CHAPTER NINE

“Get the Chinese! Kill China Jim!”

The chant echoed and re-echoed around the centre of Dundee, accompanied by the smashing of windows and the crash of stones and bottles. Acrid smoke from a burning cart coiled across the street, obscuring the topmost storey of the tenements and stinging Mendick’s nostrils. He heard the buzz from spectators who had gathered to watch or who hoped for easy loot. Mackay had formed the police in a line across the High Street, and they moved slowly towards the mob gathered around the Old Steeple and the ruined remains of the City Churches that dominated the Nethergate.

Mendick frowned as he hurried along, watching the slender line of blue swallowtail coats and tall black rabbit-skin hats advancing with staffs drawn, and the much larger crowd of soldiers, youths and hangers-on, some in scarlet, others in shirtsleeves or ragged civilian clothes surging around the High Street. A group of youths kicked at a shop window while others threw stones at the police or passers-by.

“Get the Chinese! Kill China Jim!”

As Mendick moved closer, the soldiers coalesced into a tighter group and turned against the police, a barrage of assorted missiles arcing through the space between them. Carters whipped up their horses and tried to flee, congesting Union and Lindsay Streets and the narrow closes that plunged north and south. The hackney carriages that stood waiting for custom at the Town House began to flee, with the leading cab having to swerve to avoid a loaded jute cart. Women screamed in terror, some running with children in tow, others dropping recently purchased parcels from the still-open shops. A gaggle of bare-footed girls gathered at the tail of the soldiers, adding their own raucous voices to the noise.

“It’s a full-scale battle,” Sturrock shouted. He pulled free his staff and looked eager.

“Not at all,” Mendick ducked as a bottle hissed past, turning end over end until it exploded in a shower of shards against the shutters of a shop window. “It’s only the lobsters letting off some steam. They’re angry and confused and they’ve lost one of their own. They want revenge and they’ve nobody else to attack.”

Mendick had left his cane at the office and carried the regulation baton. “This might get a bit unpleasant, gentlemen, so keep together.” He stamped his feet on the ground. “Mind you, I used to quite enjoy a good turn-up when I was in the army. Most of these lads will be looking forward to this.”

The soldiers withdrew before the advancing police officers and gathered again in an untidy bunch beyond the Steeple. They shouted insults and chanted about China Jim but already their aggression had dissipated and some of the girls lost interest and began to drift away.

Mackay halted the police line outside the Town House, whose classical pillars were partly obscured by drifting smoke. The police stood shoulder to shoulder and on an order from Mackay began to tap their staffs on the ground in a rhythmic, menacing drumbeat that echoed from the surrounding buildings.

Mendick looked along his line. The men stood firm, their tall hats adding to their height, the long coats adding to the impression of lean strength, the array of staffs looking formidable. The Dundee Police were a powerful force when seen in this mood. Up beyond the blue-white smoke, the evening sky was dull grey, with low clouds pregnant with rain and a few seagulls circling lazily, their screams melancholic in the troubled street.

“Right, lads.” Mackay sounded as calm as if he was reading the duty roster on a Sunday morning. “We want to contain the redcoats here and prevent them from destroying the town. I’ve contacted the barracks commander and he’ll be sending a company of men in support, but until they get here, it’s up to us.”

The number of soldiers had increased again as stragglers joined them, and the noise rose until it was hard for Mendick to think. He frowned as he saw a carriage at the back of the crowd. Who would want to stop in such a perilous place? He tried to see who was inside but the shifting movement of the soldiers blocked his view. Another bottle arced above, to shatter against one of the pillars of the Town House in a hundred shards of glass.

“It’s building up again,” Deuchars said quietly. He did not appear displeased.

Mendick looked to the east where an island of buildings narrowed the High Street and the name altered to the Murraygate. A handful of redcoats drifted from that direction, shouting and waving their fists. Fifty yards west, the high-quality Reform Street, where Adam Leslie had his crockery shop, led off at a right angle, while behind him Crichton and Castle Street arrowed down to the docks with some narrow wynds giving alternative dark passage.

