by Andy Conway
“Don’t shoot!” Arthur cried.
If he pulled the trigger, Daniel would be killed instantly.
“Get away from this house,” Mr Palmer shouted. “Or I’ll shoot you like a dog!”
Arthur rushed forward. Daniel had apparently been struck dumb and would make no effort to defend himself. “Mr Palmer, please be calm! As you can see, Daniel has been released by the police. He is innocent of all charges. You know this yourself because your daughter was attacked by the very killer while he was in custody.”
Someone appeared behind Mr Palmer. His wife. “Jacob. Put that gun down at once!” she cried.
“I’ll not let this man anywhere near my daughter again,” the old man barked.
Arthur stepped forward so he was between Daniel and the pistol. He thought it might not be loaded, or serviceable, but Palmer had the unmistakable bearing of an ex-military man, and his daughter had been attacked by a maniac this very night, so it was highly likely he would shoot at the slightest provocation.
“Mr Palmer. We believe your daughter is in great danger.”
“I’ll shoot you down like a dog too. Don’t think I won’t.”
“We believe the killer will return tonight for her. We are certain of it.”
Mrs Palmer let out a cry of frustration and scampered up the stairs.
“If he does, I’ll put a bullet through his heart,” said Palmer. “And if you’d step out of the way, I could do it right this instant.”
“Daniel Pearce is not the man who attacked your daughter tonight,” said Arthur, lowering his voice, trying to calm the situation, pin-heading forward almost imperceptively. “You know that. I believe you saw him. You know it wasn’t Daniel. You know he was in a police cell at the time. I was in the same cell with him. They arrested me too. Does that make me the killer?”
Palmer’s face suddenly scrunched up like a sheet of paper thrown into the fire. He was crying. “My beautiful daughter. My Arabella.”
He dropped the pistol to his side and everyone breathed a little deeper. Arthur reached out and took it from his grasp. A Beaumont-Adams percussion revolver, 54-bore. Loaded.
“It was supposed to be her wedding day,” Palmer sobbed. “And now this.”
Daniel stepped forward. “Mr Palmer. I’m deeply sorry for all that’s happened today. It has been as much a shock to me as it has to you. But we believe Arabella is still in very great da—”
There was a scream from upstairs, and before any of them had time to run, Mrs Palmer came bolting down, yelling, crying, “She’s gone! Arabella’s gone! The window’s open. She’s gone!”
Daniel cried out and made to rush into the house, but Arthur pulled him back. “He’s taken her. We must go!”
Daniel froze, startled, and seemed to come to, realizing where he was. He nodded.
Arthur pulled him into the Clarence cab. Conway had scrambled inside.
“Where are you going?” screamed Mrs Palmer.
“Where is she?” cried Mr Palmer.
“Christ Church!” Arthur bellowed but not to Mr Palmer.
The cabman cried out a furious, “Ya!” and cracked his whip and they were off.
40
BURY SHIVERED AS HE rode the Victoria to Birmingham. It took all his effort not to whip the skinny horse into a gallop, cruising at a moderate pace. He was a simple cabman patrolling the streets waiting for his last night’s fare. A couple of men tried to flag him down, but he rode on, ignoring their curses.
He passed several peelers on their beat, but none of them gave him a second look. The girl had slid down and was lying on the passenger seat, invisible to prying eyes.
Eventually he rode into Birmingham down Sherlock Street, scowling at the pawnbrokers that held the fortune he’d been jewed out of. He spat, cursing all the Jews who’d taken his money, and skirted the edge of the Bull Ring, stinking of fish and rotting vegetables, driving the scabby horse up Hurst Street.
As he left the Jewish quarter behind he fixed his eye on the clock tower at the top of Hill Street. He whipped the horse on, passing the grand glass palace of New Street Station. The horse wheezed and slowed to a walk as it reached the top of the hill and he had to lash it severely, till it finally crested the hill and rested in Council House Square, a film of sweat glistening along its flanks.
