works
-owner.’

‘I’m comin’ to that. The second thing he did was to buy the two mines off old Seth Updyke. The Victoria Mine, which is where Tom an’ me work...where Tom
used
to
work, before he…before he...’

‘Where Tom worked before he was killed,’ Blackstone said gently.

Walter Clegg nodded. ‘That’s right. The Victoria Mine isn’t a bad little business either, but the Melbourne Mine, which is the other one he bought, is an entirely different matter. He should never have touched that—not even with the end of a six-foot barge pole.’

‘It was a bad purchase, was it?’

‘About as bad as it could be. Even if the Melbourne had been the going concern that he thought it was when he bought it, he’d still have paid more for it than what it was worth. But the simple fact is that the mine hasn’t made a profit for years, an’ is never likely to again.’

‘Didn’t anybody warn him of that before he bought the mine?’

‘Somebody probably would have done—if he’d bothered to ask. But he didn’t.’

‘So what’s wrong with the Melbourne Mine?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Everythin’. Some mines are easy to work, an’ some mines aren’t—the Melbourne Mine’s one of the hardest there is. You see, when you’re...Walter Clegg paused for a second, as if searching for the right words. ‘Maybe the easiest way to explain it to you would be to draw it,’ he continued.

‘All right,’ Blackstone agreed.

Walter Clegg stood up, walked over to the sideboard and rummaged around in the drawers. When he returned to the table, he had a piece of paper and a pencil in his hand. He put the sheet of paper flat on the table and drew a series of parallel lines on it.

‘These are your beds of rock,’ he said. ‘The top one is made up of sand and clays. I did hear that it was laid down in the Ice Age, but I’ve no idea when that was, except that it was before my time.’

Blackstone smiled. ‘
Well
before your time,’ he said.

‘Now below the clays, you got the marlstone,’ Walter Clegg continued. ‘An’ below the marlstone you’ve got the seam of salt. Do you see how level an’ regular all the layers are?’

‘Yes,’ Blackstone said, ‘I do.’

‘In a mine like this one I’ve just drawn, all you have to do is sink your shaft down to the drift, then hack away to your heart’s content.’

Walter drew another set of lines on the paper, and this time the lines were stepped.

‘But there’s places where the layers of rock aren’t regular, because of a slippage that probably occurred when Moses was a lad,’ he continued. ‘An’ if you try to mine there, you’ve got problems.’

‘What kind of problems?’

‘As you can see from my second drawin’, the drift doesn’t run flat. Sometimes it goes up, an’ sometimes it goes down. So gettin’ the salt out takes a lot more time an’ a lot more labour, and that means it’s costin’ you more to extract it than you can sell it for.’

‘And the Melbourne Mine’s like that?’

‘Yes. An’ it’s not its only drawback. The Melbourne has always had a seepage problem. Mr Bickersdale has got a lot more pumps down there than you’ll find in any other mine, an’ he has to keep them runnin’ twenty-four hours a day. An’ that’s extra expense, an’ all.’

‘But even so, he still keeps it running, does he?’

‘In a manner of speakin’.’

‘What do you mean—in a manner of speaking?’

‘There were only a few lads workin’ there when he took over, an’ he moved them to the Victoria Mine. Then he brought in some fresh miners from outside to take over their jobs in the Melbourne.’

‘Why would he have done that?’ Blackstone wondered.

‘Beats me. The local lads were quite happy with the new arrangement, because it’s easier work in the Victoria, but even they couldn’t see the sense in bringin’ in strangers to mine the Melbourne.’

But maybe they were never intended to mine the Melbourne at all, Blackstone thought. Maybe that was just a cover to explain the presence of outsiders in the area—outsiders who knew nothing about rock-salt mining, but a great deal about smuggling stolen jewels!

‘Have you ever talked to any of these men that Bickersdale brought in from the outside?’ he asked.

‘No, I haven’t,’ Clegg said. ‘They keep themselves pretty much to themselves.’

