Touchstone Season Two Box Set

by Andy Conway

  She stumbled on, holding her skirts up, her white woman’s shoes buckling along the roof tiles. She was running out of rooftop. Soon enough she would face a drop like a canyon.

  She glanced back. Peter was looking all around. The same thought had occurred to him. They needed an escape route.

  A figure flitting across the roof far behind. Calder. And in his fist the unmistakable shape of a pistol. He’d retrieved it from the stairs and was now in pursuit.

  She saw it. A dormer jutting out just ahead. The window wide open.

  “There!” she cried, running full pelt along the apex of the roof, hoping he was fleet of foot enough to follow.

  There was a bang and a tile exploded by her feet.

  She didn’t look back. Kept on running.

  She dived through the open window, felt its sill scrape against her entire leg, knowing it would bleed and bruise, pulling her skirts free, caught on the catch. She was standing inside the building, looking back at Peter edging towards her.

  Another gunshot rang out and Peter crumpled, clutching his shoulder.

  His eyes on hers.

  It was as if he was pleading, don’t leave me, and also urging her on, just run, just go.

  He fell to the side and slid down the slope of the roof, a man falling down a crevasse.

  A man falling to his death.

  She screamed.

  And he was gone. He was dead.

  She only had time to see Calder come into view, craning to one side to see where Peter was landing. Then he looked right at her and raised his gun.

  She turned and ducked out of the window.

  The picture on the wall ahead of her blew apart, glass shattering over bare floorboards.

  Sacks of grain.

  She ran to the door and yanked it open.

  A wooden staircase. Slamming the door behind her, she hurtled down the staircase, a circling slalom of panic, aware of people rushing out of doorways to see the commotion, no one stopping her.

  Only when she reached the bottom did she feel tears falling down her face.

  It was a grain house. Men with great moustaches and rolled up sleeves paused to look. She ran for the open door to the daylight and the street beyond.

  And she was running down a hill, alongside a horse and carriage, wildly thinking she might steal a horse and ride away, then ducking past the carriage to cross to the other pavement, running, following the slope of the hill towards the giant swell of the station, great clouds of steam billowing from the open end of the glass domes.

  New Street Station, he’d said.

  She had no idea if Calder was behind.

  She ran for the station entrance and did not look back.

  23

  CALDER TOTTERED AND almost fell. The recoil from the gun unbalancing him, almost sending him careening down the sloping tiles down to the street far below. He windmilled his arms, crouched to a safe stance and scoped the dormer window ahead of him. A picture on the wall inside, crooked, glass shattered. No sign of the girl.

  A piercing whistle from below. The police. His shot would lead to a mess of trouble; there was no doubt about that. What kind of country was this where you couldn’t take out your gun and shoot down a fugitive from the law?

  He crawled forth along the apex of the roof, scared to stand now, spooked.

  As he dropped into the attic room, he looked back out at the sloping expanse of tiled roof, the sun gleaming on it.

  The phoney reporter had fallen. He’d seen him slide down the roof and fall over the edge to certain death. And yet he’d also seen him disappear. Not disappear from view, but simply disappear, mid-air, as he fell. He was reaching out, eyes wide with fear, clawing at air, and then there was a flash of blue light and he was gone. Not falling. Just gone.

  He shivered. What was it? A conjuring trick? A flash of lightning? He had read of such things. Ball lightning, for instance. But to occur at that precise moment. What were the odds?

  He felt his knees trembling and he suddenly longed for a good slug of Bourbon to steady him. He was shaken to the core.

  He gasped a deep breath and ran on.

  Through the door, down the staircase, ignoring the workers gathering to watch the commotion, simply yelling, “Police!” as he barrelled down the wooden stairs. He ran through the workshop and out onto the street, holstering his gun as he did so.

  There was no sign of her but he could see the chaos in her wake. People staring after her. They stopped to stare at a fleeing woman in this town.