The town was quiet, only a few people walking here and there, shadows skulking. Christ Church loomed over the square, its white spire calling to him, emanating a terrible power.
The road splayed out, Colmore row curving around Christ Church and meeting New Street and Paradise Street, statues of some dignitaries standing high on plinths in the middle of it. Three of them. A holy trinity.
He circled the square, edging the iron railings of the church, and growled with frustration. Too many people milling around. A handful only, but too many. There were no gravestones. There was no graveyard surrounding it. All who were buried there were buried in crypts. The flight of stone steps leading up to the church doors would have been the perfect place to do it, but the gates were locked, wearing a lace of chains like a necklace.
Had he brought her all this way to be foiled so easily?
He circled again, the horse’s hooves ringing on the cobbled stones, looking all about for the place, the right place. The giant Council House. The imposing Doric columns of the Town Hall. Where to do it?
She stirred behind him, murmuring, her eyelids flickering. She would wake soon and those eyes would look upon her fate with horror.
Not here. Not now. It had to be right. Just as he’d seen it in his vision. Just as he’d seen it in the artist’s studio, painted exactly as it was in his mind’s eye, which was another sign from God that his mission was true.
He glanced all about him. Where? Tell me where!
His eye fell on street which ran off between the Town Hall and the corner of the Council House. It seemed to open out into a dark square. He could see a monument of some sort, ringed by what looked like a fountain.
There. Yes. A fountain.
He whipped the horse forward and entered Chamberlain Place.
41
THE CABMAN SITTING atop the Clarence, who’d introduced himself as Turner, spared his horses no mercy. Tom had shouted up to him the urgency of the matter, smelling the sharp tinge of whisky on him, but drunk as he was, he’d seen enough to know that it was a matter of life or death.
Daniel gripped the seat as they rattled towards Birmingham, their teeth shaking in their skulls. It was the fastest he’d ever travelled but still it was frustratingly slow. He thought if only Turner would stop he could take off and fly there. It was absurd, but part of him believed he could do it.
Arthur revealed he was still holding Palmer’s pistol.
“Jolly lucky,” he said. “Just what we need. If I see him I’ll shoot him dead on the spot.”
“Make sure Arabella is nowhere near him,” Daniel grumbled.
“And hold it well away from you,” said Tom. “An old service revolver like that might blow up in your face.”
“Nonsense,” said Arthur. “It’s in perfect condition. And it’s the only weapon we have.”
Tom pulled something from his jacket pocket and flipped it out. A razor, glinting in the gaslight. “All I have, I’m afraid. If it comes to close combat I might be able to distract him with a wound or two.”
They looked at Daniel. He shrugged and said, “I’ll see to him him with my fists.”
But he thought it would not come to that. Their weapons seemed so feeble and irrelevant compared to — what was it exactly? — this feeling inside him that had been pounding all day like a migraine building, that had been growing for weeks now. He had thought it nerves over the wedding, but now he recognized it for what it was: a sense of power.
It was as if angel wings were sprouting from his shoulder blades. He felt an almighty power coursing through his veins. Something was changing in him. He was beginning to feel superhuman.
The sketches he’d scrawled
after feverish dreams — a man god that could control the winds — a lone figure at the heart of a maelstrom. He recognized it as himself now. He knew that he could unleash a hurricane to devastate a city, just like the man in his sketches.
Was he this Wind God? Was this the thing he’d forgotten all these years? Everything else he’d painted had been a premonition of the future, so why not this? Although it was ludicrous, he felt its truth. He knew it was himself he’d painted. He knew that power was in him.
But he had no idea how he might unleash it.
Tom cast a rueful glance at the pawnbrokers as they thundered down Sherlock Street. Daniel caught Arthur glancing out at the place that had given him his character’s name. No smile this time. He adjusted his collar and gulped air. Perhaps he was thinking that this might not be as easy as the denouements he was used to writing in his stories. This could all end very, very badly.
