by Tim Standish
‘Can you find out what the letters mean?’ I asked.
She gave me a look. ‘Obviously.’
I passed the file across to Patience who looked it over quickly. ‘So she went to the Tech did she? Very impressive.’
‘Is it?’ I asked, having been brought up to believe that there were only two English universities: Oxford and the Other Place.
‘Oh yes,’ replied Patience as she flicked switches across the desk and set her engine into motion. ‘Tapper’s paradise.’
I matched the rest of the women’s photographs back with their folders and found room for them on top of a pile of textbooks.
That left a small pile of papers still for me to look at, the few details that Patience had managed to find on the two pilots suggested by Boston Jack.
Sidney Buckman’s notes comprised his employment records (he had worked as a bargeman before progressing to be an airship loader and finally a pilot), summary arrest sheets (evading duty, smuggling prohibited goods, falsifying official documents) and the title deed for a public house on the Isle of Wight, where he now lived. Lem Waller on the face of it was a simpler prospect having joined the Royal Aerial Navy at the age of eighteen before transferring to a newly formed Army Air Corps in ’82. Both his naval and army records detailed unexciting, run-of-the-mill careers, his last position in the army that of an instructor before retiring on health grounds about five years ago. I was about to go back to Sidney Buckman as the most likely of the two when something jumped out from Waller’s army notes, an eighteen-month period described as a ‘temporary posting’ and next to it a short word that I assumed was a location but then, looking at it again, read BES-K-17.
‘Patience?’
‘Yes?’ she looked up from her screen.
‘What does that word look like to you?’ I leaned over, holding Wallers notes for her to look at them and pointing at the temporary posting.
Patience took the notes from me and held it under one of her many desk lamps.
Patience read aloud. ‘BES.’ She looked at me. ‘Bureau of Engine Security.’
‘K17. Like our friend from Preston,’ I replied.
‘So,’ she said, throwing down the notes on the desk and attacking her keyboard, ‘the question is, did Lem and Lenora hit it off?’
‘Can you find out?’ I asked.
‘Not a problem. Just give me a minute or two to get up-line and into the Bureau engines.’
I stood, stretching my back and shoulders. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘You’ll be lucky,’ she laughed, ‘March went home hours ago and Wallis couldn’t make a cup to save his life.’
‘I’ll do it myself,’ I said.
‘You?’
‘Yes, me.’ Seeing a small panel of bulbs on her desk light up, I pointed it out to her. ‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing to worry about, just the Bureau’s engine checking our credentials, which of course are impeccable,’ said Patience.
‘And who are we today?’ I asked.
‘Night shift at the War Office, clearing up old pensions records,’ she replied.
‘Doesn’t anyone ever suspect you?’ I asked.
‘Of course not,’ said Patience, ‘because I am very, very good and very, very careful.’
‘Have you ever been caught doing this kind of thing?’ I said.
‘Me?’ she said ‘Caught? As if.’ She made a derisive sound and went back to her keyboard as letters and numbers started flickering in across the screen. ‘Right. Here we are. I’ll run a search on K17, find out who’s who and what’s what in less than the time it takes you to find the kitchen.’
Taking the hint, I half-consciously checked my gun was still holstered and walked out of the room and down the corridor towards the kitchen.
‘Oh and cream, no sugar for me!’ Patience shouted after me.
I was about halfway down to the kitchen when I heard an explosion of mechanical clamour from Patience’s room. I ran back as quickly as I could, gun suddenly in my hand. The noise died as I arrived, then started up again, thumping and clanging like a broken engine.
Patience was typing away at her keyboard, seemingly oblivious. She suddenly realised I was there in the doorway and looked up. She reached over to a cylinder player next to her and pressed a button. The noise stopped. ‘What?’
‘What the blazes was that?’ I asked her.
Patience looked puzzled. Gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘It’s Electric Rag. You won’t have heard of it.’ Then she looked at me, saw the gun in my hand. ‘Oh my God, did you think I had exploded or something?’ Laughter bubbled up inside her. ‘Or did you think we were under attack? That the bad men had come out of the wires to get us? Sterling, you are priceless!’ When I didn’t say anything, she shrieked with laughter and turned the music back on so that it blared out from two large speakers set against the end of the room. I mustered what dignity I could, re-holstered my Webley and walked back down the corridor to the kitchen, the noise of Patience’s cacophonous music following me as I went.
