by Tony Pollard
‘All I did was acknowledge that I had made Brunel a promise.’
The razor brushed my flesh again. ‘A promise you then broke. Don’t split hairs with me, doctor, you know I’m quite capable of using this.’
‘Yes, I saw Bittern last night. A neat piece of surgery.’
‘I gave him every chance to tell me where the heart was, then he pulled a gun on me.’
‘He told you nothing?’
‘Said he’d sold it but couldn’t tell me the name of the buyer.’
‘How did you know he had it in the first place?’
‘Your man William had been making enquiries in drinking dens I sometimes have cause to visit and he wasn’t too subtle about it. But I didn’t need an informer to tell me you’d taken the heart in the first place.’
‘I can’t see how that’s possible.’
‘Come now, doctor, of course you can – you’re just too much of a rationalist to realize it.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Ockham let out a mocking laugh. ‘The dreams, the nightmares, of course! Whatever it is you want to call them. Why else would you and I be trapped in that infernal engine room?’
At last the pieces fell into place. ‘You have the dreams as well!’ I exclaimed, forgetting for a moment that there was a razor at my throat. That was why the shadowy figure I had seen running out of the alley the night before had looked so familiar. I hadn’t just recognized Ockham, but also my fellow inmate.
‘And you know what the strange thing about it is?’
‘Stranger than you and I appearing in one another’s dreams?’
‘That I can never quite catch up with you in there. We catch glimpses, but that’s all. Around and around we go, a pair of mad dogs chasing our tails.’
The knowledge that Ockham shared my dreams made a sound explanation for them seem further away than ever. He came from poetic stock and at least had an overindulgence of opiates to explain his delusions. Were Ockham’s eccentricities simply rubbing off or can a man become so racked with guilt that he loses control of his mind? Ockham was right: I had made a promise to Brunel, but I had also promised young Nate that I would bring his father’s murderers to book. Could one promise outweigh another? Was there a set of balances like those used by the Ancient Egyptians to weigh the heart and the sin carried within it? That would perhaps begin to make sense if I were a devout Catholic, brought up to take sinning seriously, but as it was I wasn’t even a churchgoing Protestant. I was a doctor, a surgeon and a pillar of rationality, for God’s sake!
But it wasn’t just the nightmares. I was kneeling with a blade at my throat because of my own obsession with that accursed device, the mechanical heart which for so long I had written off as impractical but now valued as an important contribution to medical science, even if it had come a hundred years before its time. Perhaps it was all down to Brunel, the engineer who was so uncomfortably at one with his machines, enjoying the plaudits they earned him, yes, but also suffering and perhaps even dying because of them; to use a term I had seen in the newspaper, he truly was the Man of Iron. And then, if all this weren’t enough, my emotions also seemed heightened, for the feelings which Florence imbued in me were entirely unlike the more base desires I had previously experienced. Among all of these uncertainties, though, one thing was certain – like Ockham, I was now mad, bad and dangerous to know.
Crouching for so long was beginning to get to me. ‘Can I stand up? I’m getting cramps in my legs.’
‘Careful.’
Mindful of this advice, I rose slowly to my feet. ‘Believe me, I didn’t mean to betray Brunel. I thought I was doing the right thing by him. It seemed such a waste to consign the heart to his grave.’
The blade pinched my neck again. ‘All with his best interests at heart, I am sure.’
‘All right, all right. My own best interests,’ I conceded. ‘But there is something else.’
‘Go on.’
‘If we removed the heart from the equation, made it cease to exist, as you put it, then we would take away the motivation for our enemy’s actions. Sure, making them think the heart was unfinished kept them off our backs for a while, but the last thing we wanted to do is remove motivation entirely.’ It was a fair point, I told myself, even if it did postdate my decision to retain the heart. ‘Put it like this, if you want to see a lurcher run you have to set a hare before it.’
He was plainly unconvinced. ‘I’ve heard enough.’
‘Who do you think has the heart then?’
