by Alex Grecian
“I will.”
“Good man. Everybody else we have is covering the train yards and the roads out of London. It is up to us to help contain and capture the prisoners before they can get far. All of you, talk to the sergeant briefly and get out there on the street. Kett will have temporary assignments for you, and he’s got sketches of three of the men for you to look at. Memorize those sketches. I want a circle, beginning a mile out from Bridewell. I want half of you working your way toward the prison. Look under every shrub, overturn every rock, examine every windowpane of every home. Remain in pairs. Do not wander off on your own. We will keep runners moving back and forth so that you will have a steady stream of information. It should go without saying that these are dangerous prisoners and you need to be alert at all times. The rest of you do the same, but work your way from that mile mark outward, away from the prison. Obviously you’ll have more ground to cover, so move quickly. Catch these men. Catch them before they can harm a single person.”
He looked out at the sea of faces, all good men, all of them committed to keeping London safe. “Be very careful,” he said. “I want every one of you back here by end of day unharmed.” He slammed his hand against the desktop. “Now go!”
The crowd dispersed, gathering around Sergeant Kett for their assignments. Sir Edward saw that Kett was passing out lists of everything they knew about the prisoners and wondered how the sergeant had made time to create the lists. He caught Inspector Day’s eye as the detective crossed the room.
“Mr Day, Mr Hammersmith, I’d like to see you both in my office, please.”
Sir Edward gathered his notes and led the way to his small office at the back of the room. He allowed Day to open the door and preceded him through. He went around his desk and laid the notes on the blotter, but didn’t sit.
“Please close the door.”
Before Day could move, another man entered and closed the door behind him.
“Mr March?” Sir Edward said. “I don’t recall asking for you.”
Retired Detective Inspector Adrian March was a stout man with spectacles and muttonchops, his curly grey hair worn long enough to brush against the top of his collar. He carried a cane, but didn’t appear to need it.
“If it’s all the same, sir,” March said, “I’d like to be paired up with the inspector.” He nodded to indicate that he was talking about Day. “We make a good team.”
“You did,” Sir Edward said. “Mr Day also makes a good team with Sergeant Hammersmith. I plan to pair them.”
“Then I’ll be a third, if you don’t mind. There to offer whatever assistance or advice I can. I’m afraid I don’t know most of these other men and I’m not as fast on my feet as I once was. I’m familiar with Mr Day’s strengths and know those qualities he may require of me.”
Sir Edward sighed. “Very well. You’re kind to volunteer your services at this ungodly hour. I can’t very well order you about like a constable, can I? Please take a seat.”
Adrian March smiled at Day and frowned at Hammersmith and sat down. Sir Edward wondered why March seemed displeased with Hammersmith, but then noticed that the sergeant had a long soup stain down the front of his shirt, which he had apparently tried to hide by buttoning his jacket all the way up. But he had mismatched the buttonholes, and his jacket skewed strangely across his rail-thin chest. He was tall and lean, with a narrow face and almost feminine features. His hair stuck straight up, uncombed, except for a mass of it at the front that had fallen into his eyes. Sir Edward was used to Hammersmith’s slovenly appearance and realized he no longer even noticed the frequent stains and rips that the sergeant habitually sported. He sighed again. He was still unsure about whether he ought to have promoted Hammersmith to the rank of sergeant. In addition to his unkempt appearance, Hammersmith was unruly and impulsive. It was nearly impossible to keep him in line. But he brought qualities to his police work that many of the detectives did not. He was sensitive, caring, and brave, quick to leap into a fray if it would help the cause in any way.
“Mr Day, Mr Hammersmith, Mr March, while the others beat the bushes for the escapees, I would like you to investigate some discrepancies in the information we’re receiving from the prison.”
“Sir,” Hammersmith said, “with respect, I feel I would be best suited to the search itself.”
“And you may be, Sergeant,” Sir Edward said. “But Inspector Day will require assistance and, as I said, you work very well together. I think each of you may see things at HM Prison Bridewell that the other would miss.”
“But Mr March is here to help,” Hammersmith said. “He can assist Mr Day.”
“You make me weary, Mr Hammersmith. For the time being, you will remain with Mr Day. And Mr March. Perhaps the three of you together will uncover something faster than you might otherwise do and then . . . only then, Sergeant, will I reassign you to the manhunt. Do we understand each other?”
Hammersmith nodded, but his expression was black. Sir Edward was touched by the young man’s devotion to justice. Just wait, he thought. Be patient and try not to get yourself killed before you become the great policeman I know you could be.
“The head warder claims that all the dead prisoners have been accounted for and that four men have escaped,” Sir Edward said. “But there is another man, a clerk on the prison staff, who claims there were five escapees. Both of these men seem to be absolutely unshakable in their convictions, and that worries me. It makes every bit of information coming out of that place suspect.”
“I should think the head warder would have the best information,” March said. “There must be four escapees.”
“Perhaps,” Sir Edward said. “But perhaps not. No one is infallible, and I want to know the truth. Were there four escapees? Five escapees? Perhaps there were twenty or thirty, for all we know. Find out for me. We can’t catch four men and call the job done if there are five men on the loose.”
