by Andy Conway
“He’s alive?” she said, surprised at the pang of hope that burst in her heart like a flame.
“God damn it, don’t mess with me, you hear! You know he didn’t fall. You know he just vanished into thin air. You did it somehow and you’re gonna tell me what it was before I send you to your happy hunting grounds.”
“But doesn’t Buffalo Bill want you to take me back?”
He laughed. “I ain’t taking you back, squaw. I’m ending you right here.”
With his free hand, he dug into his jacket packet and pulled out her notebook, holding it up like a mad preacher: Bible in one hand, gun in the other.
“You deserve no mercy. You gave no mercy to this soldier you killed. You gave no mercy to Custer! You deserve to be shot like the dirty little prairie dog you are. But you’re gonna tell me first.”
She closed her eyes, thinking of the dovecote that was a couple of hundred yards behind her, thinking not like this, I came too close for it to end like this.
“I don’t know what happened to him,” she heard her lips say. “I thought he died.”
He made a strangled snorting sound and she thought he was crying.
“Then you’re gonna die right here.”
She sensed his finger squeeze the trigger and jumped at the sound of a great echoing bang.
39
SHORTLY AFTER DISPERSING from Moseley a gang of Cheapside Peakies, whose presence in the neighbourhood was occasioned by the posting of a reward for the rescue of the kidnapped Indian girl known as Bright Star Falling, the verger of St. Mary’s reported a break-in at the church and sent a boy to inform the police.
Due to the large police presence in the area, the boy came upon a uniformed police officer almost immediately, so my force were able to respond promptly to the verger’s call.
Thinking it might be the suspect, we repaired to the church and ascended the bell tower, whereupon we discovered the suspect in the company of a Pinkerton agent by the name of Baynard Calder, a United States citizen in the employ of Col. William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody, acting as private security for the travelling show, currently resident in the city of Birmingham.
Although Mr Calder was in possession of a firearm, he did not have it drawn, nor was there any indication of him using it.
Mr. Calder reported that he had been sent by Col. Cody to track down the kidnapped Indian girl and return her to the camp at Aston Lower Grounds, and that he had followed her trail to Moseley, whereupon he had managed to locate her on the bell tower of St. Mary’s, Moseley. He was in the process of persuading her to return with him when our constables intervened.
Mr Calder offered his sincere cooperation in every aspect and made it clear to myself that he only wished to fulfil his duties to his employer, who in turn wished only to see the kidnapped Indian girl reunited with the show.
Inspector Beadle ceased writing at the rap of Desk Sergeant Wake’s knuckles on the door. He placed the fountain pen in its inkwell and pushed the sheet of yellow paper away with the air of a man who knew that no amount of struggling over just the right words would save this report from the waste paper basket.
It was the kind of report that no one wanted on file.
“What is it, Wake?”
“Chief Superintendant Varley, sir. Birmingham.”
He looked up at Wake, taking off his glasses. “Here?”
“Yes, sir. Wants to speak to you. About the Indian girl.”
Beadle looked at the page of neatly written pen and knew that this changed everything.
“Send him in. With Sergeant Macpherson.”
“Yes, sir.”
Wake bustled out to the reception area and in a moment, Chief Superintendant Xavier Varley bowled in, holding out his hand. Macpherson slipped in behind him and sat at the back of the room.
Beadle rose and saluted, out of courtesy, but Varley waved it away with a friendly smile.
“Inspector Beadle, old friend. Forgive the intrusion. Just a courtesy call.”
Varley asked him about his wife and his children and nattered along for a good five minutes, as if this really were a courtesy call and he really had been just passing by and thought he might drop in on an old friend.
Finally, Beadle said, “You’re here about the Indian girl, I take it?”
Varley winced and smiled and laughed and brushed lint from his pin-striped trousers. “I have no intention of interfering on your patch, Beadle, you know that. But with a delicate matter like this, that, as it were, also pertains to a quite delicate situation on my patch... I thought it wise to make you aware of it.”
“Aware of what, exactly?”
Varley leaned in close and lowered his voice. “There are certain members of our city council who are somewhat annoyed at all the fuss this has caused. A certain Pinkerton agent discharging his revolver not yards from our council house. A certain near riot the other night. We all want this visit by our American friends to go well. What with them being such favourites of Her Majesty, and Her Majesty perhaps being disposed to grant us a city charter sometime soon. You see?”
Beadle nodded and smiled, and worried that his smile looked too conspiratorial.
“So, what would you have me do?”
“What you do is entirely your own decision, Inspector Beadle,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender, as if it really had nothing to do with him. “But if, say, you were of a notion to let me take this problem off your hands, then I would be happy to help out.”
“You’d like to take her?”
“Again, you misunderstand me. I’ve no particular dog in this fight.”
Beadle caught the smirk of Macpherson from across the room and tried to keep his own face straight. Of course, he had no dog in this fight. Which was why he’d dashed into the neighbouring borough as soon as he’d heard the bark.
