The Red Ribbon

by H. B. Lyle

  “Ya want some and all?” He held the cleaver above his head, murder in his eyes. “Sid, get Frankie and Mueller—now.”

  Wiggins patted him once more. “Easy, easy. You wouldn’t want the cops coming down here, would ya?”

  “This ain’t cop town. Now sling it.”

  “Look, what’s he owe?” Wiggins said, tapping his pockets.

  The butcher looked at him quizzically. He was breathing hard with anger and adrenaline, but he still had an eye for cash. Jax squirmed again but the enormous fist held firm. “He’s lifted all sorts from here. Steaks, chops, bangers, you name it. And it ain’t just me. He’s lifted from half the stalls on the Lane.”

  “This do?” Wiggins pulled out a pound note and straightened it between his hands in front of him. “All yours,” he said. “’Less you wait for the others.”

  The butcher frowned, licked his lips, and glanced up the market in the direction of the disappearing Sid. “Fack it.” He tossed the cleaver aside and grasped the note.

  Wiggins yanked Jax away into the crowd. “Move it.”

  “Where you get a quid from?” she muttered.

  “Aargh!” From behind them, the butcher howled.

  “Run!”

  The two of them nipped between the last stalls at the top of the market, ducked under the arch onto Liverpool Street, and jumped a bus as it rattled past.

  Wiggins pushed Jax into the main compartment. “I’m paying this time,” he said. He glanced back to see the butcher and Sid burst onto the road, heads swiveling.

  “You lifted it from his money belt, didn’tcha?” Jax said. “Paid ’im off with his own cash.”

  They both laughed, the same high-pitched gurgle descending into giggles and splutters. A matron sitting in front of them turned and frowned. Wiggins tipped his cap. “No wonder you didn’t want to go there,” he said once they’d stopped laughing.

  Jax shook her head. The bus trundled south toward the river. “What about Millie?”

  “Did she have any identifying marks?”

  “Wot, like your big hooter?”

  “You know what she did, don’t ya?”

  “All I know is she’s gone.” Jax looked out the window as they went over London Bridge, the river thick with traffic right down to the high masts of the big ships out east. She pulled a small trinket from around her neck. “She wears one like this. Got ’em together, down Petticoat last year.”

  “Lifted?”

  “Wot you think?”

  Wiggins examined the small cross and icon. A St. Christopher. “You gone soft?” he said, handing it back.

  “Nah, it’s just . . . He stands up for waifs, don’t he?”

  “You’re no waif.”

  Jax tucked the icon back into her shirt. “I just want to know where she is. You promised.”

  “I’ll have another look,” he said. He had promised. But after that first conversation with Tommy and the one with Poppy, he guessed she’d gone off with her Fred. Who wouldn’t flee a job like that? Jax looked so hopeful, big blue eyes staring back at him, he didn’t have the heart to tell her just yet, and he didn’t know for sure. He put his hand on her shoulder lightly, a promise renewed.

  The two of them got off the bus at Borough and walked over to Sal’s tea hut, just south of Waterloo. Jax’s mum, and Wiggins’s oldest friend, ran it for cabbies. Open even on a Sunday, every day, all year. The taxis never stopped, so neither did she.

  Jax hesitated at the door. “I can’t keep looking for this Peter bloke, not unless you pay me. I gotta get back running.”

  Wiggins nodded.

  “Mum needs the blunt coming in. We’re brassick. Always. And don’t say nothing about what happened up the Lane—she don’t like thieving.”

  “Times change.” He smiled. “You’ve gotta work when you can. I’ll come back when I can pay. I’s a bit skint myself.” He pushed open the door to the hut. “And I just gave up the last quid I nicked. Bought your hand, if you’ve forgotten.”

  “Whose hand?”

  “Wotcha, Sal,” Wiggins said. “Jax was just helping me with my inquiries.”

  “All right, my girl,” Sal said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Her own. Don’t ask.”

  “Leave off, Ma.” Jax went straight for the loaf of bread on the sideboard at the far end. Sal held up a teacup and Wiggins nodded. The sole customer saluted with his free hand and blew thick black pipe smoke at the yellowed ceiling.

  “Well?” Sal said. A couple of cabbies bustled in, hallooing. They took seats and glanced at Wiggins without curiosity. Sal got up and served them, two times tea, two times bread and butter, and one slice of lemon, special like.

