The Irregular: A Different Class of Spy

by H. B. Lyle

  ‘What, of food poisoning?’

  Rayner’s eyes bulged. ‘That’s it! You’re fired, get out of it.’

  ‘That ain’t your decision.’ Wiggins paused. ‘Cooky.’

  ‘How dare you?’ Wiggins really did think the old man might drop dead there and then of apoplexy ‘I … I …’

  ‘Listen, you old fucker. You can’t fire me and you know it. What you can do is go to the boss first thing and make your strenuous recommendations as to my future employ, which I know you’ve done already, by the way. Well, don’t trouble yourself. This is my last day. But someone’s got to mind the shop this evening, and that’ll be me. Now, I’m not doing this out of any respect for you – but for the job. I’m a patriot, so I’ll watch out as good as always and tomorrow you can bring in whoever you like. Now piss off home.’

  Rayner stepped back, shocked. He nodded dumbly and collected his hat and coat from the guardhouse pegs. As he headed towards the gate, he turned slightly, his head bowed. ‘I was the best cook in the line, so I was.’

  Wiggins had a momentary pang of pity for the old fool. Still, it gave him the perfect excuse to leave work with the bag – and the old watchman would tell all and sundry he’d given him the boot.

  Once the factory floor had emptied, Wiggins reconnoitred. Two other watchmen took random turns themselves, stationed at different workshops. Every half-hour or so, he’d hear the heavy tread of Tomkins in particular, an enormous man with a cauliflower ear. He would snap Wiggins in two given half a chance. Finally, unable to settle, Wiggins could wait for his opportunity no longer. He kept his step steady and slow and filched what Peter wanted. Then he padded back through the deserted factory, the hulking machines eerie in the silence. It took all his willpower to resist the urge to whistle. He got back to the guardhouse and stowed the deadly ingredients in the carpet bag.

  Moments later, Tomkins thrust his head round the door. ‘Got a brew?’

  Wiggins nodded. Tomkins sat down and proceeded to relate a tale of marital woe. Wiggins continued to nod and tried not to look at the bag, nestled as it was beneath Tomkins’ monstrous arse.

  In Hampstead’s NW across town from Woolwich’s SE, Vernon Kell made love to his wife. Married couples throughout the city were no doubt doing the same, but for the Kells it had become routine in the execution and rare in its frequency. All that had changed after the German Embassy party. The pursuit of LeQuin brought them together – the excitement of the chase and the chance to talk about something other than the children or women’s suffrage or the invitation list for the latest dinner party. Seeing the spark in her eye and her quicksilver mind kindled something within him; and he could see in her eyes that he was no longer the staid civil servant she’d become used to. What surprised Kell most of all was his own ardour. The danger of Constance’s impending meeting with LeQuin troubled him, but it excited him too.

  Afterwards, Kell stared at the ceiling and wondered whether letting women into the workplace was really such a bad idea after all.

  ‘What the fack’s this?’

  Wiggins woke with a start. He’d fallen asleep in the chair outside the guardhouse. Rayner rooted around, pulling at the holdall. ‘You ain’t allowed nothing here.’

  ‘Hey, leave it,’ Wiggins growled as he stood up. ‘That’s my change of clothes. I’m done here for good, if you’ve forgotten.’

  The sun had yet to rise and the night chill clung to Wiggins. Rayner, his mean and morose self once more, bent over the carpet bag.

  ‘Tell you what, old man. You let me get on my way nice and friendly, and we’ll leave it at that. Play up and I’ll let everyone know yous was a cook in the army and not some hooting tooting warrior likes you claim. Your choice.’

  Rayner glared at him. ‘You wouldn’t.’ He hesitated, then threw his withered hands in the air. ‘Oh, what do I care anyway? Fack off out of it and take your poncey gear with you.’

  Wiggins walked slowly towards the station without averting his gaze. It only took a few minutes for Peter to fall in step beside him. ‘You have it?’ he said.

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Otlichno!’ Peter exclaimed. He bent down to take the bag from Wiggins. ‘Thank you.’

  Wiggins pulled away and switched the holdall to his other hand. ‘No you don’t.’

  Peter looked askance but said nothing. They walked on in silence until they reached the station. ‘Where next?’ Wiggins said.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Peter opened his arms. ‘We are friends, comrades. Don’t you trust me?’