Her naked limbs astride pale stone, one hand behind her head. A cruel slash across the canvas that rent her torso in two.
Daniel closed his eyes and prayed. One of his friends gripped his clenched fist and gave it a squeeze of encouragement. He didn’t see which. He tried to imagine the route they were taking from the contours of the road beneath them. A sudden rise as if they were climbing a hill. He half wondered if he could do what he’d done in his cell, fly across the city to the exact spot where Bury was about to kill Arabella. He had believed it possible a couple of hours ago when he believed he truly was the killer, but now it had been proved he wasn’t, and it left him doubtful of the ability he’d experienced.
“We’re here,” said Tom, nudging him.
Daniel opened his eyes and was confused for a moment till he found his bearings. They were circling the statues of Wright, Priestley and Peel that faced Corbett’s Temperance Hotel. He craned his neck to see Christ Church’s looming tower, suddenly so eerie.
Turner pulled up outside the church gates and they leapt out, checking the entire square for any sight of Bury. Daniel rattled the bars of the gate.
“It’s closed!” he cried.
“Is he in there?” asked Tom.
“He couldn’t climb over those bars with her,” said Arthur. “And remember the painting. Christ Church was in the distance.”
They looked around in every direction. Where could it be?
“There are no gravestones anywhere here!” said Daniel.
“There’s not a single spot from which one might view the church from a distance,” said Arthur.
The face of the church was hemmed in on all sides by imposing buildings: Corbett’s and New Street to the south, the giant Council House to the north, and, where the church faced west the view was blocked by the Town Hall and the giant Library behind it.
“Could it be your vision was wrong?” said Arthur.
Daniel walked this way and that, desperately searching for the angle he’d painted. Could it be a cruel joke of perspective, only to be revealed that the church was half a mile away from where Arabella was being murdered?
His eyes fell on the dark space in the north-west corner of the square, where the corner of the Council House almost met the north-eastern corner of the Town Hall. It was the gap through which Daniel walked to work every day. He had done it this very morning and had been spooked by a vision (a memory?) of another building altogether — a gigantic stone façade like a cliff face. Chamberlain Place. And another vision.
The fountain that flowed with blood.
“There!” He pointed.
They all stared at the dark corner and tried to discern any detail beyond it.
“Get in!” cried Turner, cracking his reins and driving the horses towards it.
Daniel leapt onto the side runner.
“Wait!” cried Arthur. “The gun!”
Daniel glanced back. Arthur and Tom were running in the Clarence’s wake and already falling behind.
It was no use waiting for them. Arabella and Bury were somewhere ahead in the blackness and he would have to face him alone.
42
THE VICTORIA ROARED into the square and rounded the rear of the Town Hall. Daniel jumped off and as the coach passed he found himself facing the Chamberlain monument, its white stone reflecting what dim light penetrated from Council House Square.
He thought for a moment of his dream, his vision, of seeing Catherine Eddowes murdered in Mitre Square, which was nowhere near as grand as this, but it felt the same: a black square at night hemmed in by dark buildings.
And in one corner, a killer, and a prone woman.
And in his other vision — a fountain seething with blood.
Please don’t let it be that. Please God, no.
It took a moment for his eyes to make out Arabella’s white nightgown against the white stone of the fountain that ringed the Chamberlain monument. He heard the sudden violent tear as Bury’s knife rent her night gown in two.
There. The dark shadow leaning over her. He had no legs. No, he was standing inside the fountain.
Footsteps approaching fast from Council House Square. Arthur and Tom. The cabman turning his Clarence round in a clumsy arc. And for the first time Daniel noticed the skinny horse and trap — a Victoria — that sat silent, waiting.
All of this came to him in a couple of seconds before he launched himself towards the fountain.
The knife flashed in the air above Arabella, who lay dazed splayed across the fountain wall. He heard the water sloshing around Bury’s knees.
“Don’t!” he yelled.
