M, King's Bodyguard

by Niall Leonard

  “Forgive me, but you seem rather naïve.” He actually giggled. “What did you say of this society—that it was corrupt and hypocritical? You are right. Do you really think, with the life of his King at stake, Melville will concern himself with justice?” Plucking the cigarette from between her fingers he tossed it to the floor and crushed it into the carpet with his shoe. “Have you asked your household if they are willing to sacrifice their freedom for your cause? Or is that something for their noble mistress to decide on their behalf?”

  Lady Diamond at last seemed lost for words.

  “If you care about them, about any of the men and women who work for you,” I said, “this is your last chance to show it.”

  The woman’s pursed lips quivered, but no words came out.

  “Where is your rendezvous?” I asked her.

  She turned her head away and shut her eyes. Her voice, when at last she spoke, was so soft it was barely audible. “In Chelsea, a street by the river. Aleksandr has arranged for a boat, to take us down the Thames, and across to Belgium, by night, on Saturday, after the…”

  “Aleksandr?” I tried not to appear too eager, though my heart was thumping in my chest. “Aleksandr what?”

  She glared at me with a hint of her former hauteur. “You may ask him that yourself,” she said. “If you ever catch him.”

  “Tell him you want to meet tomorrow,” I said. “Send him a message, the usual way.”

  “He will not come.”

  “He will come if you ask him,” I said. “What newspaper do you use on Fridays?”

  “The Mayfair Gazette.” All her reticence had evaporated, it seemed.

  I crossed to the bureau by the window, found a pen and paper and pulled the chair back.

  “Sit. Write,” I said.

  “It will be in our code,” she said. “Perhaps I shall tell him it is a trap.”

  “You will write what Herr Melville tells you to write,” said Steinhauer. “Otherwise, it will not just be you who pays the price.”

  * * *

  —

  The Chelsea street Lady Diamond had named was not hard by the Thames, as she had implied, but ran west some distance from the riverbank, then turned north along Chelsea Creek—a shallow muddy channel about forty feet across, down which a slick of oily black water ran to the river. On the west side of that creek rose an embankment crowned with a railway line, and beyond the railway line lay the massive Chelsea Gasworks; on the east, facing the embankment across the creek, was a maze of shabby decaying terraces once inhabited by fishermen and glue-boilers and washerwomen. The fishermen had long since given up trying to catch anything in the rancid waters of the Thames, and the other trades had vanished with them.

  From the window of the upper bedroom of one of those cottages I surveyed the wooden wharves where the fishermen had once tied their boats. Only a few of those craft remained now, all long disused. The nearest was little more than a rotting wooden skeleton, stranded by the receding tide. Beyond it a few more lay overturned, shining with mossy green slime like the carcasses of turtles. There were few passers-by; a pair of filthy street urchins had passed through twenty minutes ago, kicking ahead of them a ball made of rolled-up newspaper and string; in the other direction a one-legged man had hobbled by, swaying on his crutches. Not Akushku in disguise, I knew, because one of my men, clad in the rags of a tramp, had jostled him and got close enough to smell the curdled beer on the cripple’s breath.

  I had other men concealed at the farthest end of the lane, and more in the dung-dotted alleyways that ran between the slums. I even had six officers stationed on the Thames itself, in steam yachts and rowing boats, although the tide had sunk so low no boat would be able to enter the creek for at least another hour. I could have used more bodies, but tonight these were all I could muster. The state funeral was to take place the very next day, and every policeman in the Home Counties had been requisitioned for crowd control and security duties. We might not have enough men, but we did have the element of surprise. Or so I hoped.

  The rendezvous had been arranged for 5:00 p.m., a few minutes after sunset. It was now twelve minutes to the hour, and the grey light was fading fast. I took a deep breath; all we had to do was wait, though that was hard enough, with all that was at stake, and so little time to spare. I pushed those thoughts aside and calmed myself, aware that the very urgency of our task called for the utmost patience. This was the calm before the storm, a precious chance to reflect; I focused on the street before me, and thought about what led us to this place.

