The Thieves' Labyrinth (Albert Newsome 3)

by McCreet, James

  ‘Another of my kind, I expect. There are enough of us.’

  ‘But you said this was undiscovered territory.’

  ‘Then I advise you to keep quiet and turn your light away from that passage. There’s no need to worry – we’ll be leaving shortly.’

  ‘I should speak with the other fellow also. Wait for me here.’

  ‘It is better that you stay with me. You don’t want to be going off . . . sir? Sir!’

  But Mr Newsome had set off splashing into the other tunnel, where the light he had seen was becoming dimmer.

  ‘Ho! You there! Wait a moment if you please!’ he shouted into the vanishing blackness.

  His shouts echoed dankly along the sewer and seemed to return to him from both directions. The tunnel was clearly a very old one and became smaller as he strode, forcing him to bend further and further until he reached a parting of the ways, where four other mouths let forth their gurgling stream into a larger pipe. He stopped, looking back to be sure of his return path. Then the light he was chasing showed itself again and appeared to be vanishing into a branch from the sewer straight ahead.

  He determined to venture only that far before returning to his friend with the wooden map. But as he hurried towards that branch and peered into it, he caught the briefest flash of the person he was pursuing: the silhouette of a hatless head, hair apparently stiff with dirt and a figure of seemingly boyish dimensions . . . the selfsame man who had leaped in handcuffs from the police galley? He who had loitered at Pickle Herring?

  ‘Stop! Thames Police!’

  Mr Newsome rushed to where he had seen the figure, heedless now of the stinking matter that soaked him to the thighs and splashed across his uniform jacket. Here was his treasure, just out of reach within the subterranean viscera of the city.

  ‘I said halt!’

  Mr Newsome arrived at another nodal point, his own voice still reverberating wetly through the brickwork, and searched once more for the fugitive light. Which tunnel now? There seemed to be no sign of illumination but his own.

  He tried to control his breathing that he might better hear the footsteps of his quarry, but there was none. The man had no doubt extinguished his lamp and paused silently in his flight. Now it was only a case of who would move first . . . but the tide was ineluctably rising and only one of them likely had the knowledge to escape without aid.

  He waited a few more heavy heartbeats, hearing nothing but the constant telluric rumble and the conjoined flow of a thousand foetid streams. Seconds passed into minutes, and still nothing. Time to make a decision – he had to return.

  He kicked the wall in frustration and set back the way he had come. Back along that same tunnel to the place he had glimpsed the figure; back further to where the tunnels divided and then straight on . . . but which one was ‘straight on’? It had seemed at the time that he had proceeded in a direct line from one passage to the next, but now he faced two that might qualify. Both looked identical from his vantage point.

  ‘Hello there!’ he called out to his guide. ‘It is I: the Thames Police inspector. Can you hear me?’

  No reply.

  ‘I say – I am close to you but cannot see you. Could you move in front of the tunnel I previously ventured down? I cannot remember which one it is . . .’

  No sight or sound of any human presence.

  Grinding his jaw, Mr Newsome selected the sewer on the left and walked down it to the end. But once there, he did not recognize the place in which his tosher had found the silver coin. So, returning whence he had come, he took the right-hand option and discovered soon enough that the brickwork therein was in a state of partial collapse – quite dangerous, and clearly not the right tunnel.

  He returned to the meeting place of all and determined to take the third tunnel, which, though it seemed not at all to be the one he had originally emerged from, must indeed be the correct one.

  It was not. At least, it brought him to no place that seemed remotely familiar. Indeed, nothing seemed familiar. It all looked the same: the maddening uniformity of the bricks, the perpetually trickling liquid, the flickering shadows thrown by his chest-mounted lamp . . .

  ‘Where are you, man?’

  His own voice replied: a sound oddly magnified and distorted through the endless masonry roots of the metropolis, a repeating note of creeping panic – a sound to unnerve any man.

  He held his breath and strained to hear any indication of his tosher guide: the faintest splash of foot or distant cough. But there was only the constant trickle of liquid and that great elemental moan of the city throbbing through the brickwork all about him . . .

