The Thieves' Labyrinth (Albert Newsome 3) (34 page)

‘Is that right? A terrible business two days past, was it not? In fact, you must have been about your duties at around the time the crimes in the furnace were perpetrated. I wonder if you
saw or heard anything?’

‘I have already sspoken to the Thamez Police on the matter.’

‘The
Thames
Police? Perhaps you mean the Detective Police . . .’

‘Not at all. A red-haired fellow in uniform, he waz. Quite impertinent, and no friend to catz. He ssmelled of boatz.’

‘Inspector Newsome,’ said Noah.

Another enormous cheer interrupted their conversation as a feisty terrier (a substitute for the tremulous Prince) tossed a dead rat over the rim into a fellow’s lap. Noah took the
opportunity to wave across at Mr Williamson and indicate that he should come to join them.

‘I don’t recall hiss giving a name,’ said Mr Baudrons.

‘On what did he question you?’

‘Az you ssay: about the night of the deathss. I ssaw nothing.’

‘And that was the extent of your conversation with him?’

‘That, and a tooth he wanted to know about.’

‘A tooth? A human tooth?’

‘No, ssir – an animal’z tooth he found. Very likely a lion or tiger, I would ssay.’

Noah looked dubiously at the pinched and hirsute face of his interlocutor. It seemed to show no signs of guile or deception.

Mr Williamson arrived meanwhile and stood alongside, shaking his head at Noah’s raised eyebrow of enquiry: no, there was still no sign of the Italian or of Eldritch Batchem.

‘This is a fellow of mine,’ said Noah to Mr Baudrons. ‘He is a genuine detective – not a uniformed policeman. George – this gentleman is the cat master of London
Dock and has been interviewed by Inspector Newsome about a large animal tooth. What do you make of that?’

At the name of his former superior, Mr Williamson blinked and seemed to return from his hitherto abstracted realm. ‘Hmm. Inspector Newsome is indeed a curious man. Did he reveal where he
found the tooth or to what it might pertain?’

‘He did not, ssir, though he assked me if ssuch a large animal might live in the ssewerz, and about the sstoriez of the mudlarkz. They claim to ssee footprintz in the mud, you
know.’

Noah and Mr Williamson exchanged a glance of mutual bafflement. Had Mr Newsome’s descent into uniform rendered the man insane?

‘And did he seem to suggest that this tooth was in any way connected to his investigation into the deaths in the spirit vault or Queen’s Pipe?’ said Noah.

‘No, ssir. No indication of that at all.’

A reverberating collective yell filled the room. The landlord’s champion terrier Claymore was about to enter the pit and Mr Baudrons excused himself to fetch a fresh consignment of rats
from downstairs.

‘What do you make of that?’ said Noah, looking swiftly around the banked benches to see if anyone had been watching their conversation with Mr Baudrons.

‘I admit I have no idea,’ said Mr Williamson, ‘but whatever else he may be, the inspector is not stupid. There must be something in his enquiries. The sewers, the mud banks . .
. could there be some connection with that body he apparently pulled from the river?’

‘It is the only connection I can think of. But how to proceed . . . ?’

Mr Baudrons entered the room once more, this time aided by another man in carrying a large rusting wire cage that teemed with claws, wet fur and thick cable tails. Together they traversed the
wooden stairs into the pit and poured the heaving brown mass onto the ground, where it swarmed briefly in exploratory arcs before instinctively forming a protective mound. The crowd cheered
appreciatively at the general size and robustness of the specimens, and Mr Baudrons took a small bow.

But as he raised his head from that bow, he seemed to pause as if remembering or sensing something. His eyes seemed to flicker across one quadrant of the benches, and then he retired from the
pit so that Claymore might try his luck at fifty rats. Noah, however, had caught the moment and touched Mr Williamson’s arm.

‘Another good selection of vermin,’ said Noah as Mr Baudrons rejoined them.

‘Yess, all quite filthy and dizeazed . . .’ came the somewhat distracted reply.

