Assassin’s Creed®

by Oliver Bowden

  The Ghost rolled up the plans, replaced the hair, extinguished the lamp and left the office. As he went with the image of the plans fresh in his mind, his thoughts went back to the events of a few days ago, when boxes had been brought and a makeshift stage built. Cavanagh had taken to it, with Marchant and the punishers standing at the hem of his coat, and through a speaking trumpet had gone on to regretfully announce that there had been some instances of theft from the site, that men’s tools had been stolen.

  This had elicited a gasp. The men cared about their tools as much as they did their families. More so, in many cases. The Ghost had long since been in the habit of burying his own spade at a spot on the perimeter of the dig, but for many men their spades and pickaxes weren’t just the means of their livelihood, they were symbolic of it. When they walked through the streets with the tools of their trade over their shoulders they walked tall with their heads held high, and passers-by knew they were in the presence of a hard-working man, rather than just a dirty one. Thus, the idea that some wretch was stealing tools, well, this fellow might as well have been stealing the food from out of their mouths. Cavanagh had the men wrapped round his little finger, and his proposal that workers would be searched as they left the site from now on was therefore met with fewer than expected grumbles. Shift changes now took three times longer but at least the men could be reassured that the Metropolitan Railway had their best interests at heart.

  The Ghost hadn’t been fooled, but now he knew exactly what lay behind the decision. It was because the excavation had finally reached the shaded circle. The end was in sight and though the men were under strict orders to report any unusual finds – with the promise of a reward to match the value of anything precious – there was still a possibility that one of the labourers might simply purloin what he found. Chances were the Templars were as clueless about this artefact as the Assassins were. They were taking no chances.

  And then, of course, there was the other issue, the small matter of the persistent Police Constable Abberline, who had been turning up at the works and, according to Marchant, making accusations against him. ‘Don’t you worry,’ Marchant had told The Ghost. ‘We’ve got you covered.’ The implication was that them ‘having him covered’ came with a price.

  He would see to it that he repaid them. Yes, he would repay them.

  But now Abberline had returned, and with him was a consortium, two of whom he recognized – the other peeler, Aubrey, and the division sergeant – and two he didn’t – a smartly dressed man who had a habit of tugging at his collar, and a fourth man, who …

  There was something about this fourth man that The Ghost recognized. He looked closer now, feeling as though his brain was moving too slowly as he tried to place him …

  Marchant was walking towards him, coming closer, hailing him with a weasel grin. ‘Oi, you’re needed over here …’

  And still The Ghost was staring at the new arrival, who had stood slightly apart from the group and was looking right back at him. As their eyes met, they recognized one another.

  He was the bodyguard from the graveyard.

  37

  Abberline watched him come.

  That morning he had stormed into the sergeant’s office, with his new friend Hazlewood the private detective in tow, and told the sergeant that he had something new on the Indian at the dig.

  ‘Tell him that what you told me,’ he insisted to Hazlewood, who wore an expression that seemed to indicate things were quickly moving away from him, like this wasn’t the way he had planned it. One minute, trading confidences with a contact who might be of use in finding this Indian fellow, the next being hauled before the division sergeant by an excitable Abberline.

  Sure enough, the sergeant looked him up and down before returning his attention to Abberline. ‘And who the bloody hell is this, Freddie?’

  ‘He’s a private detective, is what he is. He’s a private detective who happens to have information regarding our friends at the rail works.’

  ‘Oh not the bloody rail works,’ sighed the sergeant. ‘Please not the bloody rail works, again.’

  ‘Now hold on, hold on a minute.’ Hazlewood had his hands held out to Abberline and the sergeant like a man trying to control a small crowd. ‘I’ve been asked to locate a young thug involved in a brutal attack on a member of the aristocracy who wishes to see justice served. I don’t know anything about any goings-on at the rail works.’

  ‘One and the same, mate, one and the same,’ Abberline reassured him. ‘Now just tell him what you told me before I do it, and, believe you me, I ain’t leaving anything out and I may even add a few bits and pieces that won’t reflect at all well on either you or your employers.’

  The detective shot him a furious look and then directed himself to the sergeant. ‘As I was telling the –’ he paused, for extra contempt – ‘constable here, I have been employed by a high-ranking gentleman in order to help apprehend a very dangerous man.’

  ‘A very dangerous man,’ spoofed Abberline. ‘That’s a matter of opinion. You say that there was another bodyguard there, apart from the two in the sanitorium?’

  ‘There was.’

  ‘Then he could identify the boy. We could take him to the rail works and get him to identify the man who attacked him and your employer.’

  ‘We could do that, I suppose …’ said Hazlewood cautiously.

  ‘And why would we do that?’ roared the sergeant from behind his desk. ‘I’ve already had Mr bloody Cavanagh of the Metropolitan Railway giving me the bollocking to end all bollockings on account of your behaviour, Abberline, and if you think I intend to risk another one – or worse still have him talk to John Fowler or Charles Pearson and the next minute have the superintendent breathing down my neck – you’ve got another think coming.’

  Abberline winked. ‘Our friend here can make it worth your while, sergeant.’

