by H. B. Lyle
Kell passed his ticket to the gangling lieutenant. ‘The second session is Mendelssohn – perhaps you’d like to take my seat, Russell?’
‘But shouldn’t I come with you? This is it, isn’t it, sir?’
‘What?’
‘The great game for Europe.’
Kell almost shouted at the idiot. But he didn’t have time. Instead, he pulled on his overcoat and regarded Russell for a moment. ‘The great game for Europe? Is that what you’d like?’
‘Isn’t that why we’re here, sir, for King, Country and Empire?’
‘Not tonight, Russell. Tonight, you are here for Mendelssohn.’
Kell’s shoes beat a sharp report on the new flagstones of Knightsbridge. The concert didn’t finish for another hour and he couldn’t see a cab, so he kept walking. As he did so, he became aware of steps behind him. He went to cross the road and glanced back, ostensibly looking for a cab. An angular figure, his face obscured by a spotted scarf pulled tight, flitted out of view. Kell reached the opposite pavement and increased his pace. He ducked down a mews as he approached Grosvenor Place, and waited in the shadows. Then he stepped out quickly, back into the light cast from a street lamp, and caught hold of the man.
‘’Ere, wot you doing?’ The man pulled away, but Kell had him by the lapels.
He hesitated. ‘Who are you?’ Kell searched the man’s face.
‘Get off, or I’ll call a copper.’
Kell relaxed his grip, suddenly unsure. At that moment a cab pulled up in the background. Kell caught a brief flash of someone leaping into the carriage and then it clattered past him in a whoosh of dust and tack. He stepped back.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I mistook you for someone else.’
‘Too fucking right, mate.’
He reached the War Office with twenty minutes to spare. As he settled into his chair, telephone in front of him, it occurred to Kell again that someone knew a lot more about him than he did about them. It could be a German spymaster, a criminal gang – he had no clue. He couldn’t even be sure he was being followed. The truth was that he, Captain Vernon Kell, responsible for military counter-intelligence in the British Isles, had almost no idea who he was fighting against. The closest he’d come to real intelligence had died along with poor, headless Lawrence Leyton. Hopefully Sixsmith knew more.
At nine o’clock, the telephone failed to ring.
Kell clicked his tongue.
In the days after Leyton’s death, Kell had tried to reconnoitre Woolwich himself. A futile exercise, he’d discovered soon after exiting the train station. A foreman doffed his cap, a flower seller put on her best toffee accent as he passed, a policeman wished him good morning. He couldn’t hide who he was. He didn’t belong at Woolwich Arsenal, didn’t fit in amongst the vast whirring machinery, the dirt, the grime; sheer hard, physical work simply looked alien to him – and everyone he passed knew it.
By nine thirty, the telephone still had not rung.
Sixsmith worked in the Portsmouth naval yard as a clerk. Kell had placed him there last November. Though he’d come up with little of interest, he’d managed to maintain his cover, which was a damn sight better than the rest of the depleted department. Perhaps at last Sixsmith had something for him. Or perhaps he too was dead.
Eleven o’clock. No call.
Kell stared at the silent instrument in front of him. A night chill crept down his back. He’d never liked the blasted things, couldn’t trust them. Like ghosts speaking from the grave, or hallucinations.
He shot to his feet and grasped the telephone, as if to throttle it. ‘Get me the exchange. Hello, yes, this is Captain Kell at the War Office. Whitehall 412. I received a call on this number about half-past seven this evening, can you tell me where it came from?’
Eventually, after much complaint and heavy sighing, the girl from the exchange gave him the name. Kell called the hotel, only to speak to an irritated receptionist. Sixsmith was not a guest, he said. The lobby was empty at that time of night, sir. Don’t you know it’s late? It took Kell another two hours to whistle up an army driver and car.
‘It’s gone one, sir,’ the duty QM whined, but by two o’clock Kell was on the way.
London’s tentacles reached long and wide. Vernon Kell sat in the back of an army-issue Austin as it rattled south down Clapham Road, on the way to Portsmouth. Less than a mile away, in Brixton, Wiggins stared into the blackness of his piss-dank prison cell. He kept in his heart a picture of the girl with the angel-high voice and a birthmark splashed across her face, an image that had been his companion for the first thirty nights of his stretch and would be for the next thirty. The cell prompted darker thoughts too, the worst of life mixing with the best. As he slept, he dreamt of his childhood on the streets of the uncaring city.
