Moriarty (6 page)

A collage of vivid thoughts concerning Idle Jack swamped Daniel's brain as they pulled him out of the water again, retching, reaching for air. Gasping, trying to see into that dark patch at the end of the room, where he knew there were people.

The commanding voice again. “What did he want of you, Daniel, the Professor? Did he give you orders? If so, what were they?”

“Yes.” He could hardly get the word out, lunging for more air to feed his starved lungs. “Yes. Yes, he gave me instructions.”

“Tell me, and maybe I won't let them duck you again.”

He told it all: how he was to go to the hotel, bribe the boot boy, discover how long Mrs. James would be there and in which room she was to be lodged.

“Mrs. James?” It was definitely Idle Jack. In the back of his head Daniel had the picture of him, there next to the bed, grinning his wolfish grin.

Hello, Daniel, we have need to talk
.

“That's what she called herself.”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

There was a pause, maybe the space of two beats, then the hands were on him again and he was submerged once more, fighting for his life; and this was the worst yet, making him urinate in his trousers, brought to a fever of fear. He seemed to be out of air for longer than he could remember, taking a great gulp of water in, choking, and finally suffering the red mist, then the darkness as he hit unconsciousness.

“That'll teach you to play the old soldier with me, young Daniel,” Idle Jack said, his voice hard as a grindstone.

Carbonardo vomited water back into the bath, his lungs wheezing with the dregs still remaining.

“Who was this Mrs. James, Daniel? Tell me everything now, and tell me true.”

“Sal Hodges: the woman in charge of Moriarty's girls, the whores and the dollymops, the perfect ladies and nightwalkers, those in his knocking houses.”

“He had many such houses?”

“Some ten in the West End and several smaller shops elsewhere, places of sixpenny sinfulness. In the suburbs mainly.”

“Really? He should count again, I think. The Professor has been away too long and when the cat's away, the mice … Well, you know how it goes, Daniel.”

Nearby, somebody chuckled.

In his mind, Daniel Carbonardo could see the man, Idle Jack, whose father had been called “Farmer Idell” because of his ruddy complexion, the loping walk as though he tended a plough, and his slack-jawed face. Indeed,
Punch
, the 3d-a-week comic magazine, had once
published a cartoon of him as “Farmer Idell catching flies as he speaks to his farm labourers.” The drawing showed Roderick Idell—old “Roister” himself, mouth drooping as he harangued a group of politicians over whom he held much sway. The son, Jack, was very like his father, and he exploited the somewhat foolish expression of his face by pretending to be “sixpence to a shilling,” as the wags called it. He was, of course, sharp as a needle and dangerous as an angry adder.

“If you should see Moriarty again—which I would not advise—I'd tell him to take a good look at some of his pleasure houses. They don't all pay their profits to him anymore. Now, what did he want with Mrs. James, Danny?”

“He was after intelligence. He thinks someone near to him has committed treachery, supplying an enemy with hard facts about him and his plans.”

“So, what has this to do with Sal Hodges? He and Sal were as close as wax.”

“I don't know. He had suspicions. Said Sal would know who the traitor is.”

She'll know, Daniel. Sal Hodges'll know, mark me
.

“And you were to squeeze the juice from the plum, eh?”

“Them were my orders, yes.”

There was the sound of shuffling from among the people at the end of the room, as though they were acknowledging some kind of truth.

“Good. You're a sensible man. Far more sensible than I expected from one who takes orders from the Professor.”

Daniel was about to try and speak, but he prudently changed his mind.

Idle Jack continued, quietly, “Will you take some advice from me, Daniel? Will you?”

He nodded, and Idle Jack roared, “Will you, Daniel?”

“Yes,” he croaked.

“Take yourself out of London, then. Take yourself into the country and hide yourself away. Get a job in some country school, maybe, as fencing master or in teaching calisthenics in a school for young women. Just disappear. You follow me?”

“I follow you, sir. Yes.”

“I warn you, Carbonardo, if you don't get lost and away from Moriarty and his mob, I'll hunt you down like the hound of heaven and next time I'll let my lads hold you under forever. And don't go near the Professor. The Professor's had his day. Finished!”

And at that moment there was a freak change in the weather. Though it was almost freezing outside, an enormous double lightning flash lit the sky, sending a few seconds of clear light in through the dormer windows.

