A_Burden_Shared_The_Dundee_Murders

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Mendick stood outside the Greenland Inn where Hitchins still begged in his ragged, once-scarlet jacket, and the same shifty clientele sidled in and out.

“Evening, Hitchins. Remember me?”

There were upwards of five hundred pubs, licensed grocers, shebeens and cheeping shops in Dundee and by the Tuesday of the following week Mendick and his team of officers had visited every one. Sometimes Mendick had taken Sturrock with him, sometimes Deuchars, and often he had gone alone, but always with the same objective in mind. Now he filled his pipe outside the Greenland Inn.

The beggar peered at him through narrowed eyes. “Why, no, sir, I can’t say as I do. Are you the gentleman who gave me two shillings yesterday?”

“No, Hitchins, I am the police sergeant who gave you the sore head some weeks ago.”

Hitchins cringed. “Oh! Sergeant Mendick! I didn’t recognise you sir, it’s my eyes, you see.”

“You see as well as I do, and that’s damnably near to perfect.” Mendick pulled Hitchins close. “Robert was telling me I should be kind to you.”

“Indeed sir, that is very kind of Robert. He is a good man, indeed.” The beggar bowed and shuffled.

“You know Robert of course?” Mendick opened the flap of his Chesterfield and allowed the head of his staff to show, “or should I remind you? Robert Marmion?”

Hitchins looked around, but there was no pretence in his trembling. “For God’s sake, Sergeant! You’ll get me killed stone dead!”

“Who is he? Obviously you know full well.” Mendick pulled his staff out to half its length, but Hitchins was looking in every direction save at him.

“Marmion’s China Jim’s man, Sergeant. Now go away, for God’s own sake. China will skin me and feed me to the dogs if he knows I told you.” Hitchins crouched against the wall as a group of seamen lurched past.

“I promise I will never tell him,” Mendick said. “Now. You know this corner better than anybody, Hitchins. Who supplies the spirits for this establishment?”

Hitchins stared, “What sort of question is that? How the devil should I know who supplies the spirits?”

“Try,” Mendick had no cane to aid him so he relied on a soft smile as he ground the heel of his boot into Hitchin’s toes.

“I don’t know!” Hitchins wailed, “I honestly don’t know!” His voice dropped to a whisper as he realised he was attracting attention. “I don’t know, Sergeant. Ask the landlord. It comes in a cart, that’s all I know.”

“Don’t go away,” Mendick said. “I might need you later.” He pushed open the door of the pub and walked in.

The sounds and scents and scenes were utterly familiar to Mendick. Apart from the preponderance of Dundee accents he could be in any dockside pub in any town in Britain. There were the same raucous seamen, tanned, fit and three sheets to the wind. They spent weeks and months in unremitting hardship to earn their wages and now they wasted them in a careless debauch. In his time Mendick had done the same. He recognised the behaviour as well as he recognised the same over-dressed women clinging to the arms of the men, pretending undying love as they transformed the wages of their catch into something liquid to pour down their throats. There were the same clamouring children, the same false, good humour from the landlord and the same perfume of beer and whisky.

“Whisky,” Mendick ordered. He spun a silver threepence onto the counter and looked around. The tables were crowded, but he squeezed onto a bench near the counter where a large man stared into a near-empty glass and a done old man clawed at his stomach and muttered to himself.

“He’s coming out,” the old man said, and looked up. “They do that you know, they come back to get you. He’s got two so far and I’m next.”

“I’m sure they do.” Mendick looked closely, there was something vaguely familiar about the man’s features. He grunted. He had been in the same place and intoned the same words on Mendick’s last visit to this pub. Having no desire to share his time with a meandering drunkard, Mendick looked for another seat, but the pub was just about full.

“I’m Andy,” the drunk slurred. He looked at Mendick with shadowed eyes. “I was Andrew Cleghorn once, but now everyone calls me Old Andy.” He began to sing, his voice surprisingly melodious.

Mendick did not know the words but the tune was familiar, from where he could not say.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” The large man nudged his neighbour with a ready elbow. “Shut your mouth, you drunken old bastard. You only did the one bloody voyage anyway.”

“I did one more than you, you little dog, so shut your teeth.” For a second Andy’s voice altered and the benign old face altered to something intrinsically unpleasant.

“You little dog.” It was the combination of that unique expression and the new, hard voice that Mendick recognised. The surge of fear was instinctive, a memory from long ago, and he fought the urge to cringe and raise his hands to protect himself.

“Get up there, you little dog, and get it swept.”

The voice echoed in the choking darkness, distorted by the surrounding brickwork but still containing enough menace to make Jamie shiver. He looked upward to where the flue ascended forever, the sides black and slippery with soot and the exit a tiny circle of light diminished by distance.

“Move you bugger! Or it will be the worse for you!”

Mendick looked closer into the face of old Andy and rolled back the years. In place of the wrinkled, broken old man he saw the beery brutality of the man he had only known as Master; in place of the whines he heard the barked orders given in all their guttural obscenity.

