The Irregular: A Different Class of Spy

by H. B. Lyle

  ‘Steady on, sir.’ Wiggins stood up and raised a hand, though he didn’t touch his boss. ‘What about the Albany? The registration number?’

  Kell let out his cheeks, avoided eye contact and gathered himself. ‘That’s why I am here.’

  Wiggins smiled. ‘I thought you were here to get me out.’

  ‘I haven’t decided about that yet. Something about your manner seems to suggest you rather belong here. Anyway, the point is we have to break into the Albany.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘You traced the car?’

  ‘No. Look, the vehicle-registration service is new …’

  ‘That’s jam, that is.’

  ‘Never mind. My point is we know the set – you’re sure of which window went dark?’ Kell outlined his conversation with the commissionaire at the Albany. ‘Simple. We break in as soon as possible, find out what we need.’

  Wiggins sighed. ‘What about the cops?’

  ‘But there’s no evidence. I can’t get a warrant, and we don’t want to expose you. You’re a secret agent, remember? If we put you into the open, that’s it, for ever.’

  Wiggins sat down again. Kell eyed him carefully. Despite his black eye, this budding agent had a fresher look about him, even after a night in the cell. His hair was shorter, smarter – still too long on top, but the black mop had gone. And his clean shave revealed a surprisingly youthful countenance.

  ‘Why are you so pleased with yourself?’ Kell asked.

  Wiggins shook his head in mute reply. ‘Can’t do tonight.’

  ‘Can’t? You work for me.’

  ‘Saturday.’

  Kell opened his mouth to object, to upbraid his slipshod employee. But what was the point? He needed a happy agent.

  ‘Very well. Tomorrow it is. Come to Hampstead for ten o’clock.’

  ‘Best not.’ Wiggins grinned. ‘Go to your gaff, I mean.’

  Kell nodded, despite himself. ‘I’ll send you rendezvous details, the usual way.’

  ‘You’s the boss. Sir.’

  They regarded each other for a moment, assessing the truth of this statement. Kell let it go, and pointed to Wiggins’s shiner. ‘The desk sergeant told me you attacked four of them without provocation.’

  ‘There was six,’ Wiggins said matter-of-fact. ‘And they was all armed with bloody great truncheons.’

  Kell pulled from his pocket a small square of felt and began polishing his spectacles. ‘The police say you were part of a violent mob in Hyde Park.’

  ‘It was a demonstration – ain’t you read the papers?’

  ‘It certainly won’t be in the papers. You don’t think the government allows them to print such things?’ He put his glasses back on. ‘I should ask you what the hell you were doing, fighting with the police.’

  ‘You should …’

  Kell hesitated, shrugged then rapped on the cell door. ‘Now, I have permission to walk you out the back door, where I suggest we go our separate ways.’

  ‘Nah, you go out the back – I’ll take the front. If anyone’s watching, they’ll think the cops let me go fair and square.’

  ‘Who would be watching you?’ Kell asked.

  ‘Can’t be too careful.’ Wiggins winked with his good eye.

  Kell shrugged, gave a curt nod to the constable holding open the cell door and ushered Wiggins into the corridor. ‘Please, do not make any insolent remarks to the desk sergeant on your way out. My relationship with the police Commissioner is not what it could be.’

  ‘Right you are, skip.’ Wiggins tipped his forelock.

  Kell waited in the corridor as Wiggins tapped up the stairs to the exit. A moment later he heard the sergeant bellow, ‘You cheeky swine, I’ll have your guts.’ Kell sighed as he made his way up.

  ‘What did he say?’ he asked the red-faced policeman.

  ‘He didn’t say anything, sir, he mooned me. Next time he’s in here, he’s not coming out in anything other than the wagon. Blasted cheek.’

  14

  ‘Come up in five minutes. Or I’ll kill you here and now. I don’t care,’ Vincas whispered in her ear. His breath stank of cheap spirits. Bela nodded and turned away. She’d been lying down in steerage, feigning sleep among the other lower-class passengers, hiding. But he had found her. ‘Go through the door yonder, there’s a quiet space on deck. I bribed the steward.’ He made to stand up but then leant close. ‘I know you hate me. But you fuck great. Why else do you think I brought you along?’ He pushed himself vertical and stumbled away.

