The House Of Smoke (9 page)

The vicious gaoler closed the door and the stranger strode towards me. He was tall but thin, had thick sandy hair and long sideburns. His uniform was spotless and smartly pressed, his boots freshly shined.

‘My name is Huntley,’ he announced. ‘
Harrison
Huntley.’

‘And what do you want,
Mr Harrison Huntley
? As you can see, I’m somewhat busy forcing shit out of my backside.’

‘Mind your fucking manners!’ shouted Boardman, ‘Or I’ll kick that shit out of you.’

‘You will do no such thing,’ said Huntley. ‘And if I hear you make another threat like that, I’ll have your job. Now stand back and be silent.’

To my amazement the whiskered old thug straightened his shoulders and slunk obediently against the wall.

Huntley stared ominously at him and then turned to me. ‘In light of the attack on you, I have been brought in from another prison to ensure you are protected and kept in good health until the eighteenth of this month.’

I laughed. ‘Until my execution! That is ironic.’

‘It is. You are quite correct. But it is my job. Mr Johncock is to remain in charge of your lawful despatch but not your daily welfare. From this moment onwards, that is my specific duty.’

‘Forgive me if I don’t express how grateful I am.’

‘There is one other thing.’ Huntley stepped nearer. He eyed the irons around my hands and the rolled-down trousers snagged above my ankle chains. ‘I am here also to inform you that we have been notified you have new legal counsel. A man called Theodore Levine.’

Now this was a name that I did recognise and my spirits lifted. Levine was Brogan Moriarty’s external legal counsel, though very few people knew of such an arrangement. He was the lawyer I had asked for when I was arrested. Unfortunately, he had been out of the country and I ended up with a dimwit junior. ‘Do you know when he plans to visit me?’

‘I do not. The fact that the keeper asked me to inform you indicates it is probably imminent.’

‘Imminent?
Overdue
is the word I would use.’

‘I understand your impatience. If I were you, I too would hope my counsel moved quicker than the money leeches and desk snails that populate his profession.’ He sounded surprisingly sympathetic.

Huntley was well spoken but beneath the veneer was a familiar accent.

‘Where are you from?’ I asked.

‘Birmingham. Why do you ask?’

‘No particular reason,’ I lied. ‘Just the way you said
you
and
me
, more like
yow
and
moy
.’

‘I try to cover it up,’ he said with a smile.

‘
Yow
need to try harder, Mr Huntley,’ I joked.

He smiled and turned away. Banged on the mighty slab of door and with a nod of his head left me with my thoughts. Memories from sixteen years ago, when I was in the city of Huntley’s birth and would rather have been in the bowels of hell.

Birmingham was the first place I settled after I fled London. I welcomed its noise and crowds after months of self-imposed exile in lonely forests and meadows where I had been living off the land, stealing and killing whatever I could, like a country fox. Hens. Chickens. Eggs. Rabbits.

I had roamed farms and cottages, becoming an adept scavenger. I snaffled ragged clothes, cuts of useful twine, dregs from bottles to quench my thirst, even discarded newspapers or periodicals to read and keep my mind alive.

The Londoners I had grown up with had all had skin the colour of slate and eyes as dull as ditchwater, while the poor country people I encountered were ruddier of face and seemed fitter, happier and healthier. I presumed this was because they spent so much time out in the fields, where there is no smoke to cover the sun and as a consequence their hands, arms and faces had turned multiple shades of brown. But this was not the case in Birmingham.

This city’s skies were blackened by coal smoke and its inhabitants had all the pallor of those in the capital. Its streets boomed with the same urgent clatter of carts, horses, loud-mouthed traders and surly inhabitants. Beneath that coke-smudged canopy of clouds stood endless rows of workers’ homes, and factories belching soot through a forest of chimneys.

I knew I cut a strange sight as a sun-browned ragamuffin boy sat by the roadside in this city, reading old papers, but I didn’t care. Reading was one of my few joys and talents. As a child I had received little instruction but took to it like a duck to water and this served me well when I found faded, sun-crisped sheets of Birmingham’s
Daily Post
blown against walls and railings.

Much print was dedicated to the growth of railways and football. The papers also divulged that there was plenty of basic work to be had. I could take my pick of manual jobs with the railway, council, waterworks or all manner of engineering and metal companies.

