The House Of Smoke (24 page)

‘What happened to the boy? Was he badly injured?’

I shook my head. ‘Neither of them were. The wounds were shallow but the shock was great.’ I turned to face her. ‘What I did that day changed me. The workhouse master made me fight the boys as a punishment, box them. He said it was to teach us a lesson. And it did. It taught me how to sharpen my anger and wield it like a sword.’

She put a hand to my face. ‘I have anger similar to yours, so I understand your pain.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘My parents were not good people, not like those who tried to raise you. They taught me to kill. Or at least my father did.’

‘I am not sure that I understand.’

‘There has always been a Breed in the Trinity. My family has served the Moriarties for generations and my father was a close aide to Brogan’s father. With no sons in the family line, he wanted to prove his loyalty by making sure I could fill the gap he would leave.’

‘I am sorry to hear it,’ I said. ‘This is no life for a lady.’

‘A
lady
,’ she laughed. ‘Is that how you see me now?’

I laughed as well. ‘I do. I do indeed. Now can we please stop talking?’

‘We can.’ Surrey pushed me back on the bed. ‘Consider our
talking
well and truly stopped.’

My feet were swollen and sore from the six hours that Johncock made me walk the yard. I had no more water with which to soothe them or to quench my thirst. My stomach grumbled from hunger and there seemed not a part of me that did not ache from some brutality or other.

I sat in the darkness of the cell and listened to the turnkeys settling down. It was gone midnight and I knew their habits well. All doors had been checked, names called and the gallery gates secured. No mistakes had been made, no opportunity afforded me to escape. No gaoler would now walk the landings again until about an hour before daybreak. Despite another day passing, my resolve to be free burned brightly.

In my hands was the nail some mystery helper had given to me. Although I had no proof, I was all but certain it had come from Huntley. He had sent men to take me to chapel and had been in the room when the orderly had passed the bible to me. He had fought for my right to fresh air and exercise and was the only man within this place of damnation who appeared to have any spark of humanity in him.

I manipulated the nail in the lock of the leg manacles and counted until I managed to open it. Two minutes.

I tried again. A hundred seconds.

A third attempt reduced the time to eighty seconds.

For the next two hours, I practised but could not improve beyond the one-minute mark. It was too long a time to free myself in the Press Yard if I ever had the chance. I threw the nail to the floor in anger, roared like a wounded animal and banged my fists against the walls to vent my building frustration.

My knuckles were grazed. Blood seeped into the tears of skin. I licked the wounds.

‘Quiet back there!’ boomed a turnkey’s voice. Feet slapped the floor towards my cell. I grabbed the nail and plunged it back into the recess by the door, snapped the leg irons shut and lay back down on the bunk.

The door opened. Greybeard and two of his men rushed in, wielding sticks. A flurry of blows followed to my legs and torso but I kept my knees bent to protect my testicles and my hands across my face to avoid major injury.

When they were done, Greybeard grabbed my hair and lifted my head. ‘That’s for who you killed. For what you did and who you are, you offspring of Satan’s whore.’ He spat in my face and banged my head down on the bunk. ‘Now shut up, or we’ll shut you up for ever.’

The door slammed and I heard the locks turn and men march off. Oddly enough, I understood their anger. Like me, they wanted to avenge what they understood to be a terrible murder. My first. One I had committed as a young man. The one that had haunted me all the way to the gates of Newgate.

The year had been 1878 and following my brutal boxing encounter with the Connor brothers, Jeremiah Beamish decided good money could be earned by having the three of us fight children from neighbouring establishments. It was what he called his ‘academy’ project. In truth, it was merely a way to sell tickets and take bets on which workhouse boy might beat the other.

Bosede and Miller continued to train the twins and me; over the next few years, because of our common plight and a mutual hatred of being exploited, we actually grew to be friends.

I fought more than forty times and never lost. Jimmy had a similar record and Charlie was not so far behind. Our victories, and occasional losses, all made Beamish and his cronies a small fortune. But not us. We got the odd copper, some extra food and occasional jug of ale, but nothing more. We were told we had a debt to pay to the workhouse for taking us in and should be grateful for the chance to do it so easily. And we were warned that we’d be unable to discharge ourselves from that hellhole until Beamish considered the debt settled.