  Bela let out a breath. She kept her eyes down. The huge cabin contained a hundred or so new immigrants, wrapped up against the cold, huddled for warmth. No one around her said anything. They all knew men like Vincas. Dim lanterns swung from the ceiling, shadows danced. She stood up, unsteady against the rolling of the ship, and teetered towards the door. An older woman, lined face squeezed tight by a headscarf, watched her as she left.

  Vincas had escaped the Okhrana. Or rather, due to Marinsky’s contacts and money, he’d been temporarily released – long enough to skip the country. ‘We must go,’ he hissed as he came through the door. ‘What are you doing in here?’

  Bela had leapt back to the table when she heard the noise. She sat down just in time, her efforts to take Marinsky’s gold almost discovered. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she muttered. ‘We are worried.’

  Old Marinsky cried out upstairs and they heard him come down.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Vincas placed a lantern on the table. ‘Father,’ he said. ‘We must go – they’ve let me out but I’m sure they’ll be back.’ He scrabbled in one of the cupboards and pulled free a bottle. ‘God I’m thirsty.’

  ‘Vincas. It worked for the moment,’ Marinsky said. ‘But I stay. The business, the money.’

  ‘They will come for me. I’ll follow Arvo.’

  Bela sat still, her mind abuzz. The chance of escape blown in an instant – there was no way she could flee now, steal Marinsky’s money or get to the coast. Yet, suddenly, this other chance to reach her goal – if Vincas were going to Arvo, to America, that meant he would be going to Sarah too.

  Marinsky knelt down in the hearth. ‘Take this, you’ll need it for the passage.’ He pulled free the bricks and turned towards his son with a handful of gold coins and a roll of banknotes. Vincas stepped over to his father, hand outstretched. Then he swigged again from the vodka bottle. ‘How long do you have?’ Marinsky went on. ‘And how are you going to get to the coast at this time of night?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Vincas snapped.

  ‘I do,’ Bela said at last.

  Together, husband and wife travelled up to Dunava with the Plovs’ driver, then caught the boat upriver as Bela had planned for herself. It took them a day and a half to get to Riga. They barely said a word to each other all the way. He didn’t question her and she daren’t break the silence, in case he asked her why she already had an escape plan. They were bound together – at least, that’s what Vincas seemed to want.

  At the port he bustled off to buy the tickets. They boarded a shabby, overstuffed, ocean-going steamer. Bela kept quiet and avoided the gaze of the other women, squeezed into steerage with their menfolk. It was only once they were well under steam that Bela realised the boat was not America-bound. She overheard two women discussing their relatives in the East End of London.

  ‘Does this not go to New York?’ she whispered when Vincas went for a piss.

  ‘You joking? This tip will never make it that far. It’s for London.’

  Bela hissed at Vincas when he returned: ‘We’re on the wrong ship. Are we changing in London?’

  ‘I can’t be bothered with America. Arvo’s a cocksucker. Anyway, I have friends in London. What? You want us to go to New York? Maybe we should.’ He looked into her hopeful eyes and laughed. ‘Then I could fuck your little sister too.’

  Bela’s anger hadn’t subsided in the three days since he had crushed her hopes. He’d got hold of some booz
e from one of the crew and had been drunk for the last twenty-four hours. She picked her way through the slumbering throng to meet Vincas on deck. Either to get fucked or beaten, she could never quite tell – nor could she really decide which was worse. She pushed open the door to the deck, and saw her husband lolling against the rail.

  ‘Wife,’ he shouted. ‘Ready to fuck?’

  * * *

  ‘Christ,’ Wiggins gasped. ‘That hurt.’

  ‘Don’t be baby,’ Bela said. She examined his black eye with her hands. The blue-black had begun to give way to a greeny-purple in the twenty-four hours since the riot. She held her mouth firm. ‘Who did this?’

  They sat on a public bench in Aldgate Station. Well-dressed gents strutted past and pigeons hopped between the scissoring legs, looking to score a feed. Wiggins enjoyed her fingertips on his face. He closed his eyes. His mother, once, caressed him in such a way before they were taken to the bone shop. An army nurse, in Bloemfontein, had cradled his head after his eardrum shattered on the veldt.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said.

  She held his chin between thumb and forefinger. ‘Nothing? Only now you have nothing to say?’

