The House Of Smoke (32 page)

‘Perversions?’
His anger flared again. ‘You imbecile! You think I would watch you for pleasure?’

‘Why else?’ I stood my ground. ‘What other reason did you have for spying on Elizabeth and me when we first kissed? You even called Sirius and Surrey in to share your viewing.’

‘I did it because I did
not
at that time fully trust you, Simeon. You had killed a man. You had set about Brannigan and you unquestionably acted strangely around Elizabeth. I was concerned for her safety, nothing else.’

I could see from his face that he was speaking the truth and had no option but to back down. ‘I feel foolish. I apologise.’

He shook his head in frustration with me. ‘Accepted. And now I expect you to be the guardian of her safety and interests.’

‘I will not let you down.’

‘Good. Then it seems we must rely on each other’s discretion in this matter, as we do in so many other things.’

He thrust out his hand and I shook it. If Elizabeth had manipulated me into this confrontation then she had done it well.

Moriarty held my hand tightly in his and fixed me with a cold stare. ‘I have a caveat for you as well.’

‘Which is?’

‘Make sure you speak openly to the woman you have scorned. I will be displeased if Surrey’s professional performance is compromised by your personal treatment of her.’

‘I will. When does she return?’

‘She came back from my brother’s chores in the early hours of this morning. She may still be resting.’

‘Then may I leave and see her?’

‘You may. Handle this well, Simeon; Surrey Breed is a dangerous young woman and you should not make her an enemy of Elizabeth or yourself.’

I left him filled with purpose and searched the house but Surrey was not there. Nor was she in the gardens. After asking the servants, I eventually found her in the grounds of the chapel, on her knees, laying fresh flowers on Michael Brannigan’s grave.

Surrey turned her head on hearing my footsteps on the gravel and instantly I saw red and purple bruising down the right side of her face.

‘Are you all right?’ I moved more quickly towards her.

She got to her feet and I saw tears in her eyes. She wrapped her arms around me and said, ‘Hold me. Hold me tight and make me feel safe.’

I embraced her. Nestled the back of her head in my hand and held her in the way I knew she liked. ‘What happened to your face?’

‘It’s nothing. The man I killed yesterday punched me, that is all.’

I ran a hand tenderly over the purple skin.

‘He looked for all the world like Michael.’ Her voice was breaking with emotion. ‘He was a dead ringer for him. As I watched him choke on the poison I had administered, I saw only Michael’s face in pain,
Michael’s
face pleading with me for help.’

For a second, I remembered the look in the old wrestler’s eyes, on that awful day when I had to end his suffering. ‘What had this fellow done?’

‘I don’t know. Neither Moriarty nor Moran, that damned former colonel of his, informed me.’ She shook her head. ‘In truth, I have long forgotten to ask such questions.’

‘Surrey, there is something I must tell you.’

‘No, there isn’t.’ A great sadness suffused her face. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything, Simeon. I already know it.’

‘Sirius? Did he—’

‘No, he didn’t say a word. It was in your eyes. I saw it as you approached me. It was in your touch when you held me just now. What little we had, it has already gone, hasn’t it?’

‘I am sorry.’

‘No need to be.’ She sounded exhausted. ‘It’s not like your feelings for
her
are a surprise. This moment was always going to happen. I just wish you had been more honest with me.’

‘I think I was having trouble being honest with myself.’

‘The more you do this job, Simeon, the more difficulty you will have being honest with anyone, especially yourself.’

I put the palm of my hand to her injured cheek. ‘Has the doctor looked at that?’

‘A doctor is of no use to me.’ She turned her back, faced the grave she’d been tending.

I touched her shoulder. ‘Surrey, I am sorry. Truly, I—’

‘Don’t!’ she pulled away from me. ‘Please
don’t
say anything more.’

‘You will always be dear to me. I hope we can remain friends. Closest of friends.’

She wheeled round, laughing bitterly, ‘Friends?’ Her face had hardened. A steely shield had been raised. ‘You are no friend. You are dead to me, Simeon. As dead and buried as poor old Michael.’

Forty seasons in the Peak District came and went as quickly and colourfully as brushstrokes on an artist’s canvas. Autumn’s russets and golds washed into winter’s blacks and whites; spring’s lemons and limes squeezed into summer’s blues and greens.

While the passage of ten full years showed only seasonal change on the landscape, the decade saw my personality altered beyond recognition. With every kill I lost a piece of my humanity. I had become two people living in one skin: an increasingly cultured, educated and kindly Simeon along with a savage and ruthless Simeon. But for my love of Elizabeth and the good fortune of her loving me in return, the base and beastly side of me would have taken control of my being. She was my certainty, my lodestar.

Unplanned and unexpected, we had a beautiful baby daughter whom we named Molly. Our princess had her mother’s eyes and hair colour, though it fell in soft curls that were uniquely hers and simply refused to be straightened by comb or brush.

According to Elizabeth, Molly had both my smile and stubbornness. Certainly, the more I saw my daughter laugh, the more I smiled, and the more I smiled the more she laughed. We were symbiotically happy.

To my great surprise, the professor turned out to be more than just understanding about the birth. While he would not let us marry, as to do so would remove his cloak of heterosexuality, he did give us a detached cottage and a generous plot of land in the grounds of the family estate.

Both he and Alexander showed genuine affection for Molly and it was made abundantly clear to me that, providing I still performed my duties to the best of my ability, then my own family would never want for anything.

