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Peter Lovesey

The Detective Wore Silk Drawers

CHAPTER 1

Sergeant Cribb sat with his pint of Bass East India moodily watching the froth disperse. A glass at the Ratcatcher, supped in solitude after work, was his usual antidote for a hard day. Murder or arson, rape or robbery, he would seldom allow duty to break the routine. At the bar he was recognized as a regular. The ale was drawn for him between entry, bowing under a low beam and arrival at the counter. He would then produce twopence, nod to Ada and look about for an empty table. For twenty minutes or more he was anonymous. The station knew where he was, all right-poor bobbies they’d have been if they hadn’t-but heaven help the orderly who disturbed him now.

“Punch cartoon coppers. ” That was typical of Jowett. A calculated insult, delivered with a curl of the lip, and no doubt who was meant. Sitting there under his halo of pipe smoke, pontificating about the new style of detective. Cribb had known this would happen as soon as rumours began to emanate from the Yard about the new Director’s ideas. If one thing was predictable in these uncertain times, it was that Inspector Jowett would embrace the current orthodoxy.

Cribb, meanwhile, had stood to attention in the carpeted office, appearing to listen. What was Jowett? A sandwich man without boards, with a new message each time you met him. He was one of the few at the Yard who emerged unscathed from the Turf Fraud Scandal of 1877, when the Detective Department’s three Chief Inspectors stood in the dock at the Old Bailey accused of conspiracy, and two were convicted. Heads had rolled in plenty after that. Not Jowett’s, though. Who knew what he stood for?

Cribb lifted the glass and drank deeply.

The whole episode was unexpected. It had started as a perfectly straightforward Monday: cab to the station, letters to sort, the Duke Street assault and battery to write up, a pleasantly dull morning. Then the call from the Yard. What could Jowett want with him? There the Inspector sat among unread books and leather-bound furniture drawing at that infernal briar between the well-prepared insults. “Bow Street methods. ” Nothing, of course, in personal terms. “Jumped-up beat pounders. ” Superficially the approach was affable: “Not long since we were sergeants together, eh?”The talk was all of backward-looking colleagues who would not survive long in the new C. I. D.

Cribb, like the rest, well remembered the notice:

CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT

From Monday next, April 8th, the whole of the detective establishment will form one body under the Director of Criminal Investigation. With the exception of the undermentioned officers, promoted or appointed to responsible posts, the present staff will be placed on probation for three months. .

It was galling to read the names that followed, comprehending that yours did not appear. And the next three months had been harder still, as rumours circulated of new purges. But that was all two years ago, and Cribb now had two or three successful murder investigations to his credit. When the call came from Jowett, even the thought of promotion had crossed his mind.