  And then something else.

  It came to him from a distance, channelled through the network of ancient and modern cavities: a low, guttural note that seemed half growl, half roar – a sound that could have been an irregularity of the sewer’s flow . . . or one made by an animal. A large animal.

  At this sound, there followed another no less perturbing: that of a thousand unseen rats stirring from their vile crevices into the water, where they squeaked and splashed and scratched in evident agitation. The sub-city tunnels were alive with it.

  Mr Newsome checked his watch with a hand that refused to shake. The river had now risen. The sewer mouth was closed. He was trapped, abandoned: lost beneath the vast, teeming mass of London’s urban fabric.

  He wondered whether the oil in the lamp would last.

  TWENTY

  The glow of the fire was the only illumination in that modest parlour in Lambeth. It shone in Mr Williamson’s eyes as he sat alone, staring sightlessly into the flames. His notebook lay open on his knees, and numerous other sheets of paper were scattered on the floor about him. Katherine’s chair – his dead wife’s chair – had been moved from its accompanying location by the hearth to sit instead beside the wall. It was dark outside, yet the curtains remained unclosed, providing a dim reflection of the man in the window’s black panes.

  Held loosely in his right hand was a tract recently pressed upon him by an earnest young man in the habit of hectoring the crowds outside the theatres of Haymarket:

  BEWARE THE LURE OF THE MAGDALENE!

  Be not blinded by her beauty, for she has no higher morality. Sin and deprivation is all she knows. Cast down your eyes upon seeing her, for she is Eve proffering the cankered apple.

  Take not that fruit! Look not into her eyes – she is serpent beneath her smile, and her forked tongue leads Man into temptation as surely as Christ was tempted by the Devil himself . . .

  He crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it towards the fire, where it at once began to uncurl languorously among the flames – a bright heart of combustion even amid the burning coals. In a moment, it was naught but frail ash.

  A sudden knock at the street door startled him from his reveries.

  He remained sitting.

  Again the sharp rapping at the door and the voice he had hoped not to hear:

  ‘George – it is I: Noah. I know you are awake; I have seen the firelight through the window. George?’

  Mr Williamson closed the notebook with a sigh and made a perfunctory effort to clear some of the papers around him. Still, he did not stand.

  ‘George?’ came the voice from outside. ‘Are you safe? In ten seconds, I will assume you are being held against your will and must force open the door . . .’

  Finally, he stood and ventured into the hall, where he opened the street door to peer out through the crack. He had been prepared to rebuff his visiter, but circumstances persuaded otherwise.

  ‘My G—, Noah! What has happened to you?’

  Noah Dyson was bleeding freely from a long cut to the forehead above his left eye. His unkempt clothes (an incongruous oilskin ensemble) were likewise spotted and smeared with blood – whether his own or another’s was unclear.

  ‘May I enter, George? I have important intelligence on the Aurora case.’

  ‘Were you attacked?’

  ‘It is more complica
ted than that . . . and I fear that my attacker will soon know your address if he is observing and sees me dawdling on the step talking to a gap in the door.’

  ‘Yes, yes – I suppose you must come in.’

  Noah cast a final look at the street behind him and entered.

  ‘I will get something for your wounds,’ said Mr Williamson. ‘Pull a seat in front of the fire.’

  ‘Have you any brandy?’ called Noah, taking Katherine’s chair and settling it before the hearth.

  ‘I do not keep spiritous liquor in the house,’ said Mr Williamson, returning with a small brown glass bottle and a strip of cotton cloth. ‘This is chymist’s alcohol to clean your cuts.’

  Noah sniffed the bottle’s neck and set about cleaning the lacerations above his eye and across his knuckles. If the preparation stung, he showed no sign of it. Then, with that task completed, he sighed and swigged heavily from the bottle, coughing as the concentrated spirit burned his throat and brought tears to his eyes.

  ‘I believe it is not to be taken internally,’ said Mr Williamson, taking his seat.

  ‘The bitterest medicine is sometimes the most efficacious, is it not?’

