by H. B. Lyle
Below him, LeQuin rose from all fours. The Underground’s tracks ran directly under the windows of the terrace, in a deep, open trench that arced beneath the ground at either end. A set of signals glowed red. LeQuin had jumped onto the roof of a stationary train held at the light. He glanced up at Wiggins, as if to utter some triumphant parting shot.
Fear flashed across the Frenchman’s face as the train lurched into life. LeQuin stumbled backwards, arms windmilling, just as a roar rumbled from the tunnel. A second later, LeQuin fell from the roof of the one train under the onrushing wheels of the other. Wiggins watched in horrified fascination as LeQuin’s legs were thrown clear – severed by the wheels – while his torso disappeared under the engine.
‘Christ.’ Inspector Carlton appeared at his shoulder.
The train directly below them eased off in the other direction, leaving LeQuin’s remains spread across the tracks. ‘We’ll have to get down there. I’ll telephone the station,’ Carlton said. ‘That bodyguard’s a beast. It took four men to subdue him. We’ve got him in the back of a wagon.’
‘There’s a man in the basement,’ Wiggins said. ‘He won’t put up much of a fight. Mrs Kell?’ Wiggins remembered, and hurried back to the drawing room.
Kell held Constance in his arms. It was the look of tenderness in her eyes, the shape of Kell’s body, the affection, love, between them … Wiggins hesitated, brought up short by the sight.
‘Ah, Mr Wiggins.’ Constance smiled at him. ‘Please come in. I am quite well, there is no call to be alarmed. A little buffeted.’
‘LeQuin?’ Kell asked.
Wiggins drew his hand across his neck twice in a quick but decisive gesture.
Kell stood up and looked at Carlton. ‘And what of the other man?’
‘We have him, sir. He’s out cold and currently being sat on by three of my constables. A formidable opponent.’
‘Show me.’
Kell and Wiggins followed Carlton outside. The constables were in various states of disrepair: all helmetless, two had bleeding noses and a third sagged as he stood guard at the front door. Carlton swung open the van doors.
‘Move aside, lads, give us a butcher’s,’ he said. The three policemen crouched aside, revealing the body of Rijkard. He stretched over six three, wore a collarless shirt and a heavy coat, despite the heat.
‘That’s Rijkard all right,’ Wiggins said. ‘He killed Milton. I’ll swear to it.’
‘Look at those hands.’ The inspector whistled. ‘What a boxer he’d have made.’
Kell pushed back his spectacles. ‘Did you find anything in his pockets?’
A constable stepped forward. ‘Not much, sir. Matches, fags. A nice watch, though.’ Kell picked up the gold timepiece and was about to hand it over to Wiggins for some of his analytical tricks when he saw the inscription on the back. His face clouded over and his head dropped.
‘What does it say?’ Wiggins asked. Kell handed it to him.
Wiggins read it out dully: ‘“L.F. Leyton, presented to him on the occasion of his wedding, all my love, your new wife, 6th June 1908.” This is …?’ He turned to Kell.
Kell nodded and muttered quietly to himself. Then he took a deep breath and handed the watch to Carlton. ‘That may very well be evidence of another murder, Inspector. Guard it well. This man must never see the light of day again.’
‘It would be my pleasure, Captain Kell. There’s another of the brutes out cold in the basement. In the meantime, I’ll leave a constable on the door – I shall have to return to deal with the, er, body. I’ve telephoned through and the line has been suspended.’
‘What line?’ Kell asked.
‘You’ll see,’ Wiggins said as they returned to the house. Constance was adjusting her hat in the mirror. She handed Kell a broken peacock feather.
‘Did you see where he kept his papers, ma’am?’ Wiggins asked.
‘Not clearly. He was quite charming to begin with. His man, you know, the Dutchman with the Adam’s apple, picked us up and drove here. But he’d hardly left us alone for a moment before he quite broke in upon us. He went downstairs then came up shortly after, shouting and screaming. They started to pack up and Monsieur LeQuin disappeared into the back half of the room. I tried to leave but Monsieur LeQuin got rather angry. Thank heavens you arrived when you did. I think he’d forgotten I was there for a moment. But he must have known I was against him. I’m terribly sorry, dear.’ She looked at Kell. ‘I gave myself away.’
