Rusted Souls by Chris Nickson

Author:Chris Nickson [Chris Nickson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-05-28T16:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

‘Do you know the Leylands?’ Harper asked Bingham as the driver pulled away from the kerb in the morning.

The man chuckled. ‘Spent my first six months on the beat down there. Picked up a decent smattering of Yiddish when I worked it, too.’

It would have been astonishing if he hadn’t. The Leylands was where Jewish immigrants from across Europe came when they arrived in Leeds, Yiddish their common language.

‘Let’s go down there before the town hall.’

Maybe it was the conversation with Annabelle, but in his dreams, his mother had visited. A short woman with a kindly face but determined eyes. Even when he was sixteen, working five and a half days a week rolling barrels at Brunswick’s Brewery, she’d encouraged him never to lose sight of becoming a copper. It had been his ambition since he was a young boy, following Constable Hardwick as he patrolled the streets. Sometimes the copper would give him a clip around the ear, other times a sweet; it depended on his mood. Nellie Harper had died young, not long after her son was promoted into plain clothes. But she’d returned in the middle of the night to stand in front of him, wearing her old, faded apron, a shawl around her shoulders, that gentle smile turning up the corners of her mouth. She reached out to him and Harper extended his hand until their fingers almost touched. Then, in a blink, she was gone, only the darkness left.

‘Park on Noble Street.’

He climbed out, ignoring the boys who ran towards the novelty of a car. Even now, they’d see very few in a place like this.

It was smaller than he recalled, but that was always the way. Growing up played its trick on reality. Shabbier, too. He remembered the first influx of Jewish families, running from the Russian pogroms and not sure they’d ever find safety. Harper glanced around. Down on the corner, colourful advertisements in English and Yiddish were pasted to the gable ends of houses.

Hands in his overcoat pockets, he strolled along to number twenty-seven. The windows were clean, the step donkey-stoned. But it seemed impossibly tiny. His father had been a large man; how had he ever been able to fit through that front door?

No familiar faces, of course. The last of those would be long gone, dead or moved elsewhere. It probably wouldn’t be many years before all this was torn down as unfit for human habitation. Then only ghosts would stroll around here, the ones who didn’t need to see the flagstones and cobbles and bricks. It could become their home for eternity.

‘You wanted to see me.’

Ash and Sissons sat in the chairs on the other side of the desk.

‘We believe we’ve found the driver who hit Ben Rogers’s car and sent him off the road,’ Ash said.

To his death.

‘Believe?’ Harper asked, taken aback by the word. ‘Aren’t you certain?’

A pause as Miss Sharp bustled in with a tray of teapot, cups, and a plate of biscuits.

‘We’re certain we’ve discovered the vehicle that did it.

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