There came a knock at the door and Other Hardy showed his face. ‘Sir, sorry to disturb you, but Mr and Mrs Pearson have arrived.’
Starrick rolled his eyes but Cavanagh held out a hand to show it was a matter of no concern. ‘Ill as he is, Pearson prefers the company of the navvies to the hospitality of the office. He’ll have his usual royal tour, don’t worry.’
Other Hardy glanced back out of the door. ‘Seems all right, sir. Like you say, he’s making his way over to the trench.’
‘Even so,’ said Starrick, ‘I believe that concludes our business. Miss Thorne and I shall take our leave. See to it that the next time we visit you have some more encouraging news for me.’
When they had gone Cavanagh looked at Marchant with hooded eyes. ‘He’s a fool; he knows his time is short.’
‘He is the Templar Grand Master, sir,’ said Marchant, and then added with an obsequious smile, ‘for the time being.’
‘Exactly,’ said Cavanagh. ‘For the moment. Until such time as I have the artefact.’
And he allowed himself a smile. The ghost of a smile.
Meanwhile, as Cavanagh, Marchant and co. were occupied with Starrick and Thorne – and with The Ghost yet to begin his shift – Pearson was doing just as Cavanagh said he would, and conducting a small tour of the works, his wife Mary on his arm.
The men loved Pearson, and on this particular occasion had cooked up a plan to show him just how much. At the office steps, with Starrick and Thorne making their way to the gates, Marchant watched the men gather around Mr and Mrs Pearson, and frowned, seeing that work seemed to have been abandoned for no good reason he could think of. There was definitely something happening, though. He leaned on the rail to speak to Other Hardy. ‘Get over there, would you? See what’s going on …’
40
It was a rare afternoon off for Police Constable Aubrey Shaw.
No, that wasn’t strictly speaking true. Firstly, because Aubrey’s afternoons off were comparatively frequent, and, secondly, because it wasn’t really an ‘afternoon off’. Not in the officially sanctioned sense anyway. A more accurate way of putting it would be to say that Police Constable Aubrey Shaw had donned plain clothes and was skiving again.
As usual, Aubrey’s skiving incorporated a cricketing element. Most of the time this meant hoisting ale in the Green Man but today was a special day. He had taken his business to Lord’s Cricket Ground in order to watch the annual Eton versus Harrow match. It was a nice sunny day to spend with a spot in the stands (albeit crowded, as the event was attended by tens of thousands), a pie and maybe an ale or three, with plenty of crinolines and bonnets to catch a man’s eye and the cricket whites blinding in the sun.
Truth be known, Aubrey didn’t much care for cricket, but the gentleman’s sport was a pastime his wife approved of, and what’s more it involved pies and beer – and meeting those two requirements was central to Aubrey’s journey through life.
He thought of Abberline. Unmarried Abberline, constantly preoccupied Abberline – the two undeniably connected as far as Aubrey could see.
‘A wife is what you need,’ was what he’d told Abberline one afternoon in, where else but, the Green Man.
‘A fellow bobby who cares more about police work and less about how to get out of doing it is what I need,’ was what Abberline had replied.
Which was rather hurtful; after all, he, Aubrey, had become almost as involved in their ongoing case as Freddie, and …
Oh no, he thought, as he took his place on the stands, I’m not thinking about Freddie today. Freddie, begone. And to signal an end to work-related thoughts he began lustily joining in with the cheers, happy to submit himself to the tides of the game and the rhythm of the day. Just another face in the crowd. Worries ebbing away.
Still, though. He couldn’t help it. His thoughts returned to Abberline and his obsession with what he called ‘the goings-on at the rail works’. The two bobbies had asked themselves who beat the bodyguard to death. ‘One of them strongarms from the rail works,’ said Freddie predictably, but on this occasion Aubrey had to agree with him. It was as plain as the nose on your face that Cavanagh and co. were up to no good. After all, weren’t they all? Aristocrats and industrialists and politicians all feathered their own nests, and breaking a few laws was a small inconvenience if you had enough influence to ride roughshod over them.
Bloody hell, thought Aubrey. Hark at me. He was starting to think like Freddie himself. It was catching, that was what it was.
But they might know – this was what Abberline said. If they’d got it out of the bodyguard then Cavanagh and co. might be aware that Bharat Singh was the boy at the graveyard.
‘What would it matter to them if he was?’ Aubrey had asked.
‘Maybe nothing, Aubrey, maybe nothing. Who knows?’
It was a puzzle, no doubt about it. Like those carved wooden shapes that fitted together. You turned it over in your hands to try to work out how it fitted together.
A combination of cogitation, ale intake, the sheer volume of other spectators and the fact that he was here at Lord’s on an unofficial day off and probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway, meant that Aubrey wasn’t aware of three men who had barged through the crowds to take places at the rear of the stand. They stood with their backs to the fence, with their arms folded and the brims of their bowler hats pulled down in the universal pose of men trying to look unobtrusive.
