Although Daniel and Abigail went to bed at ten o’clock, hoping to get a few hours’ sleep before they made their way to Bob Bones’ butcher shop in the early hours, neither slept properly. By one o’clock both were still awake. Daniel got up first and went down to the kitchen to turn up the range and add wood and coal to the glowing embers in order to bring the hotplates up to heat, and by the time Abigail appeared, fully dressed, he had the kettle on the hob steaming, and four slices of toast keeping warm on the top.
‘We’ll need something to keep us going,’ said Daniel as he buttered the toast for them. He looked at his much-loved old and blackened cast iron range and said ruefully: ‘I suppose we ought to think of something easier for cooking. Possibly a gas oven. I believe that some houses have electric cookers, which everyone says is the way of the future.’ He looked at Abigail and asked: ‘We really ought to move. This house did me well enough when I was on my own, mainly because as a policeman and then a private investigator I was hardly here. But now, the outside toilet in the yard, where we have to take a candle with us at night so we can see, the gas lighting in the house, the tin bath filled with hot water from the copper in the scullery, you deserve something better. An inside toilet and a proper bathroom, for starters.’
‘We deserve something better,’ she corrected him. ‘You’re the one who gets up at the crack of dawn to clean the grates and lay the fire in the range and the hot water copper.’
‘So it’s agreed, then,’ said Daniel. ‘We move house.’
‘We agreed that about a year ago,’ smiled Abigail. ‘Just like we agreed we’d get married.’
‘Then let’s stop talking about it and do it,’ said Daniel firmly.
‘Let me get this trip to Egypt out of the way first,’ said Abigail.
Daniel shook his head. ‘No, let’s sort it out before you go. Once we’ve agreed on the house, I can arrange things while you’re away. Decorate it. Furnish it.’
‘I want to furnish it,’ protested Abigail.
‘You will. We’ll choose furniture and wallpaper and everything together before you go, and I can get on with it while you’re in Egypt. It’ll be ready for you to come back to.’
Abigail thought about it as she sipped her tea. Then she nodded. ‘Yes. Let’s do it. Get married and move house. Once this case is over.’
It was bitterly cold when they left the house and both wore thick coats, scarves, gloves and hats.
‘It’s cold enough to snow,’ observed Daniel.
As they walked along Plender Street, heading for Camden High Street, Daniel told Abigail about the meat market they were going to. ‘There’s been a meat market at Smithfield since the tenth century, although at first – and right up to about forty years ago – it was a live cattle market. At least, the animals went in alive.’
‘And they were actually slaughtered there?’
‘Slaughtered and butchered. It was reckoned about a quarter of a million cattle a year, along with one and a half million sheep, were herded through the streets of the City of London every year.’
‘Through those narrow streets? It must have been awful!’
‘It was. You think London’s bad with all the horses spreading their manure over the roads as they pull wagons, carriages and omnibuses, but that’s nothing compared to when that number of sheep and cattle were shepherded through to Smithfield. And it wasn’t just the smell from their droppings – butchering adds to the aroma: the smell of blood, of offal. The place was awash with blood and guts.
‘In the end, under pressure from numerous petitions, Parliament closed it down in the 1850s and created a new cattle market at Copenhagen Fields while they built a proper market on the site, the one that’s there today. It still smells, but it’s under control.’
‘But we’re not going to Copenhagen Fields.’
‘No, it’s Smithfield for us. And even though they use loads of ice to keep the meat fresh, be prepared: the smell of blood and meat can be quite overpowering.’
Bob Bones was hitching his horse up to his covered van when they arrived at his butcher’s shop.
‘Good, you’re early,’ he said. ‘We can get off. And I’m glad you’ve wrapped up well. When we come back the van will be pretty cold because I’ll pick up some ice at Smithfield to keep the meat good.’
At this time of day there was hardly any traffic on the roads, making their journey across London much easier and quicker than their bus journey the previous day, although as they neared Smithfield they got caught up in traffic jams as they encountered more covered vans, all painted, as was Bones’s, with the name of a butcher.