‘But they must come into the village in the evening, if only to have a drink in the pub.’

‘Not as far as I know.’

‘What about their provisions? They have to buy them somewhere.’

‘Maybe. But they don’t buy them here.’

Which made sense, Blackstone thought. If they weren’t real miners, then the last thing that Bickersdale would want was to have them talking to men who were.

‘I’d rather like to have a word with this Mr Bickersdale,’ he said. ‘Where will I find him? At the salt works?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. He’s more of what you might call a silent partner in that business. Mr Watkins is the feller what actually runs it.’

Bickersdale wouldn’t need to run it in order to use it for his own purposes, Blackstone thought. All he had to have was unquestioned access—which was exactly what his silent partnership would give him.

‘So he’ll be at the Victoria Mine, will he?’ he asked.

But he was not all surprised when Walter Clegg said, ‘No, he seems to spend more of his time at the Melbourne Mine.’

Of course he did. It was only natural that he would want to stay close to the centre of his
real
business.

‘How do I get to the Melbourne Mine?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Your easiest way would be to go to the bridge, take the path down to the canal, turn left, an’ keep walkin’ for about fifteen minutes,’ Walter Clegg told him. ‘If you do that, you can’t miss it.’

Six

From his elevated vantage point on the canal bank, Blackstone raised his field glasses to his eyes and gave all those parts of the Melbourne Mine which were above ground a sweeping examination.

In many ways it looked very much like all the other mines in the area. It had its winding shed, and a boiler house with a brick chimney, which was belching out thick black smoke. There was a solid brick structure, which had a sign on it announcing that it was the office, and two other brick buildings—one half the size of the office, the other much smaller—neither of which gave any indication of its function at all. And the mine had its salt store, a big wooden building with a domed roof. It was only when the sweeping examination was completed, and a slower, more careful one begun, that the ramshackle nature of much of the complex became clear. The salt store—which should have been the very heart of the business—was clearly rotting away from neglect, and Blackstone was in no doubt that in a heavy rainstorm it would leak like a sieve. The carts and wooden trucks scattered haphazardly around the yard looked to be in very poor repair. And though he had been standing there for over half an hour, Blackstone had not once seen the winding gear bring any rock salt to the surface.

The door of the middle-sized building opened and a man stepped out. He was wearing a jacket and trousers, rather than miners’ overalls, and there was something about the way he walked over to the corner of the yard that told Blackstone that, while he might be a hard man in himself, he was not a man habitually involved in hard physical work.

Once he had reached the end of the yard, the man unbuttoned his trousers and urinated.

A second man stepped out of the shadows. He was not dressed like a miner either, and he was holding a double-barrelled shotgun in his hands.

The two men talked for a while. Then the man who had been relieving himself buttoned his trousers again and returned to the building he’d recently emerged from, and the man with the shotgun stepped back into the shadows.

So the middle-sized brick building was a hostel for the men that Bickersdale had brought in from outside the village, Blackstone thought. They could eat there and sleep there, without ever once risking meeting a villager and revealing how truly ignorant they were about rock-salt mining.

And the man with the shotgun was a guard—though why a salt mine should actually
need
an armed guard was an interesting question.

But, of course, it wasn’t a real salt mine, any more than the men whom Bickersdale employed were real salt-miners.

‘If this place produces enough salt in a day to flavour a workhouse soup cauldron, I’ll eat my hat,’ Blackstone said to himself, as he took the track that led down to the mine.

As he crossed the yard, Blackstone was aware that the man on guard duty was probably watching him from his hiding place. But he gave no outward sign that he was even aware of the man’s existence, and instead marched straight up to the office door and knocked on it as loudly as if he were executing a warrant.

The man who answered the imperious knock was in his middle-to-late forties, and balding. He had pinched features, and half-moon spectacles were resting on his nose. But what Blackstone noticed most about him—as he stood blocking the doorway of the outer office—was the fear in his eyes when he saw who it was who’d come calling.

‘What...What do you want?’ he asked.