  With the tearful help of the mousy maidservant—Elsie by name—we had traced every advertisement she had placed for her mistress in the last two weeks and gained some insight into Akushku’s code. This information had been kept from Lady Diamond, which allowed me some measure of certainty that the message she composed under my instruction said what I wanted it to say. The possibility remained that she had omitted some vital code word, and thus flagged the meeting as a trap, but that was a chance I would have to take. If tonight’s operation failed—if Akushku did not show, or merely sent some stooge in his place—Lady Diamond would answer for it. Whether her household would answer too, as Steinhauer had threatened, I had not yet decided. Failure was not an outcome I cared to contemplate; still less the consequences of failure.

  Another train rumbled south along the embankment on the far side of the creek, and shuddered, clanking, to a halt; even at this distance I could feel the house tremble under the massive weight of its trucks. Two trains passed in each direction every hour, delivering coal to the gasworks, where it was cooked to produce gas, and the leftover coke sold as fuel. Soon came the distant roar as the coal wagons disgorged their cargo, sending up a cloud of black dust that obscured still further the evening sky. I could just about see the coke-stacks from my window, and beyond them two enormous gasometers—huge hollow metal pistons filled with coal gas that slowly rose and fell within towering steel frames, stabilising the pressure of supply to all this part of London. As the wind shifted I caught an eye-watering whiff of sulphur. What a hellish place to live, I thought, pitying the family who rented this hovel. At that moment all seven of them were gathered around the meagre fire downstairs, silent and tense. Probably dreaming of what they would do with the five guineas I had offered the family matriarch—an ancient washerwoman with only three remaining teeth—for the use of their home for surveillance. The cobwebbed ceiling of this bedroom sagged so low my hat brushed against it, and the windows were grimy with coal dust, but I could see the intended meeting place well enough—a lamppost next to a flight of stone steps leading down into the creek.

  Lady Diamond would not be attending tonight’s rendezvous; her part would be played by Lawrence, whom I had relieved of his duties at our reception desk. Of all the men available he was nearest to Lady Diamond in build. Steinhauer had retrieved a suitable outfit from her wardrobe, and Lawrence had tried it on in the office. There had been laughter, of course, but none of that lasted long after they saw the look on my face. As for Lady Diamond herself, she was at home in her bedroom, under house arrest until this business was concluded; there was nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, by dragging her off to a prison cell right away. As few people as possible were to know she had been exposed. I had given orders she was not even permitted to see her husband, though I doubted she would find that any great burden. Diamond knew nothing of her illicit activities, I was sure, and when he found out he was bound to make a fuss.

  And I’d been right. Lord Diamond had come home just as his wife had finished composing her letter to her lover and demanded an explanation for our presence. I was preparing to spin some yarn when I realised any explanation would have been wasted on him. His talk was addled, his pupils were wildly dilated, and his clothing stank of opium smoke. He took in nothing of what little we told him. Oh, he had cursed us roundly as common scum, but that was merely a reflex action
, like breathing; contempt for the lower orders has been bred into the British aristocracy over centuries. I had had him escorted to his room, and a bottle of brandy sent up after him to ensure he slept. Four uniformed men would keep an eye on Diamond and his wife until we had time to deal with them.

  A hansom cab turned the crook of the road and headed up towards my lookout. I tensed momentarily, then relaxed again; this was not the cab I had arranged to come from Scotland Yard. It was travelling at a brisk pace, too—clearly the driver was taking a shortcut and did not expect to pick up any fares in this shabby backwater. Horse and cab hurried north into the gathering gloom, passing a cart coming in the other direction—a rag-and-bone cart drawn at little more than a walking pace by a thin, tired nag, its head hanging low. The wizened old man clutching its bridle cried out for custom—“Rag and bo-oh-nah!”—in a harsh shriek that made the hairs rise on my neck; it seemed to have a ring of mortality to it, like the squawk of a crow.