  Wiggins scoped the platform, busy with a Sunday morning crowd. If the coppers picked them up now, it would be hard for Kell to save him – not with what he had in the bag. But he had no other cards left to play. If he pulled out, the road to Arlekin would be closed for ever. He could see it in Peter’s expression.

  Wiggins whispered, ‘I want in, proper like. I want to meet Arlekin. That was the deal.’

  The train clattered into the station, all noise and steam and pistons. ‘We go to London,’ he said. ‘I knew I liked you.’ Peter put his arm around Wiggins’s shoulder. He squeezed hard, let go and thrust his hand into his pocket. ‘Here, I have humbugs.’

  Wiggins kept a tight hold of the bag.

  A great scrum funnelled through the ticket gate at Charing Cross. As the two approached, Peter cursed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I have no ticket,’ Peter replied. ‘In the middle of the day, there is nobody. But now.’

  Wiggins glanced around, noted a bored policeman on the far side of the gate. ‘Follow my lead. Just walk through a second after me, you’ll be fine.’

  ‘But how? If we are found with the bag …’

  ‘Stay behind me.’

  Wiggins stepped in front of Peter and confidently strode up to the gate and tried to pass through without showing his ticket. ‘Oi, you – stop!’ the inspector barked at him. Wiggins turned back, patted his pockets and eventually produced his ticket while at the same time Peter walked straight past along with others, the inspector distracted.

  ‘Brilliant,’ Peter said when they met again on the concourse. ‘So simple.’

  ‘They love to find a cheat,’ Wiggins muttered.

  The Irregulars never paid a fare. Wiggins never allowed it. ‘We’re street kids,’ he’d say. ‘The trains are ours. And we can keep the Grand Old Man’s expenses.’

  Sal got caught once on the Metropolitan at Portland Street. The guard stood her by the gate and sent his mate for a copper.

  ‘Here, Tommy,’ Wiggins whispered. ‘Look sharp before the mutton-shunters get here.’

  ‘Sharp?’ Tommy, a boy of thirteen with sandy hair and a button nose, was Wiggins’s left-hand man. Not that he knew his left from his right.

  Wiggins ushered him back into the ticket concourse, in full sight of Sal and the guard.

  ‘Sorry, Tom,’ Wiggins said.

  ‘What for?’

  Wiggins punched him in the face.

  The fight escalated quickly. Tommy went wild, swinging his arms left and right, kicking and scratching. Wiggins held him off as best he could before they were pulled apart by a great crowd. Sally escaped in the chaos, while Wiggins and Tommy ran off into the park.

  ‘Why’d you do that?’ Tommy snivelled.

  ‘It was the duck and dive, Tommy. A dodge. Look, there she is.’ He pointed as Sal emerged from the bushes. He knew she’d be here, just as she knew he would. Regent’s Park was their manor. The rhododendrons offered some of the best cover in central London.

  ‘You took your time.’ She brushed a pink petal from her chest. Wiggins felt his face go hot all of a sudden, as if he’d met Sal for the first time. ‘Cat got your tongue?’ she said.

  ‘We ran the dodge.’ Tommy ducked his head. ‘So you could get clear.’

  Sal eyed Wiggins. ‘You look all poked up.’

  Wiggins coughed. ‘Why’d they nab you?’

  She shook her head slightly as the three turned north to Camd
en. ‘I’m too big, is all.’

  ‘You’re fine,’ Wiggins protested.

  ‘I’m old. Too old to be bunking rattlers. Look at me.’ Wiggins didn’t. He couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t go red again. ‘Here, Tommy,’ Sal went on. ‘Nail us some nuts from the zoo. Bet you can’t.’

  ‘Can so,’ Tommy cried, and ran off ahead. Always ready for a rob.

  Sal and Wiggins strode on in silence for a minute. ‘It’s no good, Wiggins. We’s proper now, we’s all grown up.’

  ‘I’m fourteen.’

  ‘’Zactly.’

  ‘You want to give up on the Grand Old Man?’

  ‘Can’t duck and dive for ever.’

  * * *

  Still ducking and diving, Wiggins thought as he and Peter threaded their way across the concourse outside Charing Cross. As they moved to the Strand, Otto the German beggar beckoned to Wiggins.

  Wiggins shook his head and Otto called out instead: ‘Change. Any change for a poor Luxembourger? Good gents, any change?’

  After they passed, Wiggins turned back and flicked a coin at him – mouthing ‘Luxembourg?’ Otto shrugged.