  The sergeant narrowed his eyes. ‘Is this true?’ he demanded of Hazlewood.

  The detective admitted it was true. He could indeed make it worth the sergeant’s while, and the sergeant did a little weighing-up. True, there was the risk of another bollocking, but then again he had a scapegoat in Abberline.

  What’s more, a little extra wedge would come in handy, what with Mrs Sergeant’s birthday coming up.

  So he’d agreed. He’d agreed that if they could produce this bodyguard then they had enough of a reason to confront the Indian lad at the dig, and now the Indian was coming over the mud towards them.

  Bloody hell, thought Abberline, he’s gone up in the world. Wearing a new pair of strides, he was, as well as braces and a collarless shirt open at the neck. Still barefoot, mind, trousers flapping about his calves as he came closer towards them. Everybody, it seemed, was fixed by his dark, impenetrable gaze.

  ‘Bharat Singh?’ said Abberline. ‘I’m pleased to see all those cuts and bruises have healed since the last time I saw you.’

  Barely acknowledging them, The Ghost stood before the group, holding files to his chest and looking quizzically from man to man. Abberline watched as the lad’s gaze swept past the bodyguard, and he reminded himself that if even half of what they said about this young man was true, then he might be a very slippery, not to mention dangerous, customer indeed. He readied himself. For what, he wasn’t sure. But he did it anyway.

  ‘Now,’ he said, addressing The Ghost, ‘if you don’t mind, we have a matter to attend to.’ Surreptitiously, he felt for the handle of his truncheon, and then directed his next question to the bodyguard. ‘Is this the man who set upon you and your two employers in the churchyar
d? Have a good long look now. It’s been a while, and he’s spruced up a bit in the meantime. But if you ask me, that’s not the kind of face you forget in a hurry, is it? So, come on, is it him, or not?’

  The Ghost turned his attention to the bodyguard, meeting his eye. The man was tall, like the three punishers, but not cocky and arrogant like they were. A reduced man; the encounter in the graveyard had left him changed but here was his opportunity to recover some of that lost pride and dignity.

  Abberline’s fingers flexed on the butt of his truncheon; Aubrey was ready too, and the punishers stood with their eyes narrowed, hands loose by their sides, ready to reach for whatever concealed weapons they carried as they awaited their next set of orders and anticipated bloodshed.

  And every single man there expected the bodyguard to give the answer ‘yes’.

  So it came as something of a surprise when he shook his head and said, ‘No, this ain’t the man.’

  38

  ‘So, what is the truth of it then?’ asked Abberline.

  ‘I don’t think I know what you mean.’

  The impromptu meeting at the rail works had broken up and Abberline had left with his tail between his legs, and then, back at the station, the sergeant had given him a flea in his ear, and then, with his tail between his legs and his flea in his ear, Abberline had gone searching for the bodyguard.

  Why? Because he’d seen the look on the geezer’s face and he’d seen the look on Bharat Singh’s face into the bargain and there was something there. Non-recognition my arse, those two know each other. They had a … well, strange as it may sound, but Abberline would have said he’d witnessed a kind of grudging, mutual respect pass between them.

  So the next order of business was to find the bodyguard, which wasn’t difficult. He’d done it with Hazlewood the previous day, and this afternoon he found the bodyguard in the same place: the Ten Bells on Commercial Street in Whitechapel, a favourite haunt of prostitutes and blaggers, the occasional police constable and disgraced former bodyguards attempting to drown their sorrows.

  ‘You’re protecting him is what I think,’ said Abberline.

  Without a word the bodyguard picked up his drink and moved to a table in the snug. Abberline followed and sat opposite. ‘Someone paying you to protect him – is that it? Not a man in robes by any chance?’

  No answer.

  ‘Or perhaps you’re protecting him out of the goodness of your own heart?’ said Abberline. Now the man looked up at him with sorrowful eyes and Abberline knew he was on the right track. He pressed the point home. ‘What if I were to tell you that I had my own suspicions about this young Indian man? What if I were to tell you that I think he might well have saved my life the other day, and that, in fact, far from trying to put this fella in the clink I’m actually beginning to wonder if he might be on the side of the angels.’

  Another pause and then the bodyguard began to speak in a voice that rumbled from between his hunched shoulders. ‘Well, then you would be right, constable, because if you ask me, he is indeed on the side of the angels. He’s a good man. A better man than either you or I will ever be.’

  ‘Speak for yourself. So he was in the churchyard that night then?’

  ‘He was indeed and there wasn’t no “setting upon” anyone being done. There was a wrong – a wrong with which I was involved, to my shame – a wrong that he put right. My employers at the time, two nobs, were doing down a dollymop, just for kicks, because they could. And me and my mates were looking out for them. Ours not to reason why and all that.’

  Abberline gave a thin smile of recognition.

  ‘And this young man turns up, the only passer-by who did anything more than react to her screams with mild puzzlement. And when the two nobs wouldn’t stop their game he stopped it for them.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything move so fast, I’m telling you: boy, man or animal. He bested all of us, including yours truly. He did it in the blink of an eye, and we deserved it; every last one of us, we had it coming.