“But I could take her back right now,” Varley said, examining his nails. “Even let the Pinkerton take her back?”
Beadle found himself shaking his head, despite the voice inside telling him to go along with this nonsense and let the problem go away. “This Pinkerton that, you say, was discharging his revolver in your town centre?”
“An accident. On the rooftops. No one saw. No harm done.”
“We heard he shot through a window into a flour mill premises and fled the scene,” Beadle said.
Varley turned pale and tried to swallow something that appeared to have lodged in his throat. “I’m sure that was an exaggeration. You know how tongues wag. The people get over excited and before you know it they’ve turned it into some Wild West shoot out or a Little Bighorn massacre.”
“I think there were a large number of your citizens who tipped up here tonight who thought along those lines.”
“Oh, really?”
“Peakies. Welly Davies’s gang. Caused quite a stir.”
“In Moseley?” said Varley.
“Perhaps they got excited by the reward money announced in the Birmingham Post tonight.”
“I didn’t know a reward had been announced. Do you think those Peakies can even read?”
“Such a great deal of villainy spilling over into our borough would lead me to suspect so.”
“I’m sure it was a mere coincidence. Probably nothing to do with this at all.”
“So I don’t think I’ll be handing her over to this man. Not if that’s how he conducts his business.”
“I do think that’s a mistake—”
“And also due to the fact that he’s rather drunk.”
“Oh,” said Varley. “I see.”
“But if you want to escort him back across Birmingham and deposit him in Aston, I could certainly release him to your care.”
“Yes. Yes, of course. And the girl?”
“She’s arrested and there’s the matter of two criminal charges to bring against her: a stolen horse and breaking into a church.”
Chief Superintendant Xavier Varley rose and put his hat on. “I wouldn’t proceed with those charges. T
he church is surely sanctuary, especially for a poor, lost waif who’s a stranger to this country. Completely understandable. And the stolen horse is a Birmingham matter. Calthorpe Park. Which would be my territory.”
Beadle rose to see him out. “Yes, Chief Superintendant. You’re right. Perhaps there are no charges to bring. But I would, at least, prefer it if she is escorted back to Aston by a representative of Colonel Cody’s entourage, rather than a gun happy drunk.”
Varley wheeled, anger flashing in his eyes. But he chose to swallow it and put on a smile. “Certainly. I completely understand. I’ll escort Mr Calder back to Aston immediately, with your permission, of course, and inform Colonel Cody that he can come and collect her from your care. I’m sure he’ll be most grateful. I imagine he’ll be dispensing a number of tickets for the show, for all your lads. And their families too.”
Beadle nodded and ushered him out to Desk Sergeant Wake, informing him to release the Pinkerton to Chief Superintendant Varley’s care.
When he walked back into his office, Sergeant Macpherson, raised an eyebrow. “Does that happen often?”
“What?”
“Birmingham march in here and start throwing their weight around?”
“In the nicest possible way, of course.”
“Oh yes, very polite.”
“I suppose it’s all Buffalo Bill’s doing,” said Beadle. “They’re all cock a hoop that he’s in town. They’ve practically made him Lord Mayor.”
“And we’re all invited to the circus, apparently.”
“We’re part of the circus now,” said Beadle. “We have to just sit here and wait for Buffalo bloody Bill to march up, no doubt at the head of a giant parade, and give her up to him like we were handing over the keys to the bloody county.”
“It certainly stinks,” said Macpherson.
“Their whole bloody town stinks. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the smell has been drifting over here quite a lot recently.”
“That’s the problem with smells,” said Macpherson. “They’re no respecter of borders on a map.”
Beadle scrunched up his neatly written report and tossed it at the waste paper basket. His anger only mounted when it missed and rolled away.
40
JUST AT THE MOMENT when Katherine had thought she was going to die, there had been a bang. But it wasn’t the gun. It was the policemen running into the church and charging the door to the bell tower.
They had stormed in, in their black uniforms with their brass buttons. They would have looked like cavalry if it wasn’t for the absurd pointed helmets and the bull’s eye lanterns they carried, and the sticks they held, instead of swords.
The cavalry had never come to save. Only to murder.
But these had saved her.
Calder had shoved his pistol into his shoulder holster, buttoning up his jacket swiftly, even for a man who was drunk.
When the police burst in, he jabbered some story about how he was working for Buffalo Bill and had tracked this poor kidnapped Indian to Moseley and was to take her back to the camp in Aston.
But the police inspector hadn’t fallen for it, looking him up and down, sniffing at him, reading him, and patting him down to find his hidden pistol.
The police had taken them both into custody.
They dragged her down the winding stairs, through the dark graveyard, down the alley that was now clear, and into a waiting wagon that thundered off and rode northwards for a long time.
She thought they were heading back to Aston. They were certainly heading back to Birmingham, but they stopped just short of it, she thought, and when they dragged her out, she saw the name of the police station.
Balsall Heath.
She had been so close to the dovecote. And now they’d dragged her back another mile.
It was over.
She would never get there now.