In the flood of light, Carbonardo clearly saw Idle Jack Idell standing a little in front of a knot of people, and to his right Daniel thought he could see Sal Hodges, hemmed in by two burly rampsmen. Sal, he would have sworn, looked sore afraid.

There followed a massive thunderclap that sent a further shiver of fear through Carbonardo, and the floor seemed to move under him.

I
N
P
OPLAR, DOWN
near the West India Docks, in The Sheet Anchor public house they heard the clap of thunder but did not see the lightning flash, for the pub fronted onto a narrow alley off West India Dock Road that blocked out the light and made the landlord, Ebb Kimber, keep gaslights on in his house almost round the clock, for his receipts from the bar were never good enough to cover the expense of putting the electric in.

The thunder came just as they arrived, walking into the saloon bar: Albert Spear, Lee Chow, and foxy little Ember, all three of them smart, dressed in well-cut suits with greatcoats—men about town.

“Was that thunder?” Ember asked.

“Yea. Queer weather.” Spear sucked his teeth. “Strange. Fog and ice when we got in, now there's a bloody thunderstorm.”

“The weather's changing. Said so in
Reynolds' News
.”

“Well, they'd know, wouldn't they,
Reynolds' News
?” Spear gave Ember what was known as an old-fashioned look and repeated “
Reynolds' News
” with a curl to his lip.

“Once I saw pouring rain one side of street and hot sunlight on other side.”

“Where was that, then, Lee Chow?”

“Was in Nanjing.”

“Blimey,” Ember smirked, “I thought the nearest you been to China was Wapping.”

“Ah, in my young days I spent many year in China.”

They came fully into the room, acknowledging an elderly man, sitting on his own by the fire reading the
Evening Standard
, and the two younger men at the bar with a woman who looked flighty with a smudge too much rouge on her cheeks, a ratty feather boa round her neck, and a cackling laugh that could wake the dead if the wind was in the right direction.

Divesting themselves of their greatcoats, the three men pulled chairs up against the wall behind a pair of round, marble-topped tables and Spear went over, rapped on the bar, and ordered three pints of porter.

No money changed hands, and the landlord greeted him warmly, calling him Mr. Spear, very correct, treating him with respect. Then the door opened and a tall man peeped in, as if checking on who had come into the saloon bar. On seeing Spear his wary eyes lit up.

“Mr. Spear,” he said. “How nice to see you. Unexpected, like.”

“Will Brooking,” Spear acknowledged. “Still lurking round here, then. Good lad.”

“Doing the job you give me, Bert. What? Six, seven years ago?” and the newcomer thrust out a hand like the head of a battle-axe. He had a craggy face, watchful eyes, and carried himself like an army man.

“See him before,” Lee Chow announced, taking a long swallow of his drink.

Spear rarely smiled, but he did now. “One of mine. Prizefighter he was—a boy of the Holy Ground. Used to go round the country fairs, with the travelling people. Keeping an eye out here, in the pub. Good to see him still doing his job.”

“Bet he hasn't been paid in a while.” Ember had an annoying, somewhat whining voice that went with his ratty, foxy face.

Ranged along the wall, they all had a good view of the door, ready to scrutinize any customer who entered, and they began talking about how good it was to be back in London. “You could put me down in the Smoke and I'd know where I was in minutes,” Spear told them.

“Yea, by the smell of soot and smoke,” Ember said.

“Same for me in Nanjing,” Lee Chow added. “It smell highly of pork. Ve-iy pungent, pork on the butcher stall in market.”

“Raw meat can niff when it wants to,” Spear agreed.

The man reading his paper asked if they were off a ship, and Spear gave him the fish eye. “In a way. Who's asking?”

“Oh, I'm nobody. Just heard your Chink friend talking about China, so, naturally I wondered.”

“We've been out of the country for a while, but we're back now,” Ember said with stunningly obvious finality.

“I remember this pub from when I was a nipper,” Spear told them. “I used to do the shivering dodge round here with my sister, Violet.”

“What is shivering dodge, Bel't?” asked Lee Chow.

“Worked best in cold weather.” Spear smiled as if looking back through the tunnel of his memory. “We'd come out in rags. Hardly anything covering us. Nothing on our feet. The trick is to stand there and look pathetic. And shiver of course. Mind you have to do it near a pub and where there are plenty of people about. You stand there, looking miserable and shivering like a leaf in the breeze. Always worked.”