Three days past my fourteenth birthday we decided we’d had enough. In the dead of night we made a run for it. The Connors had an older cousin who ran a gang in Southwark, so we made our way there. His name was Hoolihan, Patrick Hoolihan, and he was famous in the East End, or at least he was about to be.

Hoolihan already had a reputation as a fellow you didn’t mess with, someone who always had a plate of hot food and a place to rest for strong young men who could provide muscle for his criminal activities.

When the three of us joined, there were no more than thirty in total. But as time passed numbers grew. Eventually, the Hoolihan group gained notoriety as the Hooli gang or more commonly, the ‘Hooligans’.

Paddy had access to innumerable run-down old buildings on the south side of the river and he used these to store whatever could be stolen from ships mooring on the Thames.

Around ten of us ended up living with him in a large slum in Southwark, mainly to guard the stolen goods that got stored there. He had done a deal with the landlord, collecting rents on his behalf in return for the use of the three-storey end terrace and several cellars that he stacked with poke from his street gangs. There was a brazier down there as well and once a month a fellow called The Fireman would roll up and get it roaring so he might melt down stolen coins, cutlery and jewellery into bars of gold and silver.

Several of the gang were dippers – pickpockets – more accustomed to using their hands to lift the wallets and purses of London’s richer citizens than fight for a living. Their clothes fascinated me, especially the secret pockets sewn into slits in their shirts, pants and coats. They could take a coin from your palm and make it disappear without you even knowing you’d lost it.

There was also a handful of brawny dragsmen
,
loutish youths who preyed on carriages. They simply pounced on the vehicles and dragged off whatever goods they could get their grubby hands on. Three of the others were seasoned cracksmen
.
Almost nightly, they crossed the Thames to tiptoe in and out of moneyed cribs in Marylebone and Mayfair.

As the years passed, Jimmy, Charlie and me settled comfortably into this motley crew and as a result we had more clink in our pockets than we had ever dreamed of. We stole from houses and from shops, from rich folk rolling home drunk in their carriages and from pretty much anyone who had anything worth stealing. At night we spread out our haul for Hoolihan, got paid a fair whack for our work and drank and ate like kings.

But all good things come to an end, and our run halted in the middle of a night when everyone was fast asleep in their cribs.

The coppers came – a raid that caught us all by surprise.

I was bunked upstairs with the twins when the front door was broken down and the fighting broke out. We bolted for a window and almost made it, but a rozzer with a stick started to beat Jimmy and another pulled a knife on Charlie. At first I thought he was bluffing, just trying to frighten him into surrendering, then he stabbed him.

I had no choice but to wade in. Filled with rage, I grabbed the knife, forced the copper flat and stuck it through his neck.

I had killed him. It was as simple and terrible as that. In a single second, a spontaneous action with a knife changed my life. Made me a murderer. Forced me to flee London and brought me under the influence of Moriarty. And in prison I was marked out as a cop-killer, the kind of convict gaolers liked to kill because policemen were their brothers-in-arms.

I rose from my bunk and touched the many places where the gaolers’ sticks had found flesh. There were no breaks, just bruises to count. The moon had moved in the night sky and now caught the wall by the door and the head of the nail I had hidden in the brickwork. It was my only tool. Aside from my hands, my only protection. Tomorrow I would take the nail into my murderous fingers and try again to escape.

Surrey and I spent almost every night together following Michael’s funeral and although I felt something more than just a sexual attraction to her, I did not believe it to be love. And in truth, I suspect she felt the same. Her passion and desire exceeded mine and that discrepancy became increasingly noticeable as time passed.

One day, as we walked in the garden before she went off on a job, she asked out of the blue, ‘Are you growing bored of me, Simeon?’

‘What?’

‘Nothing I say or do seems to amuse you or please you any more.’

‘That isn’t true.’

