The House Of Smoke (38 page)

No!
I told myself I would not allow it to be true.
‘
Why now?’ I asked him. ‘Why choose to tell me all this, right at this awful moment?’

‘Because you are to be hanged.’ His voice shook. ‘Because it is
wrong
for a man to go to his death without knowing the truth about his birth.’

His words stung me. I
was
to be hanged and I
had
lived a life of lies. Right from my birth, up to the precipice of my death. Lies and murder. That was all it had been. ‘This is horse shit! You have scraped together these untruths for some reason that I cannot even begin to imagine.’

An awkward silence grew.

Finally, he spoke. ‘In your heart you
know
it is true, Simeon. Why else would I have plucked you out of that den of thieves in Manchester? How else could I have traced you there?’

‘Boxing. You said you saw me box—’

‘
Really
, Simeon?’ There was a sneer in his voice. ‘Do you honestly believe that I would have opened my house and my life to a young thief who happened to be a promising boxer?’

My mind became crowded with thoughts from the past. I recalled my first days in Derbyshire. Sirius had asked me, ‘Do you not have any idea
why
you are here,
who
the professor is, or why you were chosen?’

Chosen.

The word had stuck at the time. I had come to believe he had merely wished to profit from my propensity for violence. But I had always wondered about how and why I had been picked out.

Another echo from the past sounded in my mind – Sebastian, at Michael’s funeral. He had told me he and other area lieutenants had been given my description and had been instructed to be on the lookout for ‘a boy from London whom the professor considered special.’

Special.

One more word that now conveyed deeper implications.

Moriarty leaned across the prison table. ‘Remember when we first met, when you lied to me about who you were? I said, “I know exactly who you are, young man. Know it better than you do.” Do you recollect that, Simeon?’

I did but I shook my head in denial. ‘I do not recall such a thing.’

‘You will. You will remember many occasions that made no sense in the past but do now. They will confirm that I speak the truth.’

‘And the truth is that none of this matters. As you so eloquently said, I am about to be hanged. My life, whatever is known or unknown to me, is over.’

‘You may yet save yourself, Simeon.’ He reached across the table again and once more I pulled my hands clear of his reach.

‘I am an old man now. My time is almost done and my concern is only for you. I believed Levine would extricate you from this predicament but it seems there is some new force in this damned government that I cannot overcome.’ A palpable sadness grew in his eyes. ‘Should you have been freed, I would have told you the truth. Shown you your inheritance and readied you to take over when the day of my death came. Those riches can still be yours, but to claim them you need to testify against me.’ He smiled resignedly. ‘If I go to Holmes then there will be no deal. He will merely see to it that both of us hang, along with your uncle, of course. That would be his greatest prize.’

‘Holmes is a fool.’

‘No, my son, that is the one thing that he is not. Sherlock Holmes is no fool. But you are, if you don’t accept his offer. Tell him your story and you will have your clemency, your life
and
if you are lucky, you may still secure your fortune.’

Moriarty and I talked for several more hours, not just about my mother and what little he knew of her, but also about Alex, whom he described as ‘an uncrowned prince of a man,’ and how the traitor Sirius had come into his life and his affections.

Like Surrey, Gunn had been the child of a former member of the Trinity. A paid killer; sworn in blood and oath to protect the Moriarty family and its secrets. ‘His father had been a most honourable and trustworthy fellow, killed in service to the family. Sirius came to us in his late teens, when his mother took her own life.’ Moriarty put his hand to his heart. ‘His betrayal pains me here more than anywhere. Far more than the scars you see.’ He paused reflectively then added, ‘I should have anticipated it. From Judas to Brutus, betrayers have brought down emperors and empires. They are an abomination.’

‘Why did he do it?’

‘Sirius, it seems, had long envisaged himself as my heir apparent. He would have continued to do so had he not overheard Alexander and myself discussing my will. Until then, he had always imagined you merely as a replacement for Michael. This discovery of his came about a fortnight before we went to America. I recall it because he challenged me on the matter and admitted he had been about to knock on my study door when he had heard the discussion. In hindsight, I believe this was the genesis of his treachery.’

