‘Looks can be terrible deceiving, Mr Carver. He’s a villain, sir, a light-fingered rogue. Ain’t nothing and nobody safe when Stirk’s around. If his mother was a cripple, he’d steal her crutches.’
‘Thieving is a long way from murder, though, Inspector.’
‘But he’s a pugnacious varmint is Stirk, sir. A very pugnacious varmint. You’d be surprised to hear what Stirk is a-capable of. He’d kick a man’s lungs out, soon as look at him.’
Stirk was now grinning broadly. He looked as if he thought Inspector Pulverbatch was providing him with a particularly impressive character reference.
‘So, Mr Stirk is a gentleman you’ve arrested before?’
‘Oh, yes, sir. We’ve put our ’ands on Stirk more times than you’ve had kidneys for breakfast.’
‘But what would a man from Seven Dials be doing in Herne Hill?’
‘He’s a traveller, is Stirk, sir. He travels many a mile round London to perpetrate his villainies. Lambeth, Peckham, Hammersmith, Islington. Don’t matter to Stirk. Last time we had him in here, he’d been putting his murderous thumbs round a man’s windpipe down Bethnal Green way. Flung his victim down on the cobblestones and kicked his eye out, sir. The eye was a-hanging on the poor fellow’s cheek.’
Apparently enjoying this brief résumé of his recent career, Stirk looked across at Adam and nodded again, as if confirming Pulverbatch’s description of events. He seemed almost to be expecting some kind of applause.
‘Gin is Stirk’s downfall.’ Inspector Pulverbatch now sounded almost sorry for his prisoner and his shortcomings. ‘He thirsts after gin like a tiger after blood. Look at him now, sir. Like a lamb, ain’t he? But give him liquor and it’s a different matter.’ Pulverbatch shook his head and made a whistling noise. ‘Ferocious, he is, once the liquor seizes hold of him. He’d sell his own mother for the money she’d fetch in old bones when the gin fever is on him.’
‘After he’d pawned those crutches of hers, I suppose,’ Adam remarked. ‘I have no doubt that this gentleman is the terror you describe. But how did you succeed in tracking him down?’
Pulverbatch clasped his hands behind his head and leant back so far in his chair that Adam began to fear he was going to fall off it. He had the air of a grandfather about to launch on the telling of a fairy tale to an admiring circle of grandchildren. As he leant backward, Stirk leant forward as if to catch every word the inspector might say. He continued to grin, as if enjoying the performance of some music hall comedian. Adam was beginning to suspect that the man the police had arrested was little more than a simpleton.
‘Imagine London as a thick forest, sir,’ Pulverbatch said. ‘A villain may hide himself there, among the trees, like a wild beast in the jungles of Africa. And many of them are just that. Wild beasts like Stirk here. But I’ve got the means to track ’em down, Mr Carver. I’m the hunter in the forest, sir. The hunter in search of his prey.’
‘But how do you know this particular prey is the man who killed Mr Creech? As I have said, he does not look the part to my eye.’
‘Ah, but if you’ll forgive my impertinence, sir, yours is the eye of the average man. Here at the Yard, we don’t see things like your average man. That’s what the likes of you and Paddington Pollaky don’t seem to understand. We’re what you might call specialists, sir. We have to be in possession of special facts what the average man don’t have. We have to be able to distinguish between a vast array of villainies.’
Pulverbatch, warming to his theme, was clearly enjoying himself.
‘The man’s a thief, your average cove says. Not good enough, says I. Not good enough at all. What kind of a thief? That’s the question. There’s your cracksmen and your rampsmen, your bludgers and your bug-hunters, your drag-sneaks and dead-lurkers, your till-friskers, toshers, star-glazers, snow-gatherers, snoozers, stick-slingers and skinners. Which variety of villain is your man?’
Exhausted by his own eloquence and still rocking back on his chair, the inspector fell silent.
‘I can see that your profession is one that requires subtle discrimination,’ Adam said after a brief pause.
‘That it does, Mr Carver, that it does.’
‘And yet I cannot see the relevance here. We’re not talking about a bludger or — what did you say? — a tosher. We’re talking about someone who shot Mr Creech.’
‘The same principles apply, sir.’
‘Has Mr Stirk admitted his crime?’
Pulverbatch allowed a brief grimace to pass across his features. He rocked forward again on his chair and his feet dropped to the floor. He crashed his fists on the table with a sudden force that made both Adam and the man Stirk start in surprise.
‘That he has not. He’s as stubborn as an ox in denying it. But I’ll have the truth out of him.’
‘Perhaps you have already had the truth out of him, Inspector. Perhaps he had nothing to do with the murder.’
Pulverbatch glanced at Adam, as if to confirm that this was an average man speaking whose opinion was not to be compared to that of a specialist, and then turned to his prisoner.
‘Look at me, Stirk.’ At the sound of his name, Stirk, who had followed the conversation between Adam and the inspector with every sign of enjoyment, now shifted uncomfortably in his chair. His eyes swivelled around the room, looking anywhere but at Pulverbatch. ‘I say, look at me.’
Very unwillingly, Stirk forced himself to return the inspector’s gaze.
‘Do you see any green in my eye, Stirk?’
The man made no reply.
‘Well, do you?’
‘No, Mr Pulverbatch.’
‘Don’t be giving me any more of this gammon you’ve been giving me so far, then. I know you broke into that house. I know you shot that poor gent when he come across you. You know I knows. So let’s be hearing you say it.’
‘I can’t have kilt a gent in ’Erne ’Ill, Mr Pulverbatch.’ Stirk still looked surprisingly cheerful, considering the circumstances in which he found himself, but he sounded puzzled. ‘I ain’t never been in ’Erne ’Ill. I ain’t even sure where ’Erne ’Ill is. Anyways, I told you. I was in The ’Are and ’Ounds down Borough Market that day. There’s dozens can tell you that.’
‘You see, Pulverbatch, he has an alibi.’
The inspector snorted.
‘I’ve looked into this alibi of Stirk’s, Mr Carver, and it just won’t wash. It ain’t worth a jigger. The regulars in the Hare and Hounds all lie as fast as a horse can trot. They’d swear the devil had been drinking with ’em and couldn’t have been in hell, if the fancy took ’em to aggravate us. I can tell you plainly, Mr Carver, Stirk could have been in Herne Hill as easy as you or I.’
Pulverbatch sighed deeply as if distressed by the dishonesty of the Hare and Hounds’ clientele.
‘Now, I’m not claiming that he’s the chief villain of this piece.’ The inspector sounded indignant at the very idea that Adam might believe he was. ‘Of course I ain’t. Somebody put him up to visiting Herne Hill, but Stirk ain’t saying who that somebody was.’
‘So, what do you propose to do now, Inspector?’
Pulverbatch made no reply. He left his chair and walked behind his prisoner who smirked uneasily and twisted his head to follow the policeman as he moved around the room.
‘Screever!’ Pulverbatch yelled suddenly. The door to the room opened and the constable appeared once more. ‘Take this rogue back down to the cells.’
Screever hauled the prisoner to his feet and the two of them left the room. As they passed down the corridor, Adam could hear Stirk, in a bemused tone of voice, repeating to the constable his earlier assertion that he ‘ain’t never been in ’erne ’ill’. Pulverbatch sat himself down in the chair his suspect had just vacated and drummed his fingers on the table. For a minute or two, he gazed into the middle distance as if he had just realised that Scotland Yard and the city were the very last places he wanted to be and he was dreaming instead of green fields and shady woodlands. Adam was just beginning to feel slightly uncomfortable and was considering making his farewells when the inspector roused himself from his reverie.