Touchstone Season Two Box Set

by Andy Conway

  Tramping through mud to the nearest main street seemed the best option.

  The old man who had been standing outside the beer house and had stared open mouthed at her, now emerged from the shabby dwelling with a group of friends. They were dirty-faced and rough looking, grinning toothless leers, a cloud of ripe sweat coming off them.

  One of them circled her while the others stared and chuckled. The laughter of anticipation. Some kind of amusement was about to commence and Katherine knew that she had been cast as the hapless victim.

  She kept her eyes on the larger group, while also trying to see the man circling behind her too, out of the edge of her vision.

  There was a push at her right shoulder and she wheeled round to defend herself and only then was aware of an emptiness at her left elbow. Something that was supposed to be there but was now gone.

  Her purse.

  The man was barging back into the beer house, the others all laughing.

  He had her purse. He had her Running Away Money.

  She glanced around, looking for weapons. No rocks or sticks. She walked forward, intending to chase him.

  The group of men at the door closed ranks, blocking her way, still laughing.

  Fury burned inside her.

  Their mocking eyes on her. Their leering mouths.

  She closed her eyes, shutting them out, reaching beyond them, imagining the man inside, reaching out to him, as if her hand could stretch beyond them, right inside, and tap him on the shoulder.

  The laughter ceased. She sensed their unease.

  Footsteps, stumbling, slow and clumsy, back across the floorboards inside. As if someone were being pushed out of the door and was struggling against it with all his might.

  She opened her eyes to see the bag snatcher fly out, knocking his friends aside, landing in the mud at her feet.

  Blood spurted from his nose and he was choking on it, clutching her purse to his chest, the blood gargling in his throat.

  She gazed down at him and held out her hand.

  He pushed the purse up to her as if handling a house brick that had come straight from the kiln. She tucked it under her arm again.

  He scrambled to his knees, unable to take his eyes off her, blood gushing over his mouth.

  The others retreated. One of them rushed back inside the beer house.

  The bag snatcher cowered at her feet, crying, scared, sweating, whimpering, desperate to get away from her.

  With a nod of her head, he collapsed in the mud.

  She didn’t know if he was dead or unconscious. She didn’t care. She turned and walked up the street, lifting her dress from the mud.

  She was far away and about to turn the corner before she heard a word from the men behind.

  One of them shouted, “Witch!”

  She smiled and found herself close to a main thoroughfare, where horses and carriages rattled by. A tram passed, heading north, heading to the city from which she’d fled.

  She watched it sail off into the distance, and her heart quickened at the sight of another horse-drawn tram coming the opposite way, heading south. As it drew closer, she saw the single word written along its face.

  Moseley.

  She looked ahead up the road. A cluster of people waiting by a totem pole. She walked towards them and the tram clanged past her, whipping her skirts about her ankles. The people stepped up onto the tram. One of them trotted briskly up the winding steps to the upper tier where men and women squatted on seats, peering over the single rail, huddled against the cold. It seemed a precarious thing, so tall and slim that it should topple over.

  A man in a uniform stood guard on the rear platform, staring at her.

  “Are you getting on, madam?”

  Fear gripped her, uncertainty and embarrassment flooding her resolve. What if the Running Away Money she had was not enough? What if she sat in the wrong seat? The ways of their world seemed to be a web of traps designed to expose her. She shook her head.

  The guard rang a bell, the driver whipped the horses and the tram crept away. She watched it shrink into the distance, down the great, long, straight road lined with bare trees. Hunger growled in her belly and dizziness swooned through her. She needed to sit down, to eat and to drink.

  But she had to get to Moseley.

  It was somewhere up ahead that long, straight road. The silver rails would guide her.

  She walked on, remembering the giant map in the library and wondering what those few inches from Birmingham to Moseley meant in human footsteps.

  It didn’t matter, she thought. The light was beginning to fade. When she arrived in Moseley, she wanted to arrive under cover of the night.

  29

  INSPECTOR BEADLE STEPPED down from the cab onto Moseley village green, and heard the springs of the carriage groan as Sergeant Macpherson stepped down after him. He rather fancied the horse groaned with relief as well.

  The village green had been exactly that only a year ago — a rough triangle of grass that marked the T-junction of Moseley village — but now it had a paved edge and iron railings and nice new lamps, which a lamplighter was lighting, the glass bowls glowing orange in the grey fading light. It was more like the sort of thing you would get in Birmingham. The whole of Moseley was becoming more like the kind of thing you would get in Birmingham: its human traffic thickening, houses edging its narrow lanes, more shops and pubs opening. It would be a village no more.

  He scanned the row of shops under the tower of St. Mary’s church. The Bull’s Head pub, the forge, the row of cottages that led up the hill, the squat Fighting Cocks pub, the rough dirt road that forked at the green, the row of trees all down the western side that marked the Cadbury estate.

  “Won’t be here long,” he said.

  “You think we’ll find her that easily, sir?” said Macpherson.

  Beadle turned to his sergeant, a bear of a man struggling to stay inside his brown suit, and swallowed his disappointment.