‘Russell, of course.’
‘That’s where you are wrong.’
The pressure from Ockham’s razor increased. ‘I don’t think so,’ he snarled. ‘Brunel told me all about your little escapade on the ship before he died.’
‘I told him what he wanted to know – what else do you say to a dying man? The truth is that Russell is involved but he’s not the man behind all this, and he doesn’t have the heart!’
‘Then who is and who does?’
‘Perry.’
‘Perry!’
‘Put down the blade,’ said William, cocking his pistol, ‘or I’ll put a bullet in your brain.’
After a brief pause the razor dropped to the floor and I turned around. William’s good arm was at full stretch, the muzzle of the pistol resting against the young man’s temple. Ockham’s face was a picture of agitation. I stooped to pick up the razor and folded the long blade back into the handle.
It was time to put my impetuous young friend in the picture. ‘Perry was behind Wilkie’s death and the explosion on the ship. His firm has sold the torpedo, along with the heart, to God knows whom. Russell was just a stooge in need of money.’ While he was taking all this in I turned to William and, slipping the razor into Ockham’s coat pocket, told him to put down the gun.
‘He just had that razor at your throat!’
I rubbed a hand against my neck. ‘I’ll grant you, he is beginning to make a habit of that, but I think we can count on him as a friend.’ William made no sign of movement so I looked to Ockham. ‘Can’t we?’
He obliged with a single nod and William begrudgingly pulled the gun away before allowing the muzzle to drop entirely. I waited to see how Ockham was going to respond, but all he did was stand there, his momentum lost. I invited him to take a seat.
‘Let’s get this straight once and for all. I did not keep the heart to sell it. I am not in business with Russell, Perry or anybody else. I made a mistake but, as you know, I’m paying for it.’
‘We are both paying for it,’ Ockham corrected.
‘That may be, but I was only trying to fulfil my promise to Brunel, belatedly I know, when Bittern took the heart.’
‘That was my fault,’ said William.
I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘No, William. You trusted Bittern just as Brunel trusted me, that’s all.’
Ockham sat with his head in his hands, unblinking eyes fixed on me. ‘That may be, but how do you intend to make things right?’
My answer required no thought. ‘First, we’ve got to get the heart back, then finish the job I started before Bittern interrupted things. Now are you with us or against us?’
Ockham slapped a hand on to the table. ‘All I know is I can’t take another night of dreams shut in that place. But cross me and you know what to expect.’
‘And why would I do that? We appear to be sharing the same fate, so it’s as much in my interest as yours to see things put right. I have nothing to gain by keeping the heart for myself, or allowing anyone else to have it.’
Ockham nodded wearily.
‘Now that is settled, I would like to introduce William, who I have to say is not your greatest admirer at the moment.’
‘And why is that?’
‘You killed Bittern, a privilege he had reserved for himself.’
‘The turncoat put a ball through my arm,’ said William.
‘My apologies,’ replied Ockham, rising to his feet and holding out his hand.<
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William responded by uncocking the pistol and placing it on the table before shaking hands with the man who five minutes before he would gladly have killed. ‘I just hope you made him suffer.’
‘Not nearly enough, I fear,’ replied Ockham with a cruel smile.
A lot of dirty water had flowed under the bridge since Ockham and I last travelled on the river together in a small boat. As before, he was working the oars, while I peered into the darkness looking for our objective. Then, like an apparition, a ship emerged from the gloom to our right. The hull of the part-built paddle steamer was cradled within a dock cut into the bank of the river. The vessel, an as yet unarmed gunboat, was destined for service in a foreign navy and was being built in the yard of J. A. Blyth, the company for which Perry worked, though in what capacity I was never sure.
