Blackstone and the Endgame (3 page)

Blackstone grinned. ‘After all the years we've worked together, it's wonderful to hear you finally acknowledge just how bloody good I am,' he said.

‘For God's sake, Sam, be serious,' Patterson said exasperatedly. ‘You can't keep on taking everybody else's responsibilities on your own shoulders. No man can. I know somebody has to be on the firing line – that's just the way things are – but it doesn't always have to be you.'

‘I've told Brigham that I'll do it, so there's no more to be said,' Blackstone said firmly.

Patterson shook his head, which was as round as a football and as pink as a peach. ‘Then, if you insist on doing it, at least let me come along and shadow you,' he said.

‘I appreciate your offer of support, but I'll be fine on my own,' Blackstone said.

‘It's because of my size, isn't it?' Patterson said. ‘You don't want to use me because I'm like a barrel of lard.'

Blackstone took a step backwards and looked his sergeant up and down. Archie had already been a rather large young man when they'd begun working together, nearly twenty years earlier, but over that time – during which he had married a pleasantly plump wife and produced three pleasantly plump children – he had positively ballooned.

‘You might as well admit that's the reason, because I can see it in your eyes,' the sergeant told him.

Patterson was trying to make him feel guilty, Blackstone realized – using the emotional blackmail of their friendship to persuade his boss to let him tag along.

‘It's nothing to do with your size,' Blackstone said.

‘Barrel of lard,' Patterson repeated.

‘You're a lot nimbler on your feet than some of the men who are half your weight.'

‘Then why won't you use me?'

Because,
Blackstone thought,
however much I need you – and, God knows, I've got such a bad feeling about this that I really
do
need you – your plump little family needs you more.

But aloud, he said, ‘I won't use you because it isn't necessary to use you. Brigham thinks it will all go like clockwork – smooth as silk was the term he actually used – and I agree with him.'

‘You're storing up a lot of trouble for both of us, you know, Sam,' Patterson said.

‘How can I be storing up trouble for
you
, when you won't even be involved?' Blackstone wondered.

‘I don't know,' Patterson said ominously. ‘It's not logical at all, but I can feel it in my gut that what you're about to do will land both of us in the shit.'

L
ondon was a city that had conquered the night, just as it had conquered so much else that nature had thrown at it, Blackstone thought with a true Londoner's pride. When dusk fell there, it did not plunge the city into darkness in the way that it all-but blacked out so many provincial towns. Instead, the lights came on – gas lamps in the poorer areas, the more modern electric street-lighting in the prosperous ones – and London glowed. He'd read somewhere that night-time London could be seen from space, and though he doubted that was true, he nourished the hope that when mankind finally found a way to travel beyond the planet Earth, he'd be proved wrong.

But London did not glow that night – it hadn't glowed since early in the war, when fears of German Zeppelin attacks had been raised – and as Blackstone made his way along Denmark Street, he was guided only by the light of a pale moon.

The four men who were waiting for him on the corner of Denmark Street and Cable Street all had flashlights, and were huddled together like schoolboys hatching a conspiracy against an unpopular master. As Blackstone approached them, both their excitement and nervousness were tangible.

One of the men raised his flashlight and shone it full into Blackstone's face.

‘You took your time getting here,' he said, in a voice that Blackstone recognized as belonging to Superintendent Brigham.

So the head of the Special Branch had defied both convention and protocol, and become personally involved at the operational level, Blackstone thought, as spots of light danced before his eyes.

But then, he supposed, it was hardly surprising that Brigham
was
there, because this wasn't just
any
operation; it was the one that would make Brigham's name – and he would want to ensure that no one else snatched any of the glory away from him.

‘I said, you took your time,' Brigham repeated, the tension evident in his voice.

‘Back in your office, you said that I should be here at midnight on the dot, sir,' Blackstone replied.

‘I know I did, but it must already be much later than that,' Brigham replied bad-temperedly.

And no sooner had he spoken the words than some distant clock began chiming twelve.

‘Have you got the bag?' Brigham said.

‘Yes.'

‘Then give it to my inspector.'

The inspector held out his hand, Blackstone handed him the attaché case he'd bought from Harrods, and while a second Special Branch officer held a flashlight over the case, a third began filling it with banknotes.

This could all have been done much more easily in Scotland Yard, Blackstone thought, and yet Brigham had deliberately chosen a dark corner of the East End, instead.

The man was an idiot, because only an idiot tries to draw drama from a situation which – for the safety of everyone involved – should be kept as cut and dried as possible.

And perhaps that was why Max had chosen Brigham as the conduit for the exchange, rather than selecting the head of the secret service, someone in the Admiralty or an official in the Ministry of War.

Perhaps he had known that only the head of the Special Branch – with his obvious liking for the dramatic – could have sold this preposterous scenario to the Treasury.

But that still didn't explain why he had chosen an ordinary copper to be the courier, or why he had insisted the ordinary copper buy the case.

The transfer had been completed, and the inspector closed the case and handed it back to Blackstone.

‘You are now holding twenty-five thousand pounds in your hands,' Brigham said gravely. ‘Guard it with your life.'

It wasn't going to work, Blackstone thought – he could feel it in his bones that it wasn't going to work.

But it would be wasting his breath to tell the superintendent that.

‘Are you armed, Inspector Blackstone?' Brigham asked.

‘I have my revolver with me, yes.'

‘Max has made it quite clear that he doesn't want you carrying a weapon, so I must ask you to hand it over to my inspector.'

‘Oh, for God's sake,' Blackstone said, as a sudden wave of anger hit him. ‘Did you have
any
say at all in the way this operation is to be run – or are you just prepared to jump through every hoop that Max holds up for you?'