“We’ll have to keep them from Reform Street and the Murraygate,” Mackay said. “Mendick, hold this line here. Keep them from advancing further.” He refused to duck as another bottle spiralled past and shattered on the cobbles underfoot.

“Now here’s trouble!” Deuchars pointed as a small body of lascars, Indian seamen from a newly arrived ship, wandered up from the dock and stared at the riot as if it was a public entertainment. “These lads had better get out of the way before the soldiers lynch them.”

“They’re Indian, not Chinese,” Sturrock said.

“Do you think the redcoats care? They wouldn’t know the difference between a maharaja and a mandarin.”

Within seconds one of the soldiers, more sober or more alert than his companions, pointed to the lascars.

“There’s the bloody Chinese! That’s China Jim and his friends! Get the bastards, boys!” The roar increased and a group of soldiers advanced towards the bemused seamen.

Mackay pointed to the breakaway group, “Sergeant!” but Mendick was already stepping forward, staff in hand.

“Sturrock! Deuchars! You’re with me!” He moved to get between the seamen and redcoats. British soldiers were notorious for their drunken brawls and he knew that in their present temper they were quite capable of murder. “You men! Stop there!”

The soldiers ignored him, as he had known they would. One whooped loudly, encouraging his fellows to battle. Suddenly aware of the threat, the lascars turned to run, watching over their shoulders as the redcoats broke into a ragged charge.

“There they go lads! After them!” Two young redcoats, one giggling in drunken excitement, raced ahead to cut off the lascars from the narrow wynd which offered the best escape route. “Don’t let them escape, boys! Kill the Chinamen!”

The main body of redcoats yelled, whistled, roared in their triumph. Mendick saw one smallish soldier leap high in the air to land with both heavily-booted feet on the back of the rearmost lascar and knock him to the ground. The lascar’s scream was high-pitched as the soldier swore and twisted his boots deep into the man’s back.

“Get off him!” Mendick smashed his staff across the back of the soldier’s head, sending him reeling forward. “He’s not China Jim!”

“He’s a bloody Chink!”

Mendick sought to quieten the soldiers, “He’s a bloody seaman, you stupid bugger!”

Two soldiers had joined their colleague. They glared at Mendick. “Who the hell cares? He’s bloody Chinese.”

“He’s Indian!”

“Same difference.” The voice was flat and vicious, reared in the gutter of some English Midland slum. “We’re going to string these bastards up, and if you don’t get out of the way, we’ll have you too.” Unfeeling eyes glared at Mendick.

“Will you, now?” Mendick placed his staff diagonally across his chest as he stared the soldiers down. He watched Deuchars turn the screw to close his handcuffs over the wrists of the fallen redcoat.

Other soldiers snarled drunkenly at him, both sides a few paces apart in that street of tenements and shops, with the flare of the burning wagon puncturing the growing dark. One by one the soldiers unfastened their leather cross belts and began to swing them menacingly. Mendick had seen those army belts and in the days of his wild youth he had used one as a weapon himself. Broad and heavy and with massive brass buckles at the end, they could easily break an arm or a skull. Now he heard their sinister whirr as they were swung, gathering momentum as the soldiers crowded round.

“Don’t wait, lads” Mendick shouted, “if we hit their hands and arms they’ll drop the belts. Step in together!”

There was no quarter given as the three policemen attacked the mob. The first belt buzzed past Mendick’s face with a sound like a skein of geese passing close overhead, but he cracked down his staff on the holder’s knuckles, feeling immense satisfaction from the shock of contact and the man’s instant yell of pain.

Something hard and heavy thumped against Mendick’s back. He shortened his grip on the staff and thrust it hard into the throat of the nearest soldier, leaving him gasping and writhing on the ground. Mendick looked up to see Sturrock using his staff like a sword, parrying the buckle end of a soldier’s belt, withdrawing and slashing right and left at the man’s upper arms. The belt dropped and Sturrock felled the bearer with a sharp blow to the head.

“Watch that one!” Mendick gestured to a tousle-haired soldier who was dragging clear his bayonet, but Deuchars was there first, smashing sideways with his long staff so the man shouted and dropped the weapon. Mendick recognised the vocal soldier from the Law but had no time to arrest him.

