by H. B. Lyle
Wiggins laughed mirthlessly. ‘Fair enough.’
Yakov got up and walked over to the bedroll, where he reached down for a bottle. He drank slowly.
‘So where’s the wife and kids?’ Wiggins said.
Yakov dashed the bottle against the wall and sprang on Wiggins. His hands clawed at his throat and the two men crashed to the floor. Yakov held him by the neck. ‘How you know my family? You follow me?’
Wiggins relaxed for a moment and then pushed back hard. Yakov rolled away. They both staggered to their feet, breathing heavily. Wiggins’s eyes darted to the table. Yakov’s knife was just out of reach. Wiggins rolled on the balls of his feet. Yakov jumped for the knife.
The door swung open. ‘Hey!’
Peter stood in the doorway. ‘Bomba. The bomb,’ he repeated in English in a hushed tone.
Yakov screamed at him but didn’t take the knife. Wiggins dusted down his shirt, slowed his breathing.
The three of them stood, sweating, eyes flickering from each other to the table to the bomb. At last, Yakov raised and dropped his hands and sat down carefully at the table, keeping his eyes fixed on Wiggins.
‘Wiggins. When I see you, I feel like huntsman whose favourite dog is with puppies.’ Peter smiled. ‘New soldiers. Yakov feels different, but you know already. You surprise us,’ he went on. ‘This is like Easter one week early. We did not expect you until later. It can be dangerous to surprise Yakov – when he has a gun he shoots first.’ Peter scrabbled around in his pocket for a sweet. He didn’t offer them. Instead he walked towards Wiggins and placed a hand on his shoulder. Wiggins felt the squeeze. ‘Problems?’ Peter asked.
The fingers pressed a little deeper. ‘I’m keen, is all.’
‘Good.’ Peter let go.
He slid the tea chest into the centre of the room and sat arms akimbo, straightening his back. ‘Arlekin says Friday, when bomb is ready. Come at noon.’
Wiggins hesitated. If Peter was waiting for Arlekin to say the word, then all Wiggins needed to do was to take out Arlekin. Or René LeQuin, as he now knew. R. LeQuin. He almost blurted it out in Peter’s face – what are you doing working for the French? Why? It made no sense. Peter looked at him quizzically, and Wiggins realised he needed to stay in character, keep up the charade. ‘I’ll meet Arlekin?’ he said at last.
‘Yes. Noon, Friday. We will hear great plan. But now I must go. You too, I think. Don’t worry, Yakov doesn’t leave.’
As they reached the door, Yakov muttered at Peter in Russian. ‘Wait, please tell Yakov how you know about his family. For me,’ Peter urged.
Wiggins glanced back into the room. ‘His shoes, his shirt and the lining of his hat there on the sill. Do svidaniya,’ he called cheerily as he left.
He’d be damned before he gave Yakov any kind of satisfaction. Hopefully the bastard would spend the next two hours examining his clothes for any signs. Wiggins had felt a baby’s rattle in Yakov’s pocket when they fought months earlier. The fact that Yakov’s hat and shirt had been oft repaired spoke of someone else at home – the rattle owner’s mother. He mentioned Yakov’s shoes just to fuck with him.
Peter hurried off, muttering something about a woman. But as Wiggins left him, past the Old Crown, he knew Peter was watching. Making sure he left. It wasn’t until he zigzagged through Covent Garden that he was confident Peter had gone. He went back to the gallery, picked up Kell’s jacket and set off on foot to Essex Road, via the Strand.
At Holborn Viaduct Wiggins felt secure enough to buy an evening newspaper. Dark blooms of locomotive smoke streamed down from the railway lines above. The press had taken to calling this time of day the ‘rush’ hour, now that so many folk lived out of town. Wiggins would never live out of town. Camden was too far north for him.
A young newsboy shouted above the din. ‘Tsar sets off for London, Tsar to London.’
Wiggins tipped the boy and discreetly scanned the paper as he walked. Kell had already placed a new message. Constance had succeeded. As the Grand Old Man used to say, the game’s afoot.
20
The front door creaked. A foot tested the stair. Wiggins scrambled out of bed as quietly as he could. He grasped the cosh in a sweat-slicked palm and waited behind the door.
Ten minutes earlier he’d been dreaming of Bela and now he stood naked, waiting for God knew what. The floorboards on the landing bent loudly and the door cracked open. A dark figure crept towards the bed.