Smithfield Meat and Poultry Market itself was an enormous building, bigger than most of London’s railway termini, with the main building stretching away into invisibility, despite the gaslight from the street lamps.
‘It’s huge,’ said Abigail, impressed. ‘How do you get whatever meat you buy from there to wherever you park your van? I can’t imagine carrying one carcass of a sheep or a cow that distance, let alone a few.’
‘There’s a road that goes through the middle of it. It’s called the Grand Avenue and you park near where you know you’re going to do business.’
Bones joined the stream of traffic heading towards the entrance, which was a huge, open arch made of cast iron. On either side of the arch were bronze statues of dragons, each clutching a shield decorated with an armorial cross. Behind the dragons, the stone towers that reached up into the night sky were decorated with carvings of griffins.
‘A lot of money went into making this place,’ said Bones.
‘Daniel told me it was built only recently,’ said Abigail.
‘And it’s still being added to,’ said Bones. ‘The meat and poultry markets are all done, and now the fish market is nearly finished.’ He pulled his van to a halt at the side of the road, then got out and hitched the horse’s reins to a post. ‘This is us,’ he said.
Daniel and Abigail got down from the van and walked with Bones into the main market. To Abigail, it looked like a scene from some nightmarish painting of hell: illuminated by gas lamps high up, flayed corpses of cows and sheep hanging from hooks, trolleys laden with kidneys, livers, hearts, intestines and other organs. Men with cleavers and saws, most of them wearing leather aprons, attacked the carcasses. Buckets filled with blood were everywhere.
‘Blood for black pudding,’ explained Bones, noticing Abigail looking at these buckets warily. ‘People love it.’
Each stall was piled high with meat in different forms, and beside each stall was a trolley filled with bones as the butchers cut the flesh from ribs and the long bones of the animals. The heavy smell of blood was everywhere. The blood that covered the long wooden benches on which the butchers worked ran down to the floor, where it was fed into gutters.
‘I’ve pulled up here ’cos this is where most of the Whitechapel butchers gather,’ said Bones. ‘I chop and change – one week I’ll do business with one bloke, then a different one the next. But always the same ones. Most of us trade with the regular people we know. It’s a guarantee of quality for the kind of meat you know your customers want.’ He looked at Daniel. ‘See anyone you recognise?’
‘Unfortunately, I only saw his feet,’ said Daniel. ‘But he had a tattoo on his wrist. I only saw part of it, but it looked like part of the letter L, in blue ink.’
‘That might be a help,’ said Bones. ‘Most of these blokes work with their sleeves rolled up. Which wrist was it? Left or right?’
Daniel struggled to remember, visualising the fist looming into his semi-blocked view.
‘The left,’ he said.
‘Right,’ said Bones. ‘Let’s hope we get lucky. I’ll let you two wander around a bit, while I do some business. But I won’t be far away.’
Bones walked off, heading for the heart of the market, while Daniel and Abigail stood and studied the men working at the benches. Suddenly one man caught his eye, a young man who was looking at Daniel with uncertain and wary glances.
‘See him?’ Daniel whispered.
‘Who?’
‘At that stall with the board over it that says Karl Ramsden.’
Abigail looked. ‘Yes. He looks a bit … well … nervous.’
‘Yes, that’s what struck me. I wonder if he’s got a tattoo on his arm?’
As Daniel headed for the stall, Abigail following, the young man suddenly put down the meat cleaver he’d been wielding, went to another man and muttered something to him, then disappeared through a door at the rear of the stall, taking off his apron as he did so.
Daniel and Abigail arrived at the stall and Daniel gave a smile to the man who the young man had muttered something to.
‘Excuse me,’ he said.
The man shook his head.
‘We don’t do sales to the public,’ he said curtly.
‘No, I’m not here to buy meat,’ said Daniel. ‘We’re with Bob Bones, who’s a friend of ours. He’s got a butcher’s shop in Camden Town and we asked him if we could come with him to Smithfield.’
‘Why?’ asked the man suspiciously.
‘We’re writers,’ said Daniel. ‘We’ve been asked to write some articles about important places in London, and Smithfield is certainly one of those.’
