The Darkest Walk of Crime (22 page)

“Fetch a glim!” Armstrong’s
voice echoed up the chimney.

Mendick could feel his fingers
slipping on the soot-smoothed ledge and knew that if he did not move soon, he
would fall. There was cold air and faint light coming from above, but it was
impossibly far away, and he knew he could not squeeze through the narrowing
passage. He had trapped himself. He saw a yellowish flicker from below as
somebody thrust a candle up the chimney.

“Is that him?” Armstrong must have
stepped into the fireplace. “Mendick, you bastard, come down!”

With his fingertips trembling
from the strain, Mendick kept still. He knew how hard it was to make out bodies
against a dark background and hoped that Armstrong would give up and try the door.

“I can’t see a bloody thing up
there.” The light withdrew, and Mendick heard scrapings from the room. He eased
himself further up, but the movement dislodged more soot, which showered down
onto the fireplace below.

“There! I hear him! He
is
up there! Light a fire on the grate and we’ll smother the bastard!”

For a second Mendick was a child
again, balancing on a tiny ledge while his master lit a pile of straw. He
remembered the feeling of utter panic amidst the suffocating smoke, and the
pain of scorched feet as he had danced to keep away from the rising sparks. He
would not allow himself to be roasted alive half-way up one of Trafford’s
chimneys.

Throwing himself upwards, he
searched for handholds, trusting as much to luck as anything else as he clambered
up the flue. Coughing, he swallowed soot, feeling the stonework tearing his
clothes and ripping the skin from his body as he frantically tried to escape.
He had gambled on this chimney being connected to another in the room above,
but he could not see any opening in the unrelenting black stone, and the flue
was becoming progressively narrower. Soon he would not be able to climb
further; he would either have to stay and be suffocated, or return and face
whatever ugly death Armstrong had in mind for him. The finality of death did
not matter with Emma waiting, but the knowledge of defeat did.

Voices echoed hollowly. “Break
up the chair and throw it on; if we get the old soot on fire, we’ll roast the
peeler’s flesh from his bones!”

“Jesus!” He remembered Restiaux’s
prayer as he had waited outside the Holy Land,
“Lord, I shall be very busy
this day; I may forget thee, but do not forget me.”
The words did not give
him any comfort as he heard the crackle of flames, and felt the heat beat on to
the soles of his feet. He coughed desperately; the smoke was burning his lungs
and stinging his eyes, but he also noticed that the smoke was not rising
straight up; it was veering to the left a few feet below him. If the smoke was
moving in that direction, there must be an alternative passageway, hidden in
the black of the flue. He edged down, towards the leaping flames and heard
Armstrong’s triumphant laugh.

“Come down and burn or stay
there and smother, you peeler bastard!”

Something large was thrown onto
the fire, sending an array of sparks upward; he flinched but continued to inch
downwards, seeking the outlet that was redirecting the smoke. Beneath him the
sparks lengthened and slid to one side, and he felt them scorching his legs and
smelled his trousers burning as he eased himself lower, towards that elusive
gap in the stonework, towards the fire.

He gasped as a tiny flame licked
up the calf of his trouser leg, but even that small flaring light revealed the
break in the flue, an opening barely wide enough for him to squeeze into. It
was still beneath him, closer to the dancing flames, but with no choice he
edged down, choking in the smoke, wincing as the torrent of sparks smouldered
through his moleskin trousers, burning his calf and spreading onto his thigh.
He chewed his lip, unwilling for Armstrong to hear him groan as the biting pain
halted his downward progress.

He glanced toward the tiny
opening, blocked as it was by a spiral of sparks and the lick of yellow flame.
If he descended further, he would be within the fire, but to remain was to
roast slowly; he had to go down. Retching, with his lungs a smoke-filled agony
and the flesh of both legs now smouldering, Mendick forced himself further
down. Knowing that Armstrong and Monaghan would be standing close to the fireplace
as they listened for his agonies, he kicked violently, sending red-glowing soot
showered down towards them, and then suddenly he was level with the opening.

Close to, the gap looked even
smaller, and he was unsure where it would lead, but he knew he had to try. The
alternative was a terrible death.