  Turning the corner at the foot of the hill, he saw her far ahead just as she ran into a great building whose signs claimed to be a hotel and a train station.

  He followed, cutting a swathe through the crowd of startled onlookers, crossing the road once more, dodging a drayman’s cart, the horse neighing and rearing back. A shouted oath chasing him as he stormed into the grand hall of the station.

  Commotion ahead. Again the wake of her passing. A guard and a handful of docile locals brushing themselves down. He saw in an instant that she had run through the barrier, knocking all aside.

  They saw him coming. The guard stepped forward, this time determined to restore order. A round man with red whiskers.

  “Police!” he shouted. “Which way?”

  A moment of startled deference and the fat guard pointed. Calder sped through and entered the station, hit by the majesty of its magnificent vaulted glass roof for a moment as he dashed along the footbridge that spanned all of the platforms.

  He saw her, running up one of the platforms, about to step onto a train.

  He barrelled down the steps and along the platform. A piercing whistle. Not the police this time. The train was leaving.

  As he ran for her, he reached for his pistol again and was about to draw it when a guard rushed forward, holding out a hand.

  “Out of the way!” he shouted.

  But the guard stood impassive, blocking him, shouting, “No you don’t!”

  The girl hopped onto the train as it pulled out.

  He dropped his hand. Pulling out the Smith & Wesson would create a panic here.

  “Here!” the guard shouted, as two boys ran past.

  Calder had a moment to recognize one of them as little Herbie Powell. He was pursuing the girl onto the train. Like a true Pinkerton!

  The boys hurtled down the platform and jumped for the step at the rear of the train, holding onto their peaked caps.

  “Little buggers,” said the guard. “Always hitching on for free. Afraid you’ll have to wait for the next one, sir. Very dangerous, trying to run for a moving train like that.”

  Calder squirmed at the sight of the locomotive receding through a cloud of steam, his quarry gone. But Herbie was after her. And he appeared to have engaged his own helper – smart boy.

  “Where does that train go to?” he yelled over the shriek of the train’s call.

  The guard laughed. “You’re in a bit of a rush for it, seeing as you don’t know where it goes! Over there.”

  He pointed to the timetable board and walked away with his nose in the air.

  Calder rushed over and read down the list of station names. It was the Camp Hill Line, and though there weren’t so many stops, it was still a daunting number when he considered she might get off at any of them. He read down the list.

  Camp Hill.

  Brighton Road.

  Moseley.

  Kings Heath.

  Hazelwell.

  Lifford.

  Kings Norton.

  He could get on the next train that left from this platform and get off at any one of those stations, hoping it would be the one she’d chosen, but it would still be a seven-to-one shot.

  They were odds he did not like.

  He wheeled and kicked the wall in frustration, crying, “Damn it!”

  She was gone.

  A cluster of respectable-looking locals tutted and glared at him for swearing.

  He stood helpless, staring at the track that l
ed to the south of the city, his lungs burning.

  Collapsing onto a wooden bench, he felt his chest and the padded bulk of something in his breast pocket. Curious, he pulled it out.

  Her notebook.

  Maybe there might just be a clue. With a soaring pang of hope, he riffled through the pages, looking for the list of place names she’d scribbled, hoping that one of them might match the names of one of the seven stations that lay ahead.

  24

  KATHERINE OPENED HER eyes and saw the two boys in peaked caps. They looked away and one of them, the taller one, even started to whistle with an air of practised nonchalance, but they were watching her, she could tell. She could feel their eyes on her, the way you could feel a predator watching you out on the plains. You felt it like you felt the breeze or the promise of rain.

  She glanced around the railway carriage to see if anyone else was watching her, but saw only a long, shabby room full of disinterested third class passengers, all rocked into a state of near sleep.

  The smaller of the two peaked cap boys turned his head and watched her for a while. She had her eyes ahead, gazing out at the passing landscape of grim factories, oily workshops, streets and alleys of mud and grime, the dirty forge of the industrial revolution. But she saw him through the corner of her mind, saw him staring at her.