“Keep going, Sergeant!” Deuchars was grinning, enjoying the challenge of a fight. Something had knocked flat the reinforced leather of his hat and there was a trickle of blood on his face, but he sidestepped a swinging belt and thrust out accurately with his staff, catching the soldier in the belly. “And that’s done for you!”

The chanting rose high, “Get the bluebottles! Kill the peeler bastards!”

“At least they have lost interest in China Jim,” Deuchars grinned despite his bloodied face.

There were more soldiers now and more supporters, a rabble of beery, swearing faces shouting oaths as they lunged at him, but Mendick knew there was no turning back. There was no sign of the lascars, and the High Street took on the appearance of a battleground as redcoats fought blue and the inevitable casualties crumpled in pools of blood.

“There’s too many of them,” Sergeant Morrison shouted as two soldiers converged on him, kicking viciously with their heavy boots. A belt buckle smashed against his face and he yelled and staggered back. The soldiers laughed and closed in, boots hammering. Another redcoat, diminutive in stature but large in animosity, leaped high in the air and swung his belt so the great brass buckle crumpled a constable’s hat. The policeman stumbled and another soldier thrust at him with the jagged edge of a broken beer bottle.

“Hot work, Sergeant.” Deuchars shoved the bottle holder aside, reeling as a stone thumped against his chest. He took a step backward, and Mendick thrust his staff between the ankles of a running soldier, bringing the man clattering down. Another constable was writhing on the cobbles, with the broad cross belts hissing and heavy buckles crashing down on his screaming form.

“Get the bluebottles! Kill China Jim!” Now a different chant started, one that arose from a small group of soldiers but soon spread amongst the rest.

“Burn the place! Burn the place!”

The cry was accompanied by a new approach from the soldiers. Intense groups smashed shop windows and threw burning rags inside so flames ripped skyward from half a dozen different locations.

“What the devil is that about?” Deuchars asked, “I’ve never known redcoats do that before.”

“Nor have I,” Mendick said. “We can discuss it later; here they come again!”

“Kill the bluebottles! Kill China Jim!” A volley of bottles smashed and rolled on the cobbled ground, announcing another surging charge of soldiers who erupted from the direction of the Overgate.

Mendick and Deuchars stood apart from the others and the police line looked thin and weak as it rallied once more to face the onslaught. Five constables were crumpled on the ground and others swayed in the ranks, white faces streaked with blood. Most officers nursed some sort of injury. Superintendent Mackay was in the centre, brandishing his official sword and giving loud orders but even he looked shaken, while the flames from burning shops illuminated the night. Smoke, dark and acrid, coiled between the buildings.

“Talk about the squares at Quatre Bras, eh?” Deuchars altered his grip on the staff. His face was scarlet-streaked with blood, but there were three soldiers on the ground immediately in front of him, one secured by handcuffs and the others in groaning immobility.

“And here come the French cavalry.” Mendick nodded at the next onrush of soldiers.

He saw the carriage again, the dark-coloured brougham. He craned his neck to see past the soldiers, but a drift of wind blew smoke from the burning cart between them. When it cleared the carriage had vanished.

“Get the bastards!” The soldiers rallied again and the noise multiplied. It was like nothing Mendick had heard since China. A constant background roar, punctuated by coarse voices screaming obscenities, the drumbeat of army boots on cobbles and the crash of breaking glass.

“Watch your front, boys. Here they come again.”

As Mendick stepped forward the redcoats seemed more numerous and even more determined. He blocked one hissing belt, slammed his staff against an unwary bicep, staggered as something thumped into his side, sidestepped a clumsy kick and slipped on the blood-greasy cobbles. He felt himself falling, saw Deuchars leaping to help, and then a knot of soldiers closed over him, boots and fists swinging.

Mendick yelled as an iron-shod boot scraped down his shin and lunged savagely upward with his staff, catching somebody a shrewd blow in the groin. The man shrieked, and crumpled on top of him. Mendick shoved the body away, tried to rise, flinched as a boot crunched into his ribs and curled into a foetal ball as a crowd of soldiers concentrated on kicking him to pieces.