‘It is not your fault, my love. I should never have allowed it. Luckily Wiggins got us here just in time.’
Wiggins examined the rear of the room, searching for the safe. ‘Where is it?’ Kell asked. Wiggins shook his head and walked the length of the room again, scanning the walls and both fireplaces.
‘Ah ha,’ he cried at last. He yanked at the bell pull and then reached up the chimney. Gradually, a small strongbox lowered into view on a pulley. It nestled in the empty hearth.
‘How on earth?’
‘Two bell pulls in the room?’ Wiggins said. ‘And this grate ain’t seen fire in years.’
Kell used LeQuin’s telephone to call a car for Constance. Wiggins listened as they fretted and cooed over each other in the hallway and it wasn’t until she was gone that Kell returned to his side. ‘Now all we need is the key,’ he said.
‘In the heel of LeQuin’s shoe, I reckon.’
‘Well, where’s his body then?’
‘Not in the same place as his foot.’
Gloucester Road’s stationmaster met them on the tracks. ‘You must be quick, gentlemen. We’ve got to have this open by four, else the system will jam. There’s a fireworks show on at Wood Lane later – it’ll be bedlam, sir, utter, total bedlam. Not to mention the Tsar at the palace. Embankment will be overflowing.’
Kell, Wiggins and the inspector hurried along the track. ‘Was he a jumper? We get them more and more every year, tragic it is. Don’t they know these machines are killers? I wish they’d do it on Sundays,’ the stationmaster added.
Kell had seen corpses before, but never one so reduced. The scene resembled the sweepings of a butcher’s floor. Kell shuddered inwardly and wondered whether this was indeed what happened when man came up against machines.
He shed no tears for LeQuin, though, or for the murderous thugs in his employ. Kell had finally found Leyton’s killer. Rijkard would not escape the noose – for Milton’s murder, and for Leyton’s too, possibly even Sixsmith’s. Kell had been unable to protect his agents, but he would avenge them. If he ever got back into the War Office, that would be his watchword. He didn’t care if the enemy were French, German or Sudanese – if they threatened his own, they’d suffer.
Wiggins walked towards him between the rails, holding up a shoe in one hand and a key in the other. ‘Let’s go.’
By the time they’d opened the safe, they could hear once again the rumble of the trains easing back into operation. London stopped for no man. The strongbox contained a raft of Manila envelopes full of documents, £150 in notes and a snub-nosed revolver. In addition, Carlton found a document girdle on the tracks containing a few letters and a small pocketbook. Wiggins rifled through the documents but threw them down in disgust. ‘Is this French?’
‘There’s no need for panic,’ Kell said. ‘I speak the language.’
Wiggins cursed and shot through the door out into the hallway. As Kell sifted through the papers, he could hear Wiggins crashing about upstairs. His agent then made a great show of pushing back into the room. ‘Nothing,’ he shouted, then disappeared again. He came back a few moments later. ‘There’s nothing here.’
‘Are you all right?’ Kell asked. Wiggins’s feet jiggled in agitation and he couldn’t keep his hands still.
‘Anything on the East End? Tottenham, Whitechapel?’
‘Tottenham? Why on earth? No, I don’t think so. It will take time to go through it all thoroughly – as you say, they are in a number of different languages. But I speak several.’
>
Wiggins paced to the window and looked out into the street. ‘It can’t be …’ he tailed off.
Unnerved by Wiggins’s demeanour, Kell nevertheless felt a kind of grim elation. The documents were a trove indeed. In particular, a letter with a German diplomatic letterhead informing whoever it may concern that the bearer should be afforded every assistance. Taken together with the Krupp’s connection and the death of Milton, the document in itself could be proof enough to get Ewart what he wanted – to start a whole new department.
To get his job back.
It didn’t help that LeQuin also appeared to have a similar letter from the British Government’s own Foreign Office, as well as from representatives of the governments of France, Turkey and Austro-Hungary.
‘How about Russian?’ Wiggins said.
‘Funnily enough, that appears to be the only one missing.’
‘What? I meant, do you speak Russian?’
Kell looked up at him. ‘A little. It’s an interesting language, forever in flux. Russians often take words from somewhere else and adopt them, speaking in their own accent. Did you know their word for train station is Voksal, all because of some government visit or other a few years ago – they wanted to see the new inventions and a bigwig showed them Vauxhall train station. And they thought it referred to all stations, so they took the word as was. A straight transliteration.