  She shifted her weight and he looked away, not swiftly but slowly. He was good at it. The taller boy took his turn to watch her, but he did it with shifty movements and so it was obvious. She may have lost Calder but he’d put these two boys on her tail.

  A commotion at the far end of the carriage caught her attention. A ticket inspector was working his way down the next carriage. She could see him through the glass pane of the connecting door. He opened the door and negotiated the step between the two carriages, zig-zagging this way and that, and in a moment he was in.

  The boys lowered their peaked caps over their eyes and walked away, heading towards her.

  The train was slowing. It must be coming to the first of the stops. Everyone in the carriage dug into their pockets and purses for their tickets.

  The train slowed with a great shudder of its engine, hissing steam, and stopped with a jerk that knocked half the people off their feet. The guard opened the door at the far end of the carriage and stepped out to watch the platform.

  Katherine made for the door at her end. Spooked, her heart thumping in her throat, she jumped onto the platform and marched along with the crowd of passengers alighting.

  Glancing back, she saw both peaked cap boys following. They shared a few rushed words, and one of them ran across the tracks to the other platform. A train was approaching, heading back to the city.

  She knew with a terrible certainty that the taller boy was returning to Calder to report on her while the short boy stayed on her tail.

  She pushed through the stream of people queuing to leave the platform, an inspector collecting their tickets as they left.

  She pressed through.

  “Here, madam, I’m afraid you can’t—”

  She shoved the inspector, knocking him back on his heels so he clawed at air. Someone shrieked. She ran down the slope to the street. The ticket inspector waved a fist, but no one chased her.

  Except the boy.

  He was trotting down the slope too.

  25

  LLEWELLYN ‘WELLY’ DAVIES crossed the street at the cabstand under the shadow of St. Martin’s church. Several cabmen, lounging and smoking, looked at the ground, scared to meet his eye.

  A horse-drawn tram thundered down the steep hill, Buffalo Bill’s face plastered all over it.

  I am coming!

  The cheek of the bloody yank, coming here thinking he owned the place.

  Welly paused in the middle of the road and looked back down the gentle slope of Digbeth, cabs and carriages swerving around him, a rock in a river. That way was the south, and he controlled most of that.

  Up ahead, as the road steepened up Spiceal Street and eventually climbed to New Street, was the half of the city he did not control. And beyond that, Aston, where that puffed up cowboy ruffian held court.

  Someone ought to show that bloody Indian lover who was boss around here. Welly would give it him hot if he got the chance. Slog him good and proper.

  He ducked into Park Street and came to the grey, imposing façade of the London Museum Music Hall. It was a bloody silly name to give a music hall that sat a hundred and fifty miles from London and wasn’t even a museum anyway. Someone ought to change its bloody name.

  He strode into the foyer and Harry the doorman went all pale, surprised to see him, as if Welly Davies didn’t have the run of the place. He’d organize some of the lads to boo down the next performance for that. Boo the show down to the ground and kick up some dust.

  “What’s up with you, Harry?”

  “Nothing, Mister Davies.”

  “Only you don’t look pleased to see me.”

  “Always am, Mister Davies, always am.”

  Harry waved him through and Welly Davies strode through to the saloon and smiled at the quiet consternation his entrance caused. Various men averted their eyes. The barmaid nodded to him nervously. Davies stood tall, eyeing the room through the smoke, making sure everyone knew he was there, before approaching the snug. He held the door open. The three gentlemen playing cards turned with annoyance. Llewellyn ran his fingers along the peak of his cloth cap. Their faces fell, they swept up their cards and rushed out with their pints slopping all over the sawdust-strewn floor.

  It amused him, this fear. He didn’t really need to fool them into thinking he kept a razor blade in the peak of his cap, which was just a silly rumour that had flown around town — a rumour he’d done nothing to put right — because he knew he only had to show his face to inspire fear.

