Assassin’s Creed®

by Oliver Bowden

  23

  The night after the body was discovered, The Ghost glanced into the graveyard as he always did on his way home from the dig, and as usual his eyes sought out the gravestone through which Ethan communicated, and as usual it was …

  Ah, no it wasn’t. Not tonight. It was leaning to the right. Danger. Which to The Ghost meant something significant. Not that he was being followed by Cavanagh’s men. He already knew that. But Ethan was around, keeping tabs on him still.

  But to more pressing matters. There were indeed men following him. One of them had left the dig a few minutes before him. As the shift-change bell rang, The Ghost had seen Marchant nod discreetly to one of the three hired hands who were constantly to be found hanging around the office or on the dig. Their names were Hardy, Smith and Other Hardy – Cavanagh’s own predilection for using his surname had either rubbed off on his men or been imposed upon them – and they were passed off as payroll security. The other men called them ‘punishers’, a certain breed who were expert at giving out a good hiding if you greased their palm with silver. But while The Ghost didn’t doubt they were punishers of a sort, he also knew them for what they really were: Templar strongarms. They were professionals too. Big men, they were fit and alert; they didn’t spend their time cracking jokes or whistling at the prostitutes who hung around the perimeter fence touting for business. They kept their minds on the job.

  But they weren’t that good, as the commencement of their covert pursuit of The Ghost proved; they weren’t good enough to hide from him. The man who left at Marchant’s signal – Other Hardy – was next to be seen leaning on a barrow wearing a look of studied disinterest, like he wasn’t really scanning the crowds of departing workers that thronged the street for his quarry. When he caught sight of The Ghost, Other Hardy pushed himself off his barrow and moved on with a walk that could only be described as an ‘amble’, like he wasn’t really set on staying just the right distance ahead of The Ghost.

  Meanwhile, there would be another man behind him. Probably two: Smith and Hardy. And that was good, thought The Ghost, because that was just where he wanted them.

  I hope you like a nice long walk, my friends, he said to himself, and then he spent the rest of the journey speeding up and slowing down, setting himself the challenge of making life as difficult as possible for his pursuers without actually tipping them off that he knew they were there.

  Until, at last, he reached the tunnel. He’d long since left the crowds behind, of course. Ahead of him, Other Hardy was an almost lone figure now, as The Ghost approached the shaft. Some way away, the man stopped, making a pretence of needing to tie his bootlace, as The Ghost took the steps down into the tunnel rotunda. He had spent his day underground, and now he would spend his night there too.

  Reaching the bottom, The Ghost stood among the neglected statues and careworn features – once so swanky and plush, now rotting – and gazed upwards, making a show of enjoying the view. Sure enough, he sensed figures on the steps above him pushing themselves into the shadows. He smiled. Good. This was good. He wanted them to see where he lived.

  ‘Some men may come in the next few days,’ he told Maggie later. By then he had checked on Charlie and given him bread, and he’d attended to Jake, pleased to see the old lag’s leg was on the mend. And with those two tasks complete, he had continued further along, deeper into the sepulchral darkness of the tunnel, picking his way past alcoves crammed with rag-swaddled bodies.

  Some of them slept; some stared at him with wide white eyes from inside their unwelcoming hidey-holes, silently watching him pass; and some greeted him with a wave – ‘Hello, Bharat’, ‘Hello, lad’ – or perhaps a simple blinked salute.

  Some he knew by name, others from their jobs: Olly, for example, was a ‘pure-finder’, which meant he collected dog shit to sell on Bermondsey Market, but who had a tendency to bring his work home with him. The Ghost held his nose as he passed Olly, but raised a short wave anyhow. Many of them had candles, and he was grateful for the light; many did not, and lay shivering in the dark, alone with their pain, weeping as they awaited the crispy dawn and the beginning of another day of soul-destroying survival in London – the world’s most advanced city. The shining jewel of Her Majesty’s great empire.

  And then he reached Maggie, who tended a small fire. She would have been doing so most of the evening, ladling broth into the bowls of any tunnel inhabitant who came asking. They all received their food, or ‘scran’ as it was known, with a mixture of gratitude and devotion, and left thanking Maggie and singing her praises; but mostly they all looked fearfully beyond her to where the light lost its battle with the shadows, and darkness reigned literally and metaphorically, and they thanked God for the young Indian man who some of them knew as Bharat and some of them knew as Maggie’s lad, who had brought order to the tunnel, and made it so that they could sleep more easily in their alcoves at night.

  And there they sat, side by side, Maggie and The Ghost with their backs against the damp tunnel wall and the dying fire at their feet. Maggie’s knees were pulled up and she hugged herself for warmth. Her long grey hair – ‘my witchy hair’, she called it – lay over the fabric of a filthy grey skirt, and though her boots had no laces she said she preferred them that way. She hated feeling ‘trussed up’, she always said. Once upon a time, long ago – ‘before you were even a glint in your daddy’s nutsack’ – she’d seen pictures of Oriental ladies with bound feet, and after that she’d never worn laces in her boots again. She felt things keenly for her fellow man, did Maggie.