Bury cringed, as if startled from a trance, his knife hovering above Arabella’s navel. He glared at the carriage thundering into the square, and Daniel charging towards him, a deer frozen in headlights.
A great explosion boomed around the square.
Something hit the Chamberlain memorial above Bury’s head, spitting dust and stone. Bury flinched, arms covering his face like a coward, his knife glinting above his head.
Arthur had shot at him.
It had awoken Bury from his trance. With a cry of frustrated rage he sloshed to the edge of the pool and vaulted it, running for the Victoria.
Daniel rushed to Arabella’s side, closed her torn nightgown around her to cover her nakedness, and held her close to him. She moaned. Alive.
He looked up and saw Tom and Arthur running towards him and the tower of Christ Church behind them, just as it was in his painting, yes, slightly to the north-west.
Behind him, Bury scrambled into his trap and lashed the horse.
A policeman with a bull’s eye lantern came running from Edmund Street, drawn by the sound of gunshot.
Daniel held Arabella close to him. “You’re safe now,” he said. “The nightmare’s over.”
Bury’s horse whinnied in protest, its hooves skittering on the cobbles as he drove the Victoria towards the west side of the Town Hall.
“Is she safe?” Tom called.
Daniel nodded and hissed, “We did it!”
Arthur took aim and fired another shot after Bury’s fleeing trap. A window of the Library shattered.
Turner, re-entering the square, lashed out with his whip, but Bury ducked and was past him.
“After him!” Daniel cried.
Arthur jumped onto the coach as it came by him and opened the door, ducking inside with a single movement. Turner aimed his horses to circle the fountain so he could follow Bury in one easy movement.
The policeman jumped back out of the way, looking this way and that, not knowing what to do.
Tom, caught within the arc of the coach, looked at Daniel and at Arthur and hesitated.
“Go with him!” Daniel shouted.
Tom nodded and ran after the coach, leaping aboard, pulled in by Arthur before it left the square.
“What on earth is all this?” yelled the constable.
“A murder attempt. She’s safe. Thank God, she’s safe.”
The policeman took out his whistle and blew sharply. Daniel felt it sting his eardrums. He could hear Bury�
�s Victoria circling the Town Hall to head back down New Street. He followed its echoing rattle, as if he might see through the Town Hall.
Bury was escaping.
But he had saved Arabella.
She murmured, shifting, her eyelids fluttering, lit by the policeman’s bull’s eye lantern.
Bury was escaping.
Daniel looked down at Arabella, and again through the Town Hall, following the echo of the Victoria. Bury was rounding the southern corner and turning into Paradise Street, which would run straight into New Street.
“Who is she?” said the policeman.
“Her name is Arabella Palmer. She was abducted tonight. Tell Inspector Beadle of the Kings Norton Constabulary.”
“Here. You won’t be scarpering off.”
He had lived here happily for fourteen years but he knew he didn’t really belong here. He feared he belonged in that otherworld, with those monsters.
He kissed Arabella on the lips, and pushed her gently towards the policeman.
“I will.”
“Oy!” the constable shouted.
And he was already running, bolting back across Chamberlain Place, between the Council House and Town Hall, and across the cobbled stones of Council House Square, under the shadow of Christ Church, his eyes on that southern corner of the Town Hall to his right.
The Victoria screamed into view, Bury whipping his lone horse. He would never catch it in time. He sprinted for all he was worth, legs pounding the pavement.
Bury veered, yelling at his horse, and the Victoria turned sharply, almost toppling, its left wheel sawing the air. Down Pinfold Street.
He was heading for New Street Station!
The Clarence thundered from the side of the Town Hall as if shot from it like a cannonball.
Daniel’s teeth gritted with effort as he tried to speed up with all his might. He pounded across the pedestrian island between the statues of Wright and Priestley, across the tram tracks, dodging around the statue of Peel.
Tom leaned out of the window. “Hurry, man!”
Turner saw him running but didn’t slow. Instead he whipped his horses on.