A city whose tentacles spread wider, past the pleasant Hampstead villa where Kell’s wife slept, beyond the limits of the new Underground and suburban trains, even further than the main lines steaming forth to Glasgow, Bristol, Aberdeen. The tentacles spewed further still, from the docks to Pondicherry, Melbourne, Singapore, Wellington, the West Indies and beyond, webbing the planet; stretching to the poppy fields, the gold mines, plantations sugar-rich, the cotton fields. The wealth of the world pouring back along the filaments, back to London – the beating heart and head and guts of an empire of three hundred and seventy million souls, a quarter of the globe.
Kell knew: an enemy that struck here, would strike everywhere.
Thwack!
‘This is a merciful mission.’
Thwack.
‘I strike only to help.’
Thwack.
‘You may only be seven, but I must release the evil within.’
Thwack.
‘St Cyprian’s will save you. I will save you.’
Wiggins didn’t feel like he’d be saved. His arse stung something rotten. He didn’t cry. Wouldn’t cry. The Master had held his hand when he walked him out of the Strand Union, Doc Rogers smiling sadly after them. As soon as they were out of sight, though, the Master threw his hand away, disgusted. He pushed him through the roads north of Oxford Street towards St Cyprian’s in Marylebone. The Master beat him that night, as a welcome, he said, to keep him straight. He pushed him into a dark, airless room and whispered, ‘Sleep.’ The room sounded to Wiggins like a huge slumbering animal or monster: children squashed together any old how, on beds, on the floor, curled in corners. Wiggins, small for his age, crawled beneath one of the few beds and made himself smaller still.
‘Where you come from?’ a high-pitched voice squeaked in his ear.
His eyes stung with held-back tears. He didn’t want to think of where he’d come from. He said nothing and shifted his head away.
‘Did the Master smack you, did he? With the paddle? He does that to keep you straight. So he says. I think he likes it. What’s your name? ’Ere, go on. I’m Sal.’
‘Wot kind of name’s that?’ Wiggins said, surprised. ‘You a girl?’
‘Might be,’ she said.
‘Why you here?’ Wiggins said quietly. ‘Ain’t there a girls’ place?’
‘No chance,’ Sal hissed. ‘They send the girls out to Blackheath, or God knows where. I’m London, me.’
Wiggins wiped his face with the ripped collar of his shirt. He tried to stifle a sniff.
‘’Ere, give over. The others will hear ya,’ Sal whispered again. ‘Don’t worry, he’s had his fun now, he’ll leave you be.’
The Master did not leave him be. Every second or third day: ‘I must release the evil from within,’ he said. ‘We need to keep you straight.’ Wiggins was confused. He knew his mother had scared people and that he should never tell anyone how she died. But hadn’t she released the evil in her already, weren’t that the point? Why else would you kill yourself, if not to kill the devil inside?
‘He don’t like you, Wiggins. I mean, he don’t like anyone, but he sure as teeth don’t like you. Or maybe he likes you too much.’ Sal shrugged. ‘Yo
u’re too pretty.’
Wiggins frowned. Sal was always saying things he didn’t understand. Of course the Master didn’t like him.
In the daylight, Sal had proved to be a freckled redhead with boy-short hair and oversized trousers. She was seven, too, she told Wiggins, although the way she spoke made her seem older.
Only Wiggins knew she was a girl.
The orphanage was spread over a warren of rooms off St Cyprian’s Church in Marylebone. Its corridors echoed with the sound of crying children, and the malevolant jeers of the black-toothed deputy Bane. The Master never raised his voice. Wiggins and Sal hid as much as they could, primarily from the Master, but also Bane and even some of the older boys. Violence cascades down.
‘The Master ain’t no churchman,’ Wiggins chirruped to Sal. ‘He’s scruff.’
‘He’s a phil-an-throp-ist, so he says,’ Sal replied.
‘I’ve heard of them,’ Wiggins said. ‘They’s trouble.’
‘Wiggins!’ The Master’s hand clasped his ankle and dragged him from under the bed. ‘The evil is strong, we must release it.’ Sal held his hand for a second and then he was gone.