The kitchen was pitch black when I opened the door, shutters closed, and everything cleared away for the night. After a few fumbling moments I managed to find a switch and turned it on, bathing the room in bright light from a rank of bulbs in the ceiling. A quick search turned up a bag of coffee beans and a grinder but nothing that I recognised as a coffee-maker. I thought for a moment. We had had a number of northerners in the regiment who had made their way up into Canada instead of either staying within the new Confederate States of America or braving the crossing to Europe. One of them, originally a Kansas cattleman, proved popular among the men partly for his skill as a storyteller but also for the pan-brewed coffee he could make. I felt confident that I had watched him do it enough times to be able to give it a good bash.
A further survey of the kitchen yielded some tin mugs which I used to measure the water into a saucepan and, a few patiently industrious minutes later, I had enough ground coffee to go with it. I heated the water to boiling, let it cool, then added the grounds. I stirred them and stood watching them settle for a few minutes. Clay his name was, the cowboy who made the coffee. Shot in the chest, I remembered, in an ambush on the wrong side of the border, and one of few who made it back to the camp. He died a few days later. I stirred the coffee again then put the saucepan on the tray along with the mugs, turned off the lights and made my way out of the kitchen along the corridor.
I was walking along, wondering whether I had remembered all the steps in the coffee-making process, when I had a sudden feeling that something wasn’t quite right. I stood still for a moment in the gloom of the corridor, holding the tray and listening carefully. The music had stopped. Instead I could hear men’s voices from the end of the corridor near the stairs, which seemed odd. Church had stayed on at the club with Boston Jack after I left and had no intention of coming back to the Map Room tonight. Wallis was the only other person here. This sounded like more than one voice. I set off again, covering the yards towards Patience’s room with carefully quiet steps.
As the door came in sight, I saw a man dressed in dark workman’s clothes. His back was to me and he was shouting up the stairs. He could have been a builder or a decorator except for two things: his head was completely covered in a red balaclava and from his left hand hung a short-barrelled automatic rifle, a large, black silencer fitted over the end of the barrel.
‘Taff?’ A pause. Balaclava called up again. ‘Hey Taffy!’
I stood and, ever so slowly, without taking my eyes off the man, set the tray silently down on the floor, stepped over it and drew my gun.
An answer that I couldn’t hear was called down from the top of the stairs.
‘Fred says there’s a little snowdrop down here if you fancy a poke.’
I started walking towards him with soft, wary steps to cover the ten yards or so that separated us, arm outstretched, pistol aimed at his head.
Another muffled response from above. Balaclava shrugged his shoul
ders and called to someone in Patience’s room. ‘Taff wants to know is she American?’ The man inside the room, presumably Fred, replied, though I couldn’t quite make out what he said.
I covered a few more yards, tracking steadily on balaclava’s head as I did.
He leaned into the stairwell and shouted up: ‘Taff? She isn’t American.’ Another pause. ‘I don’t know, just some girl. We’ll be about fifteen minutes. Alright? You go and keep an eye on the front of the house.’ Another muffled shout. Then I heard a short cry of pain from Patience’s room and the noise of breaking furniture.
Red balaclava turned back from the stairs and walked across the corridor, attention on the bright lights of Patience’s room.
I hissed, a low whispered sound.
He turned, puzzling at the noise, eyes struggling to adjust to the darker corridor, then, suddenly seeing me, he started to pull his gun up to a firing position. But mine was already there and my first shot took him through the left eyehole of the balaclava. The second went an inch or two higher as he staggered backwards and his head snapped back, spraying blood and matter onto the wall behind him. I waited, following him down with my gun as he collapsed, but he hit the floor in a heap without firing a shot and lay there unmoving.