  ‘Hmm. Are we to speak in riddles, or will you tell me what has happened?’

  ‘I am a great advocate of honesty and clarity, at least where trusted fellows are concerned. Are we trusted fellows, George? You were keen enough to escape my presence at the London Dock when Sir Richard was about. Did he see me whisper to you and reprimand you for it?’

  ‘He is no longer my superior. I do not work for him.’

  ‘Indeed, but you evade my question all the same. I will not press you to tell me what you would rather keep confidential . . . but only tell me this: are we still working together on this mystery of the Aurora? Would you prefer me no longer to call at your house?’

  ‘Hmm. Hmm. Noah – there are things . . .’

  ‘Are you ashamed to be associated with one such as myself? Do Ben and I sully your good name in the eyes of Sir Richard and those other guardians of justice? Has he, I wonder, hinted that your return to the Detective Force is dependent on your not associating with the likes of me? I sit here bloodied in the name of a cause I undertook in partnership with you. At least afford me the respect of a frank answer.’

  Mr Williamson sighed. ‘It is something of that sort, Noah.’

  ‘Then let us speak candidly. Is that what you truly want: a return to the Force?’

  ‘Noah, I . . . I no longer know. Since I left – or rather, since I was shouldered aside by Inspector Newsome – I have led a purposeless existence. I have engaged in employment beneath my ability. I have fallen into habits unbecoming—’

  ‘What habits? You walk the streets. You work. You do not even keep brandy in your house!’

  ‘I have become degenerate in my thoughts.’

  ‘O, not this nonsense again. You are referring to the girl Charlotte, of course. Have you been visiting her rooms at Golden-square? Have you been paying for her favours?’

  ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘Then what sin have you committed other than that of being a man? You think of her often – it is natural enough if she is attractive. It is what she lives for: to captivate men such as you.’

  ‘I . . . I dream of her. Indecent dreams . . .’

  ‘Of course you do. There is no need to blush so. Our animal urges are always stronger than our higher sensibilities. But, George – if I may venture some advice: you cannot love a whore. She does not seek it and will not be persuaded of it. Her body is her commodity and you cannot afford it for a lifetime. These street girls do not marry. They will not be saved except through the benediction of wealth.’

  ‘Hmm. You are right, of course.’

  ‘But despite knowing this higher truth, you cannot control your feelings. Such is the paradox, and flaw, of all religion, George.’

  ‘I will not tolerate any of your blasphemy, Noah . . .’

  ‘It is religion – not desire – that tortures you, George. It is religion that is your inner dictator. Your feelings for Charlotte are natural and pure . . . but only as long as they are lustful. Do not confuse this with love.’

  ‘Hmm. Hmm. I . . . it is a personal matter. I must examine my soul for guidance. In the meantime . . . I hope you will respect my disinclination to discuss it further.’

  ‘I will, but you know you can speak to me on the subject without shame whenever you wish. I have seen the world, George. I have seen horizons and civilizations that you – a man only of the city – cannot conceive. There is more to this human flesh than nave and steeple, than right and wrong . . .’

  ‘I know you have had a different life than I, but . . .’

  ‘Men change, George. Some become better; some become worse. It is within our power to choose.’

  ‘Hmm – now you sound like Sir Richard . . .’

  ‘Ha! That is a comparison I would never have expected.’

  Mr Williamson did not share the laughter, but turned his gaze once more upon the flames.

  ‘Very well,’ said Noah, perceiving the dark curtain of melancholy descending upon his friend. ‘I need hardly tell you that Mr Newsome will be pursuing whatever means necessary to solve the case, whether or not they meet Sir Richard’s notions of morality. Will you discuss the Aurora with me, or should I leave you to your fire?’

  ‘Noah . . . I . . . Tell me about how you received your injuries.’

  ‘Good. These cuts were dealt me not two hours ago by that mysterious Italian fellow of our recent acquaintance. As you might expect, it was not all one way – I gave a good account of myself.’

  ‘What happened? How did you locate him?’

  ‘That is the most curious thing. I was seeking Eldritch Batchem among the shipping districts and I quite accidentally saw the Italian surreptitiously observing none other than our russet-capped “investigator”.’