Conversely, my daughter’s birth further separated me from Surrey. Our relationship had deteriorated from being one of intimacy to a cold state of professional acquaintance. The professor tried as much as possible to have her work with Sirius and increasingly allowed me to work alone. It was an arrangement that suited everyone.

The Moriarty empire grew across the world and so did my duties. I was called upon to kill in Austria, Switzerland, France, Holland, Spain, America and even Russia. It seemed that every time a new avenue of enterprise was opened, someone needed to be murdered in order for the others to pledge their loyalty, and to share their profits. The work proved hazardous and not without injury. I sustained numerous fractures to fingers and ribs, cuts and bruises to my face and head, even bullet and knife wounds to my body. The use of guns was dramatically on the increase and Elizabeth became desperately worried about my safety. Having a child had changed our relationship. We both ached for the day when the killing might end and I could become just a mundane but doting father.

I talked at length to Moriarty about being allowed to do something else, perhaps even manage one of his companies. He said he would be happy to consider it. But not yet. There was still work to be done – my usual kind of work.

Each murder became easier than the last. It had to. I had reached the point where I felt no more compassion than a butcher ending the existence of a chicken, cow, deer or lamb. Which of course is how Michael had trained me. ‘Kill and kill again. Kill until you stop feeling.’ That had been his motto. Mine, too.

Until one particular death that turned my world upside down.

Two weeks before Molly’s first birthday she was vexed with teething and cried to the point of exhaustion. The poor mite was subsequently stricken with such diarrhoea, vomiting and stomach pains that Elizabeth sent for Dr Reuss. He diagnosed it as ‘a stomach bug, most probably caused by an unsterile teat on a feeder bottle. A most common occurrence.’ He told us not to over-worry. And having put our minds to rest left us with some soothing drops for wind.

The following day, our sweet little angel passed away.

I could not believe it and Elizabeth would not accept it. She cradled Molly in her arms and insisted she was only sleeping. I had to prise our dead child from her fingers and hold my own composure, as she wept loud enough to shake the moon while beating me with her fists.

Moriarty allowed us to lay Molly to rest in the graveyard of his family’s chapel. Alexander took care of the funeral and arranged for a beautiful statue of a cherub to be commissioned in her honour.

The weeks and months that followed were the worst of my life. Blacker even than losing Philomena in that awful workhouse ward. Elizabeth blamed herself and became despondent and withdrawn. She would sit all day in the house with the curtains drawn, clutching one of Molly’s tiny dresses to her breast. There seemed nothing I could do or say to shake her out of the state she had fallen into.

More than a year after the period of mourning passed, she still dressed only in black. ‘I will wear something different when the hurt in my heart has diminished,’ she declared. ‘Until that moment, I will know we have not been forgiven.’

‘For what?’ I asked. ‘We have done nothing wrong. The doctor said that infection was the fault of manufacture, not good practice.’

‘It is not that, Simeon, and you know it. Molly was taken from us by God. Taken because of what you have done and what I have allowed to be done.’

‘That is not true.’

‘Is it not? I should never have taken up with you.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘It
is
true. You were such a lovely young man when you came to this house. Rough at the edges, but there was a sweetness in you, an innocence.’

‘We are both much older, my love.’

‘Older and bitterer. The sweetness went when you killed. When you murdered those men who stopped your carriage.’

I saw some truth in her remark but said nothing.

‘Since then, kill by awful kill you have become hardened and our souls have blackened with every drop of blood you have shed.’

‘I did what I did because I had to. Moriarty says they were all evil men deserving of evil ends. Like your father.’

Her eyes flashed with anger. ‘You delude yourself. Always have done. You kill because it pleases Moriarty, because you have had no parents and you are desperate to be needed and approved of.’

‘Your medicine is making you speak foolishly. You need to rest.’

‘
Rest?
’ She regarded me with scorn. ‘There is
no
rest for me, Simeon. Nor for you. God will never let us rest, not even when we are wrapped in beggar’s cloth and buried in the ground.’

Festering in my condemned cell, Elizabeth’s words returned to haunt me. She had been right; I had changed and I did kill to please Moriarty. After all, the man held my life in his hands – had done since we met in Manchester and he threatened to turn me into the police. Parts of my kindness and my softness had disappeared with every life I had taken and as my days ebbed away in prison I wished with every atom of my body I had chosen a path less brutal. All that remained of the young Simeon, the one before he shed blood and unquestioningly buried victim after victim, was a desire to survive. To escape.

I had worked throughout the previous night on the yielding wall near my bunk. With that small, thin sliver of a nail, I had hacked at bricks and mortar with all of my strength and determination. Only when my hands had been cut to ribbons from holding it and my body and brain grew exhausted from lack of sleep did my endeavours cease.

Once watched the sky beyond the window bars shift from black to grey before I reviewed the efforts of my labours. I had dislodged almost two square feet of bricks, from the floor upwards. The section I had loosened covered an area that ran from the right hand corner of the cell, behind my bunk and towards the door. A hefty shove and I was certain the bricks would all collapse inwards.

Because it was winter, I knew full daybreak was still at least an hour away. This gave me the courage to work a little longer. I took two rows of bricks out, one by one, and stacked them in the same order and shape so they could be replaced if necessary.

Every few minutes, I stopped and listened for sounds of screws on the gallery outside my door. Fortunately, the prison was short on manpower and not many wished to confront me on their own. Still, I was vulnerable to prying eyes or a surprise spot check. Given half a chance, I could push my bunk back to the wall and cover some of the hole but not all of it. In the dim light it might pass a cursory glance but not any real inspection.