I looked across the table and could see the professor was close to collapsing. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Not so well. The fire cooked my lungs and much of my body has also been burned. I tire easily.’

‘Then you must go. Sleep and heal a little. Perhaps return tomorrow?’

He didn’t fight the suggestion, just gave a sorrowful nod of his head then rose slowly, shuffled to the door and knocked for the gaoler.

We parted with emotional awkwardness. Our time together had been all too inadequate for a bastard son to even think of all the questions he wished to ask his newly declared father.

After the professor’s departure, I was returned to my cell and left to contemplate the final dilemma. He wanted Levine to contact Holmes on my behalf. I had told him to wait, and said I needed to sleep on it. Not that I would manage a wink. How could I send him and his brother to the gallows, and in the process endanger every man and woman who worked for the family? No, I really could not entertain such an act.

But doubt and paranoia plagued me. Was Moriarty’s tale of parentage in fact a lavish lie? A masterful manipulation to save his own skin and fortune? Over the years, the professor had perpetrated many deceptions on me. It was comfortably within his range of cunning to seek to silence me with the biggest form of emotional blackmail he could muster.

Maybe his suggestion of contacting Holmes was a clever bluff. Perhaps he knew Levine had no hope of clearing me, so to prevent me talking to Holmes he had woven this web of lies to catch and hold me in.

I dismissed the thought. Once Moriarty had said he was my father, I had seen clearly myself in him. That was why his gaze had always magnetised me. His eyes were a mirror of my own. His voice was my voice, only older and deeper. The broad, square shoulders and the way he stood – this was my form. The more I looked for similarities the more foolish I felt not to have seen them the very first moment we had met. My lord – to others, the mutual likeness must have been obvious.

I was Brogan Moriarty’s son.

There was no denying it.

The name Lynch, the one so generously afforded me before I could even speak, was the biggest lie of my life. I had never been fit to carry it, or the immaculate reputation of that kindly baker and his angelic wife. Equally, I knew I should not irrevocably stain it by having a noose put around my neck and being dropped through a trap and into history as a Lynch.

I was a Moriarty.

I had lived and killed as a Moriarty. And if I had to tread those boards and stand on that trapdoor, then I should die as a Moriarty.

I curled up on my bunk and my mind was as troubled as a hornet’s nest battered by sticks. Thoughts of my birth mother stung me most.

Alice.

Since childhood, I had stopped myself thinking about her. I had effectively wiped her out of my consciousness. Now I tried to imagine her as Moriarty had described. Young. Beautiful. Vulnerable. I had no face to envisage. No shape or form to picture. The only image that came to mind was the silhouette of the lady that sweet Philomena Lynch had given me as we entered the workhouse together.

I still had the shade. Faded and frayed, it had been carried from place to place and pocket to pocket for more than three decades. Never had I gone anywhere without it. It had been close to my heart when I had taken my first life. At the birth and death of my child. At the death of the woman I loved. I had held onto it during my arrest. After passing through the prison gates, the shade and the clothes that I stood in had been the only things I had been allowed to keep.

I reached beneath the bunk and slid it from its place in between the leg joint and slats. For a moment, I held it so I could study the profile and imagine the colour of my mother’s hair, strawberry-blonde like Elizabeth’s, her eyes as big and blue as Molly’s. I kissed the shade, put it to my heart, then most reluctantly returned it to its resting place.

I had to escape!

I would climb that damned chimney and pull out that troublesome block with my teeth if I had to. It was my only chance. I would seize it. And when I did, I would find poor Alice’s bones and bury her respectfully. I would visit Elizabeth’s grave and I would pray for forgiveness.

Then I would find Lee Chan.

I would find him and, so help me God, I would kill him. But I would not bury him. I would gut him like a fish and leave him by the Thames for all the lowest creatures of the earth to feast upon.

Over the next few hours, both my rage and the frigid weather changed. Rain hammered against my cell window and washed away the deposits of frost etched into the corners.