The man grunted in agreement, then continued smashing his meat cleaver down on the bench, chopping long bones into smaller pieces.
‘I was interested in that young man who was here just now. I’m sure I know him from somewhere.’
‘What young man?’
‘The one who was talking to you just now.’
The man shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.
‘There was a young man with you a moment ago. He took off his apron and left just before we reached here.’
‘You must be mistaken,’ said the man. He smashed the cleaver down and the bone he was working on snapped in two. ‘Now if you don’t mind, I need to get on.’
Daniel nodded.
‘Sorry to have troubled you,’ he said.
He led Abigail away and they went in search of Bob Bones, and found him conducting business at another of the stalls.
‘Bob, can you do us a favour?’ asked Daniel.
‘Sure. What?’
‘Over at that stall, Karl Ramsden’s, there was a young man working, but as we approached he left in a hurry. I’m interested in finding out who the young man was, and where I can get hold of him.’
‘Karl?’ frowned Bones. ‘He’s a bit of a sourbones. Don’t like giving anything away.’
‘Maybe if we offered him money?’ suggested Abigail.
‘No, I don’t mean it like that,’ said Bones. ‘He’s not a great one for giving out information. He comes from Whitechapel and they’re a bit wary there of who they talk to. They don’t like strangers who ask questions.’
‘Do you know him?’ asked Daniel.
‘I’ve done business with him.’
‘Would you mind asking him about the young man?’
Bones gave it some thought, then said: ‘I’ll give it a try. The worst he can do is tell me to get lost. But I don’t think he will. Karl likes doing business too much.’
‘Will it help if we come with you?’ asked Daniel.
‘No. You wait here.’
Bones walked through the crowd of butchers to Karl Ramsden’s stall. They saw Ramsden put down his cleaver and listen to Bones for a few minutes, then shake his head. Bones then said something else, and this time Ramsden did reply, not much, but enough for Daniel and Abigail to realise he’d got some sort of answer from the man.
Bones made his way back to them.
‘The young bloke who was there, Karl says he only knows him as Joe. He’s a casual, comes in and does stuff for Karl on a cash basis some nights. He turns up and asks Karl if he needs anyone, and if Karl does, he gets to work.’
‘Does he know where he comes from? Or anything about him?’
‘No. My guess is he must be local if he just turns up like that. And as Karl’s got his place in Whitechapel, which is just down the road, I’m guessing that’s where this Joe will be from.’ He regarded Daniel inquisitively. ‘You said you were looking for a young butcher from Whitechapel, didn’t you? Could be you’ve found him.’
‘Yes, but where do I find him again?’ asked Daniel.
‘By coming back another night and seeing if he’s here,’ suggested Bones.
‘Somehow, I don’t think he’ll be back,’ said Daniel.
‘You might be right,’ nodded Bones. ‘Listen, now you’ve found what you want, why don’t you go back and wait by the van. I’ll join you as soon as I’ve done my business. Half an hour should see me finished.’
Daniel and Abigail headed out of the market towards where the van was parked, with the waiting horse.
‘It’s quite possible that Karl Ramsden was lying when he said he didn’t know what Joe’s second name was, or where he can be found.’
‘Yes, the same thought occurred to me,’ said Daniel. ‘I think it might be worth letting John Feather know. Karl Ramsden may sing a different tune when Scotland Yard start asking him questions.’
‘It’s possible that this Joe may not be the one who attacked you,’ said Abigail. ‘There are many other reasons why he acted so shiftily when he saw you. Let’s face it, we stick out here, we’re obviously not butchers. And maybe he’s got a guilty conscience about something else, possibly something criminal, and when he saw you looking at him, he got cold feet.’
‘That’s all very possible,’ agreed Daniel. ‘But I’d still like to take a look at his left arm and see if he’s got a tattoo. And, for that, John Feather could be our man.’
‘Or possibly Sergeant Whetstone might know about him?’ suggested Abigail.
‘He might, but I think that’ll be harder. A young butcher called Joe with a tattoo on his left wrist. I bet you that describes half the men in Whitechapel.’