The yard was located beside the dry dock, and like Russell’s much larger facility at Millwall, which sat a mile or so downstream, included several large buildings. It was a place I had come to know fairly well, having observed it on several occasions over the past few days, both from the streets near by, from the other side of the Thames, and even from the river itself, from where I achieved the most useful views from the bow of a boat which regularly took passengers from the city down to Greenwich. Knowing that Perry’s henchmen would be alert to unwanted prying, I went to great lengths to disguise my actions, at one point even hiding my face behind a bandage before walking past the open gates. These observations informed a series of sketches and plans of the place, each surreptitious visit adding a new fragment of information. These had been laid before Ockham earlier in the evening, not long after his recruitment to the mission on which we were now fully engaged.
Getting into Russell’s office had been one thing, guarded as it was by just a single watchman, but Blyth’s yard was like a fortress in comparison, the defences of which, in the form of a high fence, came down not only to the river on two sides, but also ran along its bank, entirely enclosing the place. But my reconnaissance had revealed a possible weak spot, which if all went well would allow entry not only into the yard but also into one of the buildings, which given its role as a workshop seemed as likely a place as any to find the heart.
Not far away from the dry dock there was an aperture, like a small doorway, in the fence, around seven or eight foot up, through which passed a jetty raised up on piles. It sloped down at a gentle angle all the way to the water, where it carried on over the river until coming to rest just above the surface, around twenty feet away from the shore.
Ockham moved the boat as close into shore as possible, and carefully pulled us towards the jetty, its sloping aspect giving the impression that it was slowly sinking into the mud. With boat hook in hand I prepared to grapple one of the supporting piles, hoping to bring the boat to a stop before we collided. The point of the hook made contact and our movement slowed, the stern swinging round as I grabbed hold of the timber pile and threaded the bow line around it. Meanwhile, Ockham stood up and with outstretched arms buffered the stern against contact as the hull came neatly to rest alongside the jetty. The boat, now partly obscured, would hopefully go unnoticed from the shore.
The stern was to be our point of disembarkation. Ockham went first, clambering up into a kneeling position, while I made my way behind him.
‘Damn it,’ he said, his foot kicking out as he struggled to gain a hold. ‘This thing’s covered in grease.’
Now standing, with my hands on an iron rail, I had just discovered the fact for myself. ‘Careful, if one of us falls in the game’s over.’
Handing over the bag, I scrambled up behind him. Fortunately, the space between what I could now see was a pair of greased rails was occupied by wooden slats, which like the rungs on a ladder would allow relative ease of movement. Ockham had already discovered this and with bag slung over his shoulder was making rapid progress up the incline. This was all well and good until we reached the solid fence, where a locked hatchway blocked further progress. Ockham started prising away with the crowbar, but it soon became apparent that the well-fitting timber was not going to be as easily forced as the flimsy frame of Russell’s office window.
Easing the sharp tip of the bar against the edge of the obstruction, Ockham struggled to get a purchase, and when he failed to do so reverted to using a mallet to drive it home. The wood creaked and began to splinter but still gave no sign of capitulation. Looking at my watch, I was concerned to see that our carefully planned timetable was already behind schedule. We needed to try a new approach.
Still crouching behind Ockham, I looked up to the top of the fence, which must have been a good ten feet above us.
‘We need a ladder,’ whispered Ockham.
‘Keep at it. I’ll be back in a minute.’
Reversing down the ramp, I retraced our steps and dropped back into the boat. Coiled in the bow was a spare length of rope. Wrapping it quickly around my forearm, I slipped it over my shoulder and rejoined Ockham, who had made little progress with the hatchway.
‘Give me the crowbar,’ I said, emptying the contents of the carpet bag into his lap. Ockham watched as I placed the bar in the bag and then bound it around the middle with the end of the rope.
After twirling it around my head, the bag flew upward, taking the rope along with it, and, disappearing over the top of the fence, gave a subdued thud as it hit the other side, the fabric bag having served to muffle its impact. Pulling on the end of the rope, I dragged the bag up the other side of the fence. Then, hoping that it would hold fast, I gave the rope a tug, only to pull it over the top and have it land at Ockham’s feet.