Wiggins leapt on the assailant, clamping him in a headlock.
The figure screamed in high-pitched, pure street. ‘Fack off.’
‘Sal!’ Wiggins stood back, startled.
He struck a match. Sal’s face loomed up, red raw. ‘It’s Jax. She’s gone.’
‘Hold up. She’ll be right as, trust me. We’s due to parlay tomorra,’ he said as he lit a candle.
Sal grasped her hands. ‘Nah, nah. She was taken to Lots Road in a cab. She got a message to me through the cabby. She’s in trouble. You said you’d protect her and now she’s gone.’ The words tumbled out of her.
Wiggins stared, open-mouthed. Jax was blown. Rijkard must be on to them. And Rijkard was a killer. ‘I’ll sort it.’
Sal pushed a shirt into his chest. ‘Get dressed. Herbert’s got the cab waiting.’
Wiggins looked down at himself, still naked.
Two minutes later, they were in the back of Herbert’s motor cab, juddering through town. Mist hung heavy and the first signs of daylight bruised the sky. ‘What do you know?’ Wiggins asked, tying his bootlaces.
‘Just the message – all the cabbies know me cos of the hut.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘I used to be an Irregular too, remember? She’s my only babe.’ Sally clung to him. ‘The cops don’t care about a kid like Jax. But I knows it’s all wrong. She would never have sent for me unless …’
Wiggins patted her hand and she fell silent. The cab wheeled left towards the river. The streets were empty. When he was an Irregular, this had been his favourite time of day. The street kids owned the hour, a break between the fear and uncertainty of the night and the bustle and stress of the day.
‘I’m enlisting,’ Wiggins mumbled into the dark space.
‘Listing more like,’ Sal hissed. ‘Are you elephants?’
Wiggins tripped over and cursed.
‘You’ll wake the others,’ she whispered.
The Irregulars lived in an abandoned railway arch out past Paddington. It was dark, it was damp, but it was safe. Eight or so of the street urchins bunked up together on bedrolls fanned around a smouldering brazier, presided over by Sal. That night, as the little ones slumbered, Sal sparked up a lantern and padded over to the entrance where Wiggins sprawled. ‘Here, take a sip. What you been drinking for?’
Wiggins burped. He wasn’t used to the liquor. ‘I’ve taken the shilling.’
Sal gasped. ‘But I thought—’
‘You were right, Sal,’ Wiggins groaned.
‘Shush,’ Sal said again, arching away from his gin-reek breath. ‘Come here.’ She led Wiggins outside, down the side alley, away from the little ones. Sal was a great Irregular, one of the best, but as she and Wiggins had grown, she’d found herself keeping house more and more, trying to make the arch some kind of home. ‘You’ll wake the lot of them,’ she said.
Wiggins lolled against the wall of the ill-lit alley. Away to their right, a few late-night revellers wandered past down towards Westbourne Grove. ‘You’s rancid with the ale. What’s this bull about the army? You’re only fifteen.’
‘You told me. I needed to sort something. Mr Holmes and the Doctor. The Berkshires …’ He tailed off.
Sal held him up by the shoulders. ‘I didn’t mean join up. I thought, I meant …’
‘Whoa ho! Lovers’ Lane, is it?’ A coarse West Country voice echoed from the street. ‘Take a look at this, lads, here’s a right set-to.’
Sal glanced up. A bandy-legged man walked up the alley towards her, his cloth cap askew
. ‘How much, doxy? I’ve got half a crown,’ he cackled.
If she hadn’t been so distracted, she’d have sent him on his way with something sharp and sassy. But Sal had Wiggins in her arms. ‘Oh piss off, farm boy,’ she muttered.
‘What you say, whore?’ The man leapt forward with surprising speed and yanked Sal’s arm.
‘Sling it,’ Wiggins slurred. The man drove a fist into his chin. Wiggins slumped to the floor, sparko.
‘Fuck off,’ Sal cried. Boxed in, she scratched at his face. The man sidestepped then backhanded her to the ground.
‘I is a farmhand, not a boy. And fucking is something we farmhands know all about.’ He kicked her in the stomach, held his foot on her torso and pulled out a short stub knife. ‘Don’t buck too frisky.’