  Now her features rearranged themselves into a picture of apprehension and concern. ‘And why,’ she asked, ‘will men be coming for you?’

  ‘They’ll be asking questions about me,’ The Ghost told her, ‘and they may well be pointed in your direction.’

  She gave an indignant harrumph. ‘Well, I bloody well hope so. They bloody well ought to be.’

  As well as helping others, Maggie liked people to know about it. She liked her efforts to be recognized.

  ‘I’m sure they will,’ said The Ghost with a smile. ‘And I would like to ask you to be careful about what you say.’

  She looked sharply at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that there will be others who live in the tunnel who will say that I protect you from the thieves and vagabonds who live further along, and that is acceptable; they will paint a picture of me of a man who is no stranger to violence and I have no problem with that. What I don’t want is for these men to be furnished with an exaggerated account of my abilities as a fighter.’

  She dropped her voice. ‘I’ve seen you in action, don’t forget. There ain’t no exaggerating your abilities as a fighter.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean, Maggie. That’s exactly the sort of thing I don’t want you to say. A man of violence but not necessarily a man of great skill, do I make myself understood?’

  ‘I’m getting there.’

  ‘They are likely to ask you exactly how we met, but … Tell them what you like. Tell them you found me drunk in a gutter. Just don’t tell them about what happened at the churchyard.’

  She reached for his hand. Her weathered hand was almost the colour of his own. ‘You’re not in any trouble, are you, Bharat?’

  ‘I’m touched you should worry.’

  She chuckled. ‘Oh, like I say, I’ve seen you in action. It’s the others who should worry, but …’

  His head dropped. ‘But …?’

  ‘But I also saw you hesitate when you had that murderous little toff bang to rights, and I saw the fight drain out of you, just as
surely as if you’d been uncorked. I saw someone who’s very good at dealing death but ain’t got no heart for doing it. Now, I’ve met lots of evil bastards with a sadistic streak long as your arm, who would go knocking your teeth out of your mouth just because they had too many ales and fancied swinging their arm. Evil bastards who loved dishing out pain but only to those weaker and more vulnerable than themselves. Christ only knows, I’ve been married to two of them. And what’s more, I’ve seen men who was good at fighting and could handle themselves if a brawl broke out, and who would do what they had to do given the circumstances, and maybe take a grim pride in their work, and maybe not.

  ‘But what I ain’t never seen is a man so good at fighting as you, who had so little stomach for it.’

  The Ghost watched as she shook her head in disbelief, her grey hair sweeping her skirts. ‘I’ve thought about that an awful lot, young man, believe you me. I’ve wondered if maybe you was a deserter from the army but not out of cowardice – oh no, I’ve never seen a man so brave – but because you’re one of them, what d’you call it? Conscientious objectors. Well, the truth of it is, that I don’t know, and from the sounds of what you’re saying now, it’s probably best I don’t, but what I do know is that you’ve got a big heart and there’s no room in this world for people with a heart like yours. This world eats up people with hearts like yours. Eat them up and spits them out. You ask if I worry? Yes, my boy, I worry. You ask why? That’s why.’

  24

  As he waited with the other men for their shift to begin, The Ghost wondered if the Templars had found what they were looking for, this artefact left by a civilization before our own, a buried time capsule awaiting discovery. What tremendous power might it have?

  His mind went back to Amritsar as it so often did – his memories were all he had now and he would revisit them with all the reverence of a devout man before a religious shrine – and he thought of the Koh-i-Noor diamond and the spectacular all-powerful lightshow it had revealed, as though providing a portal to other worlds, deeper knowledge, more profound understanding – a map for mankind to find a better world.

  But if it fell into the wrong hands?

  He dreaded to think. But into his mind came unbidden images of enslavement. He saw every man and woman ground down like those at the tunnel, virtual slaves to be spat at and looked down upon, treated as something less than human by grinning masters who ruled from plushly appointed buildings. Men who took symbols and twisted their meaning to meet their own ideology. He saw agony and anguish. He saw a world without hope.

  The bell rang, and the new shift barely acknowledged the departing men as they met like two opposing armies who couldn’t be bothered to fight, passing one another on the mud, clutching their precious tools. Next The Ghost descended a series of ladders into the shaft, walking along the line until he came to the face, where the digging and scooping and carrying continued – it never really stopped – and soon he was filthy. Soon they all were. There were no divisions of colour in the underground; there was just whether you could work and how fast. There was only a cheerful or encouraging word for the man next door.

  Bells were supposed to denote the passing of time, tolling on the hour. But either Marchant didn’t enforce their ringing or The Ghost didn’t hear them, because time simply trudged on without demarcation. Dig, dig, dig. The noise was the incessant scrape and clang of spades and pickaxes and the chatter of men along the line, certain voices louder than the others, the comedians who, they say, kept the other’s spirits up.

  Most men preferred working on the cranes. They saw more sunlight. The metronomic to and fro of the crane served as a clock, denoting the passing of time that was absent in the trench. But not The Ghost. Down here seemed like a respite from all that. Dig, dig, dig, like an automaton. Mind wandering to home, to where he was Jayadeep again.