  As his croaking faded in the distance I checked my pocket watch by the light of my dark lantern. Six minutes past the appointed hour. I craned my neck to peer along the street in each direction in turn and saw none of my men; that at least was precisely how I wanted it.

  And here, seven minutes late as arranged, came the hansom driven by my old friend Forte, heading south at a slow trot, as if Forte was unsure of his destination. Finally his cab drew to a halt under the streetlamp opposite the cottage that concealed me and stood rocking at the kerb while the horse stamped its hooves on the beaten earth and shook its mane impatiently. The hansom bounced on its springs as Lawrence alighted, his male form concealed beneath the long dark dress, his head and face obscured by a broad hat and a veil. Young he might have been, but Lawrence proved a good choice; knowing a manly gait would betray him, no matter what he wore, he kept his movements delicate and his steps small. Forte too was playing his role admirably, reaching down to accept a coin from Lawrence’s gloved hand and touching the brim of his bowler in gratitude. Then he cracked his whip between his horse’s ears, tugged on the reins to turn the cab around and set off again northwards.

  The hiss of his cab wheels on the muddy street merged with the rumble of another train approaching along the embankment, and the hansom vanished into the murk of dusk and smoke and steam. Now Lawrence stood alone under the streetlight, his hands—and his pistol—concealed in a fur muffler. He held his head upright, almost defiantly, just as Lady Diamond herself might have done had she found herself alone on the street in such a lonely, threatening location.

  The critical moment was nearly upon us. Akushku was too shrewd to rush into such an exposed position; far more likely, I thought, that he would turn up an hour early and observe the location before he approached, to gain an advantage. That was why I had set up my cordon three hours earlier and ensured my men kept themselves concealed or disguised. I would have liked two stationed on the channel shore, but what could they have done there to look inconspicuous? Mend fishing nets? Comb the mud for treasure? No one had used nets here for a decade or more, and there was little to dig for in the mud but broken bottles and the rotting carcasses of dogs.

  Steinhauer I had sent to the cottage at the northernmost end of the street, along with Dubois and Johnson. If our quarry were to make a run for it, that would almost certainly be his direction of travel—through the tangled backstreets of Chelsea to the crowds and shops of King’s Road. The southern route, hemmed in by the river, offered no such escape.

  Now I found myself wondering if I should not have kept Steinhauer by my own side, in case he should, through too much enthusiasm, spring the trap early or otherwise forget my orders. No, I thought; Steinhauer was shrewd and sharp and fast, and our encounter in the park the night before had persuaded me that in this matter at least he would do what he was told; tonight I was content to let him off the leash.

  Fifteen minutes past the hour. Now doubt was starting to seep into me, eating at my flesh like frostbite. Perhaps the note had tipped Akushku off, and he had abandoned his mistress to her fate. God knew he was ruthless enough.

  Lady Diamond was by no means the first noblewoman I’d known to become infatuated with a villain and throw her lot in with him. Yes, she and Akushku might seem an unlikely pair—but how could we be sure of that, when we knew next to nothing about him, or how they had met? Was Akushku originally a Russian noble, like her, who had turned his back on his own class?

  Lady Diamond would tell us, eventually, I thought. Willingly or otherwise. And if tonight went to plan, we might even get Akushku’s side of the story too.

  Suddenly Lawrence turned his head, as if he had heard something. I tensed, but made no move; it was too soon, and I knew no one could approach across that inlet, where the rank mud was deep enough in places to drown a man. All the same I wished I could hear what Lawrence was hearing. He had turned his back to me, and was peering down into the creek, which by now was merely a pitch-black chasm.

  Then he pulled his hands free of the fur muffler, letting it fall, revealing the revolver clutched in his fist. He shouted a challenge into the dark.

  I turned and ran for the stairs.