  “I was talking about Moseley.”

  “I don’t quite follow, sir.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  Joe Rees, the newspaper seller who was always there on the green, touched his cloth cap and gave an almost imperceptible nod of the head that said Come over here and ask me what I know. Beadle knew that nod well. He’d had good cause to get to know it.

  “Afternoon, Joe,” he said. “What news?”

  Joe folded a Birmingham Daily Post and handed it to Beadle, waving away his offer of a coin.

  “Peakies. From Cheapside.”

  “What? Here? In Moseley?”

  “Seen a dozen or more come in on the last few trams. Some old, some of them just kids.”

  “What the bloody hell do they want in Moseley?” said Beadle, even though he knew. Everyone was after the girl. Everyone was after Buffalo Bill’s money.

  “And you’ll never guess who came in five minutes ago. Sitting in a cab like Queen Victoria. Welly Davies.”

  “You sure?”

  “I know his face. Gave me the shivers, he did. He headed up that way, turned up Woodbridge Road, so he’s either heading to the station or to the Trafalgar.”

  “Good work. Thank you, Joe.”

  “Any time, Inspector.”

  Beadle turned to Macpherson as a constable came running up. He looked over his shoulder to see various locals drifting out of the pubs and shops to see what the fuss was about; to see why so many policemen had descended on the village.

  “We’re checking all the pubs and inns, sir,” the constable said, saluting. “Asking everyone if they’ve seen a strange woman. A redhead in a purple dress.”

  “Excellent,” said Beadle. “Now everyone in Moseley knows what we’re doing.”

  The constable blinked, unsure if he was being congratulated or scolded. Beadle sighed and waved him away, watching him run off up the hill towards the Prince of Wales.

  He waited for a cabman’s carriage to pass and walked across to the wooden duckboards of the
opposite pavement, glancing up the alleyway that led to the churchyard as they passed.

  “What’s it about, sir?” asked Macpherson.

  “They don’t tell us what it’s about.”

  “I mean, she’s supposed to have been kidnapped but now we know she’s on her own. So what’s she done?”

  “She’s run away from Birmingham.”

  “Do we arrest people for that now?”

  Macpherson chuckled at his own joke and Beadle allowed himself a wry smile as they strolled past the crowd of drinkers outside the Fighting Cocks.

  “If we did, the prisons would be full to bursting.”

  “So when we catch her, what do we charge her with?”

  “We don’t. We hand her back.”

  Macpherson stewed on this as they walked along the row of shops. There would be more questions. Beadle could practically hear the gears of his brain grinding.

  “I’m sorry sir, but when have we ever performed that kind of service for Birmingham?”

  “Only when someone in power wants to hang onto power.”

  The tram came down the hill, passing them, the people on the top deck, so absurd-looking perched up there, peering out over the village.

  “It’s all a bit fishy, sir.”

  Beadle stopped and searched his sergeant’s face. He was new, recently arrived from Edinburgh, used to much darker fare than the likes of Kings Norton could offer. But astute. He might not understand irony, but he knew when some politician was codding the force into doing their bidding, and that meant he’d be a good copper. He decided he would trust him.

  “Sergeant Macpherson,” he said. “It absolutely bloody stinks to high heaven. But we do what we do.”

  Macpherson grinned and stood an inch taller. This was how trust worked. You let one of your men believe you trusted him, and he would work that bit harder to keep that trust.

  The constable ran up again from the direction of the Prince of Wales.

  “You’ve found her?”

  “No sir. Telephone call came through at the Prince. There’s a report of a horse stolen.”

  “That’s all very well but that’s not what I want to hear about.”

  “Calthorpe Park, sir. A lady stole a maintenance team’s horse, sir. Rode off with it. A woman with red hair.”

  “Excellent.” He nodded and the constable looked pleased with himself and ran back up the street. “Well, Sergeant Macpherson, it looks like we’ve got something to arrest her for after all.”

  “And are we happy with that, sir?”

  It was a good question. Macpherson had much more about him than it had first seemed.

  “Between you and me, Sergeant, I’ll admit that I’m not.”

  “And why is that, sir?”

  They paused on the corner of Woodbridge Road and he gazed across at Shufflebotham’s grocery store with its vegetables all laid out in dull, wintry colours.

  “I look at it like this. If she’s heading here, and there are so many important people who don’t want her to get here, very important people who want to pretend she’s been kidnapped, who want her apprehended, but not arrested, mind, and handed quietly back, then it leaves us one very important and worrying question.”

  “Ah, I see, sir.”

  “Do you, Sergeant? And what is that question?”

  “What has any of this got to do with upholding the law?”

  Beadle nodded and shivered at the dying of the light. “Exactly.”

  30

  SHE CAME TO A STREET sign that announced Moseley and knew that the place was just up this little rise and round the bend. She could almost picture it in her mind now. Round this corner and cresting the little hill and the road would dip down to a crossroads where there was a little village green to the left and, yes, a church that looked out over shops, a church with battlements, not a spire.

  But she paused. Fear gripped her again. What was it ahead that waited for her? Something dangerous. She could taste it.

