His concentration was interrupted very suddenly by a knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ he growled.
The door opened, and Mrs Blight entered the room.
‘Mr Finch, sir,’ she said, her features gaunt and stark in the lamplight. ‘We’ve had visitors.’
Finch rose from behind the desk, his head very nearly touching the ceiling. ‘Visitors?’ he said. ‘What sort of visitors?’
‘Torchwood.’
Finch huffed and then smiled, his lips curling back to reveal yellowing teeth. ‘Looking for their friend, were they?’
‘Perhaps.’
Finch walked around his desk, picking up a small vial that was placed next to the microscope. He held it against the lamplight, sloshing its liquid red contents against the glass.
‘And did they suspect anything?’
‘Hard to say,’ said Mrs Blight. ‘But it’s only a matter of time. What if they return?’
‘You may be right,’ said Finch, turning to her and smiling with menace. ‘They may return. And we shall be waiting for them.’
As Mrs Blight nodded, closing the door behind her, Finch returned the vial to his desk. On its side there was a label, and written on that label, in black ink, the words:
PATIENT 237 - HARKNESS, J.
Peter ran across the marshlands, and Sam followed after him.
‘Keep up!’ Peter yelled, waving the broken branch above his head as if it were a sabre. ‘I can seem ’em! Thousands of ’em!’
Sam stopped running and braced himself against his knees, gasping for breath. He could feel the water soaking into his brand new shoes. His mother was going to give him a clip around the ear when he got home.
‘What are you doing?’ cried Peter, turning around, still brandishing the stick. ‘I can see Zulus! They’re down in the gorge!’
‘I’m tired,’ Sam wheezed. ‘When do I get to be Chard?’
‘You’re Bromhead,’ said Peter, as if offended. ‘Bromhead won a VC too, you know.’
‘I know, but I want to be Chard. And besides. . . There was no gorge at Rorke’s Drift. We’re doing this all wrong. . .’
‘Stop whining!’ shouted Peter. ‘There’s Zulus in the gorge. . .’
Before Sam could offer any further protest, Peter had turned and begun charging once more, bellowing at the top of his voice. Sam shook his head and rolled his eyes.
Peter was always getting him into trouble. Sam’s mother had given him strict instructions that he was to come straight home from school – no dawdling and certainly no mucking about on the marshes. It had been Peter’s idea to come home this way, and now here they were, up to their ankles in water and fighting imaginary tribesmen on an imaginary veldt.
At least, Sam supposed, they were running in the right direction. He could already see the rooftops of his street and the chapel graveyard. If he followed Peter towards his nonexistent gorge he would eventually get home, even if it was a little later than his mother would have liked.
He had been running for no more than a minute when, a little way ahead of him, Peter fell out of view, vanishing behind the reeds. Sam stopped running.
‘Peter?’ he called out. ‘Peter? What’s happened?’
His friend did not reply.
‘Peter!’ he shouted. ‘Stop messing about!’
After another moment’s pause, the only sound that of the seagulls swooping and diving overhead, Sam began to run once more. He sloshed through the water, regardless of how drenched his new shoes might get, until he came at last to where Peter had fallen.
He found his friend sat on the ground hugging his knees to his chest, his face gaunt with terror.
‘What is it?’ Sam asked. ‘Why did you fall?’
Peter looked up at him, startled, and with his hand shaking uncontrollably he pointed at something lying half-buried in the water and the mud.
It was a severed arm.
‘And you believed him?’ asked Alice as she followed Gaskell across the Hub.
‘Yes,’ said Gaskell. ‘Why shouldn’t I? The man is an Admiral, Alice, or does that mean nothing to you?’
‘Not particularly,’ Alice replied. ‘But then I wasn’t in the Navy.’
‘Sir Henry Montague is a great man,’ Gaskell continued. ‘And I don’t think we’ll get very far if we start throwing wild accusations at him.’
He strode over to the entrance to Emily’s office.
‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘I’ve spoken to Montague. . .’
‘So I heard,’ said Emily, looking up from a document. ‘All of it.’
Alice appeared at Gaskell’s side.