  ‘Disgusting,’ Peter said as they walked on. ‘This is richest city in world, heart of huge empire, bleeding colonies dry. Yet on streets, poor man must beg to eat. Where does money go? I tell you, Wiggins, into pockets of royals and capitalists. Who can support this system?’

  The question hung in the air between them as they skirted Covent Garden – the dying cries of the costermongers jangling down the side streets, as they took fruit to the city. ‘Straws, straws, two punnets a penny … Yorkshire rhubarb, get it fresh.’ They cut up Henrietta Street, where barrow boys and flower girls spilled out of the morning pubs and traded filthy banter.

  At the top of Shaftesbury Avenue, Peter gestured to a doorway. ‘It is here,’ he said. A corner shop selling umbrellas bustled with custom just to the left. ‘We are above. Top room.’

  Wiggins followed him up the thin stairs, round the hall and up again twice more to the attic room. A single door squatted at the top of the staircase and Peter flung it open theatrically.

  ‘Bozhe!’

  Yakov stood before them, knife in hand, like an irate butcher. He unleashed an angry torrent of Russian and pointed furiously at Wiggins.

  While the two Russians shouted at each other, Wiggins took in the scene. A greasy sash window looked out over the tops of the nearby buildings. Two cane chairs and a tea chest made up the furnishings along with Yakov’s table. On it lay a collection of implements, bolts and bits and pieces, like a disassembled engine or clock. Eventually Yakov calmed down. Peter cracked his neck, grinned and sat. ‘Yakov was surprised to see you.’

  Wiggins handed over the bag. Yakov dived in and pulled out the jar of phosphorus. He grunted at Wiggins.

  ‘He says thank you.’

  Wiggins sat on the tea chest. ‘How long will that take him?’

  Peter and Yakov shared a look, before Peter answered. ‘Six days. Maybe five.’

  ‘What about the rozzers?’

  Peter pulled up the spare chair. ‘Police know nothing. Klaus is back in Jubilee Street, trying to trick stupid people into throwing bricks at windows – then they can arrest them. This is how your police work here – fools. They think they are cats and we are mice. But if we keep secret, they will never know. Are you scared, Englishman?’ He grinned and popped another humbug into his mouth.

  ‘What’s the target?’ Wiggins said. ‘And no, I ain’t afraid.’

  ‘We don’t know. Only Arlekin knows.’

  ‘When do I meet him?’

  ‘Questions, always questions, Wiggins. Arlekin will meet you, in time.’

  Wiggins glanced again at the table.

  ‘I want to take the bomb.’

  ‘Why?’ Peter asked, astonished.

  ‘Look at the pair of you, Ivan the Terrible and Genghis bloody Khan. You’re not worried about the coppers, but I ain’t never seen two more suspicious-looking villains.’

  Peter glanced back at Yakov, unsure. ‘It is up to Arlekin.’

  Wiggins stood up. ‘Let Arlekin tell me the target, tell me the time, and I’ll set the bloody thing off myself.’

  19

  ‘You have a point.’ Mr Holmes fiddled with his cigarette. ‘Obsolescence comes to us all.’

  ‘Obsolescence?’

  The Grand Old Man strode to the window and looked out on Baker Street. ‘The new century is not far away, Wiggins, and I fear there is no call for men like me. This will be the century of the machine.’

  He was in one of his moods. Wiggins stood in the doorway and waited. He’d only come in to report back on a serial adulterer out in Putney, small fry. He happened to mention his age – he couldn’t get Sal’s words out of his mind – and how his work might be changing, and Mr Holmes had been prosing on, becoming blacker and blacker. He was often like this without the Doctor. ‘What will you do?’ Holmes asked suddenly.

  ‘I, er …’

  ‘Come on, out with it. You can’t live on the streets for ever, a man of your talents. And my practice cannot support you for much longer – look at you, you’re almost as tall as I am. You are distinctive, the criminal fraternity will cotton on soon. No, it’s all up, Wiggins.’

  The front door opened. Wiggins heard clattering in the hallway. ‘Ah,’ Holmes went on. ‘The good Doctor, here to surprise me.’

  ‘Good day, Holmes,’ the Doctor hallooed from the landing. ‘Wiggins, my how you’ve grown.’ The Doctor clapped his hands and walked to the fireplace.

  ‘As ever, Watson, you’ve found exactly the right words to describe our predicament. Wiggins is old.’