  She looked behind her. Another tram from Birmingham to Moseley making its way up the long road, as straight as an arrow, which was now lit with lamps.

  The sharp smell of burning in the air. Bonfires crackling across the city. A scent that made her heart race. She remembered how they had set fire to the plain to cover their retreat from the blueshirts. But there were other memories behind that. Something hidden in the black shroud of her former life. Nights like this. Gunpowder, treason and plot.

  She turned back and walked along a row of houses, back to the last street she had seen branching off from the main road. Louise Lorne Road, it said.

  If there was another street at the end of this one, it would run roughly parallel to the main road into Moseley, and she might take that route and approach the place from a less obvious angle.

  Whatever danger was waiting, it might not see her approach from this direction.

  She paused, unable to continue. A carriage rattled past. This place was speaking to her. Something had happened here, something that affected her.

  She closed her eyes to see.

  A tram coming through, but a tram with no horses, like the train she had ridden on today. It screamed down the slope and there was a girl in the road, and two men fighting over her, and another girl ran past to stop it all shouting, “Don’t!” And she knew this girl. She had seen her in her dark visions.

  She was the girl who’d sent her from this place. A girl with brown hair and eyes full of stars. The girl called Rachel.

  Katherine shuddered with fear, not because she remembered the girl who had caused her so much misfortune, but because she knew this girl was not evil. She knew this girl was punishing her for something terrible she’d done.

  I was the evil one, Katherine thought. I was punished.

  She staggered away from the scene and stumbled up the street until she came to the end of the road and found herself on a hill marked Trafalgar Road. She turned right, up the hill and struggled on, breathless, cold, hungry, climbing the hill to Moseley where she might find an answer to all of this. Where she might find a way back.

  Tears pricked her eyes and she felt a sudden rush of loss. For Peter Wethers, who had offered her protection and a way forward. He was dead. It hurt her suddenly. Hurt her with the force of a lost lover.

  She clutched the white ghost at her neck.

  Little Star, watch out for me. Protect me just one more day and I will burn this white ghost and leave you to your rest.

  At the top of the hill, she reached Woodbridge Road and heard the wail of a steam train pulling in to her left. This must be the station, Moseley, where she would have arrived earlier if she’d stayed on the train.

  It was almost black now.

  She gazed up and down the street, puzzled. She was standing at the door of a pub called the Trafalgar Hotel. The hubbub of voices inside. The place was crowded with men. Like most pubs in England she’d seen, it was a collection of bars for different classes of men downstairs and a few rooms upstairs for travellers.

  She had expected to find restaurants along this street but it was just a row of shops and none of them offering much in the way of food. Why had she expected restaurants? It was as if she could almost see them, like a distant memory.

  Perhaps the pub? It said it was a hotel. Surely they might serve food. But something in that cluster of voices from inside warned her off. There was danger in there.

  Her belly rumbled again and the dry cry of thirst from her throat decided the matter.

  She reached out for the brass door handle and pushed.

  31

  WELLY DAVIES SUPPED his pint of porter and looked around the saloon bar of the Trafalgar with pride. His men had taken over the place. They were pouring in from all over Cheapside and Small Heath, directed there by the network of boys relaying messages.

  As a feat of organisation, it had surprised even himself. There was power in a thing like this. It had shown him his own potential. You could take over a city with this kind o
f organisation.

  But flush as he was, he knew deep down that they could do this in a place like Moseley, which was respectable and soft and full of toffs who wouldn’t put up any sort of fight, but there were neighbourhoods across Birmingham where you’d get slogged.

  He had power, but he knew the limits of it, and it rankled him.

  But with a bit of money — with a bit of Buffalo Bill’s money — that could change. With money you could buy people, you could buy power. He could buy the police. He could even employ the police. He chuckled at the thought. Maybe one day he’d have a son and put him in the police force. Break them down from within. Then all those other neighbourhoods could be taken down one by one.

  “And a half for this young gentleman here,” he said, picking Herbert Powell up and plonking him on the bar.

  The Peakies cheered. The barman looked at Herbert sitting on his bar, thought about protesting for just a moment, then reached for a glass and pulled a thick half of black porter.

  Another cheer went up as little Herbie Powell, the hero of the day, glugged at it.

  He’d done a grand job tailing the girl, even though she’d stolen a horse and given him the slip. He’d got it out of some match girl prossie in Calthorpe Park. The redhead Indian bint had only gone and asked her how to get to Moseley.

  And he also knew she’d abandoned the horse in Balsall Heath, hardly got anywhere with it. The reward was all over the city, but only him and his men knew what she looked like and where she was. Either here, or still making her way here. He had men in every pub in Moseley, and a handful on the village green looking out for any arrivals by tram or carriage.

  She was as good as his.

  The saloon door flew open with a bang and everyone turned.

  32

  KATHERINE WITHDREW her hand, as if the brass door handle was hot, as if the bar was on fire and opening the door would unleash an inferno. Fear flooded her. It was not fire. Whatever was on the other side of that door meant her harm. She could taste it.