“Sergeant!” That was Deuchars, his voice sounding distant. He heard sharp commands, the rhythmic crunch of disciplined feet, and a hard hand helped him to his feet. An army captain was nodding calmly to him, a cheroot bouncing from the corner of a moustached mouth.

“You’ll be Sergeant Mendick, then?”

“I am.” Mendick took a deep breath to calm the rapid hammering of his heart. “But not for long if you hadn’t turned up.”

“Captain Chambers,Twenty-First Foot on attachment.” Chambers spoke as if he was introducing himself in a drawing room rather than in the heart of a riot.

Mendick looked around. There were at least three shops ablaze, and a couple of carts, with orange flames leaping skyward to illuminate what now seemed like a battlefield. “How many men do you have?”

“Three piquets of thirty men each.” The captain said. “We’ll have your town tidied up before you can snap your fingers.” He drew heavily on his cheroot.

Mendick saw a group of soldiers drag another face down along the ground and throw him onto the flat bed of a wagon. “Your boys are a bit rough, are they not?”

“Different regiments tend to have a little rivalry.” The Captain sounded casual, as if regimental difference allowed for any level of violence. He watched unemotionally as two of his men kicked one of the rioters senseless. “That lot let us down in the Peninsula, so we don’t like them much.”

“So it would seem.”

Mendick watched Deuchars push two of the rioters onto the back of an omnibus the police had commandeered to transport the prisoners to the police office. “Well, before you kill them all, I’d like to interview a few.”

The captain shrugged. “As you wish. Any in particular or shall I pick them at random?”

Mendick walked to the flat wagon and raised his voice. “Anybody here know Private David Torrie, the man whose murder caused all this mayhem?” He looked round the battered faces of the redcoats just as the firelight gleamed on a brougham pulling up from Castle Street. Ignoring the bedlam, the driver negotiated the knots of fighting soldiers, cracked his whip and growled past Mendick. For a second he looked up, eyes bright behind a black mask; then pushed his tall hat further back on his head and whipped on the horses.

Mendick raised his voice. “Stop! Stop that carriage!”

“What’s that, Sergeant?” Sturrock looked at him as if he was suddenly insane.

“That was China Jim! Stop him!” He nodded to Chambers, “Excuse me, Captain,” and began to run, but the coach picked up speed as it rattled along the now quiet High Street and he knew he would fail.

“You!” He pointed to the constable in control of the omnibus, “Follow that coach!”

“But Sergeant . . . I have prisoners . . .” the officer stared at him in astonishment.

“I don’t care,” Mendick began, then realised the futility of trying to follow with a bus full of truculent soldiers. He could see the brougham clattering along the cobbles, its narrow body already fading into the night. He followed on foot and hoped for some miracle that would delay its progress. The carriage turned right into South Tay Street, and the driver whipped up.

“Damn and blast and buggery!” Gasping with fatigue and frustration, Mendick stopped. He knew he would never catch the brougham and by the time he organised a proper search, it could be anywhere in Dundee or within a ten mile radius. It was another victory for China Jim. He stared at the disappearing coach and swore softly.

“Here come the fire engines now,” Deuchars tied a handkerchief around a bleeding wound in his forehead. “They’ve got a job of work ahead of them.”

Dundee’s entire force of three engines and fifteen firemen arrived a few moments apart and started to pump water into the burning shops. Those of the crowd who had not fled gathered round to watch this new entertainment.

“I still don’t understand why the soldiers started fires,” Deuchars said, just as the western sky was lit up. The flame shot fifty feet above the roofs of the tenements, as if a new sun was rising in the west, remained constant for a good five minutes then began to settle down.

“Dear God in heaven,” Deuchars said quietly. “What the devil was that?”

“I don’t know,” Mendick said. He watched as the captains commanding the fire engines debated with their superintendent which fire was more important, and eventually one of the engine crews began to gather their equipment together for this new conflagration.

“By the time it gets there, there will be nothing to save,” Sturrock continued to stare at the western sky where the fire silhouetted the stark tenements.

“Leave the fire to the fire engineers,” Mendick said, “we have our own job to do. Come on lads, we have murders to solve.”

Since all the cells in West Bell Street were full of battered and truculent soldiers, it was not difficult to find people to interview. One by one, Mendick hauled them out to the interview room and he and Deuchars interrogated the men while Sturrock took notes. All gave very similar answers.

