Assassin’s Creed®

by Oliver Bowden

  From behind Evie came a whisper. ‘What are you doing there?’

  Startled and straightening with a slight cracking of her legs, Evie turned to find Jacob behind her, grinning, as usual. She put a finger to her lips then ushered him away from the door and to the stairs so they could retire for bed.

  Evie would tell Jacob what she had learnt, knowing full well that for all he would insist on every little detail he wouldn’t really bother listening. Assassin history, tactics, policy, the artefacts – these were all aspects of the Assassin life that Jacob was happy to leave for a later date, when their father was good and ready to teach them.

  Not for Evie, though. Evie was thirsty to learn.

  34

  Months had passed since the events at the Waughs’ home, and during those months Abberline had brooded. Occasionally he brooded alone. Occasionally he had help in the form of Aubrey who, while not quite as brooding as Abberline, did a little out of sympathy, as well as being glad of an ale or two in the Green Man.

  During these occasions, despondently hunched over a table in the pub and trying not to stand out like two skiving bobbies, Aubrey would attempt to lighten the mood with one of the best new music-hall jokes.

  ‘I say, I say, I say, Freddie, when is a boat smaller than a bonnet?’

  ‘I don’t know. When is a boat smaller than a bonnet?’

  ‘When it’s capsized.’

  And sometimes he would try to lighten the mood with one of the worst.

  ‘I say, I say, I say, Freddie. Why do tailors always please their customers?’

  ‘I don’t know, why?’

  ‘Because it is their business to suit people.’

  And other times he would try to engage Abberline in more profound and philosophical discussion.

  ‘It’s just one of those things,’ he said one day.

  ‘But it’s not, though, is it?’ Abberline, who had long since forgone his no-drinking-on-duty rule, drained the rest of his pint. ‘If it was just one of those things I wouldn’t be so bothered. Because you know what really irks me, Aubrey? It’s the not knowing. It’s the fact that liars and murderers are walking around out there, thinking they got one over on the peelers. No, what am I talking about? Not the peelers, because no bugger else apart from you and me could give two hoots about robed men and missing bodies. Thinking they got one over on you and me, is what it is.’

  Aubrey shook his head sadly. ‘You know what your problem is, Freddie? You want everything to be black and white. You want answers all the time. And sometimes, you know, there just ain’t no answers, and there ain’t no black and white; there’s just different shades of grey, which is to say that things are as murky as the bottom of the Thames and just as rotten-smelling, but there ain’t nothing you can do about the Thames and there ain’t nothing you can do about that either.’

  ‘No, you’re wrong.’ Abberline stopped himself and reconsidered. ‘Well, all right, maybe you’re only half right. There are shades of grey when it comes to right and wrong. I’ll give you that and stand you a pint for your insights.’ He held up two fingers and was rewarded with a response from across the room. ‘But you’re wrong about answers. There are answers. And I want to know those answers.’

  Aubrey nodded, tried to dredge up another joke, but the only one he could think of was one with the punchline, ‘No noose is good noose’, and he didn’t think that was appropriate in the circumstances. So instead they drank their next pint in silence, and did some more brooding.

  Outside they went their separate ways along Regent Street, and Abberline wondered if a man from the pub, who had seemed to be taking an inordinate interest in them, would follow either him or Aubrey.

  Glancing in the reflection of a shop window, he saw that he was the lucky one.

  35

  ‘So, how about you tell me why you’ve been following me these past few days?’

  It was an especially vexed Abberline who had led his shadow up an alleyway on the New Road in order to confront him. Especially vexed because that very morning he had been called into the division sergeant’s office and given a telling-off. No, not just a telling-off, but a right old bollocking. And why? Because apparently a certain Mr Cavanagh of the Metropolitan Railway – that dead-eyed bastard – had made a complaint about him. According to him, Constable Abberline was spending a disproportionate amount of time at the site. Making something of a nuisance of himself, he was, what with his insinuations that Cavanagh and five of his employees were involved with a murder.

  And he was to stop that at once.

  So, yes, an especially vexed Abberline, given strength by his vexation was watching the man’s face turn purple above the blue serge of his forearm. The man wore a dark suit and a bowler hat, a little tatty, but otherwise fairly respectable-looking. In fact, thought Abberline, he was dressed not unlike one of the detectives from the division.

  Except Abberline knew all the detectives from the division. He knew all the detectives for miles around, and this pillock wasn’t one of them. Which had made him wonder if it was a different kind of detective altogether. With his other hand he frisked the man and came up with a small leather truncheon that he slipped into his own tunic pocket.

  ‘Private dick, are we?’ said Abberline.

  In response the man nodded furiously. ‘Gak, gak, gak,’ he tried to say.

  Abberline relaxed his grip.

  ‘Yes, Constable Abberline, a private detective is what I am, and one who might be of benefit to you, if you were to let me speak,’ gasped the man against the wall.

  Cautious but curious, Abberline let him go. ‘What’s your name?’ he demanded.

  ‘Leonard. Leonard Hazlewood.’

