by H. B. Lyle
He had tried some Russian clubs but all his efforts to find the associates of Hefeld and Lepidus had failed. Most hadn’t even let him in. As he swayed drunkenly against the wall, he heard a song in a language he didn’t recognise, soft and angel-high. Suddenly, out of the darkness, a woman walked up the alley towards him. Wiggins tried to doff his cap, remembered his knob in his hand, twisted back into the shadows. ‘Sorry, miss, shit, ah …’ He splashed his trousers. A faint tinkle of laughter reached him through the night as the woman carried on her way. Wiggins burped.
Further along the alley, the woman stepped into a pool of waxy light outside a pub. Three toughs tumbled through the doors. Wiggins looked up at the noise as he buttoned his fly.
‘All right, Jam?’ the tallest of the three called out to the woman. ‘Any bargains tonight?’ He plucked at her arm and thrust his pelvis towards her. ‘I might shell out for a quick ’un.’
His companions laughed. The woman turned, shook her head and muttered something before hurrying on.
‘Don’t turn your back on me, you Rooski Jew-bitch.’ The tall man jumped forward and grabbed her shoulder.
Wiggins drove his fist into the man’s throat. The tall man reeled back, pawing at his neck. Wiggins swivelled and kicked the next man in the balls full force. He lifted off the ground, a look of shock and surprise on his face twisting into sudden agony. The third man, a butterball, roared in rage and leapt onto Wiggins’s back. In an instant Wiggins dipped, twisted and threw his wobbling assailant over his shoulder – a perfectly executed Bartitsu move.
In seconds, the three toughs were utterly defeated. The first man slumped in a corner struggling for breath as he held his neck; the next wheezed, bent double, hands clutching his bollocks; and the third lay on the flagstones, his huge stomach rising and falling in fast jerks.
‘Scarper,’ Wiggins panted. ‘Unless you want more?’
The men gathered themselves, silenced by the unexpectedness of Wiggins’s attack. They barely mustered a curse between them as they pulled each other out of reach. Wiggins watched carefully until they disappeared onto Whitechapel itself. Boxing technique, basic martial arts and a good old dose of street fighting: enough to sober anyone up. The ‘bollock’ move was a favourite from his days as a young runner – Mr Holmes would not have approved. But then Mr Holmes never had to look after himself on the streets of London from the age of seven.
The woman stared evenly at him, her face half-lit by the flickering torch and framed by a tight headscarf. Wiggins picked up his cap. ‘I apologise for my fellow countrymen, miss …’
Her faint smile turned into a look of puzzlement. As her expression shifted, Wiggins realised the shadow was a large birthmark that spread from the inside tip of her left eye down past the point of her chin.
‘I thank you,’ she said at last. She spoke slowly, as if the words were recently acquired but sincerely meant.
‘Russian?’ Wiggins said.
Her mouth turned up again in vague amusement. ‘Latvia,’ she said.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Bela,’ she said after a moment.
‘Wiggins.’ He hesitated. ‘Do you know where I can get a drink?’ (He couldn’t quite bring himself to say ‘we’, though he dearly wanted to.)
She pointed past him to the very obvious pub.
He laughed. ‘No, I mean a Russian drink, or Latvian. You know, spirits? Nearby.’
Her eyes flicked down the alley involuntarily, surprised. ‘No, not for you. It’s dangerous.’ The smile disappeared.
He stepped towards her, emboldened by her kind voice. ‘Do you know what this is?’ He pulled the eight-pointed star from his pocket.
‘Sorry, I must go. You drink in there.’ She tried to press a coin into his hand but he waved it away.
‘Go,’ she said again, pointing to the pub.
Then she stepped forward, reached up and kissed him on the cheek. It was so quick, so unexpected, that Wiggins stood still. ‘Thank you, Anglish,’ she called before vanishing into the night.
The adrenaline was wearing off. The Drowned Sailor was a rancid boozer, but it was close. He ordered a pint of half and half and blinked his eyes against the fug. Wiggins had given up smoking at the age of twelve and never regretted it. He pushed his foot hard on the rail, to stop it shaking, and drafted half the beer in one. ‘Again,’ he said, though he barely had the money for more.