‘Did you notice somebody you know in the crowd just then, Mr Baudrons? I saw you look up into the crowd.’

‘No . . . no, it waz a ssmell.’

‘The smell of the rats? They are quite pungent, are they not?’

‘Not the ratz. They have their own disstinct aroma. No – I have ssmelled that other ssmell before: ssomething of the ssewerz, but with a human sscent alsso. Mosst unpleasant. It waz
in the tobacco warehousse of the dock that night – that night they found the fellow in the kiln. My ssoldierz ssmelled it alsso . . .’

‘Who? Who is it in the audience that smells so,’ said Noah. ‘Did you detect him from the pit?’

‘I think I might know who,’ said Mr Williamson, his eyes fixed on a short man towards the back of the benches.

Noah’s eyes followed the line of the gaze and saw the man. Despite the press of humanity, there was a distinct space either side of the fellow in question, who appeared even from that
distance to be a grubby specimen. His hair was thick with grime and his clothing dark with accumulated dirt. More significantly, he seemed to be showing no interest in the blood-and-fur phrenzy of
the pit, but rather stared with blank manikin eyes at the three now studying him. If he was surprised or afraid to be identified, he showed not a sign of it.

‘George – I wonder if you would like to situate yourself by the doorway while I approach that little man,’ said Noah, beginning to make his way around the inner rim of the
benches without taking his eyes from his target.

Mr Williamson did immediately as bidden, picking a way through the flailing arms and jostling figures all about him.

The doughty Claymore had by this point dispatched almost forty of the sewer rats, whose bodies lay twitching or inert about the blood-spattered circle. It was the height of the evening’s
entertainment and there was much money to be made or lost upon the next thirty seconds.

Only now did the stinking man on the benches appear to perceive he was to be trapped, and, like a rat himself, looked rapidly about for a means of escape. The door to the stairway was distant,
and Mr Williamson was struggling through bodies to reach it. Meanwhile, Noah came ever closer with an unwavering stare of intent.

Neither of his pursuers could have anticipated what next occurred.

With an agility betrayed by his stature, the stinking fellow vaulted over the rear of the benches and dropped some eight feet into the perimeter space by the wall. An uncurtained window there
had been whitewashed over and this he shattered with a determined kick that was barely heard above the clamour of Claymore’s final seconds in the pit.

Pausing only to clear any remaining shards from the frame’s lower edge with his boot, the man then crawled out backwards to hang with both hands from the sill above the alley beside the
public house. By the time Noah arrived at the window, his quarry had already dropped from the first floor to land with a jolting grunt in the mud below.

Noah risked his head over the parapet and saw the little fellow exchanging words with a colossal man whose face seemed to swirl with strange blue-black shadows: the distinctive curlicued
tattooing of those odd Antipodean warriors occasionally encountered about the world’s shipping districts. At the sight of Noah, this giant raised a pistol and let off a shot that smashed the
remaining pane even as his target jerked back inside.

‘Are you wounded?’ asked a rapidly approaching Mr Williamson.

Noah removed glass shards from his shoulders. ‘I am unharmed. He went through the window here and his accomplice fired at me.’

‘Who? The Italian?’

‘No – a South Sea islander. An enormous fellow.’

‘A harpooner, perhaps?’

‘Very likely. I saw his face and would know him again.’

‘We must go and apprehend them. Quickly!’

‘George – wait! It is futile; they will be already gone by the time we descend to the street. Even if they are not, the islander is armed and physically more than a match for both of
us. Let us instead be content to act on the knowledge we have.’

‘What knowledge? The man has escaped.’

‘If nothing else, we know we are looking for a small malodorous man and a huge one with a tattooed face. Let us also add the Italian and we have three quite distinctive characters to seek
– all the better if they are associates. When we meet with Ben and Mr Cullen, I rather suspect we will be in possession of the requisite materials to finally solve this mystery.’

‘Hmm.’

‘I am glad you agree. Now – did Claymore kill his fifty rats? I had five pounds on him to succeed . . .’

