Summon Up the Blood (3 page)

‘The
Daily Clarion
has dubbed you “Quick-fire Quinn”. Did you know that?’

‘I did not.’

‘I don’t like that look, Quinn. It’s a dangerous look. It’s the look of a man whose vanity is flattered.’

‘No, sir. With respect, I wasn’t thinking of myself. I was thinking of the department. I was merely wondering, is it necessarily a bad thing? For me to have such a reputation, I mean. Will it not tend to have a deterring effect?’

‘It is
vanity
, Quinn, however you may wish to justify it to yourself. No. Obscurity. That’s what we want from you. Stay in the shadows, keep your head down. Same goes for your men. Stop getting yourself written about.’

‘I’m not sure that’s within my power to achieve, sir. I cannot control what the newspapers print.’

‘Just try not to kill anyone!’ cried Sir Edward with sudden force. Realizing, perhaps, the impossibility of what he was asking, he relented and added: ‘For a while.’

Sir Edward gave another flinch of pain, which he attempted to cover with an energetic nod. Quinn took it for a gesture of dismissal.

‘No, no. There is one more thing: a case, on which your help is required. The Whitechapel Division have sent word up. A body has been discovered in the London Docks. You are to report to Shadwell Police Station. The body itself is being held at Poplar Mortuary, pending the coroner’s inquest.’

‘A body found in the East End? May I ask, in what way does that constitute a special crime, sir?’

‘I take a special interest in the area, Quinn. I was born there, you know.’

‘In Shadwell?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I did not know.’

‘Leaving that aside, it is a . . .’ Sir Edward cast about for the appropriate word. ‘Volatile area. Criminality is a way of life for many, of course. There are foreign influences to consider. The lascars, chinks and yids. And the dockworkers are a militant bunch. There is a delicate balance at play. If it were to be upset in any way, it could be catastrophic given the importance of the Thames for the life of the capital, the country and even the Empire.’

‘With all respect, Sir Edward: even so, I am not convinced that it warrants our involvement.’

‘The body, Quinn, was drained of blood. Every last drop.
Utterly exsanguinated
, was how the Whitechapel police surgeon put it.’

‘I see.’

‘There are other aspects to the case that make it sensitive. We have so far managed to keep the details out of the papers, in order not to alarm the general public. I mentioned the coroner’s inquest . . . that will take place
in camera
,
without a jury.’

‘
In camera
? Isn’t that reserved for cases in which there are issues of national security?’

Sir Edward nodded in confirmation. ‘These are dangerous times internationally. Go to Shadwell Police Station. The case file is there. You can read the details for yourself.’

‘I shall leave immediately.’

‘Good man. Oh, and be careful, Quinn. Look upon this as a test, for you and your department. The Home Secretary’s eyes will be on you.’

A second excessively literal image forced itself upon Quinn. He fled the room, as if he believed it contained the eyes in question, having perhaps been delivered in another velvet-lined box by the Home Office mandarin he had seen earlier.

T
he Special Crimes Department had been set up as something of a pet project by Sir Edward. He was very much the man for pet projects. There were times when Quinn almost believed the department had come into being purely as a way of accommodating his own peculiar talents within the Met.

To begin with, Quinn was assigned a permanent staff of two, Detective Sergeants Inchball and Macadam. There was the promise of more men in the future. Enough years had gone by for Quinn to accept that it was a promise that would never be fulfilled.

When the need arose, he had licence to call upon additional officers from whatever police division he was assisting. However, the call was not always answered, at least not with alacrity or enthusiasm.

There was invariably a degree of horse trading for which Quinn had little taste and less aptitude. He never could understand why the station sergeants did not share his sense of urgency. How could an overturned collier’s wagon compare with the flight of a vicious multiple murderer, even if one or two passers-by were engaging in a spot of opportunistic looting?

What made it even more galling was that the division inspectors often took the sergeants’ side. But Quinn knew he had the backing of the commissioner. If he had to go right to the top, he would. Most superintendents knew this. So Quinn usually got the men he needed before it was necessary to trouble Sir Edward.