Heaviness returned to his limbs, his focus softened and he ordered a gin, trying to dispel the iron-filing itch in his mouth. What he couldn’t shake was the thought he’d let go of a lead. Her eyes, dark, quick and strangely memorable, flashed for an instant in his mind.
‘Barman, is there anywhere round here that sells real liquor?’ He held up the empty gin glass.
The landlord swiped a wet cloth down the bar. ‘They’ll have brandy at the Ten Bells,’ he said. ‘And rum at the Blind Beggar, no doubt. But you don’t look like you’ve got the gilt for either.’
Wiggins ignored him. ‘Something Eastern. European, like. Ain’t there some Rooski dives round here?’
The landlord stopped wiping. ‘What do you want with that? Them places is dangerous for the likes of you.’
‘I know some,’ a ferret of a man called down the bar and sidled over. ‘For the price of a drink, of course.’ He swilled around his near-empty glass and raised it slowly.
Wiggins hiccuped. ‘I’ll give you the rest of mine and nothing more. And if you’re wrong, you’ll regret it.’
The man sniffled and soon enough took Wiggins outside. He pointed down the alley – the direction in which Bela had gone. Wiggins pictured her face, her laughing eyes. ‘It’s two doors before the end, red door on the right. Knock three times, I reckon.’
Wiggins swayed onto his heels, then handed the man the remainder of his beer. ‘If you’re wrong …’
‘Oh, I’m not wrong.’ The weasel gulped his drink. ‘But you’re mad to go down there – don’t you read the papers, they’re murderers. It’s an outrage.’
Wiggins teetered down the alley. He found the red door, continued past then stopped at the corner. There was no light, no sign to suggest anything other than a private home. He turned up his collar, pulled his hat low and untucked his shirt. It was not a good time to be Eastern European, he’d seen enough of them to know that look of fear, that desire to melt into the background. He hunched his shoulders and put his fist to the door. Part of him wondered whether he shouldn’t come back in daylight, or at least sober. But he needed to find out somehow, and if not today, then tomorrow or soon he would have to knock on this door or other doors like it. He rapped three times.
Nothing happened. He stamped his feet. Still nothing. He knocked again, louder, less fearful now but more annoyed, indignant. What kind of bar was this? He was used to frosted glass and pianos and shouting and fighting and bursts of coarse laughter and beer and spit on the floor, and a front door banging and crashing near off its hinges. Not the cold silence of a blank wooden door. At that moment, as he half turned away in frustration, a small man bumped into him.
‘Izvineetye,’ he said as he and another man pushed past. Instead of knocking, the man simply shoved the door open and the two men went in. As they did so, one of them held the door open for a moment and Wiggins followed with a gruff nod.
The two men, deep in conversation, hustled down a thin corridor. Lit only by a dim gas lamp, the walls were streaked with grease and dirt. Wiggins kept behind the men as they went through a second door at the end of the hallway. He stepped into the bar after them.
Smoke stung his eyes and he ducked his head instinctively, squinting. The room was surprisingly large, despite a low ceiling, and stretched out into the shadows at the back. As his eyes grew accustomed to the meagre light and the tobacco haze, he felt the rich swell of chatter die down and eventually stop.
Five or six men sat around a miserable fire. Wiggins strained to make out their features. Eyes glowed from beneath beards and hats and scarves. Do
wn the left-hand side of the room a few planks laid on thigh-high barrels doubled as a bar. Rough fabrics hung on the walls. Wiggins picked out other men sitting further back in the darkness. He felt their stares. Over and above the tobacco, the bar stank of mould, cinnamon and a sweet-rotten tang Wiggins couldn’t place. The two men he had come in with now turned, standing at the bar, and shrugged slightly, regarding him anew.
Wiggins tried to smile. No dice. He glanced about him. Finally, a heavily accented voice sounded from behind the makeshift bar. ‘Police?’ The barman, similarly bearded, held a bottle in his hand – by the neck. The wall hangings behind him rustled.
He held the barman’s eye and slapped his hand on the bar. ‘Drink,’ he said. The barman stared.