“Yes, sir,” Hammersmith said. His expression was grim. “And we’ll be back in the manhunt within the hour.” Back in. As if he had been called away from the hunt when it hadn’t really started yet.
“I’m afraid I have one more task for you,” Sir Edward said. He kept his eyes on Day so as to avoid Hammersmith’s inevitable grimace. “I want to know why there’s such confusion in the numbers. In the event of a catastrophe like this, it’s my opinion we should have immediately been given all the facts we needed. Instead, there’s a great deal of dithering going on at that prison. I worry there’s mischief afoot.”
“Mischief, sir?”
“Yes, Mr Day. It is, of course, possible that the confusion there tonight is perfectly natural. To be expected. But a train was deliberately derailed just outside the prison walls—”
“You really think the derailing was deliberate?” March said.
“Don’t you? If it was an accident, why is there no record of that train being sent out? Why was the train empty? Why has no driver come forward?”
“Perhaps he was thrown clear,” March said. “Or he might have walked back through the carriages and been in the end of it when it derailed. He could be lying under the rubble at the prison even now. In fact, that may account for the confusion there. The extra body of the train’s driver.”
Sir Edward stared at Adrian March for a long moment. Then he straightened his back and shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, that train was deliberately tampered with. And I think someone at Bridewell knows about it, was a part of the scheme.”
“Scheme?”
“Yes, scheme. Someone broke those prisoners out. Why?”
“Did he . . .” Day said. “Whoever did this, did he intend to free a specific individual? Or is it possible the train was the real target, do you think?”
“A very good question, Mr Day,” Sir Edward said. “This had to have been very carefully planned, in my opinion, and it took a great deal of courage, a great deal of intelligence. I do not think wrecking an empty train was the goal.”
“If we deter
mine who has escaped, we may be able to lay our hands on the person who masterminded the thing.”
“That is my thinking.”
“Jimmy might be the better man for this,” Day said. “He is more methodical than I tend to be.”
Sir Edward smiled at him. Day was sticking up for his sergeant, trying to get them assigned to the manhunt in order to make Hammersmith happy. He admired the attempt almost as much as he was annoyed by it.
“Inspector Tiffany does not have the same knack for talking to people that you do, Mr Day. Nor does he leap to interesting conclusions the way that you do. Jimmy Tiffany’s methodical practices are more useful to me in the pursuit of escaped prisoners.”
Day tried one more tack. “This doesn’t seem like it’s a Murder Squad assignment, sir. Nobody’s been murdered.”
“Every convict currently outside those walls is a murderer. Murder has most certainly been committed. I just hope no fresh murders are being totted up by that lot while we sit here worrying about who ought to be catching them.”
“My apologies, sir.”
“Of course. Mr Day, there’s one more thing you should know. One of the escaped men, one that has been confirmed for us, is named Cinderhouse.”
Day’s eyes went wide and he leaned forward in his chair. “The same?”
“Yes, the same man you and Sergeant Hammersmith apprehended last year.”
It had only been a few months since the Yard’s official tailor, the man who had fitted every policeman for his uniform, had revealed a secret taste for small children. Cinderhouse had murdered an inspector and, later, a constable in his efforts to evade capture. It had been Day’s first case, the first case of the newly formed Murder Squad. Cinderhouse had killed Sergeant Hammersmith’s closest friend and paid a threatening visit to Claire Day before finally being caught and brought to justice.
“He knows where I live.” Day stood suddenly, almost knocking his chair over backward.
“Sit.”
Day hesitated, and Hammersmith pushed himself back from the desk to stand beside him.
“We should check on Mrs Day,” Hammersmith said. “She’s pregnant and alone.”
“Please,” Sir Edward said. “Mr Hammersmith, would you sit back down, too?”
Both men reluctantly pushed their chairs back to their former positions and sat down.
“I share your concern,” Sir Edward said. “You must trust me. I have given the situation some thought. There is no reason to think this man Cinderhouse will go to your home or try in any way to strike back at you or your family. He’s no doubt trying to get as far away from London as he can right now.”
“But sir—”
Sir Edward held up his finger to cut Hammersmith off. “But just in case,” he said, “I have sent a constable to guard your home.”
“Only one man?”
“He is all I can spare. But Constable Winthrop is a good lad. I chose him personally. A very large fellow, and very bright. Claire will be safe, I promise.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, you three get to the prison and find some answers for me. I’m certain we’re being manipulated and I don’t like it.”
Day rose without a word and went to the door. He held it open for Hammersmith and nodded to Sir Edward before leaving. Adrian March lingered a moment, as if he wanted to say something privately to the commissioner, then he, too, rose and left the office. Day closed the door after them. The sudden silence was almost startling.
It was going to be a long day. Sir Edward hoped that every escaped prisoner would be back in a cell by nightfall. He only wished he knew how many they were supposed to be looking for. And why they had been set free in the first place.