  With the moment to himself, Wiggins pulled from his pocket the sweets wrappers he’d found in the deserted room off Petticoat Lane. He wet his finger and tasted each of the wrappers in turn. Three mint imperials and one lemon sherbet. It wasn’t enough. Peter was addicted to the sweets, but four wrappers wouldn’t stand up in court. Not that he was planning to go to court.

  “Where you been?” Sal plumped down again.

  “Up north, for work. And no, I can’t tell you what it is, however many times you ask.”

  She pursed her lips. “Suit yourself.” She got up again and began busying herself in the kitchen area.

  Wiggins went after her. They’d known each other for more than twenty years; they’d grown up together on the streets. She was his first friend—she’d saved him. And now Bill was dead and buried she was once again the closest thing to his best friend. But when he’d joined the army, a rift had been created that had never really healed. He’d bumped into her the year before, but since then had seen her daughter, Jax, as much as her. Sometimes he’d look at Sal’s fat, chipmunk cheeks and see the girl he used to know, see the girl he’d shared everything with, his fears, his hopes, his last penny pie. But she wasn’t that girl anymore, and he wasn’t a kid.

  He stood beside her at the tea urn. “Here, never guess who I saw the other day? Tommy.”

  Sal glanced sideways at him. “He showed up again, after you left.” She poured water into the urn and said nothing more.

  Wiggins waited, looked carefully at her face, then broke into a grin. “Ya didn’t.”

  “He’d grown up. He was bigger.”

  “Please tell me ya didn’t.”

  She looked at him for a moment, full in the face. A ginger curl fell over one eye, her cheeks still freckled. “Nah, I didn’t,” she said at last. “Not that it’s any of your biznay.” They both smiled, perhaps for different reasons.

  5

  “I thought this was your business?” Kell said in exasperation.

  “I can’t find anything that’s not there, can I?” Wiggins replied. “And I’ve only been at it a week. And I’m on my tod.”

  “You’ve had more than a week. But enough of the excuses. Have you even managed to eliminate any of the clerks from the inquiry?”

  Wiggins sighed. “Arbuckle. Ministry of Works.”

  Kell loosened his collar. “And?” It was three days until the King’s funeral, and they’d made no progress on finding the leak.

  “Lives in Camberwell, drinks an ’alf over the odds but not more. Wife loves him. Kids don’t. Smells.”

  “How is that relevant?”

  “If he’s on the take, then he don’t spend the money, is all.”

  “Next.”

  “Bevington in the Admiralty, Bryce in Labour.” Wiggins reeled off the mundane details he’d picked up from following these government clerks, rooting around in their lives.

  “So nothing?” Kell said at last.

  “I’ve only just started.”

  The telephone jangled into life, startling them both. Kell grasped the horn himself. “Kell,” he said, before Simpkins could answer.

  “Glad you can get something right,” Soapy’s voice crackled down the line. “Have you got any information?”

  “Not yet.” He held the receiver close,
so Wiggins couldn’t hear. “It’s early days.”

  “Early days!” Soapy’s agitation almost jumped out of the phone. “Things have got worse, and if you don’t do something about it quick smart we’re all out of a job.”

  “How?”

  “Last night. A minor bash at the FO, diplo bigwigs, you know the drill. A scratch of soup, then port and brandy till midnight. PM turns up, German ambassador there, all faux friendship.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “They know the route of the procession.”

  “The German ambassador?”

  “One of his staff. Let it slip casually, bragging, probably. The PM’s livid,” Soapy went on. “Can’t tell the King, of course.”

  “The King’s dead.”

  “The new one.”

  Kell looked over at Wiggins, who sat with his head down, apparently oblivious. “Sure it’s the sneak? Most of the route is common sense. There are only so many ways to get from Whitehall to Paddington.”

  “Of course it’s a bally leak. We’ve advertised a different one—only the members of the committee know the real one, with all the details. You were in the room, we know everyone who knew.” Soapy paused and breathed in.

  This was the worst of it for Soapy, Kell understood: that it was one of the chaps, one of the twenty or so people in the committee room, who had told someone else. It broke all the ethics they had known since school. There was a sneak, a snitch, a mole, a blabber. It was unforgivable.

  “Are you still there, Kell?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “Why? Get out, man, find out who’s behind this.” He hung up.

