by KJ Charles
“Sir, this is my pa, sir,” she announced. “And I’m Arabella and thank you for coming, only we don’t know what to do because my brother’s gone away and Pa says we can’t tell the peelers.”
Vikram inclined his head to the man, mostly because he had no idea how to speak to a child. “My name is Pandey. I’m a lawyer, I assist at Association House—”
“I know who you are, sir. My name is Anand Gupta, and I beg your pardon but we cannot pay a lawyer.”
“I won’t charge you anything,” Vikram said. As though he’d come to this hovel to seek fees. “Tell me about your son.”
“Sunil. He is sixteen, my son from my first marriage. My wife died when he was two years old, and I married Polly ten years ago. We have three children, she and I.”
“Six of you. And how do you live?”
“I sell sheep’s trotters, on the street. Polly makes trimmings for ladies’ hats, artificial flowers and such. Sunil...brought in what he could. He is a good boy.”
There was unquestionably an evasion there, masked by the non sequitur. Vikram marked it for later use. “And what has happened to him?”
“I don’t know. He did not always come back every night, but now he has not come back at all, or sent to us, for almost three weeks. He always brings money for the rent, the children. Always. He cares for his family.”
Vikram pressed a few questions, and got answers that were informative, if not particularly enlightening. Sunil had last been seen on the morning of the twenty-third of October, a Saturday. There had been no word since. He would sometimes spend two or three nights from home but had never been away so long before; he had not told any of his friends where he was going. He had not seemed distressed, or worried, or unusually excited; he had not spoken of plans or fantasies of escape. He had, according to father and daughter, been entirely as usual.
Their fear was obvious, and it was evident that Arabella adored her half-brother. Vikram well knew that was not always the case. “Do Mrs Gupta and Sunil get on well?”
“Very well. He might as well be her son.”
Vikram held Mr. Gupta’s gaze. “What do you think has happened to Sunil? Do you think he’s run away? Gone for a sailor?”
“No,” said father and daughter together, and Mr. Gupta went on, “He would not do that. I was a lascar. He means to do better for himself.”
“Was there an argument? Any family dispute? A girl, perhaps?” More sincere headshaking. “Then what do you think has happened?” Vikram pressed. “An accident? Have you asked at the hospitals? Have you contacted the police?” And there it was, the giveaway twitch. “Why have you not contacted the police?”
“I told him not to.” That was a woman’s voice, and Vikram twisted round to see a thin, worn-faced white woman entering the room with a darker infant on her hip. The child gazed at Vikram with huge, solemn eyes. “Bella, you take Joey and get outside. Off, now.”
“But Ma!”
“Out.”
The girl stood obediently, but as she passed Vikram she clutched at his sleeve with grubby hands. “You will help find Sunil, won’t you, sir? You’ll find him for us?”
“Out!” Mrs Gupta commanded again, and plonked the infant into the little girl’s thin arms, where it looked suddenly huge. The woman shut the door behind her daughter, then walked over and bobbed a curtsey. “You’ll be Mr. Pandey, sir. I’ve first to say, we didn’t know Bella was writing to you, not at all. She’s a foolish girl with a head full of ideas, and that’s the truth.”
“She acted with commendable initiative,” Vikram said, bristling in instinctive defence. “She is obviously a very bright girl and I trust you will continue her education.”
“Initiative is as may be,” Mrs Gupta said darkly. “I call it cheek. And as for her education...” She sagged suddenly. “It was Sunil made it so we could put her to school instead of piece work. The last year, he’s been bringing in good money and, well, with Gupta’s leg, we needed it.”
“And how was he making the money?” Vikram asked. “Is this the reason you have not gone to the police?”
“There’s no harm in it,” Mrs Gupta said, jaw setting. “None in the world. He does errands, for gentlemen.”
“Errands for gentlemen,” Vikram repeated.