Thrusting his head into the
reeking darkness, he wriggled his shoulders, felt his jacket tearing on the
stonework, felt something ripping at his skin but pushed desperately onwards.
The heat of the walls was intensifying by the second, while the smoke was so
dense that every breath was a searing agony.

He heard a new terrifying
roaring and knew immediately what it was. Unswept for years, the soot coating
the flue had caught fire and was flaring upwards. It would only take seconds
for the flames to reach him, and then he would die in slow agony. The flames
would scorch away his flesh and race on upwards, leaving him flayed and trapped
to die screaming in the dark.  The heat increased, roasting his legs, driving the
air from his lungs. He gasped, coughing furiously as every whooping breath
increased his torment.

“Burn, you bastard!”

The voice came from beneath him
as he writhed. He thrust himself into the narrow gap heedless of the pain as
skin and flesh was flayed from his shoulders and burned from his legs.

There was cool air on his face
as he scraped forwards, and then his hips jammed. In front of him was a small
square where the blackness lightened to gray, but the narrowness of the opening
stopped him, and he screamed, giving way to the pain of the flames that
tormented his feet and legs.

“Jesus, help me!” Mendick felt
panic overcome his sanity, remembering the terror of his childhood years, and
sobbing with desperation he hauled himself on, shrieking at the combined agony
of fear and fire and ripped skin.

“There he goes, squealing like a
baby!” Laughter followed Armstrong’s words, and the prospect of their pleasure
spurred Mendick to a final effort. Grabbing hold of the stone with already
shredded fingers, he screamed away his pain as he plunged forward, feeling his
trousers rip and his skin peel away as he forced himself through the last
obstacle.

After the horror of being
trapped, the cool dark was heaven, but he knew that he could not pause to
savour it. He crawled on only to fall headfirst into gaping space. There was
hardly time to yell before he landed with a clatter in an empty fireplace.

He lay still for a second,
cradling his agony. He coughed, the smoke was rasping at his lungs, and forced
himself to look at his legs. He felt massive relief when he saw that although
his trousers were scorched and smouldering, his burns were only superficial,
although no less painful for that. Swearing, he crushed away the last glowing
sparks with the flat of his hands, and only then did he inspect his
surroundings.

He was in a bare room with walls
and floors of undressed stone, no furniture, no floor covering, but two doors
and a shuttered window. He flinched when somebody spoke outside and looked
hopelessly for somewhere to hide. He knew he was too exhausted to put up a
fight if he was caught here and breathed a sincere prayer of gratitude as the
voices died away.

“Thank you, Lord,” Mendick
intoned, “for saving me from the fires of hell.” For a moment he was tempted to
curl into a ball on the cold stone floor, nurse his pain and relive the terror
of those flames curling around his legs.

“No,” he dismissed the thought,
“keep moving or the wounds will stiffen. Get out now.” He had seen a lot worse
out East, but he was shaking with reaction at the remembered horror.

Forcing himself upright, he
staggered to the shutter and eased it open, but the ancient windows were barred
against intruders, and he had no tools. For a second he cursed his bad luck,
stared outside at the dark grounds leading to freedom, and then he closed the
shutters and limped across the room. The first door opened onto a cupboard, the
second gave access to one of the panelled corridors that threaded through
Trafford Hall, and he moved out cautiously, very aware of the echo of his
footsteps.

“Well, now we know exactly what
we must do.” The voice was Scott’s; she had reassumed her educated accent, and
Mendick felt the sudden batter of his heart. Backing into a recessed doorway,
he tried the handle and eased himself inside as Scott and her companion walked
along the corridor.

“We will use O’Connor’s march
and Monaghan’s insurrection to our advantage.” Scott was speaking quite
casually, as if witnessing attempted murder was a daily occurrence.

The room he found himself in was
dark, with chairs arrayed around a central table and with a sideboard loaded
with decanters. The footsteps stopped right outside, and Mendick looked for
somewhere to hide. There were no other exits, and he refused to contemplate the
fireplace.

The door opened and as Scott
stepped in, Mendick rolled under the table, smothering his pain as his shin
scraped along the carved wooden leg. There was the rasp and flare of a Lucifer
and the soft glow of a candle.

“Let’s have a drink.”