The three men weren’t watching the game from beneath the brims of their hats. Their gaze was fixed firmly on Aubrey Shaw.
41
The last occupant of The Darkness had been Jayadeep Mir some three years ago. Nevertheless, the rooms had to be maintained and so, as regular as clockwork, Ajay and Kulpreet would take the steps down from the meeting house to sweep out the chambers and allow fresh air from outside to temporarily banish the dank air of gloom that otherwise hung about the place.
And as regular as clockwork Ajay would think it a great joke to lock Kulpreet in one of the rooms.
Clang.
He’d crept up on her and, before she could stop him, done it again; only this time, instead of standing outside snickering and mocking her as usual, he was making off down the passageway.
Her shoulders sank with the sheer boring inevitability of it all. Would he ever grow tired of it? Possibly not, because Ajay was nothing if not juvenile, and despite the fact that she had a husband and a little boy at home he was probably slightly in love with her too. And in her experience that was a very tedious combination in a man.
Exasperated, she called through the viewing aperture, ‘Ajay, not again,’ cursing that he’d been able to sneak up on her like that, the rat.
There was silence from outside. Ajay had gone. Damn his eyes. She hoped it wasn’t one of those days when he decided to string out the joke. He’d left her in there for half an hour once. Thank heavens she’d long since learnt to bring a candle into the chambers with her.
‘Ajay,’ she called again, the words falling flat on the dank stone. She rattled the door, the sound bouncing away into the darkness. ‘Ajay, this stopped being funny months ago. Open up, will you?’
Still there came no sound from outside and, come to think of it, she hadn’t heard him for a while. Ajay wasn’t one for keeping quiet. Even with him upstairs and her downstairs, he would have been calling to her, making bad jokes and puns, teasing her. In fact, when was the last time she’d heard any voice other than her own? You could lose all sense of time down here.
From outside the door came a sound that made her jump. ‘Ajay,’ she
said sharply, but brought her leading arm to bear, tensing her wrist in readiness.
And then he was there, face at the window, grinning at her.
‘I got you that time, Kulpreet. You thought they’d come to get us, didn’t you?’
Right, she thought, and she arched one eyebrow and engaged her blade, precision-controlling its length so that it shot through the aperture and into the tip of Ajay’s nostril.
Not just one of the Indian Brotherhood’s best with a sword, Kulpreet was also one of the best with a blade, and it was a perfectly judged, expertly balanced deployment.
‘Impressive,’ said Ajay, with a newly acquired nasal twang. He was pinned in place by the blade, knowing that the slightest movement could effectively slice open his nostril, and thinking that, by God, she kept that thing sharp. Constantly greasing and recalibrating it, she was. ‘It’ll never jam, Ajay,’ she’d tell him, sliding the blade into its housing, and then follow it with her best disapproving stare. ‘Not like some others I could mention.’
Kulpreet kept her blade where it was. ‘Toss me the keys,’ she said, and then when he’d done as he was told and was free again, barged angrily past him on her way to the door.
Upstairs they locked up and prepared to leave for the night. Kulpreet studiously ignored Ajay, which she knew was a far worse punishment for him than a hidden blade up his nose.
As she did every night she placed her flat-bladed sword into the wall rack, kissed her fingers and touched them to the fine Indian steel, before joining Ajay at the meeting-house door. The two Assassins said their parting words then slipped outside and locked the door behind them.
Neither noticed faces in the crowded street that watched them leave with interest – and then moved to follow.
42
What a great day, thought Aubrey as he joined the thousands of spectators leaving Lord’s. He was a little merry, if he was honest with himself. Merry enough to decide to sweet-talk a flower girl on a deal for a bunch, take the flowers home to Marjorie and tell his wife he loved her; merry enough to have forgotten all about acrobatic Indian boys and mysterious disappearing men in robes; and way too merry to notice the three men who were following him, their heads bowed and their hands in their pockets in the classic manner of men trying to look inconspicuous.
He was even merry enough to consider hailing one of the growlers constantly popping to and fro, but then decided against it. Best to sober up a bit. Just a bit. And so he kept on walking, turning off the main drag into quieter side streets, leaving the crowds and clopping hooves behind as he weaved his way through darker streets where the constant sound of running water reminded him that he needed a piss, and he ducked into an alleyway to relieve himself.
Because in the end it’s the small things that matter as much as the big ones: a stolen pocket watch that is slow, a man in need of a piss.
Aubrey sensed the light in the alleyway change before he saw anything, and still putting himself back into his trousers, he glanced to one end and saw that in the mouth of the alleyway stood a figure. Then back at the other end: another figure.
Aubrey shivered. Any other day and this would be a pair of mutchers, the street ruffians who preyed on the poor souls who were too drunk to offer much resistance – and of course Aubrey could deal with them all right, drunk or sober.
But this wasn’t any other day. And besides, he fancied he recognized the two men who blocked both exits, and that made it worse than a pair of mutchers.