Mrs Gupta’s eyes locked with his. Hers were light hazel, lined, tired, and defensive. “He’s brought in ten, twenty shillings a week sometimes. He’s been taught to speak nice and the gentlemen passed on some good clothes for Gupta, hardly worn. There’s no harm in it.”
There was certainly no novelty. Boys of the working classes traded their youth for coin as much as girls did. Discussion of that was usually shrouded in the sort of euphemism that Vikram found profoundly irritating in its imprecision, even if it was needful under the law.
It ought not to be. Prostitution and exploitation were words Vikram thought should be shouted aloud, along with poverty. Perhaps the Guptas knew exactly what Sunil did for his money; perhaps they merely suspected, or chose not to question. A growing family with a crippled father could not be expected to turn away the wages of sin when it paid at these rates, no matter what comfortably-off moralists would say. “Did Sunil dislike his way of living?”
“No, sir. He was always cheerful,” Mrs Gupta insisted. “He liked having money in his pocket, he was saving a little. He wanted—he wants—” Her face crumpled suddenly. Mr. Gupta put up his hand to hers, and she clutched it, work-worn fingers twining together. Her other hand was knotted in the grimy cloth of her apron. “I just want him to be safe.”
“Are you afraid for his life?” Vikram asked.
“We don’t know,” Mr. Gupta said. “We don’t know.”
But they feared to go to the police, as well they might. A foreign boy of the lowest class with such a tale was unlikely to be anyone’s priority and might even be arrested if he were still alive. A vindictive policeman might accuse his parents of living off immoral earnings. “Do you know his employer’s name?”
The Guptas both shook their heads. “He never said,” Mrs Gupta added. “I don’t know where he went.”
Well, what the devil would you have me do, then? Vikram bit back the angry words. They sprang from the tight knot in his stomach that he always felt when there was help he couldn’t give, a problem he couldn’t solve. There were so many of them. He understood why people went through life averting their eyes from everyone else’s suffering; when one noticed, it was unbearable.
“Please, sir,” Mrs Gupta said. “He’s Gupta’s eldest and Arabella loves him so and—please. Even if the news isn’t good. We have to know.”
Just say “I can’t help you.” Just say it. Don’t offer false promises.
He couldn’t make himself do it. Not this boy, this age. He’d lost one such himself, once. And if Sunil was lying dead somewhere in this sprawling city, if he had already been buried in a pauper’s grave for want of someone to claim him, Vikram might at least be able to find that out. He could spare a couple of shillings, send out someone to ask questions.
He pushed a hand through his hair. “I will send around to hospitals and mortuaries.” They both flinched. “Is there anything else you can tell me, any clue as to his employer or place of work? And I will need a full description.”
The pair exchanged glances. Mr. Gupta nodded. Mrs Gupta went to the corner and lifted the lid of a cheap, battered box. She came over and gave Vikram a framed photograph.
He blinked. Photography was not cheap, and this was a good, clear image in a well-made frame, far better than he’d expect this painfully poor family to own. It showed a handsome, smiling youth with a slight resemblance to Mr. Gupta, an incipient moustache that brought back Vikram’s memories of his own adolescence, and a cocky look. A happy, confident young man. “This is Sunil?”
“He gave it to us the Sunday before he vanished,” Mr. Gupta said. “He was working as a photographer’s model. It was a gift.”
Vikram turned over the picture. There was no indication
of the studio or the photographer’s name. That in itself was suggestive of a photographer who didn’t want to be found, and if Sunil had been a ‘model’ for one of those...
It was, perhaps, a start.
CHAPTER THREE
The next afternoon saw Vikram standing in Holywell Street.
He’d never been there before but he knew of it: a sordid little street that ran parallel to the Strand between St. Mary le Strand and St. Clement Danes. People called it the Backside of St. Clement’s, and from all he’d heard, it lived up to the promise of that nickname. This was where one came to buy pornographic and obscene works, a thing Vikram had never done in his life.
