The House Of Smoke (26 page)

‘There is no need to be afraid of anyone who knocks,’ I said, more to myself than my companion. ‘It is those who do not that must be feared.’

Sirius entered, nodded at the lady and informed me quietly, ‘Business has been successfully concluded. Elizabeth is with the professor and your guest can be reunited with her family.’

I thanked Sirius and as he left I spoke slowly and a little more loudly than necessary to Wu, ignorantly imagining that slowness and loudness would somehow help her understand a foreign language, ‘They are finished. You and I may now rejoin the others.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said in perfect English, then rose without emotion, put her hands together, bowed slightly and shuffled out of the room as quickly as her long, tight dress would allow.

I walked behind her to the main hall where everyone else had already gathered. Elizabeth was next to Moriarty and still seemed tense. Sirius was vigilantly watching the Englishmen in Chan’s party. They were tall and broad, dressed smartly in dark suits and were lighting cigarettes. ‘Who are
they
?’ I asked him.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied in a hushed voice. ‘They are from London and the Midlands and run illegal betting rings for the Chans. They put up the cash, while those lackeys provide the muscle and take the risks.’

I was about to take a closer look at them when I heard the professor laughing. I turned and saw him and the old Chinaman shaking hands. Lee Chan was close by, his eyes taking in everyone and everything.

Servants descended upon the visitors with coats, and we soon passed through the front door and into the crisp night air. As our guests’ carriages approached my attention turned again to Chan’s men. I recognised two of them. A large fellow and a smaller, stouter one. They were Brummies. Blinders.

In the same moment, the big man also recognised me, and he declared loudly to his friend, ‘It’s ’im! ’im wot done ’enry and Billy in that alley.’

The smaller man squinted across at me. ‘You’re fuckin’ right!’ He threw down his cigarette and moved quickly towards me. I saw the glint of a blade slip from his sleeve to his hand.

He lunged and swept it at me. I dodged to the side and he missed, bumped shoulder first into a wall.

Before I could make my next move, Lee Chan stepped forward. He spun on his left foot and sank the sole of his right shoe into the middle of the man’s head.

The Brummie went down in an unconscious sprawl.

Lee shouted something in Chinese. Several of his countrymen rushed forward, lifted the knifeman from the floor and carried him away.

Lee straightened his dinner suit and walked over to me. ‘Please forgive such intolerable rudeness. I apologise for my man’s actions. I assure you he will be severely dealt with.’

‘It looks like he already has been,’ I answered.

‘He will be
properly
disciplined.’ He nodded courteously, then added, ‘Please tell me, why did he so urgently seek to harm you?’

‘I think he mistook me for someone. I suspect he drank too much of the wine that you and I avoided,’ I added lightly. ‘Some Englishmen get confused and do stupid things when they are drunk.’

He could tell I was lying. ‘And some do stupid things when they are sober. Like beheading a man I was fond of.’ He stepped closer to me. ‘Do you know of what I speak?’

My eyes held his and I remembered Surrey and her bloodied hessian sack in the kitchen back in Derbyshire.

The professor stopped the conversation. ‘Lee, your grandfather is calling for you. I think he is very tired and wishes to go home.’

Chan could not refuse such a request. But still his eyes held mine. ‘We are strangers,’ he said directly to me, ‘but I
know
you. Know what you are and what you do. We will meet again, of that I am certain.’ He nodded ominously then strode away.

After the visitors boarded their carriages and left, Moriarty gathered everyone and summarised the outcome of the meeting. ‘We have tonight laid the basis of a cooperation that will serve us well for the next half-decade. Between the Chans and ourselves we have the most lucrative business infrastructures inside and outside of London. Now we must take full advantage of what is at our disposal.’

Once the applause had died down Elizabeth declared she was weary and retired for the night. The professor, Alexander, Sirius and I stayed up until dawn, mainly drinking and talking about the future.

I learned that Moriarty’s British and overseas businesses were booming and that his family was now heavily invested in every major legitimate and illegitimate enterprise imaginable. Somewhat in his cups, he mentioned the family’s heads of shipping, pharmaceuticals, transportation and ‘entertainment’ based in cities all across the world. It struck me that what he forgot to mention was the great pains he and his kin went to in order to remain far removed from the criminality but closely protected, by the likes of us.