The Master, black-suited, bounced on the balls of his feet. He rubbed the wooden paddle against the seat of his trousers as he pointed Wiggins to his desk. ‘Evil must be defeated. I fear we have not made as much progress as I’d hoped.’ His left eyelid drooped.
‘I ain’t done nothing, sir, honest.’
‘Silence.’
Wiggins turned his head to the desk. He could hear as the paddle scratched against hard worsted trousers. The office reeked of stale sweat and spilt ink. Urine stains streaked the floorboards beneath his feet, the marks of boys past. The Master breathed deeply. Wiggins scanned the desk, anything to distract him. ‘Don’t hit me, sir, I ain’t evil. Promise I ain’t.’ He turned away from the desk and faced the man.
‘You dare disobey me?’ the Master demanded.
Sal’s words flashed into Wiggins’s mind. Maybe he likes it.
The Master raised the paddle in his right hand. ‘Turn,’ he said.
‘Do you like it, sir? Do you?’ Wiggins said. ‘I could do something else if you want.’
The Master tensed. His eyes widened. His jaw worked. And then he roared.
‘A gentleman made a telephone call at seven thirty last night.’ Kell pulled off his gloves and stared hard at the concierge of the Grand Hotel, Portsmouth. ‘Where did he go?’
‘Sorry, sir. I’m the morning man. You’ll have to ask Albert. He knocked off at seven.’
Kell sniffed. A vaguely exotic smell hung in the air, something he couldn’t quite place, familiar and novel all at the same time. ‘And where might I find Albert?’
‘He comes on at six.’ The concierge had decided Kell was neither a potential guest nor a tipper. He fussed and fumbled at the desk in pointless busyness. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you? Sir,’ he added after a pause.
‘One thing,’ Kell said carefully. ‘You could inform me of your next of kin. I wouldn’t want them to worry, you see. It can be so distressing for family when their loved ones are taken to prison, don’t you think? It’s better if they know.’
‘I’ll check the book,’ the concierge offered. ‘Here it is, yes, that’s right – a telephone call was made around that time. You see? But we don’t keep records of walk-ins. The caller wasn’t a guest is all I can say, sir.’
‘Were any other calls made that night? Afterwards?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Would he have made the call from here?’ Kell pointed to the booth.
He examined the small telephone kiosk but nothing seemed amiss. There was no note. Just the mouthpiece and horn, hanging limp.
Kell didn’t like dealing with the local police, but he had no choice. He’d drawn a blank at Sixsmith’s digs, other than to confirm that he hadn’t returned the previous evening. There was nothing for it but to raise an official alarm. He flashed his credentials and after a number of confused conversations with ranks ever ascending, he spoke to an Inspector Grimes.
‘Sixsmith’s a small, slight fellow. Blondish hair, thinning at the temples. Worked as a clerk at the naval yard. He tried to speak to me last night from the Grand Hotel, couldn’t get through. And then he didn’t return to his lodgings on Alexandra Road.’
The inspector blinked, heavy-lidded. ‘Is that so unusual, sir? We don’t normally classify a person as missing until—’
‘Look,’ Kell interrupted. ‘I have reason to believe, well, that his life is in danger.’
‘Why’s that, if you don’t mind me asking?’
Because he is one of my only agents left in service. Because the last one was murdered, bled to death, because Sixsmith tried to call me and is now missing. ‘Because, Inspector,’ Kell said at last, ‘I say so.’
The inspector nodded and went to the door of his own office, leaving the desk free for Kell. ‘I must use your telephone,’ Kell said. ‘Report back to me in two hours.’
Kell looked out onto the drab Portsmouth cityscape as Grimes padded off. Mist hung in the air but the inspector’s office offered no comfort. Not even Scotch.
The telephone rang. ‘I have your call, sir.’
‘Thank you, put it through. Lieutenant Russell, is that you?’
‘Yes, sir. I’ve been manning the line, sir.’
‘Has Sixsmith reported in?’
‘No, sir, not a dicky bird. Will you be coming back soon, sir? Should we inform Jones – where is he, come to think of it?’
‘Jones is …’ Kell paused. ‘Jones is none of your concern. I will be returning shortly, if we can’t find Sixsmith. I have a car.’