He had no idea if he could pick up Sunil’s trail simply by asking around, based on a perfectly innocent photograph. It seemed unlikely in the extreme, but he had to do something with the memory of Arabella’s tug on his sleeve and hopeful eyes on his face. He was fairly sure he could intimidate dealers in illicit wares into giving him some sort of answer. Not that they’d have anything useful to tell him if Sunil had fallen into the Thames or under the wheels of a cab, but it was something to do, so he would do it.
That had brought him along the Strand to here. The Strand was a wide thoroughfare with imposing tall frontages, fit for the capital of empire; Holywell Street was its disreputable, drink-sodden uncle with his trouser buttons undone. It was narrow and lined with sagging Jacobean or even Elizabethan houses, their black timbers barely showing against soot-darkened plaster, with pointed gables and overhanging storeys that conspired together to block out what little daylight there was. The cobbles underfoot were slimy, crusty, and slippery with deposits of soot and mud, worse filth too. There was a pervading scent of urine. A couple of shop-soiled women in dresses that had once been bright lounged against a wall looking at him with an unconvincing show of interest.
It wasn’t poor, though. Vikram knew the East End and the docks; he knew the places where people slept twenty to a room in houses rotting away over cesspools that nobody ever paid to empty. He knew what poverty looked like, and it wasn’t shops with plentiful goods in the windows, steps free of hollow-faced children and dead-eyed women. Holywell Street’s decay was deliberate, if he was any judge. It would rather wallow freely in its filth than bow to other people’s ideas of cleanliness.
Twenty years ago, the street would have proclaimed its illegal wares without shame. These days, since the law had put down its heavy foot, the shops just looked shabby and unremarkable. Vikram decided he would start at one end and work his way up and down until he had an answer, or at least somewhere else to look, for the sake of a boy lost in the city and a little sister who missed him.
That was the plan. Within fifteen minutes, it started feeling more like an embarrassment.
Vikram had tried three shops by then. The first proprietor had barely looked at the image before denying all knowledge of Sunil, obscene publications, or the existence of the photographic art. Evidently he’d smelled trouble. Vikram opened negotiations in the second shop by asking about purchase of illicit photographs, but unfortunately, he’d never had a talent for acting. The shopkeeper had denied everything, and threatened to “summons a pleeceman”. Vikram took that threat for what it was worth, since he was quite sure the fellow wouldn’t want the law in here, but there was no point insisting in the teeth of such obduracy.
He decided to attempt a more conciliatory approach in the third shop. Unfortunately, he was not feeling conciliatory. Also unfortunately, though predictably, as he came in an urchin came scurrying out past him, shooting up a defiant glance, and the shopkeeper was already waiting with his arms folded.
Of course the people of Holywell Street were more interested in their own skins than the fate of a lost youth. It was only to be expected they would lie and deny and band together to fend off enquiry. It still rankled, and Vikram’s intention to appeal to the man’s humanity and better nature was rapidly forgotten when the shopkeeper told him to piss off for a nark. Vikram shared his opinion of pigs rolling in the sewer of human degradation, and stalked out of the shop in a raging temper.
This was a waste of time. What he ought to do was hire an investigator, someone used to asking questions. Or let the matter go, curse it. What was one more vanished youth in the great abyss of London? Would it not make more sense for Vikram to do the work he knew, and help the people he could?
But that meant giving up, and Vikram hated giving up. More, it meant accepting defeat of a kind that tasted like poison.
It was absurd. There were so many children lost in London all the time, and many of them lost in plain sight, condemned to misery from birth without the love and caring Sunil had obviously known. This one boy wasn’t special, except in the way that any human being was special. It was simply that Vikram felt the Guptas’ gaping, frightening loss, because he knew it.
That was the problem. He knew how it felt when someone didn’t come back, when you demanded why and never had an answer, when you looked around to share a joke or a smile and remembered he wasn’t there, when you were still doing it years later because there had been no letter, no funeral, no reason. Vikram had looked at Sunil’s picture, just sixteen, and seen his own loss, and it had hurt so much all over again.