The following day, we rose late and headed back to Derbyshire. I was informed that Elizabeth and Sirius had already left on an early train as they had other business to attend to, and I found myself returning with only the professor and Alex.

On arrival in Derby, we were met by Thackeray. To his disappointment, I explained that I was too tired to ride up top with him. Instead, I climbed inside and within minutes was asleep.

When I awoke we were in the countryside. The carriage had halted and from outside, I heard voices. Men, shouting loudly.

‘Get out! Out with your hands up!’

The professor’s face showed a mixture of surprise and interest, but certainly not shock. He spoke to me in a calm and unworried voice. ‘This is not a trick, Simeon. It seems we are about to be subjected to robbery and no doubt a hideous delay as well.’

We had been stopped at a remote junction on the Derbyshire-Staffordshire border. Two armed men had fallen upon us. One had climbed up the carriage steps and put a gun to Thackeray’s head. The other pulled open the carriage door, and at pistol point, ordered us out.

I am sure that in the haze of that heated moment the thieves had both felt in complete control of that situation. I am equally certain that, out of the four of us, they believed Thackeray, with his weathered looks and broad shoulders, presented a greater danger than the middle-aged man, his disabled companion and their youthful servant.

It would, then, have come as a complete surprise to them when I knocked away the pistol of the assailant nearest me, grabbed his arm and broke it with a twisting move that Michael Brannigan would have been proud of.

The man was still yelping when I picked up his weapon, pressed it against his head and shouted to the accomplice, ‘Put your pistol down, or I will shoot your friend.’

His friend pushed his gun to Thackeray’s skull. ‘You do that, young Mister, and I’ll off your coachman.’

‘Put it down,’ I shouted again, ‘or in three seconds, I pull the trigger.’

He shifted the gun again. ‘I mean it, mister.’

Across the ground, I saw my shadow and the robber’s, fused by the gun I held to his head.

‘One!’ I shouted.

There was no call of two, or three. A familiar feeling filled me. Flushed every atom of my body. It was anger, but not as I had known it before. Not wild and raw, not hot and snarling. It was as cool, soft and comforting as a freshly laundered bed sheet.

I pulled the trigger. The shot echoed across the countryside.

Thackeray made a grab at the shocked man by his side and pushed the pistol skyward. Another roar entered the clouds.

Anger catapulted me onto the driver’s boards. I knocked Thackeray aside, grabbed the robber around his neck and leapt from the carriage. I saw my shadow land and crumple, separating from the man whose neck I knew I had just broken as easily as a trapped rabbit.

And then that coolness went, emptying from me like a plug had been pulled. Within a second, I felt drained. Felt nothing.

‘You really must learn to count, Simeon,’ remarked the professor, as he moved from the carriage to inspect the bodies. ‘My, what a mess. Thackeray, bury these fools in the undergrowth.’ He waved a hand to his left. ‘And make sure you empty their pockets; we should at least profit from their impertinence and our inconvenience.’

The coachman walked around the back of the brougham and unclipped a shovel that he used whenever wheels needed digging out of ruts – or apparently, a corpse need burying.

‘Give me a little time, sir,’ he called as he headed into the thicket. ‘I’ll soon ’ave two nice graves for these bastards to slip into.’

Despite the torture of my walking marathon, I slept little that night. My mind was in torment and I only fell asleep when the soft light of dawn began to illuminate my cell.

I was fuzzy headed and still chasing off nightmares when two gaolers shook my bones and announced that Levine was at the gate and wished to see me as a matter of urgency.

Walking chains were fitted and I was taken to a room where my peacock lawyer strutted from wall to wall in a suit of blue, shirt of pink and tie of red.

‘I hope you have good news,’ I said as the screws fastened down my chains at a table and pushed me into a chair.

‘I have lodged intent of appeal with the Crown,’ he said as soon as we were alone. ‘And I have found men of straw to bolster our case.’