But it was all such a terrible waste of energy and time.

It was only natural that he allowed these frustrations to fuel his rage. His mission – and yes, he had a sense of mission – required him at these moments to be in a state of heightened, and wholly righteous, aggression. He had to turn himself into a human weapon, directed by society’s need for justice.

He had to keep in mind the defiled virgins, the butchered widows, and the woeful lethargy of his colleagues in the Metropolitan Police Force. And he had to allow the rage to take him over. Sometimes he could feel it flooding through his veins. He would wait until he had a sense of it filling his hands, up to the fingertips, before unleashing himself.

Against all this, it must be said that Special Crimes had been granted an extraordinary privilege. They had been allocated the use of a motor car.

The black 1912 Ford Model T was Sergeant Macadam’s pride and joy, emotions in which Quinn consciously took no part. He preferred to see the vehicle as no more or less than they were entitled to. After all, they were called upon to cover an area that stretched from Dagenham in the East to Uxbridge in the West, and from Potters Bar in the North to Epsom in the South.

Yes, there were railways, but when responsiveness and speed were of the essence, at all hours of the day and night, the railways could not necessarily be relied upon. Bicycles had been suggested. But Sir Edward must have caught something in Quinn’s eye that discouraged him from pressing forward with that particular plan.

Macadam had taught himself to drive on the job, largely through a process of trial and error. There had been one or two accidents, especially in the early days, but only one fatality.

Fortunately, that incident had not dented Macadam’s enthusiasm for motoring, and had gone some way towards inspiring Quinn with respect, if not reverence, for the vehicle. It was not just a convenient mode of transport, he realized. In the right hands, it was a lethal weapon.

Quinn stood in the drizzle on the Victoria Embankment, waiting for Macadam to bring the Ford round. He was grateful for his herringbone Ulster coat and black bowler hat. The two items of clothing formed a protective layer around him, keeping at bay more than just the moisture in the air. He felt that he would be lost without them, his bowler in particular. It was like the carapace of a tortoise: part of him, but also a shield against everything in the world that threatened to overwhelm him. Even when he was not wearing it, he felt its clinging ghost in place; he was never at one, never fully himself, until he had restored it.

He watched clumps of sodden debris float away on the surface of the turbid river, carried east by the tide. The river’s depths were impenetrable to his gaze. His peculiar imagination filled the blank with dark and sinister forms.

The day presented such a despondent face that it seemed almost malign. It was the face of a beggar. It would take everything from him, if he let it.

He stood with Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster at his back, feeling the presence of his lords and masters looming over him, watching his every move. Earlier he had caught a glimpse of one of them, the Home Office mandarin, who by now would be safely ensconced in his room in Whitehall; or more likely, in his club, his work for the day done.

But however much men like that believed they were in control, however much they believed they had their hands on the tiller of state, there would always be some ungovernable little thug somewhere undoing their work. Rendering them powerless.

Because when a man picked up a length of sharpened steel and plunged it into another man’s heart, at that moment he, the killer, was in charge. All the power of the world flowed through him.

This was something Quinn understood. It was the source of his vigilance. And the root of his darkest fears.

The silver-templed civil servants were powerless against such individuals. To keep them in check, they needed men like Quinn. That was why he knew that ultimately there was no danger of them revoking the special warrant, the paper talisman from which Quinn drew his own power.

All he had to do was show them how much they needed him.

A familiar, almost cheery sound drew his attention: the throb and rattle of the Ford’s engine. Macadam, inscrutable in his driving helmet and goggles, gave a redundant hoot of the horn as he pulled up.

Quinn stepped on to the running board and let himself into the rear passenger seat. The car was fitted with a canopy, but was open to the elements at the sides. Macadam had the double windscreen folded over to stop the moisture obscuring his vision. The glass discs of his goggles, however, were already covered with droplets, despite the fact that he had only driven a few hundred yards.