‘Anyway,’ Emily continued, ‘if the two of you are done arguing, I think I may have found something rather interesting.’
They entered the office and stood before her desk. Emily turned the document so that they could read it.
‘What is it?’ Gaskell asked.
‘Records,’ replied Emily. ‘Students who have graduated from the Hades Ragged School since 1889.’
‘And. . .?’
Emily turned the document once more and held it alongside an open dossier.
‘This name here,’ she replied. ‘Benjamin K. Flambard. Born on the Third of August 1883, graduated in July 1895.’
‘So?’ said Gaskell. ‘Doesn’t sound particularly odd to me.’
‘No,’ Emily told him. ‘Unless one considers that a Benjamin K. Flambard, born on the Third of August 1883 died at St Helen’s Hospital. On the Fourth of August that same year.’
‘When he was a day old. . .?’
‘Exactly.’
The office fell into silence.
Gaskell leaned against the desk and raised a hand to his mouth. ‘You mean to say that all these names. . . all the boys who graduated. . . They’re all the names of babies who died shortly after birth?’
‘Not all,’ said Emily. ‘But I’ve been able to match more than thirty so far.’
‘Good grief,’ gasped Alice. ‘They’re taking the names of dead babies and falsifying the records. . .’
Emily nodded.
‘But if they aren’t teaching boys there, what are they doing?’
‘There’s more,’ said Emily, taking a copy of a newspaper from a drawer and opening it next to the documents. ‘These are the classified advertisements for the Western Mail. See here. . . “Wealthy couple wish to adopt child, preferably newborn. Fee negotiable.”’
‘Fee?’ said Gaskell. ‘You mean they expect to be paid to adopt someone’s baby?’
‘Baby farming,’ Alice said, her voice barely louder than a whisper. ‘Desperate women without the means to look after their child pay a small fee to have the child taken off them. But what has this got to do with the Hades?’
Emily pointed at a number below the advertisement.
‘That,’ she said, ‘is a telephone number. Now there are not a great many telephones in Cardiff, but that one just happens to be listed at a property in Butetown.’
‘The Hades?’ asked Gaskell.
Emily laughed. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘They haven’t made it that easy for us. The property in question happens to be empty. A house belonging to a Mr Edmund Blight.’
Alice smiled knowingly. ‘Don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘Late husband of. . .’
‘Exactly. It appears our missing friend Mayhew may have stumbled upon this rather interesting clue—’
Before Emily could say another word, she was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. She lifted the receiver to her ear.
‘Cardiff one-six-five?’ she said.
There was a long pause.
‘I see. Of course. You have been most helpful, as always. Thank you, and good day.’
Emily returned the receiver to its cradle and let out a long sigh.
‘What is it?’ asked Alice.
‘Unfortunate news,’ replied Emily. ‘It would appear that our missing friend Mayhew has been found. In several locations.’
Gaskell grimaced, cov
ering his mouth with his hand. Alice sighed and shook her head.
‘And Harkness?’ she asked.
‘No news of him, I’m afraid.’
‘So what do we do now?’
‘We wait,’ said Emily. ‘Until nightfall. And then we pay another visit to HMS Hades.’
‘Penny for your thoughts?’
Gaskell looked up from his glass of rum, saw Clara and smiled. ‘Not sure they’re worth that much,’ he said.
The smoking room of the Six Bells was almost empty. Gaskell sat at the bar, while in the far corner an old retired sailor in a peaked cap sat puffing away on his pipe and nursing a pewter tankard of beer. The only other person in the room was Clara, the barmaid, a towel resting on one shoulder and her blonde hair tied up in a bun.
Clara was 26 years old, with eyes the colour of tropical seas, her beauty marred only by a puckered line of scar tissue, no more than two inches in length, on the side of her throat. Although it was only noticeable in a certain light, Gaskell knew she was still conscious of it every waking moment of the day.
‘You look like you’ve the weight of the world on your shoulders,’ Clara said, leaning on the bar so that her face was now only inches from his.
‘Do I?’ asked Gaskell.
Clara nodded sympathetically. ‘Don’t suppose you’d ever tell me what it is, though,’ she said. ‘’Nother rum?’