‘I’d like to see Mr Bickersdale.’

‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘You’re his clerk, are you?’ Blackstone demanded.

‘I asked if you had a—’

‘Just answer the question!’

‘Yes, I’m…I’m his clerk.’

‘And what’s your name?’

‘Robertson. Hubert Robertson.’

‘So tell me, Mr Robertson, if I
did
have an appointment with Mr Bickersdale, wouldn’t you know about it?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Then I can’t have one, can I? But if you were to go into Mr Bickersdale’s office, and ask if I could see him, and if, you having asked him, he then said yes, I would have an appointment. Isn’t that right?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Then you’d better go and ask him, hadn’t you?’

Robertson bit his lip indecisively, and looked down at his feet.

‘What’s the matter?’ Blackstone asked, hectoringly. ‘Can’t move because you’ve got a bone in your leg?’

Robertson looked up again. He seemed terrified of doing what Blackstone had asked him to do, but equally terrified of
not
doing it.

‘Wait here,’ he said finally. And with that, he disappeared into the office.

‘Just a minute!’ Blackstone said.

The clerk returned to the doorway. ‘Yes?’

‘If I was on my way to ask my boss if he’d agree to see a bloke who’d turned up unexpectedly, I’d at least want to know the bloke’s name. But you never asked me, did you?’

‘No, I…’

‘Why is that? Because you forgot to ask my name? Or because you already know it?’

‘It’s...It’s because I forgot to ask,’ the frightened clerk said.

‘Then it’s a good job one of us is on the ball, isn’t it?’ Blackstone asked. ‘You can tell him that it’s Sam Blackstone wants to see him—
Inspector
Sam Blackstone.’

Lawrence Bickersdale was in his mid-forties. He was a tall, distinguished-looking man, with a skin that looked as if it had seen more than its fair share of sunshine. He had a wide brow, strong jaw and quick eyes, which had been assessing Blackstone since the moment he had stepped into the office.

The office itself was almost spartan in its furnishings. A large mahogany desk—which was not so much antique as merely
old
—dominated the centre of the room. There were two chairs—one on each side of the desk—and a cheap sofa in one corner. If Blackstone had been expecting to see charts on the walls, showing production and sales figures, he would have been disappointed, because the only thing that Lawrence Bickersdale seemed to consider worthy of display was a large map of the world.

‘Take a seat, Mr Blackstone,’ Bickersdale said, indicating the chair in front of the desk. ‘My clerk told me that you’d requested an appointment with me, but he appears to have been negligent in furnishing me with a reason for the meeting.’

‘What you mean is, you asked him why I wanted to see you, and he said he couldn’t tell you because I hadn’t told him,’ Blackstone countered.

Bickersdale smiled. ‘I can see you are a man who favours the direct approach,’ he said. ‘Very well, then, I can be direct, too. You are a police inspector. Is that right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But not a
local
police inspector?’

‘No, I’m from London.’

‘Which means, unless I’m very much mistaken, that you are a long way outside your own jurisdiction.’

‘That’s quite true—I am,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘The local police have a lot on their hands at the moment. A young girl has been murdered.’

‘Yes, I heard that,’ Bickersdale said, regretfully. ‘But I still don’t see what you’re—’

‘They’ve asked me to help out with the inquiry—and with a few other matters besides.’

‘But not officially?’

‘No, not officially.’

‘So you are here,
unofficially
, about the death of that poor girl, are you, Inspector?’

‘As a matter of fact, I’m not. The inquiry I’m pursuing at the moment is one in which I’ve had some personal involvement. Yesterday, a man called Mick Huggins attacked me in a pub in Northwich.’ He paused.

For a while there was silence.

Then Bickersdale said, ‘Yes?’

‘The attack was totally unprovoked, and, as a result of having made it, Mick Huggins was arrested and placed in the cells to await his appearance before the magistrates. Do you have any comment to make at this stage, sir?’