Elizabeth had loved the rain. Adored walking in it. She would sit by a lakeside bench on Moriarty’s estate and be mesmerised by droplets dancing on the surface. Sometimes she would tilt her face to the sky, close her eyes and open her mouth to the downpour. Then I would kiss her, while she was still wet and cool and more alive than anyone could possibly be.

Before the great blackness came, we had sat by the fire in our cottage and she had talked of how she’d teach Molly to dance in the rain – something her hypocritical Scottish father had chastised her for. She said she would teach our daughter a wild Celtic dance to clear the puddles from all the great lawns around us. How I longed to have seen it. I missed them both so terribly much.

After conviction, I had locked down my grief, but now it ran free inside me, its long talons trying to catch my wounded spirit and pull it down into despair and surrender.

Today and tomorrow – then I would be dead. And no just God would reunite me with my wife and daughter, for they were surely in heaven and I would go straight to the fires of hell.

It would soon be midday. They would hang me at dawn the day after tomorrow. Twelve more hours of today, twenty-four of tomorrow and perhaps six of the final day. Forty-two hours.

I had determined not to do this, to count down the hours. It only set my heart racing and my brain aching. But I couldn’t help it. Try as I might, the clock in my head could not stopped and it chimed off every hour as soundly as Big Ben.

A thump on the door and a rattle of keys was followed by a familiar command. ‘Stand back by the window!’

Johncock swept in, accompanied by Huntley and two older screws. ‘Getting near to the big day now, Lynch.’ His face was the happiest I had ever seen it. ‘Not long now. Not long at all.’

I didn’t answer. His goading had long since failed to rile me.

‘I have to say, I really am looking forward to walking you out there.’ He grinned expansively. ‘I’ll be as proud as a father taking his daughter to the marriage altar.’

There was a loud bang and one of the screws stumbled sideways. Dopily, he had leaned on the cell door believing it closed, while it had still been a little ajar. As a result, it had slammed shut.

‘Imbecile!’ Johncock scowled at him. ‘Stand up straight, man! You should know better—’

A second noise severed his sentence – a rumble. Rows of bricks in the corner of the cell tumbled onto the floor, dislodged by the bang.

Johncock’s eyes grew as large as those of a startled deer’s. ‘My, my, my,’ he said excitedly. ‘
What
do we have here?’

I tried to look surprised.

He leaned down and sifted the rubble, picking through the debris and dust. His fingers settled on several strips of paper that I had pressed into the cracks. At first he wasn’t sure what they were. Then he realised. He turned to me and smiled. ‘Clever, Lynch.
Very
clever. But unfortunately for you, not clever enough.’ He looked to his men. ‘Get down there. Delve beneath this devil’s cot and see what else he’s been up to.’

The two screws fell to the floor. They scrabbled in the rubble and I knew it would only be seconds before they found my stash.

‘I’ve got something, sir!’ The fool that had slammed the door surfaced with Father Deagan’s crucifix.

‘There’s more!’ shouted his colleague, with the excitement of a treasure hunter. ‘It’s a rag or cloth of some kind.’ He emerged with the silk altar sash and rosary beads.

‘Anything else, Lynch?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said contritely. ‘There are also two nuns and a boys’ choir hiding in there. They kept me awake all night.’

He punched me – a sound right-hander that hit me full in the mouth. I spat blood. Then he hit me again. My lips had already been torn, and slivers of tissue came away in my mouth. I spat again.

‘Get him out of here,’ he told Huntley.

‘There’s a cell shortage, sir. Where shall I put him?’

Johncock glowered at Huntley. ‘I don’t care. Just make sure it’s somewhere I can’t hear him until it’s time to drag him, weeping and wailing to the scaffold. I need to see the governor and decide what should be done with this creature.’

Johncock was back in full control. The execution was close and his time of absolute authority had come.

Huntley told the others to clear up the rubble, then he put me in walking chains and ushered me down the landing. ‘You made quite a mess back there, Lynch. Almost became the new Jack Sheppard, didn’t you?’

‘Tried my best, Mr Huntley.’ I looked directly at him. ‘If you’d left me a bigger nail then I might’ve done a better job.’

He stopped us in our tracks. ‘What do you mean? I left you no nail.’