“Yes, I know Davie Torrie. He’s that Johnnie Raw that was murdered.”

“No, he had no enemies within the regiment, he hadn’t been there long enough to make any. Did you not hear me, you peeler bastard? He was a bloody Johnny Raw!”

“How should I know why that Chinese bastard picked him out? I told you he was a Johnnie Raw, a no-nothing, a recruity, less than dog shit on my shoe. I never spoke to the bugger.”

“Did he have any connections with anything illegal? I don’t know and I don’t care.”

There was only one constantly recurring answer that interested Mendick:

“Why did Torrie join the army? I think he was scared.”

“Torrie was running from something or somebody.”

“He was hiding behind the uniform, plain as the snout on your ugly face.”

When Deuchars asked if they thought rioting and burning shops would help, some glowered and said nothing but a few gave a sly grin and looked away which Mendick found intriguing. When the small soldier with the poisonous eyes openly laughed, Mendick’s patience gave out.

“What the devil are you laughing at?” He leaned across the table and grabbed the man by the throat.

“I’m laughing at you,” the soldier gasped. “Trying to bullyrag me. You’re only a bloody bluebottle.”

“And what are you? You’re only a broken-down redcoat.” Mendick allowed the man to drop back into the chair.

“Maybe I’m broken-down, but I’m a redcoat with a golden boy,” he gave another grin. “Look at this!” Diving deep into his pocket, he produced a sovereign. “That’s why I rioted. I never knew Torrie, I never knew he existed until yesterday, he was just another shit-scared Johnnie Raw.”

Mendick lifted the coin. It was genuine, and more than a month’s pay for the average soldier. True, a redcoat officially earned a shilling a day plus a penny beer money, but with stoppages for damages and barrack room expenses he was lucky to see a third of that. A sovereign was a small fortune to him.

“So where did you get this from?”

“Some woman gave it to me.” Closing a grimy fist over the coin, the soldier breathed stale alcohol into Mendick’s face.

Mendick exchanged a glance with Deuchars, who raised his eyebrows. “What did she look like, this woman?”

“That’s for me to know and you to wonder at,” the soldier sneered.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Deuchars said. “That’s stolen money so we’ll have it.” He reached out for the sovereign but the soldier snatched it back.

“Hey! That’s mine.” He closed his fist tight. “The woman gave one to each of us, and a half dozen bottles of beer to start us off.”

“Why?” Mendick leaned across the table and pressed his forehead against that of the soldier. “Why did she do that? Do you mean to say that this entire riot was arranged? Who was she?”

“How the hell should I know who she was?” The small soldier gave another short laugh. “She just came to us this morning when we were gawking at Torrie’s body.”

“Tell me exactly what happened.” Mendick retreated a little, but glared at the soldier’s unrelenting eyes.

“We were up the Law, watching the fun and laughing at the bluebottles buzzing around, useless as ever, when this woman wandered up, all smiles and cheeriness. She bumps herself against me, friendly like. ‘Hello’ I sez, and ‘hello yourself,’ sez she, ‘would you like to earn yourself a sov?’ I smiled at her and gave her the look, ‘I thought it was more normal for me to pay you,’ I sez, but she just laughed and told me to gather as many boys as I could and come to the High Street at five and I could earn a golden boy for a job I’d enjoy. So I told a few of the fellows and we came down, and she came in her coach and handed out sovs as if they were sweeties. She sez we were to start shouting about China Jim and start as many fires as we could.”

“Describe her.” Mendick said. “Was she tall, short, well-dressed, a gentlewoman, a weaver, a fishwife . . .?”

“Oh, she was no gentlewoman,” the soldier said. “She was maybe a prostitute or a fishwife, and her in her green cloak and feathers.”

Mendick grunted. “All right, that will be all.”

“When you get out of the cells,” Deuchars said, “I hope the army flogs the skin off you.”

The soldier shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the first time, nor the last, and worth last night’s fun any time. And I got a golden boy for it.” His grin was triumphant. “It isn’t every day we get paid to ram the boot into some bastard peeler!”