Sal screamed, but the man dropped to his knees and clamped her mouth shut in an instant. His calloused paw covered her nose and mouth completely. Wiggins did not stir. The farmhand’s eyes glistened, mean with drink. His knife clattered to the ground as he scrabbled at his flies with his free hand.
She squirmed, kicked and bucked but the man bore his weight down upon her. ‘I likes ’em eager,’ he whispered as he mounted her. ‘Full of spirit.’ Her hands scrabbled on the wet stones to the side, searching for purchase, anything, as her skirt rode up past her hips—
‘Oi!’ Wiggins shouted, rising to his knees. ‘What the …’ The farmhand turned his head, faltered.
Sal plunged the discarded knife into his groin.
The man screamed once and writhed as Wiggins pulled his body clear. Blood pumped from his upper thigh, like a burst water pipe.
‘I only meant to wing him,’ Sal said, helpless.
Wiggins, sober now, put his hand to the wound but it gushed through his fingers.
‘What do we do?’ Sal said. ‘No, no, no.’
Wiggins looked down at his palms, back at the road, up at Sal. The farmhand closed his eyes, his body tensed, then went limp, and still the blood ran fast and thick.
‘You hit something, a vein? He’s dying.’
Sal sat on the ground, her back to the alley wall, shaking. ‘I didn’t mean to, he just …’
‘Did he?’
She shook her head. ‘No …’
A horrible choking gurgle rose from the farmhand, a last rattling gasp. His chest gave a final heave, then flattened, still.
Wiggins looked down at his hands, his clothes, blood-drenched. ‘We’ve got to go, Sal. His mates will be back, or the mutton-shunters. We could hang for this.’
‘I didn’t mean …’
But Wiggins was already moving. He gently took the knife out of her hand, slipped it into his own pocket. ‘Listen. No one’s hanging you.’
‘But he’s dead.’
He knelt down beside her and ripped clear a blood-splattered portion of her skirt. ‘There’s the evidence gone,’ he said as he put it in his other pocket. ‘Roust the others first thing. None of you can stay.’
‘The Irregulars?’
‘It’s over, Sal.’
‘You?’
‘I’m your suspect, ain’t I? A bloodied male, leaving the scene. The cops’ll buy straight up. I’ll dump the knife.’
Sal looked up at him. His long dark hair hung over his face, but she reached up and touched a cheek. ‘Where?’
‘I’m joining the army, remember.’
He helped her up and they hustled to the end of the alley. They hesitated, eyeing their separate ways, Sal to go back to the Irregulars, to pack up the base, Wiggins to a new life. They held hands for a moment, then Sal turned her face up to his and kissed him fiercely on the lips.
‘I’m glad you was my first,’ she said.
The cab hurtled westward along the Embankment towards the upturned table of Lots Road power station, visible now in the dawn grey. Sal hadn’t spoken for the rest of the journey, but she’d held Wiggins’s hand. Wiggins thought of the long years since that hurried goodbye, the long years with no one’s hand to hold. He looked down at Sal’s calloused fingers, burnt red by work. Then he thought again of Bela’s own hand in his, the rightness of such a feeling, complete at last.
Sal shivered. Her fears filled the small cab and Wiggins felt every sinew in her body tense.
‘Here’ll do,’ Wiggins called to the driver. ‘Down there.’
Wiggins pointed as he and Sal got out. A mooring of boats threw jagged shadows. Beyond them loomed the power station, standing guard over Chelsea Reach. In its shadow, a crowd of small wharf houses tumbled into the river. ‘One of those.’ The perfect place for a man like Rijkard. Easy access to the river and to town, deserted half the time. The best waste-disposal service in London, flowing past your door.
Wiggins bit his lip. ‘Give me thirty, Sal, then go to the rozzers. If they sauce you, tell ’em to ring Vernon Kell in the War Office. Say my name.’
‘The War Office? What’s going on?’
‘Wait.’
He jogged along a wooden gangway that ran in the lee of the power station, scanning the boathouses and wharfs. Dawn had cracked. Nothing stirred. Six or seven small warehouses stood empty and closed, facing each other in a dusty square abutting Chelsea Creek. The minor waterway fed into the Thames. Wiggins picked his way through half-painted boats on blocks. He heard the river lap gentle. Beyond it, the lights of the malthouses and mills at Battersea winked. Creosote tinged the air, and then off to his right, he caught the whiff of smoke, a fire.