‘Funny you should ask that,’ Kell went on. ‘On today of all days.’
‘What’s today?’
‘The Tsar’s visit. Give it another hour and he’ll be rolling down The Mall to the palace. Are you sure you’re quite all right, Wiggins?’
As Kell had told this story, he’d noticed a strange transformation come over Wiggins. His face tensed, his foot tapped and he began gnawing at his fingernails.
Wiggins leapt at the door. ‘We must stop him.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘Stop the Tsar’s procession. I can’t explain. Someone’s going to try to blow the bloody thing up. Trust me.’
‘But—’
Wiggins had already gone. Kell sighed. Curse the fellow. Stopping a state visit in its tracks was near impossible. Still, he had his evidence, and he had the direct line of the one person in Whitehall who might believe him. He picked up LeQuin’s telephone and made the call.
‘What is it now, Kell? Get to it.’
‘I have reason to believe the Tsar’s procession may be the target of a bomb, sir.’
‘Good God, sir. What do you expect me to do about it?’
Kell coughed. ‘You know my current situation.’
‘This is highly irregular, Captain. It will not make me popular with the authorities. If I am to succeed – I must add this – my chances are slim. Will it be worth my while?’
‘Sir, thanks to your intervention with the police I now have cast-iron proof of German espionage on a large scale, I have one enemy agent dead and a murderer under lock and key. I will be reinstated, we will get more funding and you will get the credit. But, of course, only if the Tsar lives.’
‘I will try, Captain.’
I bet you will, Kell thought, as he put the telephone back on its hook. Winston Churchill was the most pompous, glory-hunting man he’d ever met. If he could claim the credit for saving a royal’s life, the King’s cousin no less, then he’d surely move heaven and earth to do so.
Kell went back to the documents spilling out of LeQuin’s safe. There must be all the evidence he needed here, if he only looked hard enough. It took him another ten minutes, as he gathered and sifted the papers, to realise that his agitated agent had taken the £150 in notes. Wiggins the dip indeed.
22
‘Who’s there?’
‘Vot’s wrong with your leg?’
Wiggins looked down at his knee. It jiggled uncontrollably. ‘Not now, Otto,’ he said out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Tell me.’
The beggar looked up at him from his spot on the pavement. He shrugged. ‘Spare change for an old Luxembourger. Spare change,’ he shouted and then muttered under his breath. ‘Vere have you been?’
‘I got held up.’ Wiggins glanced up and down New Oxford Street and caught his breath after the headlong rush from Kensington. ‘Are you gonna tell me who’s in there or what?’
‘Spare change!’ Otto called again. The old beggar coughed, then spoke through his hand. ‘The good-looking von, Peter, he is upstairs. I don’t see the other von leave. And no man with the big moustaches. Spare some coins, any coins! Peter, he come about von hour ago.’
‘I owe you.’
‘My takings are three shillings down from the Strand.’
Wiggins scanned the frontage. The umbrella shop door rang, its wares lined up in the window like rifles. Upstairs, unseen, Yakov and Peter plotted their mayhem, at the behest of Arlekin, in that piss-stink hellhole of an attic room. Arlekin. Not René LeQuin. Wiggins shook his head at the stupid error, playing silly games with words. Of course LeQuin wouldn’t be mixed up with the likes of Peter, with the Tottenham job. Wiggins cursed. For one moment, as he and Kell closed on LeQuin, he’d thought he had the man responsible for Bill’s death.
But now Bill’s death would go unavenged, the shadow Arlekin would be lost to him for ever, unless …
He bolted across the road. ‘Vere are you going, Viggins?’ Otto called.
Wiggins barged through the door and vaulted the stairs two at a time. His heart hammered hard, and not just from the stairs. Peter and Yakov didn’t trust him, but they still didn’t know he was on the other side. If he could string them along for a while more, he might get a chance to confront Arlekin and foil the bombing. Ever since Bill’s murder, he’d been looking for this man, Arlekin, the man behind his best friend’s death. Arlekin was waiting for him, justice was waiting for him. It all came down to this moment. He had to keep his cool.
He swung open the door to the attic room without knocking.
‘D’yavola,’ Yakov exclaimed.
‘You!’ Peter said.