  He swept into the snug and took command of the table, yanking off his cap and sitting back.

  The barmaid bustled in with a pot of porter and a glass.

  “Will you be expecting company, Mister Davies?” she said.

  “Give us a couple more glasses. Just in case, like.”

  She rushed out and brought them, and no sooner had she done so than William ‘Bowey’ Beard walked in, clutching a rolled up newspaper.

  Welly shot him a warning glare. Bowey grinned that stupid, annoying grin he had. His tart, Agnes, was skulking behind him. She was the one goading Bowey into defiance, that was obvious. She was a vicious piece of skirt, with more ruthless ambition than any of the men. It would be her who’d push Bowey into making a grab for Welly’s title of king of the hill. And that was when he’d have to kill them both.

  “Whaddya want, Bowey?”

  “Got some news, boss,” he said, swiping his peaked cap off and sitting down.

  Without asking, if you please. He’d slap him good and proper for that, another time, for something different. Give him a good lamp round the ear hole.

  “Get out, Agnes,” Welly snapped.

  The skinny bint tutted and sloped off. Tutted. Who did she think she was? He was going to enjoy killing her, when the time came, but for now he needed William ‘Bowey’ Beard — the most vicious slogger in his entire Peaky army — he needed him for now, and that meant letting Agnes Cullis live to see her nineteenth birthday.

  “Sit down, lad,” said Davies, lighting up a cigar with a swagger. “Get yer breath. Have a drink.”

  Bowey poured himself a glass of porter and glugged it like a man who’d crossed a desert.

  When he’d wiped his mouth on his dirty sleeve and breathed again, Davies said, “So, what news?”

  Bowey rolled out the newspaper – that toff paper The Daily Post, if you like – and jabbed a finger at the headline.

  Kidnapped Indian Princess—Buffalo Bill Offers Reward.

  There was a block of tight print under it that Welly couldn’t read. The big words he could read but when they were printed all small like that; the words swam about like tadpoles in a pond.

  “Reward
? For what?”

  Bowey took the paper and read it out, like a pastor reading a Bible story to a child. Welly’s fingers itched.

  “An Indian squaw with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show was last night kidnapped by a stranger impersonating a journalist. Bright Star Falling, also known as Miss Katherine Bright, is thought to have left the camp at Aston Lower Grounds dressed in the clothes of a white woman... Colonel William “Buffalo Bill” Cody has this afternoon personally offered a reward of £200 for information that leads to the rescue of Miss Bright.”

  “Two hundred pounds?”

  “And I know where she is,” Bowey said, grinning. “There’s a bloke from Buffalo Bill’s camp that’s after her, and he paid little Herbie Powell to follow her last night.”

  Davies remembered him. A tiny kid, but clever with it, useful for much more than squeezing through small windows that the older ones couldn’t get into. He showed promise. Most of the kids were malnourished in brain as well as body, but little Herbert Powell was going to make something of himself, that was obvious just from looking at him.

  “This bloke what’s after her. He’s a Pinkerton.”

  “What the hell’s that when it’s home?”

  “Detective agency in America. They’re the best of the lot. I read all about them in Tip Top Weekly.”

  Davies took a swig of porter and wiped his moustache. “And is that a fact or just some children’s story?”

  Bowey stared, gulping back resentment. Davies grabbed his collar and pulled him close.

  “Don’t make up kid’s stories, boy. Give me cowing facts.”

  “He followed her to Birmingham after he asked about her in Aston. Him and Buffalo Bill himself went to the newspaper office this morning to post the reward.”

  Davies licked his lips and shoved Bowey away. A reward like this meant everyone looking for her.

  “Where is she now then?”

  “The Pinkerton split off from Buffalo Bill and tracked her to Corbett’s Temperance Hotel.”

  “Corbett’s, eh?” He leapt to his feet, ready to run round there right away.