A strangled cry broke. Wiggins spied a decrepit godown by the river. ‘Help!’ a girl’s voice shouted out again.
Wiggins surged through the open door. There, lit by a burning brazier, stood Jax – terror in her eyes. Beside her the giant Rijkard, a bright-tipped poker in his hand. Jax reached her hands towards him. ‘Wiggins,’ she cried.
Rijkard turned without surprise, grinning. Wiggins rushed forward but then faltered, confused. Something didn’t look right. He felt a sudden movement behind him, a whoosh and a great crack. And then he fell, his head afire with pain.
‘Again.’ Rijkard nodded. ‘Snel.’
He is Dutch, Wiggins thought as he slipped from consciousness, his nose full of cloves and burning coal.
* * *
‘What does Wiggins say?’
‘He’s gone.’
‘Gone? How very inconvenient of him.’
Kell poured himself more tea. ‘We may have to postpone.’
‘Never.’ Constance crashed her cup down among the breakfast plates. ‘We have René right where we want him, we’ll never get another chance.’
‘I wish you’d stop calling him that,’ Kell sighed. But his wife was right.
Constance had played her part to perfection. A refusal to see LeQuin at the Albany – ‘Too many friends there, René, for a married woman’ – and the feigned impropriety of an hotel: ‘Tawdry, René, tawdry.’
LeQuin eventually suggested a meeting at the Natural History Museum – ‘I have a place nearby, cherie,’ he’d mumbled in her ear. A tryst.
‘Do we need Wiggins?’ Constance continued. ‘You have the might of the War Office behind you, dear, you can rustle up a squad to follow. Otherwise it will all have been for nothing. Where is he anyway?’
‘I don’t know,’ Kell answered grimly. ‘He didn’t turn up at our last rendezvous, yesterday.’
‘He’s probably with his new woman.’
‘Woman?’
‘You must have noticed? He’s cut his hair, polishing his boots, washing. It’s been a total transformation since I first met him.’
Kell shook his head, amazed his wife could tell so much when he noticed so little.
‘In any case,’ she went on. ‘I’m sure he’ll turn up. And in the meantime, we can go on – we must go on.’
Kell grunted. ‘I have to get to work. And you’re right. We don’t need Wiggins, he is but one man.’ He said this as much to reassure himself as Constance. It didn’t make it any more believable.
Kell chose to walk to work that day but he reg
retted it as soon as he hit Camden. Roadworks, railway works, half-built blocks – the air swirled with dust and smoke. It was hot, and the smell of rotting fruit tinged the air all through Covent Garden. No wonder society chose to decamp to the countryside each summer, leaving the city to the masses. As he went into the office, Kell’s abiding hope was that Lieutenant Russell might have gone off to a country estate somewhere for an extended rest.
His heart sank when he heard his deputy’s braying laughter echoing along the corridor. A moment later, Russell opened the door and ushered in their boss, Ewart.
‘Kell, what the hell are you doing here?’ Ewart rasped.
‘Well, this is my office.’
‘Russell, wasn’t this …? Oh, I see. Yes, right. Lieutenant, can you leave the room for a moment?’ Ewart dusted his hands and eyed the far wall. He did not look at Kell.
Russell shrugged an apology in Kell’s direction and stepped out. ‘What is it, sir, if I may be so bold?’
‘Best be clear about it, Captain. Can’t go on, you understand, of course? Last straw it was, the other day. We have younger men, more energy and so on. You understand?’
‘No. I do not.’
‘Hang it all, Kell, you’re a disaster. The unit is a catastrophe. We’ve been demanding evidence of German espionage for months and you’ve given us nothing.’
‘But—’
‘I’m sorry. It’s over. It pains me to say this, but you’re stood down. Can’t have you running things any more, you’ve lost control. You know what broke the camel’s back? I saw you come into the office the day before yesterday dressed like a tramp. Awful get-up, can’t have my officers looking like they’ve slept in the gutter.’
Wiggins’s jacket after the gallery. ‘That was part of an operation, sir, it wasn’t—’
‘It’s not fitting, not fitting at all. Russell! In here.’
Kell opened and closed his mouth. He knew it was coming, but not now, not with Wiggins missing and Constance about to enter the field. ‘Sir, I’m in the middle of a very delicate scheme – a week, five days even …’