Undaunted, I repeated the operation. This time the bag landed on the ramp on the other side before slipping into the gap between two of the rungs. A jerk on the rope jammed the bag between the rungs, the bar holding it fast.
‘Clever,’ said Ockham.
I yanked again on the rope. ‘Kneel down and let me stand on your shoulders.’
‘What did your last slave die of?’
‘A cut throat. Now come on, we’re running out of time.’
Ockham knelt down and I took off my shoes. They were covered in grease, and I was going to need a firm grip.
Taking up the slack, I put my right foot up against the wall, where it was sure to accrue splinters but the grip was good. Pushing up against Ockham’s shoulders, I pulled hand over hand on the rope. My experience on the roof of Russell’s building and then the cemetery wall had put me in good stead and, gaining a good couple of feet, I let go of the rope with my right hand and reached up to grab the top of the fence. From there it was just a matter of hauling myself up, first swinging a knee up to give me a firm perch on the summit. With the strain on the rope released, the bag fell back under the weight of the crowbar, pulling the rope over the wall after it. Now, dangling in the dark, I lowered myself as far as my arms would allow, and to my relief found a ledge in the form of the hatch sill.
Fumbling in the dark, I eventually found a latch and after tugging at it the hatch flipped forward, almost knocking Ockham off the ramp in the process. ‘Well done,’ he said, crawling through to meet me.
My shoes replaced and the bag refilled, we continued on our way for at least another twenty feet, before reaching our next objective, the hatchway in the wall of the building.
Once again, the hatch refused to give, our efforts limited by our not being able to use the mallet for fear of creating too much of a din inside the yard. Our only option appeared to be to climb down and look for a window, but this would mean prowling around in unknown territory and deny us any route of escape should we be waylaid by a watchman. Nonetheless, I was just about to tap Ockham on the shoulder to signal that we should descend when the flap gave way, again swinging outward like the gun port on a ship of the line. I held it open while Ockham crawled through into the total darkness beyond then, passing the bag through, I followed him.
The match flashed into life before passing its flame on to the lamp. Ockham turned the
lamp around the room. The windows were shuttered, which removed any danger of the light being observed from outside, which was just as well as Ockham made like a lighthouse.
Crates of all sizes were stacked everywhere, and one of them, looking like a large coffin, was positioned on the end of the ramp before us.
I hopped down and took the lamp while Ockham did the same before lighting the second one. We stood for a while, looking at the boxes – row after row, pile after pile of them.
Ockham gave out an exasperated whistle. ‘Tell me you gave some thought to the exact whereabouts of the heart.’
‘It’s in here somewhere, I’m sure of it.’
‘Well, that shortens our options. I’ll take that side and meet you in the middle in two weeks’ time.’
All manner of machines lined the walls, giving the place a somewhat similar appearance to Wilkie’s workshop, only writ much larger. Passing down an alleyway of crates stacked almost to the roof, I entered into an open space to find Ockham holding his lamp over a bench draped with a canvas sheet. The fabric traced a tell-tale curve, the sight of which was enough to quicken my pulse.
Taking hold of the covering I pulled it towards me, while Ockham pushed the mass of heavy canvas away from him. With the sailcloth piled like a soft mountain range on the floor, we stood and stared at the exposed object, the light from our lamps reflecting off its riveted flanks.
The torpedo looked just as it had in Russell’s drawings, cigar-shaped and stranded like a beached porpoise. The thing was either incomplete or undergoing dissection, as most of the upper half lay open, with only the nose and tail represented by complete, enclosed sections. Inside the belly of the beast lengths of copper pipe twisted and turned like intestines, while chambers and tanks nested comfortably like polished organs. But there was no sign of the heart: the thing was obviously incomplete, the most vital component yet to be added.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ said a voice that was not Ockham’s.
Perry stepped out of the shadows, a pistol in his hand. ‘Good evening, gentlemen. I was hoping you would grace us with your presence.’ He smiled with the confidence of one who knows he has the upper hand. Ockham lowered his lamp, his other hand moving towards his coat.