  ‘What was that? Oh, I see. Yes, bit of a problem out there on the streets. Hardly blend in. Tall as a telegraph pole.’

  ‘But what should he do now?’

  Watson looked on Wiggins with friendly eyes. Neither he nor Holmes showed any interest in Wiggins’s own opinion on his future prospects. ‘Army? I can put in a word with the Berkshires.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Holmes cried.

  ‘Army,’ said Wiggins at last.

  His eyes popped open. ‘Wiggins!’ Bela stood by the bed, her hand on the curtain. ‘You are moving everywhere. I wake you. You have bad dreams?’ she said.

  He put a hand to his sweat-damp chest and squinted, adjusting his eyes. Bela loomed above him, dark against the late-afternoon sunlight. ‘Hot, is all. You startled me.’ Her scent infused the room, waking his senses.

  Bad dreams. Like blowing up yourself and half of Soho with a jerry-rigged bomb. Like watching on as your best mate bleeds out in the dust of Tottenham Lea. Or listening to your mother as she slices a shiv down her wrists and stifles her own cries. He’d lived enough bad dreams to last the long sleep.

  ‘Do you want me to go?’

  ‘No, course not.’ He forced a smile, shook his fears away. Dust motes danced around her as she hesitated. ‘Come here.’ He swivelled his legs over the side of the bed and pulled her into a kiss. She tasted of plums.

  ‘I have food,’ she said after a moment. ‘You don’t eat.’ She spread out a cloth on the bed.

  ‘Anything to drink?’

  Bela frowned. ‘Lemonade.’

  Wiggins bit into a pickled egg and grimaced. He examined Bela’s precise movements as she arranged each item of her picnic, then he gazed at her face – the same face he’d seen earlier that week as he waited outside the German Embassy. She passed him a bottle of lemonade and they ate in silence. Wiggins couldn’t take his eyes off her. He imagined this was what home felt like, at last. But did happy homes have secrets?

  ‘Where have you been? I’ve missed you.’

  ‘I work. What is wrong?’

  He picked at his food. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Do you remember who tried to kill me? The night you saved me, down Cable Street.’

  She blinked. ‘I don’t know. Bad people.’

  ‘I could’ve sworn you said a name, is all. You said he’d come ba
ck to get me.’

  Bela looked at him carefully then turned her shoulders away.

  ‘Nikolai,’ she said at last. ‘Everyone know him, every Russian. He is mad. From the paint factory, he goes mad. And now we are careful. If you see him, cross the road, that is what we do. Poor, sad Nikolai.’ She looked down at her lap.

  ‘Did he have a scar across here?’

  ‘You’ve seen him?’ Bela asked quickly. ‘Where?’

  ‘Nah,’ Wiggins lied. ‘I just remember, is all. I didn’t mean to upset you.’ They ate in silence until Wiggins tried again, the questions mounting in his mind. One question, above all the rest, could he ask it? What was she doing at the embassy? ‘I’ve been going to Jubilee Street, sometimes like,’ he said at last. ‘There’s a lot of sense in all that politics.’ Bela put her hand out and took his, but said nothing. ‘I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Thank you, I suppose. I don’t hold with all those rioters, I’m not up for killing or nothing, but maybe things can change. What we need to do is stick together, ain’t it, support one another. You showed me that, so thank you. I’m with you, girl, I really am.’

  She offered the ghost of a nod.

  ‘I cannot stay,’ she said. ‘Work.’

  ‘Be late.’ He pulled her towards him again and this time they fell into the picnic things, tenderly, passionately and, Wiggins felt as they lay together afterwards, all the more united. He watched as she fussed with her skirts.

  ‘I go now.’ She stood by the door, ready. Her head to one side, she wore an expression he couldn’t read. Care, worry, resolution – he didn’t know.

  ‘Here, let me give you some lolly for that grub. It must have cost a bomb.’ He searched the floor for his trousers. ‘I’m flush.’

  ‘No,’ she said. She opened the door to leave. ‘It is gift.’

  He got up and stood before her in his underwear. ‘You know, sometimes we do things for money that we don’t want to do. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. All of us have been there, love.’ What were you doing at the embassy? The question pressed in on him. Was she selling herself? No shame in whoring. Could he say that? The barmaid’s words again – no woman wants you to know what she’s thinking. Was Bela any different? And what would he do if she told him, anyway? She could walk out the door and never come back, and that would be the end of it.