“Feel free to use my brandy.”
The second voice had the well-remembered arrogant drawl and slight lisp of Sir
Robert Trafford. “You treat it like your own anyway.”

“It’s as much mine as yours,
Robert,” Scott responded coolly.

Mendick kept very still, hoping
nobody would look beneath the table. There was the gurgle of liquid, the click
of a glass stopper and a brief exchange of a toast.

“To the white horse.”

“The white horse, damn his evil
hide.” The arrogant drawl paused. “Can you smell smoke? There’s a most damnable
smell of smoke in this room.”

“I can’t smell a thing,” Scott
sniffed loudly. “It’s probably a backdraught from another fire. One of your
flues was on fire earlier; shocking stench there.” She gave her distinctive
laugh. “It was like something had crawled up the chimney and died.”

“Oh. That must be it then.”
There was a sharp clink as Trafford replaced his glass on the table. “So with
this revolution in France and all the troubles in Italy, the Whigs are really
shaking. They will be on the alert.”

“Indeed they will,” Scott
agreed. “And the Chartists will give them exactly what they expect. When
O’Connor’s rabble rally on Kennington Common and Monaghan’s volunteers create
mayhem up and down the country, the government will be hard pressed to keep
control.”

“Everybody will be watching the
Chartists,” Trafford agreed. “Finality Jack cannot afford troubles in London,
so he’ll send in the army and then order them up here to finish the job. I
expect there will be hundreds executed or transported to the Colonies. The
Chartists will be destroyed.”

“Exactly,” Scott said, “and all
that commotion will mean that our target is more vulnerable.”

“Excellent.” Trafford gave a
sudden high laugh. “Bang, bang and little Drina is dead, the government
collapses, people fear revolution on a European scale, and I am out of the
woods.”

“And Ernie’s white horse is back
in his own stable,” Scott murmured, “ruling Britannia.” There was the swish of
brandy again and a second clink of crystal on crystal.

“And far more importantly, your
father will be paid, and my creditors will be yapping at the heels of somebody
else,” Trafford added, sniffing again. “I was right though, Rachel, there is a
most abominable stink of smoke in here.”

“Perhaps we should go elsewhere,
then,” Scott decided. “We can dodge these blackguard Chartists and find
somewhere private.”

“By God, Rachel, I will ensure
that once I am back above par, no radical will ever enter my policies again or
set a single foot on my lands.” The glasses clattered onto the table, and they
left leaving the door open wide.

“Merciful heaven.”

Mendick crawled from under the
table and slumped onto a chair, rubbing his legs as tenderly as he could while
he tried to make sense of what he had heard. It seemed that Scott and Trafford
were only using the Chartists as cover for another plot, but he could not
fathom why. He did not know who Drina might be or what the white horse
signified, but neither really mattered to his duty. He had been sent here to
find out what the Chartists were planning, and he had done just that.

Whatever double game Rachel
Scott was playing, Monaghan and Armstrong were undoubtedly dedicated to the
Chartist cause, and they intended to use O’Connor’s planned gathering in London
to cause revolution.

Mendick looked down at himself;
even with his clothes frayed and scorched and his legs screaming their agony,
he carried an important message. He knew exactly how dangerous these men were,
but he had one advantage: they believed that he was dead. Now all he had to do
was remain undiscovered until night, slide away from Trafford Hall, catch a
train to London and warn Scotland Yard. He looked up instinctively as somebody
walked into the room. Monaghan stood there with a lighted candle in his hand.

“You!”

For a second they stared at each
other, and then Mendick moved. Although he was exhausted and injured, he was
also a trained soldier and an experienced police officer, while Monaghan was
only a politician. Feinting to the left, Mendick dodged Monaghan’s clumsy lunge
and landed a perfect punch straight to the politician’s throat.

Unable to yell, Monaghan folded
to his knees, making strange gargling noises. For one mad moment Mendick
wondered if he should kill Monaghan now and end the threat of revolution, but
he pushed temptation aside. He was a police officer, not an executioner.
Ignoring the pain in his legs, he pounded into the corridor. As he did so, he
heard voices, recognised Armstrong’s Northumbrian accent and knew that he had
delayed a fraction too long.