Gaskell shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not while I’m on duty.’
Clara laughed. ‘You know something, Charlie?’ she said. ‘One of these days you’ll tell me what it is you do for a living.’
‘Oh, I doubt that,’ said Gaskell, winking at the beautiful young barmaid.
As he drained the last drops of rum from his glass and felt its warmth trickle down his throat and onto his chest, the door opened. Reflected in the mirror behind the bar, he saw two men enter. They stood behind him, and one of them gripped him by the shoulder.
Gaskell spun around on his stool, his hand already inside his jacket and gripping the butt of his revolver.
‘Hey, easy there, Charlie Boy!’ said one of the men.
Gaskell squinted in the hazy, blue-grey light of the smoking room and realised, very quickly, that he knew them. McQuaid and Tice, both of them crew members on HMS Atropos. McQuaid, a short and wiry Irishman, had been the gunner, while Tice, a towering near-giant of a man, had served alongside Gaskell in the Marines. He hadn’t seen them in three years or more.
‘McQuaid?’ Gaskell said, smiling quizzically. ‘Tice? What are you doing here?’
‘Could ask the same of you!’ said McQuaid, still gripping Gaskell by the shoulder. ‘I mean, look at you, in your fancy suit and your fancy hat. Somebody landed on their feet when they came ashore, didn’t they?’
Gaskell laughed a little nervously. His eyes met Tice’s for a moment, but the taller man said nothing.
‘So what line of work’s got you all dolled up like the Prince of Wales?’ asked McQuaid. ‘Are you selling Bibles or something?’
‘It’s Government work,’ Gaskell replied, evasively.
McQuaid turned to Tice, raising both eyebrows. ‘D’you hear that, Tice?’ he said. ‘Government work! Well I never. Government work, he says. And, no offence, like, but they’re letting coloured fellas do Government work now, are they?’
Gaskell narrowed his eyes. Where was this leading? What were they doing there? He couldn’t accept that it was merely a coincidence. He nodded silently in reply.
‘Well fancy that!’ said McQuaid, his tone bordering on sarcasm. ‘They’ll be letting the Irish in on the game soon, eh, Tice? Maybe get myself a job as a civil servant, what d’you reckon?’
Tice laughed through his nose with a huff, but said nothing.
Gaskell rose from his stool. ‘Well, gents,’ he said. ‘I was just leaving.’
‘Leaving already?’ said McQuaid. ‘But we’ve only just got here, so we have.’
‘Sorry, McQuaid. Maybe some other time.’
Gaskell turned to Clara and nodded a silent goodbye, then offered a brief nod to McQuaid and Tice in turn, before leaving the Six Bells.
It was as he walked along Charlotte Street that he realised he was being followed. McQuaid and Tice were behind him, keeping their distance, but following him nonetheless.
Gaskell turned off Charlotte Street and into an alleyway lined on both sides with barrels and crates. The far end of the alley met a dead end at the back of the Bute Street slaughterhouse, but he already knew this. It was part of his plan. When he had almost reached the end of the alley he turned on his heels to see McQuaid and Tice standing between the barrels and blocking his escape, both of them brandishing knives.
‘You know,’ said McQuaid, ‘you’re a good sort, Charlie Boy. It’s a crying shame we’ve got to do this, but times are hard, you know?’
‘Who sent you?’ demanded Gaskell.
‘Now that would be telling.’ McQuaid smirked. ‘Maybe it’s a jealous husband, or maybe it’s someone who thinks you ask too many questions. Who are we to say?’
They were walking towards him now, Tice still silent, McQuaid turning the knife over and over in his hand.
Gaskell reached inside his jacket and drew his revolver from its holster. McQuaid and Tice both stopped in their tracks.
‘Oh, come now, Charlie Boy,’ said McQuaid. ‘That’s not exactly sporting, is it? We bring knives and you bring a gun? You been reading too many of them stories about the Wild West now, haven’t you? Fancying yourself as a regular Wild Bill Hickok?’
‘Fine,’ said Gaskell, placing the revolver down onto a barrel. ‘Suit yourselves.’