In the end, I landed a labourer’s post in the grounds of the All Saints Mental Asylum at Winson Green. I supposed it to be a place that not many people would visit. Where the daily inhabitants, some three hundred imbeciles, wouldn’t be reliable witnesses if ever called upon to answer questions about me. Perversely, its close proximity to the city’s giant gaol, also appealed to my sense of humour.

I was assigned to the chief gardener, a stooping, white-whiskered man by the name of Ralph. He told me that I was his only helper and would be ‘doing most of the diggin’, plantin’, fetchin’ and carryin’, because he suffered terribly from a bad back. My knowledge of gardening was meagre but this gamut of functions did seem to cover every imaginable task and it made me wonder what, if anything, would be left for him to do.

All was made clear when Ralph confided that he was a former alcoholic and had recently taken up with a washerwoman called Betsy who was ‘much demanding’ of his attention.

‘She’s saved me she ’as,’ he confided. ‘Without Bets, I’d be dead an’ buried now. I used to drink ev’ry day, from morn’ ’til the moon went out. Now I don’t touch a drop. Cross me ’art on that.’ And he did, with the nail-less grubby fingers of his right hand. ‘Yow can watch moy. Yow won’t see a bottle to moy lips.’

The asylum had grounds that stretched for forty acres or more and there was endless soil to be dug, grass to be cut, wood to be chopped and things to be ‘fetched’. Ralph’s gardening shed was my refuge from both him and the world at large. It was bigger than most houses I’d been in and filled with all manner of tools, pots, plants and country mice.

At the end of my second day, the old man found me bunked down on a mattress made from vegetable and seed sacks. ‘Yow can sleep there, providin’ yow does no ’arm,’ he decided. ‘an’
con-dish-nal
yow don’t steal owt, or sell owt that belongs to ’ospital or moy. Yow do that an’ yow’re owt!’

His accent was painfully thick but the message was clear. I needed to be on my best behaviour.

And I was.

You could not have found a harder-working or more polite labourer in the whole of Birmingham. I seldom went into the buildings themselves, but when I did, it was usually to take tons of vegetables or potatoes to the kitchen. The staff kept themselves to themselves and were never keen to exchange more than a few words. On occasions, I saw such dreadful sights that I understood why they were not so talkative. Emaciated wretches in grey gowns wandered barefoot and glassy-eyed down corridors. Some sat rocking in the corners of rooms, deliberately knocking their troubled skulls against the walls.

The work was brutally hard and as the weeks passed I became increasingly tired and ill-tempered.

‘Yow need to gow into town an’ blow sum steam,’ declared Ralph. ‘Find yowself a cheap drinkin’ hole, an’ an even cheaper lady to befriend.’

I ignored his advice until the end of the following week, when things finally got too much for me.

Looking back, I wish I hadn’t.

I wish I had found some extra resolve to keep me away from the city centre, the taverns and the terrible trouble that was brewing.

Two turnkeys took me to a small visiting room where my lawyer, the elusive Mr Theodore Levine, apparently ‘waited in eagerness to converse with me’.

The venue for this auspicious first meeting was a simple cell devoid of convict’s bunk and the basic sanitary facilities that most convicts had at their disposal.

While the screws chained me to iron hoops sunk into the floor beneath a wide bolted-down table, the lawyer paced with hands clasped behind his back. He was lamppost thin, had black hair and a neatly trimmed beard speckled with grey. His suit was a luminous blue, worn over a frilly white shirt and a red four-in-hand knotted tie.

Once I was secured and the gaolers gone, he placed his topper on the table. Before saying a word, he walked to the door and pushed to make certain it was firmly shut. He then paced the entire cell again and tapped various bricks. ‘Walls have ears,’ he proclaimed. ‘It has been known for the police and various institutional governors to have genuine bricks replaced with paper ones, so conversations may be covertly listened to. For that reason, we must be circumspect in what we say.’

Finally, he sat and smiled at me. ‘Don’t look so worried, Mr Lynch. I have come to save you.’

‘Save me?’ I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘And just how might you do that, sir?’