  ‘Wait – the Italian was secretly observing Eldritch Batchem? Why would he do such a thing? And on whose behalf? I cannot imagine Mr Batchem asking his own associate to watch him.’

  ‘Precisely. If not Batchem, who is watching all of the players in this drama, and why?’

  ‘Is it possible that Mr Batchem engineered this in order to confuse us and cast our gaze elsewhere?’

  ‘I have considered it, of course – but no man could have predicted I would be at Ratcliff-highway at that time or place. In truth, this development now seems more logical. For all his sophistry, Batchem is not particularly sophisticated in his methods, whereas I think we can both agree that the Italian is an admirable exemplar of thievery, observation and stealth. Would such a man work for our be-capped buffoon?’

  ‘Hmm. It is a persuasive argument. As I said the other day, I first encountered this Italian before Mr Batchem’s theatrical address and Mr Timbs’s challenge. Was he, I wonder, observing me on a matter unconnected with any investigation into the Aurora’s disappearance? Or, rather, in anticipation of such an investigation – in order to gauge what kind of detective I might be? I cannot fathom what other reason he, or his masters, could have for engineering that strange incident.’

  ‘I, too, sense that my life has been under scrutiny – and not only scrutiny, but also manipulation. Let us not forget the article in the London Monitor. Did it not strike you as strange how much privileged information was revealed there? At the time, I wondered at Batchem having the wherewithal to discern those facts. But now I think about the Italian . . . he strikes me as the kind of man who might be able to learn such detail – or who might work with another who has that ability.’

  ‘Hmm. Then if not Eldritch Batchem, for whom does the Italian work? Does it not seem possible that whoever is behind these recent deaths and the disappearance of the vessel is also behind our Italian?’

  ‘Quite. And if that is the case, I venture to suggest that we are not dealing with mere smugglers. There is a greater intelligence at work here. If, as now seems likely, Batchem was not responsible for the art
icle in the Monitor, it would appear someone has been seeking to cast suspicion, quite successfully, on him at the same time as disparagement is heaped on us. Someone, in short, is not only trying to throw the investigation off the scent but also to damage or denigrate its investigators in the process. Have you heard what has happened to my business concerns as a result of that article?’

  ‘Hmm. Hmm. I have heard rumours.’

  ‘My entire stock confiscated and the manufactory closed until the extent of duties owed can be determined. It is also said that the East India Company is asking about irregularities in the exports. I am fortunate that my real name appears on no documentation and that my workforce knows nothing of my address.’

  ‘Hmm. I fear you are quite correct: we face a greater threat than we first imagined. Did you learn nothing more in your altercation with the Italian? There must be something more – some further hint or clue.’ Mr Williamson reached for his notebook. ‘Tell me precisely what happened.’

  Noah could not help but smile at the detective’s unchanging method. ‘Very well. It was like this, George: after ascertaining that Batchem was the subject of observation, I turned my attention instead to the pursuer. And, frankly, I have never seen such ability. Within minutes, he seemed to sense that he was being watched and began to look around him. Only with the greatest efforts did I manage to remain unseen, but it was inevitable he would finally discern my design and my identity.’

  ‘He attacked you?’

  ‘Not immediately. His primary interest was Batchem so he persisted in his pursuit with the frustrating knowledge that I, his shadow, would also benefit. Clearly, he could not allow me that advantage. He would have to ensure my silence. In such a way did we follow Batchem about the environs of Ratcliff-highway for almost an hour, watching him enquire at public houses and among the seafaring classes thereabouts.’

  ‘What was the nature of his investigation?’

  ‘I will come to that in a moment. However, when it became clear that Batchem was returning west to his hotel, the Italian appeared promptly to vanish. One moment he was in my vision and the next he was gone, perhaps as a wagon passed through my line of sight. Evidently, he expected me to pursue him in the vicinity of my last sighting: down an alley between two shops. It was clearly a trap, but I was in an intemperate humour and rather relished the challenge. Moreover, I was armed, as I knew he must also be.’