He was a burly figure of a man who stood head and shoulders with the younger firemen, with that long handlebar mustache, and a face with deep lines, no doubt from squinting into the heat of a burning building.
“You are a long way from the Strand,” he greeted Brodie as he came out of the office beside that first bay.
“Is there a fire that brings you here, my friend?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Brodie replied. He gestured to the gleaming fire wagon that stood in the bay with an enormous boiler mid-wagon.
“Steam power?”
The captain nodded as two of his men carried a coiled hose from the adjacent tower, and proceeded to mount it on the wagon.
“It was just brought over from city maintenance. It is supposed to pump water faster than a two-man team. We will see.” He dried his hands.
“Things are quiet today, so far. Come inside,” he told Brodie. “I will buy you a cup of coffee and you can tell me what brings you to the Green.”
“We have shared some adventures, eh Brodie,” he said after he had poured them both a cup of coffee and sat back in his chair, in the large open area just beyond an arched opening. It was lined with cots end-to-end along one wall, a large dining table with benches in the middle, and a half-dozen wardrobe closets against the other wall with helmets above.
“That last fire at a tavern before you took yourself off in private business was a nasty one,” he recalled.
Brodie nodded. “A difficult fire, that one. And started by a disgruntled customer.”
Kearney nodded. “You chased the man down in quick time.”
“Aye, but not soon enough to save that poor girl who worked there.”
“That is the problem with a city that is over a thousand years old, with buildings on top of buildings cheek by jowl, and many of them built of wood over the centuries. A fire starts and it has its way with others before we can get to it.
“But it’s better now since bringing all the districts together and organizing them, along with building the new fire stations.” He made a sweeping gesture indicating the building where they now shared coffee.
“It gives the ability for all to respond to a fire if necessary.” He took a long sip of coffee.
“Now, what is it that brings you here. It cannot be that you’ve missed me. My wife might object.”
Brodie smiled. “I miss many of the lads I worked with, good men, and there are others…” He would have let that go. As far as he was concerned, it was old business, best left in the past.
Kearney nodded. “Word gets around among the lads and those with the Metropolitan Police—what Abberline did. Not right by my book.” He poured more coffee for the both of them.
“Now, my friend. How may I be of assistance?”
Brodie pulled out the piece of charred wood wrapped in butcher paper that he’d brought from the site of the warehouse that had once been Harris Coffee Imports.
“Wot can ye tell me about this?” he said, laying it out on the desk.
The captain picked it up and turned it over in his fingers.
“Wood, badly charred,” he commented as he rubbed his fingers down the length of the piece, then rubbed them together.
“Oily residue on the underside of the piece that obviously was protected all these years. Tell me what you know about it.”
“A warehouse fire some years back at St. Katherine’s Docks. It was owned by a coffee importer, by the name of Harris. I pried this from a timber that had once been part of the side wall near a back storeroom that survived.”
“St. Katherine’s Docks, you say,” Kearney commented. “And you’re investigating the fire after all this time?”
“In a manner of speaking, as it might pertain to another crime,” Brodie replied.
Captain Kearney then smelled the piece of wood.
“There is a bit of a smell left. Wood always soaks it up, but usually it dries out either with the fire, or over time. You said that you pried it out where the timber at the side joined the wall of the storeroom?” he shrugged. “This still has the smell of coal oil.”