  Besides, he was used to being underground.

  25

  ‘Well, if it isn’t Police Constable 72 Aubrey Shaw of Covent Garden’s F Division,’ said Abberline, ‘all the way out here in Regent Street.’

  A red-faced, rotund and rather glum-looking peeler looked up from his mug and peered balefully at Abberline, a moustache of ale-froth gleaming on his top lip.

  ‘Well,’ he sneered back, ‘if it isn’t Police Constable 58 Frederick Abberline of Marylebone’s D Division, also some way out of his jurisdiction, who can take his insinuations and stick them where the sun don’t shine.’

  ‘Who’s insinuating?’ said Abberline. ‘I’m coming straight out and saying that you’re skiving, mate, and I’ve caught you bang to rights.’

  It was true. Both constables were a long way out of their respective patches, since they were in the Green Man pub on Regent Street. Abberline had thought he might find Aubrey here, seeing as how he wasn’t to be found on his patch and had a name as something of a regular. Aubrey was fond of cricket, and the Green Man was a haunt of players and enthusiasts. In the window were bats and stumps and other cricket paraphernalia, which no doubt suited Aubrey fine, as he could savour his ale without members of the public peering through the glass and seeing a peeler apparently enjoying a boozy break.

  ‘Anyway, I’m not skiving.’

  ‘Well, what do you call it then? Skiving, sloping off, showing a clean pair of heels to the Green Man to sink a brace of ales – it’s all much the same thing, ain’t it?’

  Aubrey’s shoulders sank. ‘It ain’t skiving, and it ain’t sloping off. It’s more like skulking. No, wait a minute, it’s sulking. That’s what it is.’

  ‘And why would you feel the need to sulk, Aubs, eh?’ Abberline took a seat at the bar beside him. A barman wearing a clean white apron approached, but Abberline waved him away, because Fresh-faced Freddie didn’t drink on duty.

  Beside him, Aubrey had unbuttoned the top pocket of his tunic to take out a folded piece of paper that he handed to Abberline. A crude imitation of a newspaper screamer was handwritten across the top of the page. ‘Have You Seen This Man?’ it said, while below it was a charcoal drawing of a man in robes carrying an improbably long knife.

  ‘The blokes at the station are having a lot of laughs at my expense, I can tell you,’ said Aubrey ruefully.

  ‘Why would that be?’

  ‘A double murder in the Rookery. I expect you’ve heard about it. I have a witness that saw –’

  ‘A man in robes. Yes, I did hear.’

  Aubrey threw up his hands in exasperation. ‘See? This is exactly what I mean. The whole of bloody London knows all about my strange robed man with the very long knife. The whole of bloody London knows I’m looking for a man in fancy robes with a long knife, but no bugger apart from some old crone in the rookery has actually seen him. Mind you …’ He looked sideways at Abberline. ‘They all know about your missing body too, Freddie. Matter of fact, and you’ll have to forgive me for thinking this, but since I heard about Freddie Abberline’s incredible disappearing corpse, I did rather hope it might take the heat off me.’

  Abberline gave a dry laugh. ‘And no such luck?’

  ‘No such luck. That’s why you’re here, is it? You’re skulking too?’

  ‘No. And as a matter of fact your robed man has cropped up in my missing-body case, would you believe?’

  Aubrey’s look of open incredulity was instantly replaced by another of derision. ‘Oh yes, I know your game.’ He looked over Abberline’s shoulder as though expecting to see pranksters come chortling from the shadows of the pub. ‘Who put you up to this?’

  ‘Oh do pipe down, Aubs. I’m telling you that I believe in your robed man. Th
at’s something, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, you’d be the first. You’d be practically the only one. Like I say, apart from the crone, nobody else has seen a robed man. I’ve asked every trader in Covent Garden Market. I must have asked half of the Rookery, and you would think that a robed man with an enormously long knife would stand out, wouldn’t you? Eye-catching like. But no. Nobody’s seen him. Nobody apart from that one witness. It’s like he just appeared – and then disappeared.’

  Abberline thought. For some reason that chimed with how he felt about the stranger at Belle Isle – a mysterious figure within the mist, his motives just as much a mystery. ‘So who are your marks?’ he asked.

  ‘One of them was a lowlife went by the name of Boot. Petty thief. Runner for various East End gangs.’

  ‘No stranger to the blade, no doubt.’

  ‘Yeah, but, no … Actually, he was shot.’

  ‘He was shot? What about the other one?’

  ‘Ah, here’s where it gets sad, Freddie. It was a little girl. Got in the way, looks like.’

  ‘And was she shot too?’

  Aubrey threw him a look. ‘Most people take a second to reflect on the tragedy of a little girl being gunned down, Freddie.’

  ‘Ah, so she was shot?’

  ‘Yeah, she was shot.’

  ‘Right, so a witness saw a man in robes, carrying what looked like a wickedly long blade?’

  ‘Thin as well, this blade. More like one of them fencing swords. Like a rapier.’

  ‘Not for cutting. For combat. For stabbing. Yet this man Boot and the little girl were both shot?’

  ‘That’s right.’