Sebastian Gloom

Cheetham Hill

     Bribing someone was something of an art, Sebastian Gloom had always thought. If you were lucky enough to find a genuine crook, he could usually be persuaded to do anything for you in return for a suitable financial reward. Contrary to popular opinion, though, most people were honest and would react with hostility to any implication that they could be bought. Even they could be dealt with, though, if you approached them in the right way. Don’t call it a bribe. Pretend that you're in desperate straits and that only they can help you, while offering the money as a show of your appreciation. This was a method that Gloom had used successfully many times in the past, and it paid off again during his visit to the central postal office.

     Twenty minutes after arriving, therefore, Gloom was leaving again with the address of one Bartholomew Gideon esquire who was probably the most upright pillar of the community that Manchester had to offer and had had nothing whatsoever to do with the invasion of the Cranston house. Nevertheless he was a gentleman who had to be checked out and eliminated from their enquiries before they could pursue other leads.

     Gloom had promised Benson that he would not go anywhere near Cheetham Hill without him, but he couldn’t resist just going past Gideon’s house, just to get a look at it. He wouldn't be stopping there, or even slowing down. He would just be passing down the street on his way somewhere else and he would be looking at all the houses as he passed them by, not just Gideon’s. If he happened to take a longer, more careful look at that house than any of the others, nobody who saw him would be able to tell.

     Cheetham Hill had once been a town in its own right, Gloom knew, before having been swallowed by the spreading Borough of Manchester some years earlier. Even now there was a sparsely built strip of land between it and Central Manchester in which fields of crops and acacia trees could still be seen, although this was the place where new housing estates were always built when new homes were needed. The central part of Cheetham was slowly turning into an industrial district now, providing work for the Irishmen came fleeing the Great Famine and jews fleeing persecution in central europe.

     Gloom saw evidence of its multi-ethnic nature as he drove along the pavement of Cheetham Hill Road and saw both catholic and protestant churches, synagogues, mosques and even a Hindu temple. People of all skin colours watched with interest as the steam wheelchair chuffed its way past them and he heard many different languages being spoken, some of which even he didn't recognise. He kept his eyes open for a Cheetham Hill home for Waifs and Strays, just in case there really was such a place. The discovery of such an institution would throw his whole investigation off track and reveal Father Anthony to be an honest man whom Gloom had unjustly maligned in his mind. He failed to spot any such place, but just to be sure he stopped someone. An elderly Irish woman whom he hoped had been living in the area long enough to be thoroughly familiar with it. He asked her for directions to the place, and to his relief, she could only shake her head and say that she'd never heard of it.

     He turned a corner into Progress Road, Jake walking beside him, and entered Manchester’s largest industrial district. To his left was a huge charcoal factory to which endless cartloads of acacia wood were being taken to be converted into fuel for steam engines, and next to it were other factories. Steel mills. Cotton mills. Refineries. Chemical and munitions plants, all churning out the raw materials upon which the Empire depended and all dependent in turn on the charcoal factory that produced fuel for them. A little to one side, like a nervous child who wasn’t sure if the big children would let him play with them, was an electricity generator in front of which was a small group of protesters carrying signs that said “Electricity is the work of the Devil” and “God hates sparks.” Gloom mused that he’d never heard a priest of any denomination denouncing electricity, and supposed that it was just the usual human habit of opposing change of any kind.