They took her to a cell at the end of an empty corridor and left her alone. A man at the far end of the station sang a drunken tirade to the night.
She took the grey blanket they had given her and wrapped it around her shoulders. It was going to be a long, cold night in this cell, and she was exhausted.
As she had been arrested, transported and locked up, she had thought of using those powers that had been boiling inside her, to control their minds, confuse them, make her escape. But there was nothing in her now. She had spent it all on the Peakies.
She curled up on the hard wooden bench and tried to sleep, to forget it all. They would take her back to the camp in the morning.
She shuddered at the thought. What would they say to her?
Two-Face Lillian Smith would laugh and sneer, as she always had, but would her friends be any different, now that she had turned away from them? Would Annie welcome her back? Would Red Shirt accept her now she was no longer Bright Star Falling? Could she change back into her native clothes and become Lakota again?
No.
Buffalo Bill would put her in chains and throw her into the cargo hold of the first ship back to America. They would hang her, or throw her onto one of the reservations.
Either way was death.
She had drifted into dark slumber when she became aware of someone standing over her.
Blinking her eyes in the gloom, she thought it one of the policemen, but the face gazing down at her was Peter Wethers.
It was a dream, because he could not be there, and she had seen him die. Perhaps his spirit had come to say farewell before passing over.
Peter Wethers was standing in her cell.
She jerked away and shrank back from him.
This was no dream.
He put a finger to his lips and whispered, “I don’t have much time. They’re coming for you soon.”
“You’re dead,” she said.
He shook his head. “No. I’m very much alive.”
She squeezed a hand from under her blanket and reached for him. He was warm and real and she could feel the hairs on the back of his hand.
“How did you get in here?”
“I don’t have time to explain that. They’re coming soon.”
“Who’s coming?”
“You’ll see.”
She wanted to scream. To hit him. To fall into his arms, but all she could do was whisper, “How do you know? What’s going on?”
“You don’t know how I know?” he said. “You don’t see it yet? You’re so close. You’ll know it soon.”
The vision she had experienced, waiting in the shadows of the village green, came back to her.
“I remember you. I saw you, in the street. You were taking my photograph. Not now. Not in this time. Some other time.”
“I said you’ll see it all soon.”
“But I can’t remember that far back. Every time I try to go to the past, a cloud of smoke sweeps in and I can’t see anything.”
“You’re looking in the wrong direction.”
“I was on that street, under the shadow of the church. I was running away from you. You had a camera. A tiny one. Is there such a thing?”
“Not yet.”
She rubbed her eyes, trying to wipe away the confusion, the fog that was clouding her mind.
“Why did you lie to me, Peter?”
“I had to make sure. Had to be certain that you weren’t going to be a danger to us.”
A spider crawled up her spine. She didn’t know who these others were, but the mention of them filled her with a familiar fear. “Who?”
“You fear the bad spirits and what they might do to you, Katherine. But don’t you see? You don’t need to fear the bad spirits. You are a bad spirit. It’s you that everyone’s scared of.”
“I’m not. I’m just normal. I’m like everyone else.”
“I don’t think you can say that really, can you, Katherine?”
She knew it was true, even as it tore a hole in her heart. She had felt an evil power coursing through her veins, and it was filling her soul even now, making her stronger, mak
ing her more dangerous. She thought of the terrible thrill in her heart as she’d blinded the Peakies. She could smite them all if she chose.
“You know what’s inside you,” he said. “You know what you’re capable of. You’ve been seeing it come back to you, little by little. What normal people possess such magic?”
All hope of being a good person was lost to her. She had no control of it. She was being swept down a river, the rapids dragging her to the falls that would annihilate her.
She found a branch overhanging the river and grasped it. “What of you? You were shot and you fell from the roof and you disappeared in mid-air. You’re here, in this cell. What’s your magic? You’re as strange as I am.”
Peter Wethers smiled in the darkness. “Yes. And there are others too. We all possess this magic. We all use it. But we don’t exploit it, like you did. We don’t try to kill people with it. We don’t wield it with hate and jealousy in our hearts, like you did.”
“I don’t remember this! Why am I being punished for something I don’t even remember?”
He put his hand over her mouth, glancing over his shoulder, fearing the policemen would come.
“Perhaps so you’ll forget your hate and jealousy. Perhaps so you’ll find the goodness in your heart.”
She tried to speak and he took his hand away, crouching, his face inches from hers. “Who are these others?”
“You’ll remember soon. The closer you get to your touchstone, the more you’ll remember. Your magic turned bad, Katherine.”
“But I’m not bad.”
“That badness is still in you. We have to make sure you’re safe before we can let you back.”
“But I’m good. I know it.”
“I believe you,” he said, and her heart leapt. “But it’s not just my decision.”
“Whose is it?”
“You’ll remember soon enough.”
Her notebook. The names she’d scribbled on the pages. “Hudson, Mitch, Danny, Rachel...”
“You see? You’re remembering already.”
She shook her head. “They’re just names. I can’t see their faces.”