  ‘An argument with a copper is all. Don’t worry, they let me go when they found out I used to be in the gunners – I got lucky.’

  Good liars almost always told the truth. You could get people to swallow anything if you seasoned it with facts. He needed to sell the same porky to Peter. It didn’t come easy, lying to Bela, but he had no choice.

  Instinctively he took her hand in his. ‘It really don’t hurt,’ he said truthfully. ‘Not now. Let’s get out of here.’

  They sat pressed up against each other on the Underground train. He kept her hand in his. Wiggins noticed odd looks and whispers from their fellow passengers. At first he thought it was his black eye, but they were talking about Bela’s birthmark. Bela held her head high and seemed oblivious to the remarks but Wiggins was not. He grew angrier as the journey went on. As they approached Wood Lane Station, he heard a stifled giggle from across the aisle. He glared at the two women with such ferocity they clammed up. At the station, Wiggins led Bela to the platform. The two women exited the train behind them.

  Wiggins paused, then turned back. ‘Yes, your fella is courting another woman, which don’t surprise me. As for you, you’ll never get a teaching job again unless you learn to count properly. Enjoy the exhibition.’

  He took Bela’s hand and walked her up the platform, leaving a stunned silence in their wake.

  ‘How do you know these things?’ Bela whispered.

  ‘Lucky guess,’ Wiggins replied. ‘But if you was engaged to a bloke, why would you be going to the Imperial Exhibition with someone else on your half-day? She nearly ripped off that ring, worrying it.’

  ‘What about the teacher – with no job?’

  ‘It’s a school day, Bel – if she had a job she’d be doing it, and not carrying around a book of simple numbers and a flyer from the Wilkins Paget Bureau.’

  Wood Lane teemed with pleasure-seekers, young couples arm in arm, pensioners and threes and fours of men and women heading to the exhibition. And tourists, too, clutching their Thomas Cook guidebooks. Wiggins stopped at a poster. It advertised a forthcoming fireworks display to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the defeat of the Zulus. Wiggins nodded at the image. ‘They had spears and we had Lee–Enfields.’ A dark blue woollen hat appeared in his peripheral vision. Odd for a hot day. Had he seen the same hat at Aldgate?

  She put her hand on his arm and he shook his head. ‘Sorry.’ He smiled. ‘Miles away.’

  They entered the exhibition. Pavilions of white alabaster with curlicue peaks and peeling plaster rose up against the blue sky. A great steel V-shaped contraption loomed over the pleasure gardens, its two prongs oscillating down to the ground and back up again, a viewing platform at each end. Who could be following him? Or were they following Bela?

  ‘There’s the Flip-Flap,’ Wiggins pointed, consulting the programme, a guide to the Great White City. ‘This exhibition is in “honour of the Triple Entente”. Russia, Britain and France are all pals now, so that’s all right then.’

  ‘What about Latvia?’

  ‘Sorry, love, there ain’t no Latvian exhibit.’

  Bela took his hand again. ‘Well, Britain and Latvia can still be friends, no?’

  They walked past exhibits from Austria, China, Denmark, Italy, Holland and even Persia. ‘All these countries. Have you been to them?’ Bela asked.

  ‘Gibraltar, I’ve been to. That’s just a bloody great rock. And South Africa in the war, but that’s nothing like these gaffs. Mind you, I reckon none of these places are like this. Look at that model Chinaman – he don’t look like no human being I’ve ever seen, not even down Limehouse.’

  ‘Do you never want to go somewhere else?’

  ‘Holidays?’

  ‘No, to live.’

  ‘Leave London? You must be up the pole.’

  Bela pulled him close as they strolled. Every now and then Wiggins caught her looking at him thoughtfully. They came upon the Russian exhibit, where Bela started giggling and couldn’t stop. Four waxwork figures were arranged around a fire, while in the background stood hay bales, sickles and a painted wooden cow.

  ‘What is it?’ Wiggins asked, before breaking into laughter himself.

  ‘This is not Russia,’ she said. ‘It is, how you say, a joke.’

  Wiggins looked back at the diorama as Bela giggled. He thought of Peter and Yakov and the straggly beards of the drinking den. That was the Russia he knew. He was due back at Sambrook Street that week, for more tea and vodka.

  ‘Here, do you want an ice?’