Mr Cullen’s first sensation on regaining consciousness was the pain in the back of his head. An exploratory hand proved what he already knew: he had been clubbed
senseless, the assault leaving a raw gash upon the back of his scull. He was now lying face down on a cold stone floor.

Though the very act of thinking seemed to hurt, he tried to reconstruct how he might have been attacked and by whom. He clearly recalled a man coming to him at the gates of the London Dock and
telling him that Mr Rigby needed an extra hand to unload some cargo. Then he and the messenger had re-entered the dock and boarded a ship, the
Concordia
, which had travelled a matter of
twenty minutes or so east to Frying Pan wharf.

The mood on board had been somewhat tense. A number of men evidently chosen for their strength had looked at Mr Cullen with frank distrust and at each other with questioning glances. They had
coldly rejected his few attempts to engage in the jocular riverine idiom he had sought so hard to master. Meanwhile, Mr Rigby observed all with an unfathomable gaze and exchanged some private
comment with the reeking little fellow who had also been waiting outside the dock gates.

On arrival at the wharf, Mr Cullen had sought to redeem himself by wholeheartedly putting his back into the work, hoisting barrels out of the hold and then descending to the shore to further
transport the cargo into the open warehouse. It had been dark by this point, but gas flares illuminated the wharf with their pale brilliance and rendered the toiling lumpers figures in a startling
riverside lithograph.

The work had proceeded thus, in eerie silence but for the song of the tackle and the rumble of barrels, for over an hour. Then, finding himself momentarily alone in the part of the warehouse
where the barrels were being stored, Mr Cullen had taken the opportunity to take a circuitous route back to the doors.

Nothing seemed particularly amiss. It was a warehouse like any other, albeit rather eclectically stocked with a variety of material ranging from spirits to tobacco and from tea to bales of
cloth. Such storehouses tended to be owned by proprietors who dealt only in a limited trade, but an exception was hardly to be questioned.

However, when a draught of cold musty air had caught Mr Cullen on his return to the wharf, he had paused, curious, to investigate from whence it came. There was a faint smell of drains about it,
and his first thought was that there was perhaps an old well in the rear of the building. He was engaged in peering between fat bales of cotton at what appeared to be a broad rusty iron hatch in
the floor when Mr Rigby appeared silently behind him.

‘What’re yer doin’ there, lumper?’ the tattooed foreman had said.

‘O, I . . . I thought I smelled a well, Mr Rigby, sir.’

‘A
well
? Yer not ’ere to be smellin’ wells, are yer?’

‘No, sir. Sorry, sir. I’ll get back to the ship.’

‘Or perhaps yer were lookin’ for somethin’ other . . . ?’

‘What? No . . . I . . .’

‘Get back to the
Concordia
. I knew I was wrong to give yer a chance.’

‘Yes, sir . . .’

And he had started to return to the wharf, never to reach it.

Had it been Mr Rigby who had struck him? Or was it some other unseen assailant? There had been the blow, a flash of white light, and then only blackness. He did not even recall striking the
floor.

Now he appeared to be in some manner of dim, candle-lit cell – though it was not like any police gaol he had ever seen. The dark stonework smelled damp and its huge rough blocks looked
old. A rusting iron door showed no eye slot, no knob and no shutter at the bottom for the ingress of food. There was no bed or any other furniture. Indeed, it was difficult to make out any finer
detail in the light from the single candle burning in a simple wooden holder on the ground at the centre of the room.

He struggled into a sitting position and felt nausea rush upon him. The knees of his trousers had been ripped in his fall, though any grazing of the skin thereabouts was insignificant when
compared to the pain in his head. He checked about his person and found that nothing seemed to have been taken from his pockets.

Gathering his senses, he became gradually aware of something odd: the absolute silence. There was no sound of traffic, or of people, or of the building itself: a bang of door or creaking floor.
One would expect to hear
something
of the city, even the vibration of a passing goods wagon, but there was not the merest hint of sound. Rather, he had the impression of being locked within
walls of such immense thickness that no sign of life could penetrate from outside.