I heard an exclamation from inside the room and the sound of rapid movement. The man inside appeared in the doorway. He swore when he saw the bloody mess of his accomplice on the ground. This one was dressed similarly, with the same red balaclava. Glancing my way, he ducked back, and my shots missed. Then it was my turn to throw myself to the floor as a blast of automatic fire sprayed out through the doorway, bullets ricocheting off the corridor walls. I worked my way backwards along the wall.
‘Sounds like you’re all out, cully!’ came the shout from the room. He came to the door of the room and leaned out just far enough to look down the corridor. ‘Leave the gun there and up you get.’ I did what he said. ‘Now come back down here,’ he said, then shouted in the direction of the stairs: ‘Taff!’
I got to my feet and walked towards him, holding my arms out to show that I was unarmed.
‘Who the fuck are you meant to be, then?’ he said, as I stepped slowly towards him. ‘Her dad?’
I shook my head slightly. ‘Just a security guard.’
‘You aren’t much use, are you? Best I put you out of your misery I reckon.’ He raised his gun and aimed it at me.
And didn’t shoot.
Instead, he stumbled forward a small step from where he stood in the doorway, a puzzled look in his eyes. He blinked a few times then slowly let the gun slip from his fingers and reached up for the back of his head.
I heard a sickening crack and he fell forward onto his knees in the doorway. I darted forward to grab his gun as Patience stepped out of the room, stood over him and hit him again with the hammer. And then once more till he lay face down onto the floor, the back of his head a pulpy mess of hair and bone. His limbs shuddered and twitched for a few moments then he was still.
‘George? Fred?’ a voice called as the third of them, apparently only just hearing the noise, made his way down the stairs.
I picked up the automatic rifle, and waved Patience back into her room, then knelt and aimed at the topmost visible stair. He was half-wary as he came down, moving slowly but still exposing his legs as he did, and I put half the clip into them and walked a few rounds upwards. He screamed in pain and clattered down the stairs to slump in a heap at the bottom. He tried to raise his gun, but I was too quick and stamped down on his wrist, grinding at the bone until he let go, kicking the gun away from him.
He wasn’t wearing a balaclava, instead relying on the tall, upturned collars of his coat to cover his face, an arrangement which had flattened in the fall, unmasking him.
‘You’re a long way from Whitechapel, Evan,’ I said, recognising our guide from the Ripper tour. It had only been yesterday morning, but it felt like several lifetimes ago. I picked up the gun that he had dropped and slung the one I had fired on its strap across my shoulder.
He squinted at me. ‘What?’ he shifted himself to try and look at me and grimaced in pain, letting out a curse as he did. He stared at me for a moment. ‘Fuck me, it’s the soldier.’
‘It is, and as you can see, I won’t be needing that job after all.’ I detached the magazine, making sure it was full, then replaced it and cocked the gun.
‘It’s not what it looks like,’ he said. ‘I was just the lookout.’
‘Is that a fact?’ I asked.
He nodded weakly. ‘Couldn’t find anyone else.’
‘Who sent you?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘Don’t know. Just a telegram.’ He seemed to be drifting away so I stood on one of his legs and his eyes came open with a shout of pain. ‘I swear it was a telegram. Told us to come here and clean house.’ He slumped back down with the effort.
‘Clean house?’ I asked. ‘Meaning kill everyone.’
He nodded. He closed his eyes and gritted his jaw as a spasm of pain swept through him.
‘But you weren’t part of that?’
Shake of the head.
‘The other two were the killers?’ I asked him.
Nod.
‘Does the name Leonora Mills mean anything to you?
A slight shake.
‘Special Branch detective called Harris?’
Shake.
‘Right, well, that seems clear enough. Just one last thing, Taff?’ I paused. ‘Look at me, Evan.’
He opened his eyes to look at me.
‘Why did you ask if she was American?’ My voice was hard now and I saw the fear suddenly flash into his face at the question. ‘Were you hoping that my friend from the tour was down here? Would you have come downstairs then?’ I asked. ‘Had a poke?’
He shook his head but the look in his eyes gave the lie to that denial and, anger suddenly flaring in me, I raised the gun and shot him in the head.