“You used to be a Master Sweep,” Mendick found it hard to control the tremor in his voice.

Old Andy glowered across the width of the table before lowering his eyes. “I might have been,” he said.

“You don’t remember me at all, do you?” Mendick asked. He reached across the table, grabbed Andy’s chin and forced the man’s head up. Andy’s glare returned momentarily before fear replaced it.

“He’s coming out,” Andy said, and scratched at his stomach.

“I asked if you remember me.” When Andy tried to pull his head away Mendick held him tight and ignored the protests from the large man. Andy closed his eyes. Mendick leaned forward, pinched one wrinkled old eyelid and pulled the eye open.

“Hey, there! Enough of that!” The large man said.

Mendick’s look froze him into silence.

Andy pushed himself as far back into his seat as he could. “Why should I remember you?”

“I was your climbing boy once,” Mendick said softly. He released Andy’s eyelid and watched the old eyes open wide. For a long moment, Mendick was tempted. The desire to stand up and break this man almost overwhelmed him. The years of pain returned in all their horror; the frustration of being trapped in a never-ending cycle of misery; the constant fear; the pain; the hunger and cold.

He looked at Andy and slowly drew back his fist. But this was 1849, not 1827. He had been looking for a burly man in his thirties. Perhaps his Master had only been large when seen through the eyes of a child. Instead Mendick saw Old Andy as he was now: a shrivelled, broken old man with fear in his eyes and deep lines of poverty in his face. He saw a man ravaged by drink and time so that he trembled where he sat and the only thing left was a broken mind, the failing strength of middle-age and a liking for drink.

At that moment Mendick glimpsed his own reflection in the window of the pub. He saw a man in the prime of life, a man of position and authority, a man with twenty years of life experience over half the world and a man with a responsible duty to perform. He had walked a dark road from his childhood and if he followed his instincts and hammered this man to a pulp, all his efforts would have been in vain. The police would discard him, his reputation would be destroyed forever and he would be lucky to find any other work. Andrew Cleghorn would have destroyed his adult life as he had destroyed his childhood.

“No,” Mendick shook his head as the gibbering black ghosts of the past dissipated. “No. I was mistaken, I don’t know you. I thought you were someone important but now I see you are a . . .” He searched for a word to reveal his contempt for Old Andy but there was none. Instead, he shook his head. “You are nothing,” he finished. He stood up. “You are nothing,” he repeated. When he stalked to the counter, Old Andy was rubbing at his stomach and still mumbling to himself.

“He’s coming out.” Old Andy said and began his song once more.

“Excellent whisky.” Mendick placed his glass on the counter. “Not like the usual rot-gut rubbish. In fact, I will buy you one myself.” He passed over a silver three-penny piece, which the barman accepted without hesitation.

“Very kind of you, sir.” He bit into the coin and put it in his fob pocket while pouring himself a generous measure of whisky. “It’s always easy to recognise a genuine gentleman when one graces my establishment.”

“Indeed, sir,” Mendick sipped at his own glass, “a compliment like that deserves another dram any day of the week.” He flipped a second threepence onto the counter and smiled. “You really must tell me the name of your supplier.” He had followed the same routine in pub after pub throughout Dundee, sometimes rejected by laughter or threats of violence, often given the name of a perfectly legitimate distiller, but this time the barman looked at him shrewdly.

“Are you in the trade?” He asked, once the coin had been safely deposited beside its companion in his fob pocket.

“In a manner of speaking,” Mendick leaned across the counter and lowered his voice. “I’m not in competition with you. I was getting peat reek from the Glens but my man withdrew his supply. He said he was advised to stop.”

“Muscled out, was he?” The barman finished his drink in a single swallow. “There’s some rough play going on up north just now. My supply comes regularly, though. The carrier never gives the name, but we all know who it is.” He winked and withdrew.

Mendick slapped a crown piece on the counter but kept his hand on top of it with his fingers splayed open. “Perhaps he could supply me as well?”

The barman looked at the glint of the silver coin between Mendick’s fingers. “I am due a delivery tomorrow night, a barrel of the finest.” His hand hovered above Mendick’s. “Give me your name and I can have a word with the boys.”

Mendick slid the coin back into his pocket. “I will speak to them in person,” he said. “It will be a local man, I expect?”

The barman looked pointedly at Mendick’s pocket and shrugged. “Maybe so,” he said.

Mendick replaced the crown piece where it was. It shone bright against the scarred wood of the counter. The barman slammed his hand over it in case Mendick changed his mind. “The whisky comes from one of the towns in Strathmore.” He hesitated, “It might be Blairgowrie.”

“Thank you,” Mendick placed his hand on top of the landlord’s, “and the supplier’s name?”

“China Jim,” the barman whispered and looked up sharply in case he had been overheard, even in that noisy bar.

When Mendick left the pub Old Andy was still clawing at his stomach and warbling his song.