‘Take the Petersfield road, sir. They’ve recently laid a new surface, far better than the Guildford route. Absolute bone-wobbler, that one.’
‘Thank you, Russell.’
‘It’s only Jones, isn’t it, sir? He’s the only one left.’
Before Kell could answer, the office door swung open. ‘Captain Kell?’ A constable stood before him, eyes hooded by his helmet. ‘Inspector Grimes says you must come at once.’
Wiggins may have been short, he may have been seven, but he was old enough to see murder in a man’s eyes. As the Master roared, eyes bulging, Wiggins dived between his legs and out into the hall.
‘Bane!’ the Master bellowed. Boys scattered through St Cyprian’s, terrified.
Wiggins barrelled down the corridor, eyes wild. ‘The gate’s open,’ Sal cried from the dorm doorway. ‘The coalman’s here.’
He swerved towards the front door.
An arm shot out of nowhere. ‘I’ve got him, sir,’ Bane called. The assistant, no more than eighteen, grinned, black-toothed and rank.
Wiggins swung for a second as Bane gripped his collar. But then the ragged shirt fell apart and Wiggins was away. He burst into the sunlight, Bane cursing in his wake.
He dodged left, right and then the coalman towered before him. Wiggins looked up at him and froze. The coalman winked white in his tar-black face and Wiggins bolted out into the traffic.
‘Oof, sorry, lad,’ he heard the coalman say.
From the other side of the road, Wiggins caught sight of Bane, sprawled in a pile of coal on the orphanage steps, the Master trapped behind. He was free.
Free to do what? He ran wildly down unfamiliar streets. Finally, after losing himself in a crowd, he came across a park. He hid in some bushes and tried to think what to do or where to go. Mary-the-bones wasn’t his manor. Wiggins was a Soho boy, and since he and his mother had been in the Strand Union he also knew the neighbourhood north of there. He’d never once been west of Mary-the-bones Lane, not in all his days. But he was hungry now, and though it was warm, he didn’t fancy staying the night under that bush. Park-keepers were to be avoided. They often carried sticks specifically for the task of beating small boys.
He snuck out into the nearest street, looking for something to eat, a click, anything. The roads were wider here than his own Soh
o patch. Cleaner too. He couldn’t see a costermonger or a rubbish dump. Adults rushed around, towering over him, unheeding. He slumped down on the steps of a terraced house and eyed the passers-by.
‘Got a tanner, sir?’ he called out. ‘Tanner for a poor choirboy.’
No one even slowed. Not to look at another long-haired scrote knocking around the streets, begging. Two men approached. One, tall, thin, with a sharp face and a clean shave. The other square-shouldered with a bushy moustache and kind eyes. Wiggins glanced quickly at their boots as they neared, searching for an angle.
‘’Ere, mister. Gi’ us a tanner. You’ve been down south, ain’t you, mister? Don’t wanna leave London.’
The two men stopped and the tall man regarded him with the clearest eyes Wiggins had ever seen. His insides shrivelled. ‘What was that you said?’ the tall man asked.
‘A tanner, sir.’ Wiggins put out his hand.
‘After that?’
‘You’ve been down south.’
‘How did you know?’
Wiggins pointed. ‘Chalky boots, guv, chalky boots. That’s south, ain’t it?’
The man twinkled. ‘Or west, don’t forget it could be west. My dear fellow,’ the man called to his friend. ‘Do you have tuppence for the boy?’
‘A tanner, mister. Go on.’
The tall man turned back to him. ‘Tell me, how many people have gone past since we started talking?’
‘Five, sir. Three gents, a lady and a sweeper.’
‘And on the road?’
‘A four-wheeler, two cabs and a hurdy-gurdy. Where’s me tanner?’
The man offered the sixpence piece. Wiggins went to take it but the man withdrew it. ‘And what street are we on?’
‘Dunno. I’m new round here. I’m Soho.’
The man pursed his lips then handed the coin to him carefully. ‘You must know London, if you are to survive. Do you know your letters and numbers?’
‘Course.’ Wiggins had only just mastered them before his mother died, but master them he had.
‘Well, learn the street names. There is no excuse. Now be off with you, scram. Out of my doorway.’
Wiggins jumped into the street and turned back to the man, triumphant – a whole sixpence.