Ember gave a dry little laugh. “They still do it, kids do it in winter. I seen 'em. Fair brings tears to the eyes if it's done right.”

Lee Chow laughed. “Shivering dodge,” he said.

“Eventually, if you stand there—”

“Shivering—”

“Yea, shivering, well, some person, usually a woman, she'll say, ‘Ho, Lord love us. Look here, Charles'”—he was doing a posh voice now, exaggerated and quite funny, moving his hands, fluttering them around like a woman might. “‘Ho, my goodness me! Ho dear, ho dear! This child. Ho my. Child, does your mother know you're out in this cold weather?'… ‘Ain't got no muvver, miss.'… ‘Your father then?'…'Ain't got no favver. Only me and me little sister in the whole world.'…'Ho my poor child.' And if you're lucky she'd get her husband, or her gent, to take you to the pub and give you some bread and cheese and a pint of porter to warm you, maybe there'd be a bowl of hot soup ‘n' all—nip of brandy, if you were working well. Sometimes you'd even come away with some money. Sixpence. Shilling maybe. You see, the blokes didn't want to look cheap in front of their women. They may have suspected you were on the dodge, but the last thing they'd do is show meanness.”

“Yea, I done the shivering dodge an' all,” Ember nodded.

“And I'd wager that you were very good at it, Ember.”

“Once, a man give me a whole silver crown to show off to his girl,
but he come back, clipped me round the ear, and took it from me. I even called a copper, said he was robbing me, but the copper knew the dodge and clipped me ear again.”

Lee Chow was delighted with all this, his sallow little face screwed into a wreath of pleasure.

“Hey, Spear.” Ember leaned forward. “You ever do the dead man's lurk?”

“Oh, that was good if you had the gift of tongues. If you were a good talker. But let me tell you about a woman I knew: We called her Haggie Aggie. She was an old whore. Past it by then. So she was on the shivering dodge well into her sixties, near seventy. Used to station herself close to a good pub, and she'd rub ash into her face, make her pale and pasty like, mess her hair up with grease. And she'd do more'n shiver. She'd moan, an' do the fainting stagger an' all. A real performer. Beautiful to watch. Someone would always take pity and they'd get her to the pub an' give her a good glass of brandy. She'd move around, mind you, Haggie Aggie. She'd crawl round the pubs up the garden, up Covent Garden, where there're plenty of young men after a bit of how's-your-father. And they'd take her from pub to pub. She'd start eight or nine in the morning and she'd be pissed as a loon by midday. Really in need of a quack by noon. Half seas over she'd be. Too drunk to see a hole in a ladder. Pixillated. Oh, but my word, she didn't half smell an' all. Ponged something terrible. Don't think she can ever've washed. Smelled like a badger's touch hole.”

“Covered in fartleberries, eh?” Lee Chow gave a great guffaw, as if this was the funniest thing he'd ever said.

“Very witty,” mumbled Ember.

“Fart-e-bellies,” mused Lee Chow with an almost childish giggle. But he was a man who imagined a rousing breaking of wind to be the height of sophistication.

Lee Chow now asked Spear what this dead man's lurk was—“Ber',
wha' dead man 'urk?” The Chink's short tongue sometimes made it difficult for him to pronounce his
L
s and
T
s. But he was inconsistent and some said he did it on purpose, to sound exotic, but sometimes he would forget.

Bert Spear started to explain that you had to be very careful: pick a recently deceased person and go round checking up on him. “Then you'd go down the coffin maker, down the undertaker, and ask to visit the corpse, and you'd find out when the family were coming in and place yourself ready to bump into them, like. When they come out from the chapel of rest, after viewing the stiff.

“See, Lee Chow, they'd be overcome with grief, so more likely to believe any old bunny you spun them: how their dad had been a wonderful person and always paid you for odd jobs. ‘Only last week I did this, that, or the other and didn't see him to get the two guineas he would have given me. No…No, lady…No, I don't want any money now. It was a privilege to help him out…Well, ma'am, if you insist.'” He laughed heartily at the memory; then the door of the saloon bar opened, and all three heads turned as though they were all on the same string. If you were looking carefully enough you'd have noticed Ember's hand duck inside his jacket, and Lee Chow's right arm reach around to his back where he kept his little scalpel-sharp filleting knife safe in a scabbard.