‘By hook or by crook, Mr Lynch. By hook or by crook. Before we proceed, a personal apology that I could not attend your trial.’ He cleared his throat. ‘There was a certain matter, one best not discussed within these walls, that needed my urgent attention on foreign soil. And, I must say, the Crown acted with surprising swiftness in their case against you. By the time I had extricated myself from those other duties, I am afraid your fate had been sealed.’

‘I accept your apology, but find it of no comfort.’

‘But comfort I
will
bring. We have already begun preparations to file appeals on your behalf. The procedure is somewhat archaic, but file we shall.’

‘Based on what?’

‘Ah, that “what” is precisely
what
I am here to discover, sir.’ He stretched out his hand dramatically, and clenched and unclenched his fingers. ‘I am the proverbial clutcher at straws, the great grasper of the most minuscule of opportunities. But you must assist me in my pursuit of something upon which I may build your appeal.’ He let his dramatic hand fall and rest upon the table. ‘First, I have some direct questions for you.’

‘Then I will strive to answer them as best I can.’

‘That’s the spirit.’ He interlocked his fingers and manipulated them until they all cracked. ‘A little arthritis,’ he explained with a smile. ‘Now tell me, the other day you were visited by a Mr Sherlock Holmes. What did this troublesome fellow require of you?’

‘For me to testify against certain people.’

‘In return for what?’

‘Clemency.’

Surprise flashed in his eyes. ‘A full pardon?’

‘Yes, the promise of a clean slate and a life to begin anew.’

‘That was indeed a
most
generous and beguiling offer. How did you view Mr Holmes’s proposition?’

‘I found it
most
agreeable. And it remains so. I am sure a fine legal mind such as yours understands that it presents a far better alternative to being hanged.’

He smiled. ‘It does. It most certainly does. You are quite right. Will you accept it?’

‘I do not know.’

His eyebrows arched a little. ‘It is my duty to remind you that you swore an oath of allegiance to our mutual employer. One from which you benefitted greatly.’

‘I did. You are quite right. And I would not break such a bond, if indeed the breaking of my neck was not a distinct possibility.’

He shifted in his seat. ‘You are being very honest with me, so I shall reciprocate in kind. Prisoners often get very badly injured in institutions like this. Even killed. I understand you have had one altercation already and I fear that unless we extricate you from here as a matter of urgency you may suffer another.’

I flew at him. The manacles drew tight and stopped my hands reaching his throat. Levine looked as startled as a rabbit being charged down by a carriage.

‘Were
you
behind those men?’ I challenged.

‘Good Lord,
no
!’

‘If you
were
, then so help me, I will kill you.’ I strained against the chains.

‘What a terrible question.’ He pushed his chair back to ensure his safety. ‘Mr Lynch, you unjustly impugn my integrity and that of our mutual employer.’

‘Fuck your integrity. A man tried to murder me.’ I was so angry I snorted the words out. ‘Someone sought to plunge a shank through my heart.’

‘I know the particulars of the attack.’ He fussed with his tie. ‘Who do you think it was who complained to the board of this prison about your ill-treatment and forced the keeper to take steps to have you protected from Johncock and his brutes?’

His words silenced me. I sat, fists clenched, glaring at him.

‘Every day we are looking after your welfare, Mr Lynch. You may not see us toiling, but I assure you we are hard at work.’

I looked up at Levine. Was he truly trying to have me freed? Had he and the family really intervened and used political influence to protect me from Johncock? Or was it all a pack of lies?

‘I am presuming you have been briefed well, Mr Levine, so you will know that I am a man of my word. Tell those who need to be told that my oath is intact and I have every intention of keeping it that way.’

‘I am delighted to convey such news.’ He rose swiftly, collected his hat and extended a trembling palm over the table. ‘I believe we have a gentlemen’s understanding. Am I correct?’

I grasped his hand and held it painfully tight. ‘I believe we do.’

Levine winced until I let him go. ‘Then I will get to work. There are appeals to be lodged, people to be spoken to, wheels to be set in motion.’

It had been a hot, windless day in the grounds of the asylum and I had sawn and moved a forest of logs. Ralph had been in a foul mood all week because of a row between him and his precious Betsy. Whatever work I did wasn’t good enough and his bad temper meant that he did even less to help me than usual.