‘I’ve just buried my best friend,’ Wiggins said in a loud voice.
A door wheezed open somewhere off past the bar, then slammed. The barman shifted his grip on the bottle and looked past Wiggins to the men knotted around the fire. Wiggins didn’t turn back, kept both hands foursquare on the bar. He may have been drunk, but he wasn’t senseless. The barman furrowed his brow and Wiggins concentrated on counting each crease. One, two, three. Someone called out a single word. Four, five, six. The barman drew up the bottle in a sudden flourish then in one swift movement slapped down a metal beaker, upturned the bottle and splashed in a full measure of booze.
Wiggins gulped down the drink with a great show of bravado that he didn’t feel. The spirit, for that’s what it was, hit the back of his throat like a white-hot hammer. He gasped and held his hand on the bar. His eyes watered, his chest burned but bit by bit the fire subsided. He stared hard at the barman, whose face came slowly back into focus. Was that a smile?
‘Again,’ Wiggins croaked and placed his final coin.
A murmur of conversation resumed. Wiggins took in the rest of the room, this time ready for the burn. The group around the fire caught his attention. They looked at him with an unhealthy degree of fascination. Wiggins felt his legs loosen and his jaw slacken. He finished the drink but it didn’t do any good. The room tipped ten degrees to the left, and the conspiracy of men stared at him – expectant. Wiggins looked at his beaker – was this one spiked?
‘What is this?’ he said to no one and stumbled towards the fireplace.
‘Voy,’ someone shouted at him and he felt a hand on his shoulder. One of the men rose from his fireside seat. Wiggins caught sight of a jagged gash across the man’s chin and wondered was this the reason he wasn’t bearded? And then, as the man approached, Wiggins saw the large symbol, hanging on the wall above the fire. An embroidered red eight-pointed star.
Hands throttled him from behind. A welter of shouts broke out as he struggled against the barman’s tree-trunk arm. He kicked someone hard but the man with the scar slapped him around the face then plunged a fist into his stomach.
Wiggins strained and bucked but the barman was too strong. He dragged him towards the rear of the room. Out of the corner of his eye Wiggins saw one of the men walk behind the bar and pull out a knife. Its blade flashed in the light of the bar-top candle.
They pulled him outside into the blackness of the yard. Someone rammed a dirty cloth into his mouth. Three or four men tugged him to his feet and hustled him through the starless night, first round one corner, then another and a third. Wiggins tried to pick out familiar words, all the while thinking of that long, flashing blade.
The men came to a halt and Wiggins’s stomach lurched. He had a sense of being near the river. A Londoner, born and bred, perhaps it was right to end his days in the Thames. It washed away all the city’s shit.
The Russians argued. Despite not knowing the language, Wiggins could tell by the stifled urgency and the half-seen pointing that they were discussing where to dump his body. The man with the scarred chin had obviously decided how to kill him. Wiggins heard the knife slicing the air. Practice.
Wiggins writhed against the barman once more but the grip was firm and true. He breathed heavy garlic into Wiggins’s ear and laughed. Finally, after another round of whispered discussion, the four other men standing above him – little more than bearded silhouettes – came to some agreement. The armed man whistled the blade through the mist-wet air.
‘Goodbye, Anglish,’ he said.
‘POLISKI!’ A woman’s cry pierced the night.
Footsteps neared.
The men stepped away and exchanged hurried words. The female voice moved closer, quiet but urgent, calling out in Russian. In seconds, the barman released Wiggins with a violent wrench and the men hustled off into the darkness.
He recognised her smell first, as she bent over him, and then the voice – sounding so different in English. ‘You stupid man,’ Bela said as she knelt over him. ‘Stupid, stupid man.’
‘I …’ He tried to cough life back into his throat.
‘Run,’ she said. ‘Don’t come back here. I am sorry for your friend. But go now. There is no police. If you don’t go, they will come back for you. Nikolai will kill you.’ She pulled him up and then pushed him away all in the same movement. ‘Run,’ she said again.
Wiggins held on to her arm for a second. ‘Thank you,’ he said but she was already gone, after her compatriots. His survival instinct kicked in and he stumbled off in the other direction, the lights of Cable Street blinking into view.