  21

  The stairway was narrower than my shoulders, and the planks creaked dangerously under my weight, but I had not a moment to waste. I heard shots, then distant shouts and running feet. Ignoring the ragged family huddled round their feeble stove, I ran to the front door, wrenched it open and dashed outside to find Lawrence, scarf and bonnet and veil discarded, pointing into the pitch-black creek and shouting instructions to his colleagues as they closed in. From north and south shapes of men loomed from the shadows as my trap sprang shut—but on whom or what?

  “In the creek, sir,” said Lawrence as I reached him. “Someone was there, concealed under a boat—I thought I winged him with my first shot, but he turned and ran—”

  I joined him in scanning the gulley below. Even this close it was no easier to make out any detail—a faint silvery gleam snaked along its depths, but the oil-black clay of the banks seemed to absorb all light. We had to get down there, but that stinking mud would be nearly impossible to wade through. Had Lawrence really seen someone? If so, surely they must still be there? Then again, if the fugitive had been hiding under one of those upturned boats, he’d be coated in that black filth too and almost impossible to see in this gloom. How long had he been hiding out here—had he taken position before we had even arrived?

  Now Steinhauer was by my side, panting from his race down the street. “Do we have him?” he gasped. The rest of my men were spreading out along the bank of the creek, calling instructions to one another, but found their shouts drowned out as yet another train ran along the embankment towards the river, shaking the ground underfoot and filling the air once again with a harsh metallic thunder. I cursed in frustration—a passenger train would at least have cast a flickering light on the scene, but the pall of smoke and steam from this goods train was now drifting down from the embankment, making the visibility even worse.

  There—a shudder of movement halfway up the far slope.

  I raised my gun before I even realised I’d drawn it, and fired into the murk, but the movement I thought I’d seen was immediately obscured by swirling grey clouds of gritty smoke. All the same I carried on firing in the same direction, and Steinhauer and other officers along the creek raised their guns and fired too, wildly, until the tang of cordite mingled with the stink of the engine’s fumes, and we were all of us half-deafened by the shots. The steam locomotive pushing the hopper wagons along the embankment added its piercing whistle to the cacophony, as if in protest. The hammer of my gun clicked on an empty chamber, and hurriedly I reloaded, but even though there were no civilians at risk, I realised I was wasting bullets I might yet need. The same thought seemed to occur to my men, and the firing died away; and then, as the goods wagons rumbled south across the river and the noise receded in its wake, we saw it—a low, dark s
hape that rolled up over the lip of the embankment to be briefly silhouetted against the boiling grey sky before it disappeared again down the far side.

  Our quarry had escaped into the gasworks.

  “Pierre”—I pointed to Dubois on my right—“take three men, head north, and then west. Get to the gasworks gate, and seal it—no one is to enter and no one is to leave, until I give the word. Go! You there, Sergeant, pass me that lamp—”

  A uniformed officer, recruited at the last minute and looking slightly dazed by the gunfire, held out his oil lantern. I holstered my pistol and snatched the lamp from him.

  “Steinhauer, the rest of you, with me—”

  I found the steps at the top of the creek bank, hurried down to the bottom and stepped out into the mud. It squelched under my boots, but I did not sink—it was not so deep, this high up the bank. I called over my shoulder, “Where did he appear from, Lawrence, and which way did he run when you first saw him? Quickly, man!”

  “A—a little to the left, I think, sir.”

  I held the oil lamp low and set off down the slope towards the thin trickle of silver. The deepening slime started to suck at my boots, but I tried to keep my pace steady, praying under my breath I would not fall and go headlong. Our quarry had stolen a march on us and every second was precious.

  “What are we looking for?” asked Steinhauer, right behind me.

  “He had an escape route lined up before we even got here—he must have done. Stepping stones or a causeway—around here somewhere—damn and blast it—!” Now the clay was so thick and deep it had sucked my right boot in and was not letting go, and the harder I pulled at it the closer I came to losing my footing altogether.