6
Griffin had carried his keys right past the guards without being searched. A simple matter of money exchanging hands. One of the keys, a master for every cell in Bridewell, had been put to use in the escape. Another skeleton key had been used to open the cabby stand. Now he used the third key to unlock the back door of St John of God Church. He stopped inside the doorway and listened. All was quiet. He crept forward through what seemed to be a storage room full of shadows. Shapes that might have been piles of old curtains, extra pews, spools of braided cord, crates of books. Remembering his instructions, he stopped in the center of the room and knelt beside a threadbare rug. He pulled it aside and ran his fingertips over the floor. A seam ran perpendicular to the grooves in the smooth wood. He got his fingernails into the seam and pulled until one of his nails bent back. There was a flash of pain and he felt sudden moisture. He was bleeding. He wiped his fingers on the leg of his trousers and felt around his neck for the chain, raised it over his head and felt for the flat teeth of the largest key. He jammed them sideways into the seam and pried at the floor until he heard a soft pop and a square chunk of wood, roughly two by two feet, came loose. He smiled and lifted the wood up and out, set it next to him.
There were other ways to access the tunnels beneath the prison, but this was the fastest.
He put the chain, with its keys, back around his neck, tucked it under the front of the stolen warder’s jacket, and sat on the edge of the opening in the floor. He could feel cold air wafting up at him, curling around his ankles and up under his trousers. He kicked his feet out and found a ledge three feet down in the dark. He tested it, then put his weight on the ledge and scooted forward. Held on to the lip of the opening and felt forward with one foot until he found another narrow ledge farther down. A staircase. He kept one hand on the cold wall and the other gripping the edge of the hole in the floor above him and moved cautiously down. The air grew colder and then warmer; the square of slightly brighter darkness above him shrank, then disappeared as he went around a shallow curve in the tunnel wall. He stumbled and nearly fell when he reached the bottom, expecting another stair and stepping down too hard on a stone floor.
He took a moment to catch his breath and remember the instructions he’d been given. There was, he’d been told, a lantern hanging from a hook on the right-hand side of the wall three or four feet from the bottom of the stairs. He ran his hand along the stones until his fingers encountered a hook, but there was nothing hanging from it. They had forgotten. Or they had left the lantern in the wrong place.
There had been far too many mistakes made tonight.
But of course, that was why there was a backup plan. That was why they needed Griffin.
There was no time to waste. He oriented himself and began walking, slowly, shuffling along so as not to trip over anything in his path, one hand always on the gritty wall beside him, until he saw a light far ahead.
Griffin slowed down and edged sideways along the tunnel, trying to be invisible. The silhouette of a man cast a blunt-edged shadow up and along the curved wall. Griffin’s foot scuffed up against an old timber, and a pile of bricks tumbled down from the other end of it, scattering in the dirt. The man turned and held the lantern high. He was bald, and the harsh paraffin light made his skin look yellow. Cinderhouse. The escapee swung his head back and forth like a snake and squinted at Griffin.
“Your name is Griffin,” he said.
Griffin sniffed and stepped out into the fuzzy pool of light. “It is,” he said.
“You’re following me?”
“No.”
“Then you got the message, too,” the bald man said. “Just like me. Telling us to hide down here.”
“Yes.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. He had sent the message to the other prisoners, but had included himself.
The bald man nodded. “You came by the well?”
“The well?”
“You came down here through the old well?”
“I came down a staircase.”
“A staircase?”
“Hidden beneath a church.”
“Look!” The bald man held out his free hand. It was bleeding and covered with fresh blisters. “I hurt myself climbing down that well.”
“There must be more than one way to get down her
e,” Griffin said.
“Where are we?”
“I was going to ask you that.”
“There are buildings down here. Have you seen?”
“No. It’s dark.”
The bald man nodded again. “This was hanging from a post.” He held up the lantern so that its light spread out across the wall beside him. “I think we’re in the old city.”
Griffin looked up at the high-timbered ceiling, arched and weathered by long-ago rain. They were in a courtyard that had once been aboveground. Tunnels branched away from them in several directions, and Griffin almost smiled to think that those dark ominous mouths had once been sunny footpaths. London had sunk into the mud and had been rebuilt on top of itself. Thousands of people had once walked down the road they now stood on, but it had been covered over and forgotten. The yellow lantern light revealed blank brick walls, yawning glassless windows, doors sagging on ancient wooden hinges.
“Yes,” Griffin said, “I think we are.”
They both jumped as a fox ran across the courtyard and disappeared down a dark tunnel, its orange tail a blur.
“Do you think people live down here?”
“I suppose it’s possible.”
“Listen,” the bald man said. “Listen, we could stay down here. They’d never catch us.”
“We?” Even in the dim glow of the lantern’s light, Griffin could see the need in the bald man’s eyes. This was not a person who did well on his own.
“Well, yes. We’re right under their feet.” The bald man chuckled, a rasping, uncertain sound. “They’re right up there, looking for us. And they’ll never find us. Not in a lifetime of searching.”
“You think not?”
“No. I mean, what if they came down here? What then? Why, we’d simply move to a different spot and they’d pass right by us because we’d know the area down here and they wouldn’t. It’s a perfect maze. We’d be safe forever.”