‘Where to?’ said Macadam.

‘East.’

Macadam wrenched the gear lever into position. Metal snarled in protest. The Model T lurched forward and Quinn was thrown back into the coach seat.

They followed the course of the river, first north past Charing Cross and Cleopatra’s Needle, then banking east at Waterloo Bridge. The motor car ripped past the slow-moving barges and lighters on the water, an upstart in the society of vehicles, pert and frisky in comparison to their ponderous solemnity.

Quinn remembered what Sir Edward had said about the importance of the Thames to the Empire. No doubt he had been thinking of the trade that flowed in through the estuary: food and raw materials from every corner of the globe.

Could one corpse found in the London Docks really jeopardize all that? No matter how savagely and strangely it had been killed?

The stench off the river was tangy and ripe. Not altogether an unpleasant smell, though there was a strand to it that both fascinated and repelled. It was the whiff of something that you wanted to get to the bottom of. But the more you nosed it out, the more you realized that its source was something rotten.

Already, even before he had begun, Quinn had the sense that there was more to this case than met the eye. First there was the presence of the Whitehall mandarin in Sir Edward’s office. Then there was Sir Edward’s warning. Why had it come now?

He wondered if he were not being set up for a fall. But why? In whose interest was it for him to fail?

There could only ever be one answer to that question.

They reached Blackfriars, where the road parted company with the river. Quinn thought he detected a look of startled resentment on the face of one lighterman who glared after them as they drew away. Perhaps there was also a hint of envy in his gaze, for their freedom as well as their speed. The river was his life, his destiny. He was trapped on it.

Their easterly progress was signified by the dingy state of the houses on Upper Thames Street, once great mansions fallen into dilapidation. It was hard to believe that these overcrowded slum dwellings had formerly been the homes of a privileged few.

The street was caked with filth. Children played listlessly, shoeless and ragged. They looked up at the din of the car, cowed by its implausible gleam. With their grime-blackened faces, they reminded Quinn of photographs he had seen of native children in Africa.

Only minutes before, he had left the stately glory of the Victoria Embankment, with its imperial monuments and edifices of Portland stone. Was it really possible for such scenes to coexist in the same city?

Quinn had never seen the attraction of ‘slumming’, the fashionable pastime among certain members of the upper classes. It was like a grotesque inversion of the Grand Tour. Instead of the cultural pinnacles of Europe, these tourists visited the impoverished hives of the East End. But then he was not of their class, not quite. He was not buffered from the deprivation they witnessed by the same layers of wealth and privilege. Unlike them, Quinn was but one degree away from destitution. His job was all that kept it at bay. If he lost that, he would lose everything; all the trappings of respectability he currently enjoyed would be in tatters. He had nothing else to fall back on.

Quinn’s father had been a doctor. Indeed, Quinn himself had studied medicine, or at least begun his studies, at Middlesex Hospital. But it was not to be.

His father’s suicide was one reason he gave for his breakdown. There were others. Quinn did not care to dwell on them.

At the time, Quinn had been unable to accept that his father had killed himself. A more genial, robust and hearty fellow it was impossible to imagine. He was far from the archetypal Victorian paterfamilias. Quinn remembered him as a warm and indulgent parent. A man of standing in the community, yet approachable. He was respected by all, loved by many.

It was simply inconceivable that he would take his own life. Not because of the old cliché:
he had so much to live for
. There was more to it than that. His father had
believed
in life. He had committed himself wholeheartedly to it. Not just by his choice of profession, and by the fact that he spent every working day preserving life in others. But he engaged in his own life – the life he had created for himself through his family and friends – with a consuming energy. The glow of his father’s presence lit up Quinn’s boyhood.

In retrospect, such energy struck Quinn as nothing short of heroic. Certainly, he could not come close to emulating it.

How could such a man kill himself?

As a young medical student, Quinn had been convinced that there must have been foul play behind it. And so his father’s death was the first mystery he set himself to solve.