Sergeant John Parker was a man aged around thirty, clean shaven except for a moustache, with short centrally parted hair (unlike Swann’s, which, although thinning on top, curled over his ears and the back of his shirt collar) that had just a hint of grey at the temples.

Parker was also a non-smoker, and a church goer, who, in his dark grey three piece suit, polished black boots, white starched wing-collared shirt and blue knotted cravat, gave the young man a studious, almost clerical look, which was appropriate because John Parker seldom smiled (and when did you last see a cleric smile?) which was not to suggest he didn’t have a sense of humour, he did, but he found it very hard to smile. Oh, he knew he should smile more, his mother had told him so, but he couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried, there were too few smiles in him, which, it has to be said, was useful if you were a copper: it put the fear of God into most murderers, housebreakers, sneak-thieves and loafers.

” Parker?”

” Yes, sir?”

” Take a look out there, what do you see?”

” A road that needs surfacing again, sir. And the usual horses and carts and the motley mix of vagabonds and pickpockets; and dung, a great deal of dung, sir.”

” No, across the road in the back yard of Shakespeare’s Birthplace.”

” The usual load of rubbish…”

Swann interjected impatiently.

” Apart from that! There, look.”

” Some vagrant rolling a barrel.”

” But what’s in the barrel?”

” Beer I shouldn’t wonder. He’s just come out of the back door of the Coach and Horses.”

” Precisely. Now watch what he does.”

The two policeman watched the young man roll yet another barrel of beer into the outhouse.

” Well?” asked Swann.

” Well, sir, I’d say that either the Birthplace has started selling beer to the visitors, or there’s criminality afoot.”

” Good. Get Evans to take a look will you?”

” Yes, sir.”

” Now, any more on our little band of merry actors?” asked Swann.

” Bartlett has arrived and parked his caravan on the fields opposite the theatre. Samuelson too, he’s moored his steam launch opposite Holy Trinity. The Donaldsons left Southport around eight-thirty this morning, should be here around eleven.”

” Thomas and Mrs Deveroux?”

” Last seen catching the train in St Ives two days ago.”

” Any communication?”

” No, sir. Oh, and Littleton has a new girlfriend.”

” Do we know her?”

” We’ve picked her up a couple of times for soliciting. She moved here from Birmingham six months ago. Known as Jess by the other girls at Lady Brown’s. There’s talk Littleton has signed her up for his new show.”

” And how did you find that out, Parker?”

” Friend of a friend, sir.”

Swann and Parker were a team and a damned good team to boot, but they were chalk and cheese – good chalk and good cheese mind – but chalk and cheese nonetheless, which is why Swann had chosen Parker, who, in the four years he’d known him, had proven to Swann that, although
educated, he too was intuitive and someone who took the imponderables of the seemingly obvious seriously, in other words he was a good copper.

The two policemen had first met at Scotland Yard in 1877, during the investigations into what subsequently became known as the, Turf Fraud Scandal, where a rich Parisian woman, Madame de Goncourt, had been duped by a couple of British con-men, Harry Benson and William Kurr, to part with £30,000. When Benson was arrested in Amsterdam by the Dutch police Scotland Yard sent the young, multi-lingual Detective Inspector Nathaniel Druscovich, and Detective Constable Parker, over to Holland to bring Benson back.

But this fairly routine affair soon turned into a fiasco when Benson, overpowering Druscovich, escaped into the courtyard of the police station from where he could easily have disappeared into the narrow Amsterdam streets had Parker not spotted the fleeing prisoner, given chase, and, with the threat that he would shoot Benson dead, stopped the attempted escape from succeeding.

In the meantime, when Benson’s accomplice, William Kurr, was spotted in the north of England Inspector Herbert Swann and Sergeant John Littlechild were despatched to seek him out. After a week, with Kurr able to stay at least two steps ahead of the two pursuing policemen, Swann became suspicious the con-man was receiving inside information about his and Littlechild’s whereabouts. Swann immediately sent Littlechild back to Scotland Yard instructing him to find someone he could trust to help mount a clandestine internal investigation.

Littlechild chose Parker – who had just returned from Holland something of a hero – and the two young coppers began a vigorous, yet discreet, internal investigation, which included moving Benson out of Scotland Yard to an undisclosed country police station where they could interrogate him without fear of being overheard. This interrogation, which was none too gentle, soon revealed that Inspector Druscovich was corrupt and had been accepting money from the two con-men since 1873, as had two other Scotland Yard officers, Inspector John Meiklejohn and Chief Inspector Palmer, and that the attempted escape in Amsterdam had been orchestrated by Druscovich.

Upon receiving this information, by a secret encoded telegram, Swann instructed the sergeant and constable to rejoin him in Edinburgh (someone fitting Kurr’s description had been spotted living above a fish shop there) where he instructed them to keep an eye on the suspect while he went back to Scotland Yard to inform his boss, Superintendent Adolphus Williamson, of the findings of his totally unauthorised investigation.

Williamson was naturally none too pleased and at first could not accept that Meiklejohn, Druscovich and Palmer – three men he had personally engaged – were corrupt, until he questioned Benson himself and the murky details came out once more. Williamson arrested the three officers as Swann headed back to Edinburgh where, with Littlechild and Parker, he burst into Kurr’s flat, and, at gunpoint, arrested the terrified man. It was a seminal moment in the history of the British police force.

Druscovich, Meiklejohn, and Palmer, were sentenced to two years in prison (Kurr and Benson received much heavier sentences), with Williamson severely criticised by the government for his lack of control. Littlechild was promoted to Inspector who, with Swann and Parker, created, in 1878, the new Criminal Investigation Department (C.I.D) at Scotland Yard.

Late in 1878 Swann and Parker were seconded to the Warwickshire Force, where, based in Stratford, they were to organise not only that town’s own C.I.D department (which would become a blueprint for the rest of the country), but also, and perhaps more importantly, a clandestine undercover department specifically created to target organised crime, espionage and corruption, which became known as the S.U.D (Special Undercover Department).

No operation was to be too small, or too big, with Swann and Parker given absolute control over all police officers (irrespective of rank), and all army and navy personnel, too, again whatever the rank. But to the average man and woman in the streets Swann and Parker were just two plain clothes peelers.

To Be Continued…

Read Chapters 1 – 13