  ‘So if you’re asking why I didn’t identify him at the rail works, and if you’re sincere when you say he’s a decent man, and as long as you’re asking me in the snug of the Ten Bells, knowing I’ll deny it at the site, at the station or if I’m up before the beak, then yes, it was the same man. And bloody good luck to him.’

  ‘Of course it was the same man.’

  Marchant and Cavanagh had met Hazlewood at the Travellers Club on Pall Mall, where they took him to the smoking room overlooking Carlton Gardens.

  Cavanagh was a member at the Traveller’s, nominated by Colonel Walter Lavelle, shortly before Cavanagh had killed him; Marchant, as Cavanagh’s right-hand man, was also familiar with the club. Hazlewood, on the other hand, was agog or, as he’d later say to his wife, ‘as excited as a dog with two cocks’. Men like him weren’t accustomed to being entertained in the Travellers Club on Pall Mall, and he smelled money, as well as maybe the chance to solve this bloody case into the bargain. And maybe, if he played his cards right, the chance to solve the case and make a bit of extra chink on the side.

  Not forgetting, of course, the fact that it was a swanky old place, and no mistake.

  Around them was the laughter and raised voices of drunken lords and gentlemen getting even drunker, but it was hard to imagine Cavanagh participating. He sat in a voluminous leather armchair with his hands on the armrests, wearing a smart black suit with flashes of white shirt at the collar and cuffs. But even though he fitted in among the toffs and swells, Cavanagh radiated a certain danger, and it was telling that when the occasional passing gentleman greeted him with a wave, their smiles dipped momentarily, more as though they were paying their respects than saying hello.

  ‘You think the man who attacked your client and my employee Bharat Singh are one and the same?’ he asked Hazlewood now.

  ‘I’m sure of it, sir.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘Because when I hear hooves I look for horses, not zebras.’

  Marchant looked confused but Cavanagh nodded. ‘In other words you think logic dictates it must be the same man.’

  ‘That I do – that and the fact that I spoke to our friend the bodyguard afterwards and it was pretty obvious that for reasons best known to his own self, he was keeping quiet about it.’

  ‘Then perhaps we need to persuade the bodyguard,’ said Cavanagh, and Hazlewood thought ‘money’, and wondered if some of it might be coming his way.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Cavanagh, ‘if this young Indian man set upon the bodyguard, and – what? Four other men? – in an unprovoked and vicious attack, then why would the bodyguard want to protect him?’

  Hazlewood looked shifty. At a nod from Cavanagh, Marchant took folding money from his pocket and laid it on the table between them.

  Here we go, thought Hazelwood, palming it. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I only know what I’ve been told, but it seems the Indian lad took it upon himself to rescue a damsel in distress who was being used as a bit of a plaything by the two toffs.’

  Cavanagh nodded, eyes flitting around the wood-panelled room. He knew the type. ‘Getting their jollies, were they?’

  ‘By the sounds of things. Your man, this Indian boy, was quite the dervish, it seems. He took on the lot of them and won, and by all accounts carried the poor tail they was doing down off into the night.’

  ‘I see,’ said Cavanagh. He paused for nearby laughter to die down. ‘Well, Mr Hazlewood, I thank you for your honesty, and for bringing this matter to our attention. If you leave it with us, we should like to conduct our own investigations. Perha
ps, when this process is complete, and assuming that our findings are in accordance with your own suspicions, we can join forces, so that we can root out the bad apple, and you can get your man.’

  When Hazlewood had left, a happy man, Cavanagh turned to his companion. ‘We shall be true to our word, Marchant. We shall look very closely into our interesting Indian colleague.’

  39

  Early the next morning, as was quickly becoming his custom, Abberline was staring at a dead body. Beside him stood Aubrey, and the two constables took off their helmets as a mark of respect. They knew the man who lay sprawled on the street, his face barely recognizable beneath eyes that had swelled shut, a face that was a mixture of purple bruises and open cuts, and a broken jaw that hung at an obscene angle.

  It was the bodyguard.

  ‘Someone wanted to shut him up, obviously,’ said Aubrey.

  ‘No,’ replied Abberline thoughtfully, staring at the corpse and wondering how many more had to die. ‘I don’t think they were trying to shut him up. I think they were trying to make him talk.’

  Across the city, Cavanagh sat behind his desk at the rail works office, Marchant on one side, Hardy on the other.

  In front of the desk, sitting on forbidding straight-backed chairs and wearing expressions to match, were the Templar Grand Master Crawford Starrick and Lucy Thorne. As usual, they wanted a report from Cavanagh, the man who had promised to deliver them the artefact but who had so far conspicuously failed to do so, and as usual they wanted that report to include encouraging news.

  ‘We’re close,’ Cavanagh told them.

  Lucy sighed and frowned and rearranged her skirts. Starrick looked distinctly unimpressed. ‘This is what you said last time, and the time before that.’

  ‘We’re closer,’ added Cavanagh, unperturbed by his Grand Master’s irritation. ‘We have to be. We’re in the immediate vicinity of the artefact’s location.’