They were moving up the alley towards him. A third figure had appeared at the mouth of the alley. Aubrey desperately wished he had his truncheon but knew it would be no good. He cast his eyes at the streaming wall in front of him in the hope that a ladder might magically be present, and then back at the men, who were upon him now.
He recognized the grinning faces in the second before the light went out. Just as he’d known he would.
Striding through the streets of Amritsar in their robes, Kulpreet and Ajay had been preoccupied with their own thoughts – which was why they didn’t notice until it was too late that the crowd had seemed to de-materialize, and in the street before them was a line of seven men in matching brown suits.
Curses.
They wheeled round. The street was emptying. Behind them was another phalanx of men in brown suits, nervous crowds moving away from them like ripples from a dropped stone. A tempo of fear increased as the brown suits began to produce kukris from within their coats. Over a dozen blades versus two.
Ajay and Kulpreet looked at one another. With a reassuring smile she pulled her cowl over her head and he did the same, and then he reached to give her three quick taps and a squeeze on her upper arm, and she responded to the code with a nod. They knew what to do.
Mentally they both counted – one, two, three – and then, in one coordinated movement, went back to back, deploying their blades at the same time. It was a measure of how quiet everything had become that the noise of this was audible, and a measure of how confident the brown suits felt that they didn’t even flinch, didn’t even look nervous.
The one in the middle was the leader. He gave a whistle and rotated a finger. As one, the brown suits began to advance, the end of each line edging forward, closing the circle in the hope of trapping Ajay and Kulpreet at its centre.
‘Now,’ said Kulpreet and they made their move. She dashed to a canopy on her left and he went in the opposite direction, and both reached their respective targets before the brown suits could get to them.
Ajay’s blade was back in its housing as he hit the wall running, his bare feet clinging to the stone as he reached for a sill and heaved himself up. Two more grunting efforts and he was on the roof traversing the building, jumping down to the street on the other side and sprinting into a passageway. At the end was one of Amritsar’s street walls separating one thoroughfare from the next, and Ajay went for it now, knowing he’d be home free if he could scale the wall and get over.
He never made it. The brown suits had anticipated his move, and as Ajay reached the end of the alleyway they appeared, taking him by surprise. He stumbled and saw a kukri flashing towards him, and acting on instinct brought his hidden-blade arm into defence, engaging the steel …
Only, the blade didn’t engage.
It jammed.
43
Aubrey had no idea where he was, but sensed that was the least of his concerns.
What mattered was that he was bound to a chair in a room that was dark, apart from a flickering orange glow given off by lamps bolted to the walls, while in front of him stood the three punishers, gazing at him with smiling dispassion, preparing to do their work.
Hardy moved forward. He pulled on black leather gloves and then from his jacket pocket took a pair of brass knuckles that he slipped over his fingers. The two other men shared a look and then stepped back into the shadows as Hardy came to Aubrey and put his gloved hand to the peeler’s face, like a sculptor testing the consistency of his unmoulded clay.
And then he moved back and placed his feet with the expertise of a boxer, and Aubrey thought that closing his eyes might be a good idea right now, so he did, and it was funny, because he’d always found it difficult to picture his family when he was away from them; it was something he always wished he could do – just to have them with him. But they came to him now. A perfect image of them that he clung to as the blows began raining in. There was that, at least, to be said for being beaten up.
Thank God for small mercies.
Kulpreet awoke with a sore head and found herself squinting in the grey dark of a warehouse: an empty, cavernou
s space, with just the slapping sound of rain pouring through the roof and birds nesting in the rafters. Rusting stairways led to ancient dilapidated gantries overhead.
She was restrained in an unusual manner. She was seated at one end of a long slatted table, to all intents and purposes as though she were an honoured guest for dinner – apart from the fact that you tended not to tie up honoured guests. Her chair was pushed neatly beneath the table. She couldn’t see her feet but they were bound to the chair legs. Meanwhile, her hands were laid out in front of her and tied tightly with leather thongs, palms flat to the tabletop. They were placed almost as though she were about to receive a manicure.
In a sense she was. A few inches from her fingers, laid very deliberately so that she could see them, was a pair of pliers, the sort of rusting pliers one might use to extract a fingernail.
She knew of this torture of course. The cumulative pain. Apparently there was an Assassin who had managed five before he broke.
As far as she could tell, there were three brown suits in the warehouse with her. With a clenched jaw she watched as one of them inspected her hidden blade, and if there was one thing that made her angry – beyond being captured, beyond having it taken from her and beyond being told by sniggering brown suits that Ajay had been cut down like a dog in the street, it was that. They had Ajay’s blade as well. Another Templar thug stood at the end of the table turning it over in his hands.
‘This one jammed,’ he told his friends, and they laughed.
But that’s not why you can’t deploy it, you idiot, thought Kulpreet. Not unless you can slip it over your wrist and arrange your muscles and tendons in such a way as to precisely emulate Ajay or can activate the fail-safe switch, and to be honest you could spend the rest of your life looking for the fail-safe switch and still not find it.
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