  ‘No,’ Bela said firmly. ‘I want to go on Vibbly-Vobbly.’

  Wiggins hadn’t asked Bela much about her past. She shied away from questions, and he didn’t have the knack of easy talk. He hadn’t even asked her age. Mid to late twenties, he thought. But when they got on the ride, he saw what she must have looked like as a girl. Her face bunched up, she screamed, laughed and bubbled as she clasped him. The contraption spun them around and up and down like a ship off the Cape.

  Joy spread across Bela’s face, but Wiggins reached out for her hand. ‘You scared?’ she cried, laughing all the harder.

  ‘No, no, it’s just …’ The ride lurched again, dropping Wiggins’s stomach into his innards. His knuckles shone white as he gripped the handrail.

  When it was over, Wiggins stumbled out onto the walkway, queasy and relieved. ‘Big strong man,’ Bela said as she followed after him. ‘Time for ice cream?’

  ‘You have one,’ Wiggins said. ‘Let’s get away from that thing. Even looking at it gives me a turn.’

  Bela laughed. ‘Men always say they are stronger, bigger, better. Look at you. Big muscles, weak stomach. Only women have the stomach for this life, I think.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If men had same life as women, I think the world would be different. Men can do as they like, women have to take responsibility. Is this the word?’

  ‘I’ve been taking care of myself since I was seven,’ Wiggins said.

  Bela squeezed his arm. A brazier burnt chestnuts nearby, the smoke whirling close. Pleasure-seekers milled and chatted around them. She leant towards him. ‘I am sorry. All I mean is—’

  ‘Oi!’ Wiggins shouted.

  The blue woollen hat flashed off to his left and this time he pushed through the crowd, but the blue hat sprinted clear. Wiggins couldn’t see his face, but he kept his eye on the bobbing hat.

  ‘Stop thief!’ he cried.

  Onlookers fluttered aside. Wiggins gave chase. He sped past the fountain by the gates and into the street outside. Wiggins shouted out again but it was no use. He lost him in the confusion of the ticket queue. A huge after-work crowd pressed out into the street. At least suspicion had firmed into fact. He was being followed.

  He went back for Bela, heart racing. She was nowhere to be found. He pus
hed past lolling ladies and guffawing swells, the chatter and laughter pressing in. A throng surrounded the French exhibit and marvelled at the Dahomey warriors as they glistened dark against the waning early evening light. Wiggins cursed again.

  ‘Hey.’ Bela pulled him around. ‘You forget me?’

  ‘No, no, sorry. I … where did you go? I was looking for you.’

  ‘Where did you go? You run.’

  Wiggins shook his head. ‘I thought I recognised someone, but I was wrong. Sorry.’

  Bela searched his face but didn’t speak for a moment, holding her hand on his chest. Wiggins tried to smile. He couldn’t be angry for long, not with her so close, her lemons and laundry-soap smell all mixed up. ‘We go,’ she said softly. ‘I want tea.’

  ‘You’re turning English.’

  ‘And then you have work, yes? We go back east – I don’t like West London.’

  ‘Nor me, love. Wall-to-wall tossers from Sloane Square to Ealing Common. But I ain’t working, not when I’ve got you to myself.’

  ‘You must.’ Bela looked at him sharply. ‘You have good job, don’t miss it for me.’

  Wiggins’s heart swelled at the concern on her face. ‘I’d miss anything for you. But I’m not on shift tonight. I won’t be missing anything.’

  She nodded. ‘We go to Is-ling-town?’

  ‘Too right.’

  They snuggled close on the train back, cocooned against the afternoon crush. Wiggins breathed her in. Outside the Angel, he bought a copy of the Evening Star and scanned the classifieds as they walked home.

  He tossed the paper away when they reached his door.

  ‘Tory rag,’ he muttered.

  But he’d got what he needed.

  Kell had advertised.

  Kell hurried towards Berkeley Square. He’d paid the cab at Marble Arch, still thick with traffic even at this late hour, but the side streets were graveyard quiet. Kell felt his collar, itching in the heat. His shirt clung to his back and the air smelt of horse dung – the Mayfair mamas still insisted on horse carriages and it made the place stink. He’d told Wiggins to meet at ten fifteen on the dot. If Wiggins failed to show, Kell was to take a turn around the square and arrive again fifteen minutes later, and so on.