Bickersdale seemed to be considering the matter.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said finally, ‘unless it’s to express my deepest regret to you that your introduction to our fair town had to involve an encounter with a hooligan.’

‘Do you know the hooligan in question, sir?’

‘I don’t believe so.’

‘That’s strange.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes, I really think it is. Because, you see, his bail was posted this morning—and we’ve been informed that you were the one who posted it.’

Bickersdale smiled again. ‘Have you, indeed? And might I ask what the source of that information was?’

‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say, sir.’

‘I would guess it was an anonymous letter,’ Bickersdale said. ‘But no matter. What does this man, Higgins...’

‘Huggins.’

‘What does this man
Huggins
do for a living? If, indeed, he does anything at all?’

‘He operates a narrowboat.’

‘Ah, then I may well have met him. I may even have done business with him. But I can’t recall the name, which is hardly surprising since my clerk, Robertson, handles all the trivial details. And I would certainly never have even considered posting a fifty-guinea bail bond for him.’

The expression on his face showed he realized he’d made a mistake, but it was only there for an instant before it was replaced by a much blander look.

‘Fifty guineas,’ Blackstone repeated. ‘Now where did you get that figure from, I wonder?’

‘I believe you mentioned it yourself.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘I’m sure you did.’

‘I was most careful not to.’

‘Then perhaps I just assumed that for such a serious offence as attacking a policeman—even one from London, with no official standing here in Cheshire—a bail of fifty guineas would be the least that would be required.’

‘You talked earlier about “our fair town”,’ Blackstone said. ‘But it’s not really
your
town at all, is it? You’ve only lived here for two years.’

‘True,’ Bickersdale agreed. ‘But one’s attachment to a particular location cannot be measured merely by the calendar. There are some places that just feel like home—and this place felt like home to me the moment I arrived.’

‘And so you bought a couple of mines and a share in a salt works?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Which has me puzzled,’ Blackstone admitted. ‘Oh, I can see why you bought the mines. Any man would like to have businesses that he could truly call his own.’

‘Quite so.’

‘It’s the share in the salt works I don’t understand. That’s just putting money into somebody
else’s
business.’

‘A business from which I derive profits.’

‘True, but you don’t have control over the business, do you? And you strike me as a man who likes to be in control at all times. So I was wondering whether there might be some other—what you might call
subsidiary
—reason for your investing in the works.’

‘I’m afraid that I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Bickersdale told him.

‘No, I’m not making much sense to myself, either,’ Blackstone said easily. ‘Where did you live
before
you came here, Mr Bickersdale?’

‘I fail to see how that could be relevant to either the attack on you by this man Huggins, or to the murder of that poor girl.’

‘It isn’t relevant,’ Blackstone admitted. ‘I was just curious.’

‘Would you reveal to me the details of .
your
background, if I asked you to, Inspector?’

‘Willingly.’

‘Then by all means feel free to do so.’

‘My mother died when I was a nipper,’ Blackstone said. ‘I was brought up in an orphanage. As soon as I was old enough, I joined the army. I served in India, fought in Afghanistan and rose to the rank of sergeant. When I left the army, I joined the Metropolitan Police.’

Bickersdale nodded. ‘Very concise,’ he said. ‘And I will try to be equally brief in return. Before I came to live here, I travelled extensively abroad for a number of years.’

‘That
is
concise,’ Blackstone said.

‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ Bickersdale agreed.

‘Did your travels take you to the United States of America?’

‘Yes, I’ve certainly been there.’

‘India?’

‘There, too.’

Lawrence Bickersdale stood up and walked over to the map hanging on the wall. ‘In order to save you the trouble of having to list every single country in the world, Inspector, I’m quite willing to specify I’ve been here...’ (he pointed at Australia), ‘here...’ (he circled the Middle East with his index finger), ‘and here...’ (he jerked his thumb in the general direction of South Africa).

‘Do you know much about diamonds?’ Blackstone asked, as the other man was walking back to his seat.

Bickersdale sat down quite heavily. ‘I beg your pardon?’