The two men stood opposite him in the small room. They were fully dressed, and even had their hats on, ready to leave. The bomb was nowhere to be seen and the bed had been rolled up in the corner. Peter’s hand strayed to his coat pocket but Wiggins took a breath and kept his voice calm.
‘I was passing,’ he said. ‘We still on for tomorrow? Noon?’
Peter hesitated, glanced at Yakov. His eyes involuntarily flicked to a hatbox under the table. ‘Yes, yes, of course. It’s good to see you.’ He smiled wolfish. ‘A surprise. Nice surprise. Here, have one of these.’ He held out a brightly coloured pellet. ‘Wine gums. Delicious. Capitalism’s only gift to world.’
Wiggins shook his head.
‘You are sure? It gives a little to your teeth, like good meat, but then it breaks in two, easy.’ Peter bit into the small sweet and held up the other half between finger and thumb. ‘See. A clean break. No juice.’
Yakov stared intently at Wiggins then sloped back to the table. ‘You are mess,’ Peter went on. ‘What have you been doing?’
Wiggins shrugged. ‘I’m fine.’
Peter barked out a sharp laugh. ‘So English,’ he said.
‘You going out?’
Peter put his arm around Wiggins’s shoulder and drew him towards the window. The arm weighed heavy.
‘London,’ he said, pointing with his free hand. ‘We make our mark here. It is centre of world, even for us Russians. This is where revolution starts. Over there, only two streets away, Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital. And Lenin lived near here. Even our very own Tsar is parading in streets today! This city is heart. This is where it starts.’
As Peter talked, Wiggins sensed Yakov shifting around the room. He followed his movements in the reflection in the windowpane. The Russian knelt down and gently pulled the hatbox from under the table.
Peter went on. ‘I came here to make something for myself and to make something for my people. This is not always a nice thing to look at. Sacrifices have to be
made. World is hard. If I told you stories of my childhood, you would not believe; you would not believe I could be standing here, hundreds of versts from my country. I survived.’ Peter paused. ‘But I refuse to be defeated. Revolution takes different forms. We learn this. We all have our own wars to fight.’
His hand squeezed Wiggins’s neck, the thumb dug deep. ‘This is not your war. Not your way.’
A hand on each shoulder, he forced Wiggins round so that they were now face to face. ‘I like you, truly. You are my favourite Englishman, I think – a man who can drink vodka and fight police. This is a good man to know, my kind of man. But Arlekin says we cannot trust you with this job, it is not your way.’
‘But—’ Before Wiggins got any further, Peter drove a fist into his solar plexus. Wiggins doubled over in pain.
‘I am sorry,’ Peter said.
Wiggins squinted up at the handsome Russian, his mouth twisted in regret. Yakov then burst past Peter, his fist balled around a snub-nosed knife. He drew his hand back but Peter shouted out and yanked him away. ‘Niet!’
‘Sorry for Yakov. He is very angry you stole compound spring from his bomb parts. Lucky we have spare. You have very good fingers.’ Peter shrugged. ‘All of us poor, we learn to take things. Yakov would kill you. I like you. What can I say, I am human. Do svidaniya.’
Peter dragged Yakov away.
At the door, he turned back. ‘One day, we drink again. Until then, my English friend.’ He swivelled on his heel and pushed Yakov in front of him.
Wiggins clambered to his feet.
‘Wait,’ he shouted down the narrow stairs, stumbling after them. ‘Bombing the Tsar won’t change anything.’
Peter turned at the landing, puzzled. He looked up at Wiggins, and shrugged his shoulders in resignation.
‘She was right,’ he mumbled. Then he pulled the Mauser from his pocket, straightened his arm and fired.
Wiggins flew backwards. A jolt of pain exploded in his shoulder. A blinding light flashed in his eyes like a reel of cinematographic film unspooling. And then it went to black.
Kell sat on the floor of LeQuin’s drawing room, documents strewn around him. They included a number of compromising letters and other scandalous material about various royals – not only British but those scattered across Europe. They would need to be handled carefully, as would the few technical papers – the importance of which he didn’t yet know. The constable previously posted on the door now fussed about the room, helping Kell sort through the documents. There were also Leave of Passage letters from the diplomatic departments of Europe and even the State Department of the United States. Bloody Yanks, pretending they believed in isolationism while paying spies.