He stood there in this disgusting street of disgusting men, under drizzle hardening into rain, staring at the filth-encrusted cobbles under his feet for a moment. Then he took a deep breath and set his shoulders. He would not give up the search for Sunil; he would find someone who would give him some sort of answer, or place to look. He would, in the name of all the lost people, and in memory of Gil.
Vikram squinted up under his hat-brim at the next shop-sign, and almost fell over.
Gilbert Lawless Bookseller
The sign hung there, once red and gold, now dusted by soot and streaked by rain, but the words were quite legible.
Gilbert Lawless. Gil.
It couldn’t be, Vikram thought, with an odd roaring in his ears. There must be dozens of other boys—men, now—with that name. Of course there were; it was only the reawakened memories that were making him imagine otherwise. This could not be his Gil Lawless, because his Gil Lawless was missing, vanished, almost certainly dead. This couldn’t possibly be Gil, alive and well and...running an obscene bookshop in London’s most ill-reputed street...
The appalling plausibility of that dawned on him along with the awareness that if this was truly, really Gil Lawless alive, Vikram was going to kill him.
He shoved open the door. The interior of the shop was very small and cluttered, with the counter in the middle of the room, and behind it a door to a back room and a flight of wooden steps leading up. The walls were lined with books, cheap card-bound editions available to browsers, leather-bound sets of evident quality behind the counter. The gas was lit against the encroachment of dusk, and the chilly air felt at once dusty and damp.
Gil was leaning on the counter.
He’d changed. That was Vikram’s first thought; on its heels came the awareness that he would have known him, even without the name on the shop front. He’d have known him anywhere.
Gil at sixteen had already been filling out into manhood, and Gil at almost thirty was not dramatically bigger. He hadn’t grown particularly tall, so that Vikram had the advantage of him by a good four inches, and he was of no more than medium build, sinew rather than muscle. His face was longer and leaner, interestingly high-cheekboned now he’d lost his boyish roundness; he had a day’s black scruff on his chin. His hair had been kept cropped almost to the scalp at school; it now grew up and out in tight curls for an inch or so. His coat was shrugged on as his clothes had always been, his cuffs and elbows dusty. In fact, he looked exactly as Vikram would have imagined him, if he’d ever imagined the swine was still alive.
Gil was wearing a purely professional smile, which faded as he saw Vikram staring at him. His brows drew together, warily. “Yes, sir? Can I help you?”
They hadn’t seen one another since Gil had disappea
red from school part-way through summer term thirteen years ago. Vikram had been bewildered, then afraid, then more alone than he’d ever imagined possible. And there had been nothing more, ever: no letter to the school or Vikram’s home, no response to the pleas Vikram had sent to Wealdstone House, no result from the search he’d paid for when he’d come down from Oxford. Not one single indication that he wasn’t dead. Vikram had made himself accept that his childhood friend, the person he’d been closest to in his whole life, was gone and he would never even have a chance to say goodbye. And all the time Gil had been in London, running a shop a stone’s throw from Lincoln’s Inn, as though Vikram hadn’t spent the last thirteen years alone.
It was typical. It was absolutely typical Gil Lawless, the idle, flippant swine. Of course he wouldn’t have considered something as trivial as his best friend’s terror for him. He’d doubtless moved on and forgotten, shrugging the past off as he’d always shrugged off the insults and abuses Vikram couldn’t ignore, and he didn’t even know who Vikram was now.
Bloody, bloody, bloody Gil.
“Nothing,” Vikram heard himself say, and turned away. He would just leave, walk out, abandon this ill-fated quest—
“Hold on,” Gil said sharply. “Hoi! Stay there!” A scuff of feet and a thump, as if he’d vaulted the counter, and then Gil’s fingers were closing around Vikram’s forearm, tugging him round. “Vikram? Vikram. You are.”
There was astonishment on his face which gave way for a second to something almost like alarm, and then his face split in a smile of delight that made Vikram think he must have imagined that fleeting look. “Vik. Bugger me.”
“Gil,” Vikram said, and couldn’t find anything else.