  ‘Right, now state your case, Mr Hazlewood, and make it a good one.’

  Hazlewood straightened himself up first, adjusting his hat and his suit and his collar before he went on. ‘You’re right, I’m a private detective in the employ of a member of the aristocracy, a viscount, if you please, who pays well and doesn’t mind who he pays it to, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, I know exactly what you mean. How about I take you in for attempting to bribe a member of Her Majesty’s constabulary?’

  ‘Who’s bribing anyone, constable? I know my business, and I know that the other men at the division call you Fresh-faced Freddie, and that you like to do things by the book, and that you don’t even take a drink on duty …’

  Abberline cleared his throat guiltily. Yeah, mate, if only you knew. ‘What of it?’

  ‘So I reckon you’d be just as interested in solving a crime as you would be in lining your own pocket. Maybe even more so. And that if I can help you do the one, while maybe also doing the other, then maybe that isn’t a bribe so much as a gift in recognition of your sterling police work, such as a benefactor might bestow.’

  ‘Just say what you have to say and say it outright.’

  ‘This viscount of mine, him and his mate were set upon not far from here, in the Marylebone churchyard. His mate was so viciously attacked that he lost his life there.’

  ‘He didn’t have far to travel for his burial then, did he?’

  ‘A somewhat off-colour joke, if you don’t mind my saying so, constable.’

  ‘It’s an off-colour joke because I know a load of codswallop when I hear it, and I’m hearing it now. If two members of the aristocracy had been set upon in a graveyard and one of them killed right here in the division, I think I’d have known about it, don’t you?’

  ‘Both my employer and the family of the murdered man prefe
rred not to report the matter, in a bid to keep it out of the public spotlight.’

  Abberline curled a lip. ‘Oh yes? Up to no good, were they?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. I’ve simply been appointed to find and detain their attacker.’

  ‘Detain, is it? And then what? Deliver him into the hands of the police? Don’t make me laugh. Do him down or top him completely is what you’ve got in mind.’

  Hazlewood pulled a face. ‘Does it matter? The fact is that justice will be served.’

  ‘Justice is served by the courts,’ said Abberline – although these days he wondered if he still believed it.

  ‘Not always.’

  ‘You’re right. Not always. Not on young nobles who get drunk, take a trollop or two into a graveyard and then find themselves being rolled over by the ladies’ pimps, am I right? I mean, unless you’re trying to tell me they was in there putting poppies on a grave? One thing you can always depend on the aristocracy to do is get their jollies at the expense of the lower orders. Maybe the tables got turned for once.’

  The detective shrugged. ‘It wasn’t a pimp. No simple cash carrier attacked my employer and killed his friend and disabled two of his bodyguards …’

  Abberline’s eyebrows shot up. ‘They had bodyguards, eh? Bloody hell, you really know how to play on a man’s sympathies you do, don’t you?’

  Hazlewood frowned and tugged at his collar again. His neck had reddened. This wasn’t going well. ‘This was a dangerous man, constable. Hardly even a man, they say. And it would be in all of our best interests if he were to be off the streets for good.’

  Abberline was thinking of Aubrey’s different shades of grey. He was thinking about justice and how that fitted into the picture when two aristocrats took bodyguards for drunken jaunts into the less salubrious parts of town. Why should he care if a lone man taught the bastards a lesson by giving them a good hiding? In other words a right batty fang. Abberline knew what Aubrey would say. Good luck to the fella. More power to his bloody elbow.

  For maybe the first time ever Abberline found not that he didn’t care, but that him caring was in abnormally short supply. He chuckled. ‘And tell me, what did he look like, this man who was not even a man? I’ll keep an eye out for … what? A monster, perhaps? Six-feet tall and armed to his jagged pointy teeth, with talons for hands and a roar to split the night?’

  The private detective rolled his eyes. ‘If I didn’t know better I’d say you’d been drinking, constable. No, when I say not quite a man, I don’t mean more than one, I mean a young lad.’

  ‘A young lad?’

  ‘That’s right. An Indian boy with bare feet. And they say he fought like the devil. Quite the acrobat, he was.’

  Abberline looked at him, suddenly serious as everything else fell away and all other considerations were sidelined.

  ‘An acrobat, you say?’

  36

  The next day, The Ghost stood by the shaft, overseeing the work. He clutched laced-up files full of dockets, manifests, schedules and work rotas to his chest – Marchant had offloaded almost every aspect of his clerk’s work on to The Ghost – and tending to them all was proving more taxing than anything he could remember doing ever, and that included learning the finer points of the kukri with Ethan Frye.

  One of the foremen approached, wiping his nose on his sleeve. ‘Shall I toll for the shift change, Mr Singh?’

  The Ghost looked at him without seeing, trying to focus on words he wasn’t used to hearing, specifically the words ‘Mr Singh’.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said at last. ‘Thank you.’ And then he watched as the foreman touched a hand to his forelock and stepped away, still not quite accustomed to this sudden change of events. ‘Indian’ was what they called him, the men, up until he started at his new post. But now … Mister Singh. It had respect – power, even. Because, yes, what was respect, if not a kind of power? For the first time in his life The Ghost could understand its allure and the constant pursuit of it. For with power came money and influence and perhaps most importantly it meant being heard, and these things were as seductive as love, friendship and family, probably more so, because they spoke to selfish ego rather than the gentle heart.