‘I feel it is. In fact I have a feeling that you would rather be somewhere else. Perhaps with someone else?’

‘You are being silly. What makes you say such a thing?’

‘I don’t know. Female intuition, I suppose.’

‘And what exactly is that?’

‘It is a sense. Like smell, or touch.’

‘And only females have it?’

‘No. Men have it, too. Masculine intuition, but it is not as finely honed. It cannot sense emotional and sexual nuances nearly as acutely as feminine intuition can.’

‘For example …’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It does. Give me an example to prove your point.’

‘Very well.’ She let out a sigh, then continued, ‘I think you still nurture passionate thoughts for Elizabeth, even though the woman is old enough to be your mother.’

‘She is not
that
old!’ I protested, perhaps a little too strongly. ‘And no, I do not
nurture
any such thoughts.’

She burst out laughing. ‘You are a liar, Simeon Lynch, and a very bad one at that.’

I turned away, partly out of embarrassment and partly because I feared further interrogation.

‘Are you sulking now?’ she teased.

‘This subject is closed, Surrey. I do not wish to discuss it any further.’ I quickened my step to get ahead of her.

She grabbed my coat-tail. ‘Wait.’

I turned. ‘What now?’

‘Just tell me this. Did you get more excited kissing
Elizabeth
in the drawing room than sleeping with me?’

I was speechless with shock.

Surrey saw that she had drawn blood. ‘I saw the whole thing, my love. We
all
did.’

My blood ran cold. I felt a terrible vulnerability. ‘How? How could you have seen anything?’

‘Sirius and I were with the professor, when you went through to the drawing room. He called us through to watch.’

‘You watched? From where?’

‘Through the wall.’ She paused and then explained. ‘There are false walls throughout the house. Secret passages big enough to walk through, all with spy holes. They run everywhere and allow the professor to watch us and any guests that visit.’

‘In God’s name! That is terrible. He cannot do that!’

‘Of course he can,’ she laughed. ‘This is the house of Moriarty, so he can do what he jolly well likes.’

A dreadful thought occurred to me. ‘And us? Has he watched us, in bed together?’

‘Most probably.’ She did not sound concerned.

‘Sweet Lord! That first night – did he watch us then?’

‘I don’t know. Most likely.’ She shrugged. ‘If it is any consolation, neither Sirius nor I were aware of this practice until
after
our initiations. It was only then that Michael told us.’

‘Did the professor know you were going to tell me?’

‘Yes. Actually, it was his suggestion. He said that given our
closeness
, I really should.’

I shook my head. ‘Then he
has
watched us.’

‘Undoubtedly.’ She sounded bored. ‘Perhaps he did so with Elizabeth.’

‘What?’

Surrey laughed again. ‘You are so easy to provoke. You know they are lovers, don’t you?’

‘No.’ I couldn’t help but sound aghast. ‘Such a thing never crossed my mind.’

‘Then you are even more naive than I took you to be. Your precious Elizabeth has been fucking him for years and is no more a lady than I am.’

‘Watch what you say!’

‘I’ll do nothing of the kind. No one but the professor tells me what to say or do.’ She slapped her hands into my chest and pushed me away. ‘Certainly not you.’

‘Surrey, be careful what you say.’

‘You are a fool, Simeon Lynch. Before she began calling herself
Lady
Elizabeth Audsley, she was plain Lizzie MacIntosh. You should ask
her
about
that,
when you are next drinking tea and being her puppy dog.’

‘I’ll ask her no such thing.’

We stared angrily at each other and in the midst of that cold and silent moment it felt like all the warmth we had built up between us with every naked kiss and personal truth had suddenly been frozen.

‘I have to leave tonight on business for the professor, so I will bid you good day,’ she said frostily.

‘And I, you.’ I did not even tell her to be careful, though I wished to.

Surrey walked away, then stopped and turned. For a second, I thought she was going to shout at me. Then I saw she was crying. But before I could say a word, she turned again and ran towards the house.

I watched her go and felt sad and guilty. Surrey did not deserve to be hurt or disappointed by me. But in time she would be. Because she was right.