‘That's quite enough, Inspector Blackstone,' Brigham said. ‘Max and I have reached an agreement that is acceptable to us both, and I will see that it is carried out to the letter.'

‘You haven't reached an
agreement
at all,' Blackstone countered. ‘Max – whoever he is – has told you what to do, and you're bloody doing it. And if he'd told you he wanted me to paint my arse yellow, you'd probably have said that that was acceptable, too.'

‘I could have you charged with insubordination, and if you do not surrender your weapon immediately, I will do just that,' Brigham said, his anger matching Blackstone's own.

Giving in to the inevitable, Blackstone reached into his coat, took his gun from its holster and handed it to the inspector.

‘This is a very simple operation, and there is no reason why you should not be back here within the half-hour,' the superintendent said.

‘Unless I hit trouble,' Blackstone pointed out.

‘There will be no trouble,' Brigham told him – and though he had probably intended to make it sound as if he had complete confidence in the whole operation, the words came out more like a prayer.

As Blackstone walked down Pennington Road, the leather attaché case in his hand, the whole area was as quiet as the grave.

But he knew it would not stay like that for much longer. Two hours before dawn, a line of ragged and desperate men would begin to queue up in front of the Western Dock's big wooden gates. They were called the ‘casuals', and they would be well aware that though they were the first in line, they would be the last to be offered whatever work was going that day, because only after the ‘ticket' men had been placed would they get their chance. And so they would stand there, stamping their feet against the cold, wishing they could afford a cheap cup of acorn coffee from one of the temporary stalls, and praying that they would leave the docks that day with some money in their pockets, so that they would be able to pay for a roof over their heads that night.

By the time the ticket men arrived, just as the sun was rising, the queue of casuals would stretch right along the road – almost to St Katharine's Way – and mumbled, hopeful rumours would run up and down the queue that ships were expected and there would be work for all who wanted it.

It was all wrong, Blackstone thought, as he got closer to the dock gates. There was dignity in labour, and no man should be forced to beg for work. And perhaps things would change. Perhaps once this war – which had already cost millions of lives – was finally over, the government would recognize the sacrifice the people had made, and treat them with respect.

And perhaps, too, elephants would learn to fly, and best bitter would come gushing out of the spouts in public fountains.

It was when he was a hundred yards from the gates that he began to be concerned.

At that distance, he told himself, there should have been some indication that there were constables on duty there.

It didn't have to be much of an indication. A dark shape moving along the dock wall, a whisper of conversation caught on the breeze, the glow of a surreptitiously smoked cigarette, a flash of light as one of the constables checked his watch – all these things would be enough to reassure him.

But there was nothing!

It was not until he was almost at the gates that his growing suspicions could actually be confirmed as certainties.

What had happened to the constables?

Had they been removed as the result of a last-minute instruction from the mysterious Max – an instruction that Superintendent Brigham had not considered it necessary to tell him about?

Or had Max ‘taken care' of the officers because they did not fit in with that part of his plan that he was keeping secret from the superintendent?

Blackstone felt his rage erupting again. One of the most important responsibilities of any high-ranking officer was to protect his men, and if the two constables had been killed because they had not been aware of the danger they might be facing, then Brigham should be punished.

‘And the bastard
will
be punished,' Blackstone promised. ‘I'll see to it myself. I'll …'

Thoughts of revenge could come later, he cautioned himself. What he had to do at that moment was decide how to deal with this new situation.

There were two alternatives. One was to enter the docks as he'd been instructed and let Max find him. The other was to turn around and walk back to Cable Street.

But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that if Max was intending to simply
snatch
the money – and he now believed that was exactly what Max
was
intending to do – it didn't really matter which of the alternatives he chose, because the German would already have armed men posted along Pennington Road, cutting off his retreat.

‘In which case, we might just as well stick to the plan,' Blackstone told himself.

The big dock gates were closed, but when he turned the handle, he found that they were not locked. He pushed one of the gates open slightly and stepped inside.

In the pale moonlight, he could see the outlines of the skeletal cranes and the bulky warehouses, and he could hear the water swishing against the sides of the docks. He reached automatically into his jacket and felt his fingers brush against his empty holster.

‘You bastard, Brigham,' he said aloud. ‘You weak, ineffectual –
dangerous
– bastard!'

A strong wind blew up from nowhere. It howled around corners and rattled the slates on the dockland roofs. It picked up detritus lying on the ground and sent it manically hurtling through the air. And then, as suddenly as the wind had arrived, it was gone.

Blackstone moved slowly and cautiously towards Wapping Basin. Wherever Max was now, he would not have arrived there from the street, he thought. For safety's sake, the German would have come by river, and that was how he would make his exit, too.

Blackstone heard a furtive scuttling to his left and again reached for his revolver, even though he knew it was probably a water rat. But the revolver was not there, he was forcibly reminded. It was being held by an inspector in the Special Branch – because that was what Max wanted.

‘You hav' der money?' asked a voice to his right.

Blackstone turned and saw the dark outline of a large man.

‘I have the money, and I'll give it to you the moment you've handed me the documents,' he said.

The other man laughed. ‘Yes, ve could certainly do it that vay,' he agreed, ‘but I have an alternative plan.'

‘An alternative plan,' Blackstone repeated. ‘And what alternative plan might that be?'

‘Tell me, Inspector,' Max said, avoiding a direct answer to the question, ‘how does the thought of one thousand pounds appeal to you?'

The clocks all over London were striking one.

‘He should be back by now,' Superintendent Brigham said, walking nervously up and down.

‘Yes, sir, he should,' the inspector agreed.