  Yes, he’d allowed himself to think, I could, in another world, get used to being called Mr Singh. I could come to truly enjoy that.

  Indeed, he had no choice, what with his new exalted position at the dig.

  Through Marchant, Cavanagh had insisted The Ghost smarten up. Hardy had handed him a brown-paper bundle. ‘Here you go, mate, some new kecks and boots, a shirt and a jacket for you. Hat in there too, if you want it.’ That night at the tunnel The Ghost had tried on his new ensemble for Maggie’s approval.

  ‘Well, what a swell, you look quite the man about town,’ she told him when he was all togged up. ‘You’ll have all the ladies after you – if they’re not already.’

  The Ghost smiled and Maggie felt her heart open at the sight of that smile, just as it had on the night they had met, and now, just as she had then, she thought to herself, If only I were forty years younger …

  In the event, The Ghost had done away with the hat. He never much liked his railwayman’s cap. He’d give it to someone further up the tunnel. The trousers were way too short, and The Ghost thought this was probably Hardy’s evil trick. But the punisher would have been disappointed to know that the shorter trousers, flapping just above the ankle, suited The Ghost just fine. He gave the boots to Maggie. She gleefully tore out the laces before putting them on. Her old ones she’d pass to another tunnel dweller.

  And the next day he went back to the site, literally a changed man.

  The work was demanding. All his time was spent scratching out names and numbers on the various schedules Marchant presented to him, as well as keeping up with the constantly changing shifts or liaising with the many foremen, some of whom had taken ‘Indian’s appointment’ better than others. Interestingly, he’d found that a sharp but soft word accompanied by a glance to the office was enough to set any recalcitrant foreman straight. It wasn’t respect that ruled, he knew. It was fear.

  Nevertheless, his primary purpose of being here was not to ruminate on ideology or learn new workplace skills. It was to spy on behalf of the Brotherhood, to ascertain exactly what the Templars were up to, and in that regard he’d been slightly less successful. For a start his new work kept him busy; secondly, he rarely had an excuse to visit the office where the plans were kept.

  One day he had looked up from his vantage point by the cranes to see Crawford Starrick and Lucy Thorne arrive, the two of them picking their way across the mudflats before disappearing inside.

  Now’s the time, he had thought, and trod across the mud to the office on the pretext of delivering some dockets – only to be stopped by Smith and Other Hardy, the two punishers guarding the portal to the inner sanctum. They’d taken the documents from him and sent him away. The Ghost’s introduction to Cavanagh’s immediate circle was only theoretical, it seemed. Perhaps they were still testing him; indeed, not long after that day was an incident that The Ghost was still puzzling over.

  It came one late afternoon when The Ghost approached Marchant on the mudflats. Shouting to make himself heard over the racket of a steam engine laden with spoil, he had tried to hand the site manager the rota, just as he did at the end of every shift.

  ‘All in order, sir,’ he said, indicating the hive of industry behind him: men were swarming on the cranes, buckets of earth swinging black against the grey dwindling light of the day, filthy-faced navvies with spades and pickaxes slung over their shoulders leaving the
trench like defeated men on a retreat. The conveyor rattling, always rattling.

  But on this occasion, instead of taking the rota as he would have done normally, Marchant shrugged and indicated the wooden site office behind them.

  ‘In there,’ he said. ‘Leave it on the side near the plans table. I’ll look at it later.’

  His eyes betrayed nothing. The Ghost nodded assent and made his way across. There was no Cavanagh. No Hardy, Smith, or Other Hardy. There was just The Ghost stepping into the office, the heart of the operation, alone.

  He stopped himself. This was a test. This was surely a test. Conscious that Marchant might be timing him, he lit a lamp, then moved over to the plans table.

  Marchant had been very specific about that. The plans table.

  And sure enough, there, rolled up on the plans table, were the plans.

  Placing the lamp on the tabletop, The Ghost bent to inspect the rolled-up document. If it was a trap as he suspected then this is how it would be laid, and … there, he saw it. A single black hair had been left rolled into the plans, just the tip of it protruding. His heart hammering, he plucked the hair out between his fingernails, and then, praying it would be the only trap they had set, unrolled them.

  There in front of him, were the designs for the excavation and the building of the railway, but not the official designs. Those he had seen, craning over the heads of fellow workmen as Charles Pearson and John Fowler gave presentations on their baby. Those plans looked exactly like these but for one vital difference. They had the crest of the Metropolitan Railway in the top right-hand corner. This set sported the crest of the Knights Templar.

  Marchant would be wondering where he was. Quickly he scanned the drawings in front of him, eyes immediately going to a section of the dig – in fact, the section they were currently digging. Here was a shaded circle. Inside that shaded circle was another smaller Templar cross.