I turned back to Patience where she was watching from her doorway. He hair was dishevelled, her clothes tugged out of shape. She looked like she had taken a few knocks to the face but otherwise appeared unharmed. Blood was splashed across her shirt. It covered the hammer and the hand that held it. Her jaw was tight, her eyes bright with delight or fury or some combination of the two. She stepped across the body and, suddenly, the last thing I expected, pulled me into a hug. Taken off guard for a moment, I stood there as she clung on to me, face buried in my chest. I reached around her back, gun still in my hand, and placed my arm gently around her. For several seconds we stood like that, hammer in her hand, gun in mine while she cried a few brief and silent sobs. And, as she did, something that had been with me since Cooper’s lightened and left me.
Patience pulled away from me, eyes red, took a deep breath, and gave me a brief pat on the chest. Then she walked back into her room, dropping the hammer on top of the man she had killed as she did.
The corridor stank of cordite and blood. I stopped at each body in turn, checking for signs of life. Finding none, I walked back down the corridor to the tray, picked it up and brought it to Patience’s room, putting it carefully on the desk. She looked up at me, gave me a half smile, then carried on pressing buttons and switches on the engine.
‘I pressed the alarm button,’ said Patience. ‘Jays should be here in,’ she looked at her watch, ‘six minutes.’
‘Right,’ I said, pouring the coffees out, adding cream to hers and putting it down next to her. We drank in silence, Patience’s fingers tapping on the keyboard the only accompaniment.
The coffee tasted rather good.
17. Bustle
Regent Street on a crisp autumn morning. Pavements swept clean, coloured awnings catching the sunlight, windows polished to a shine and the final, deft adjustments being made to goods on display. Most shops were barely open but already the street was thinly populated with the earliest and most purposeful shoppers. Traffic was light; a few cabs and half-empty buses chugged and hummed along while boys neatl
y darted their bicycles between them, pedalling away the first packages of the day. Here and there along the street, hawkers were readying their stalls while paper sellers called out the morning’s headlines.
Church and I walked in silence, each with our own thoughts as we went to our meeting with Milady. I had managed to grab a few hours of sleep and had showered, shaved and found a change of clothes waiting for me in my room, but the events of the night before clung vividly to me. Though physically draining me, the gunfight at the Map Room had seemed to fire up my mind, which whirled with thoughts of airships and surgery and the card labelled ‘Patient’ on the board in the briefing room. And a bell was beginning to ring more clearly. The brisk and business-like cheer of Regent Street that was unfolding around me felt like something that was happening at a distance. The activity seemed orchestrated and remote, a collection of players well versed in their roles and entrances, warming up for a performance of which I was no part.
We drew level with a news stand where the headline display read ‘Blackpool Murder Suicide! Ripper found?’.
‘Wait a moment, would you?’ I said to Church, who did so while I bought a copy of The Times.
‘What does it say?’ he asked as we continued on our way. I scanned the front page.
‘They’ve identified Richardson, dug up some of his background, some quotes from a police investigator who knew him from Whitechapel. He was always a suspect apparently,’ I said.
‘Of course he was,’ replied Church. ‘Since about yesterday afternoon, I’ll be bound. Poor sod.’
‘There’s nothing about his personal life.’
‘Yet. They’ll find out though. And then they’ll have a field day.’
I nodded, feeling a stab of remorse for what was being done to the memory of the sad, fearful man we had met, making the best of his life in a Blackpool dressing room. I folded the paper and put it under my arm. ‘We’re here.’
The shop was about halfway up Regent Street, a large emporium for women’s clothes that advertised its wares in a series of extravagant window displays. The outfits on show were in different colours and styles but with one thing in common; they all looked as though they would be inordinately expensive. The shop’s interior was decorated in a traditional style I recognised from reluctant shopping trips as a boy. Cabinets and shelves of polished walnut were arranged around the ground floor, showing off artful arrangements of ribbon, silk and woven fabrics as well as examples of the finished articles. A pair of counters, each attended by a smart and smiling young assistant, stretched away either side of dark wooden stairs leading upwards to the next floor. As we stepped through the door, I caught sight of Collier by one wall, holding up a pair of long, black opera gloves for inspection.