McQuaid smiled malevolently, nodded, and then, after only a moment’s pause, he and Tice came forward.
Gaskell bunched his hands into fists and adopted the stance of a boxer, resting back on his heels as they drew closer and closer.
Tice was in front, now. Practically mute though he may have been, he was the brawn to back up McQuaid’s sarcastic wit, the secret, silent weapon in his arsenal.
Gaskell waited, and waited, and, when Tice was only a few feet away from him, he spun around, his left leg arcing up in one fluid motion until his booted foot slammed violently into Tice’s jaw with a loud crack.
Tice staggered sideways, falling into a tower of barrels which came crashing down around him, but Gaskell was far from finished.
As McQuaid made his move, the blade of his knife held out like a poor man’s rapier, Gaskell dodged to one side and then delivered a crippling punch to the Irishman’s ribs. McQuaid gasped for air and lunged again but Gaskell grabbed his wrist and in one swift move snapped it with a sickening crunch.
McQuaid swore, dropping the knife to the ground, his hand hanging limp and twisted at his side.
Tice was back on his feet, slack-jawed but conscious, and, as he came running forward, Gaskell delivered another kick to his face and then, before he had a chance to recover, a punishing blow to Tice’s stomach.
Scrambling around on his hands and knees, McQuaid searched the puddles and potholes for his knife. As he spotted it and made a grab for the handle, Gaskell kicked him in the head and then the stomach, pinning him to the ground with his boot against the Irishman’s throat.
‘Who sent you?’ Gaskell snarled.
McQuaid looked up at him, his lips curled into a bloodied sneer, and laughed.
‘Who sent you?’ Gaskell asked once more.
From somewhere behind him Gaskell heard the sound of sluggish footsteps sloshing through the puddles. Without taking his foot from McQuaid’s throat and without turning, he reached out, grabbed his revolver from where he had left it, aimed it back over his shoulder and fired.
A second later he heard the sound of Tice’s corpse hitting the ground with a heavy thud.
He aimed the gun down at McQuaid.
‘Tell me who sent you,’ he said, through gritted teeth.
McQuaid laughed again. ‘Loud gunshot like that,’ he whispered, blood and saliva foaming i
n the corner of his mouth. ‘Somebody’ll have called the police. . .’
‘Who sent you?’
‘I’m not telling you,’ McQuaid cackled. ‘You’ll have to shoot me first.’
Gaskell looked McQuaid in the eyes, searching for just a flicker of hesitation, but he saw none. McQuaid meant every word of what he said. Gaskell thumbed back the hammer of his pistol and aimed it squarely at McQuaid’s forehead.
Somewhere beyond the alleyway, out on the thoroughfare of Charlotte Street, he could hear the sound of police whistles. The last thing Gaskell needed was to waste time with the police, as much as he might enjoy watching constables grudgingly acknowledge his authority.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he opened his revolver and emptied the five remaining shells into the palm of his hand, pocketing them as he did so. Then, using a handkerchief, he wiped down the butt of the pistol, and crouching on his haunches placed it on the ground next to McQuaid.
‘Bastard. . .’ McQuaid hissed.
Gaskell looked down at him and winked.
‘You should have answered my question.’
He was far away from the alleyway and Charlotte Street by the time the police arrived.
As night fell, a wall of fog came rolling in over the docks and the tangled streets of Butetown. The skeletal masts of tall ships were all that could be seen rising up out of the mist, and the sound of foghorns echoed across the town like a mournful lullaby.
Deep under the ink-black waters of the Oval Basin, three people prepared themselves for the night ahead.
Emily Holroyd loaded her Smith and Wesson revolver, checking the action several times over before sliding it into her holster.
Alice Guppy sharpened her Corsican vendetta knife on a whetstone.
Charles Gaskell opened the cupboard next to his desk and lifted out his Winchester pump-action shotgun.
As if acting upon some unspoken signal they rose from their stations and together they marched along the narrow corridor from the Hub to the stables.
Moments later, on a street shrouded in fog, an anonymous wooden door in an abandoned warehouse opened with mechanical grace, and from the darkness inside three horses and their riders came charging out into the night.
Consequences Page 3