‘Men
of straw
? We have to rely on scoundrels who stalk the Old Bailey offering to lie for any solicitor with coin enough to buy their oaths? I would beseech you, sir, to—’

He flapped a hand to cut me off. ‘No, no! These are stronger
straws
than the court has ever seen. Do not worry about their veracity or believability.’

‘And what will they say?’

‘Whatever we wish. But to put the right words in their mouths, I must know more than is on your file, more than you said at the trial – hence the urgency of my visit.’

‘I have held nothing back.’

‘Then we must go over everything in meticulous detail and see if we have missed something.’

Levine fished a gold pocket watch from inside his jacket and examined it. ‘Neither of us has an abundance of time, Mr Lynch. Your story, please?’

‘Very well. You know that I resided in a flash house run by Paddy Hoolihan.’

‘I do.’

‘That I had intended to leave the following morning with two companions, Jimmy and Charlie Connor—’

‘This I know. Go on. Go on!’

His impatience irritated me. I closed my eyes so I could not see him. Let my mind drift back to that night. ‘I had fallen asleep, when there was a noise. Charlie, Jimmy and I were bunked at the top of the house, crammed into the roof space just beneath the rafters. It had been the worst spot to lodge, until we heard the sound of the Old Bill breaking down the door.’

‘What did you do?’ He dabbed his nose with a handkerchief.

‘I remember Jimmy dropped to the floor, peered through a crack in the boards to see what was the cause of all the noise. “Coppers!” he said. “They’re downstairs.” I pulled on my boots. Charlie opened the loft hatch and said there were lanterns moving near the foot of the stairs, so we decided to chance it.’

Levine had produced a small pocketbook and made notes with a pencil as I continued: ‘Charlie was first down the ladder, then Jimmy, then me. No sooner had we reached the landing than the coppers were almost up the stairs.’

‘How many?’

‘Four.’

‘You are certain?’

‘I am. It is the same four I mentioned in my statement.’

‘Proceed.’

‘The twins headed for a bedroom and two of the coppers followed. I planted a boot in the chest of a third and he fell backwards, taking the fourth copper down the stairs.’

‘Was he badly hurt?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t truly know.’

The lawyer grew thoughtful. ‘As far as I can recall, there was no evidence of his injuries.’ His pencil hovered in mid-air. ‘Continue.’

‘I ran into the bedroom and saw Jimmy and Charlie over at a window that had been pulled open. Close to them was a young copper, hitting out with a police stick. And, more dangerously, there was a bearded brute of a bobby, the one that had the knife.’

‘This would be Mr Jackson?’

‘It would. But I did not know his name. Not then.’

‘Was a knife in
his
hand when you entered the room?’

‘I didn’t see it straight away. He was shouting at the Connors to give themselves up.’

‘And the other policeman?’

‘The younger one stepped forward and struck Jimmy across the knees with his stick. Charlie went to his defence. That’s when I saw the bearded man raise his voice and flash the knife.’

Levine looked up from his notebook. ‘This was Jackson?’

‘Yes, Jackson. He stabbed Charlie. Sank the blade into his abdomen.’

The lawyer finished writing then drew a line under some words. ‘You are certain you saw the knife enter Charlie Connor’s body?’

‘I am.’ I put a hand on my stomach. ‘Just here, below the ribs but above the waist and to his left. Charlie screamed and fell to his knees. There was blood everywhere. You could see instantly that it was a very bad wound.’

‘And what were you doing at this moment?’

‘At first, I was in shock. Then I joined in.’

‘How?’

‘I punched Jackson.’

‘In what part of his body?’

‘In the face. Right on the jaw. It was like hitting a wall. He took the blow and came for me.’

‘With the knife?’

‘Yes. He swiped wildly. Almost cut my nose off. I dodged the blade, grabbed his wrist and ran him into a wall.’

‘Did he drop the weapon?’

‘No. He held on. Smashed his head against my nose. Shouldered me away.’

I closed my eyes again to relive the encounter, ‘I clung to his wrist, kept my balance and pushed back. He lashed out with his free hand. I lost my grip and grabbed again. He flung up a knee between my legs. I rode the pain and grabbed his knife hand again. The best I could do was wrestle it up above my head. I jammed my body against his so there could be no more kneeing or butting. That’s when Jimmy and the other bobby banged into us.’