He held his hand to his throat, bruised by the barman’s arm. The street lamps hissed along the otherwise deserted street, the shopfronts shuttered. Over the sound of his own heaving breath, he heard the slow lope of leather shoes.
‘I’ve been …’ Wiggins spluttered.
‘On the piss, son?’ said the policeman.
‘No, yes.’
The policeman shook his head and made to continue on his beat, unwilling to concern himself with a time-waster. Wiggins grasped his arm. ‘I’ve been—’
‘Get your hands off me.’
‘I’ve found an eight-pointed star. At Tottenham and now here, in the ’Chapel. It’s a link, you stupid bastard. The Outrage …’
‘If you don’t calm down—’
‘Listen.’ Wiggins pulled at the policeman’s cape, half to steady himself, half in desperation.
The policeman, as his notebook later reported, and as he testified to the local police court, immediately took all necessary measures to subdue the defendant – both on his own and later in conjunction with a colleague who had come to his aid on hearing the whistle. The magistrate noted Wiggins’s black eye and broken lip with regret, ascribed it to the evils of strong drink and sentenced him to sixty days in prison for assaulting a policeman and resisting arrest.
5
Sixsmith didn’t like the sea. The wind sheeted in from the Channel, stray salty flecks tattooed his face. Out there past the navy yard in the black was the raging, monstrous ocean. He whipped his head round. Was he being watched? Or was it the tapping of a buoy out in the harbour? He turned away from the front, collar tight against the rain, and hurried past the glowing doorway of the Eight Bells up the hill towards the Grand Hotel.
‘I wish to make a telephone call,’ he said.
‘Booth one.’ The bellboy pointed to the only telephone.
Sixsmith glanced around the hotel lobby, but saw no one.
‘Operator,’ he spoke into the horn, ‘get me Whitehall 412, fast.’
Kell closed his eyes. The violin hit high, sweet, heavenly notes, then came the rest of the strings and finally the brass. His fingers tapped time on the empty seat next to him. Constance was at a meeting and so he attended the concert alone. He had recognised a few faces when he arrived, and nodded curtly to a man from the Admiralty. On those evenings when he went out without his wife, he felt it easier to keep his distance from conversation, her absence so often a dominant, if silent, subject of any interaction. The wives were worse than their husbands, their lips tighter, their brows sharper. Sometimes he saw something approaching envy in the eyes of the men.
The audience erupted for the half and Kell jer
ked awake. Musicians hurried from the stage and the concertgoers bubbled around him, alive with conversation. As people hubbubbed out of the exits, a gangling man pushed his way against the tide towards him.
‘Excuse me, madam, sir. Apologies. Was that your foot?’
‘Russell,’ Kell said. ‘What are you doing here?’
Lieutenant Russell stood before him, a six-foot-three man-child, whiskerless, with impeccable manners and, as far as Kell was concerned, a mind as feeble as his voice was loud. Kell had finally acquiesced to Ewart’s promptings and made him nominal deputy of the unit.
‘Good evening, sir,’ he foghorned amiably. ‘How is the music?’
‘Mozart has his moments.’
‘Lady Agnes.’ Russell bowed to a grand old woman swathed in purple velvet. ‘I’ll pass on your good wishes to my mother of course. How is Fifi?’
Russell turned back to Kell, having finished another round of pleasantries with the stately dame. ‘Who the devil is Fifi?’ Kell hissed. He hated himself for asking but couldn’t help it.
‘A Pomeranian. At least, she was last time I looked. Lady Agnes calls all her dogs Fifi.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I almost forgot. A telephone call. Sixsmith, sir. He said he would try again at nine.’
‘He shouldn’t call.’ Kell scrambled to look at his watch. ‘Not on the office line anyway.’ Something was wrong, he knew, as he hastened to the cloakroom.
Russell lumbered after his boss. ‘Sounded a bit, you know, rattled. I came as fast as I could. He’s stationed in Portsmouth, isn’t he, sir? Perhaps he has news about Leyton.’
Kell glanced up quickly as he collected his coat and gloves. ‘Did he say that?’
‘Oh no. He just said he’d call again. I only thought …’