  Kell looked at the receiver for a moment, then replaced it carefully. “Who’s next on the list?”

  “Carter, chief clerk at the Foreign Office.”

  Kell thought of the committee room, who had been there: Foreign Office, Home Office, War Office, Admiralty, Cabinet Office, and police. “You can scrub most of the names on your list,” he said at last.

  “You’re joking?”

  “Look into Carter as planned, then the chief clerks at Home, War, and Admiralty.” Kell couldn’t quite bring himself to send Wiggins after the ministers. Not yet.

  Wiggins hesitated. “It’s your money,” he said and got up.

  “And don’t forget,” Kell called across the room.

  “Forget what?”

  “The funeral, noon. You’re to meet me at Paddington.”

  “How could I forget Paddington?” Wiggins said, and was gone.

  Wiggins stepped across the hallway of the apartment and had made it to the front door when he felt a hand on his arm.

  “What-ho! Got a letter for you.” Simpkins, the clerk, held out a small envelope.

  “For me? Addressed here?”

  “I know, bit odd.”

  “Ta.” Wiggins took the letter and examined it. “No postmark?”

  “Simpkins!” Kell called from his office, and the clerk hurried away.

  Wiggins opened the envelope. A first-class rail ticket fluttered to the floor. The envelope was otherwise empty. He examined the inside of the envelope, and then the writing once more. His name—WIGGINS—and the address were written in capitals. He sniffed the envelope, then turned his attention to the ticket, which came with a compartment reservation for the 0918 from Marylebone the following morning. He hesitated, then thrust the ticket into his pocket and set off for Islington.

  Hilldrop Crescent was a pleasant, tree-lined street in a respectable part of Islington. Number 43 sat on the right-hand side of a three-house terrace. Four stories high, single-fronted, it was an unremarkable building in an unremarkable street. It was also the home of Archibald Carter, chief clerk to the Foreign Office, a civil servant of over twenty years’ standing. Wiggins had spent most of the afternoon asking around discreetly—local tradesmen, at various pubs and the like. Now he was posing as a canvasser on the street. He’d filched a magazine from the stall on Holloway Road and was knocking on doors asking for personal advertisements. People were remarkably open to conversation, Wiggins found, especially if you asked them about their neighbors.

  He tapped up the steps at number 39, two down from Carter’s but in the same terrace. A middle-aged man opened the door a few inches. “Can I help you?” He peered at Wiggins through thick, round glasses, much like a mole might peer at daylight.

  “It’s more a question of whether I can help you. Do you advertise? I see you’re a medical man?”

  The man shrunk back. “How did you know?”

  From deep inside the house a woman bawled, “Hawley! Who the hell is that?”

  The man glanced back. “No one, dear,” he said, a slight American twang to his voice.

  “Hawley, get back in here!”

  Wiggins tried a different tack. “You’ve had building work done, I see.”

  The man, Hawley, twitched. “No.”

  “But the flagstones—replaced recently?” Wiggins asked, gesturing to the front of the house.

  “Hawley!”

  “I must go,” Hawley quivered. “I have no need for advertisements. Good day.” He squeezed the door shut before Wiggins could say another word.

  Wiggins walked down the steps to the pavement and looked back at the house and the recently disturbed flagstones beneath the ground-floor window. He considered the rarity of a medical man not interested in advertising his wares and recalled the bead of sweat on Hawley’s brow, despite the cool evening air. Someone bustled past him on the road, breaking the thought.

  A tall, thin man of sixty turned up the steps to number 43. Well-pressed frock coat, bulging briefcase, air of self-importance—Wiggins guessed this was Archibald Carter, home from work, a suspicion confirmed when he heard someone bellow from behind the front door, “Archie!”

  He hesitated. Something about the last house, Hawley and the shouting woman, had unsettled him. His mind was filling with loose threads: Peter at large in London; Millie missing; things amiss at the Embassy; and this tiny mole in the haystack of Whitehall. He shook his head, reset his features into those of an ingratiating canvasser, and rang the bell at number 43. It never hurt to look a suspect in the eye.

  “Good evening?” Archibald Carter answered the door himself, as Wiggins had hoped, for he’d only just gone in. “Can I help you?”

  Wiggins opened his mouth to speak but before he could do so a huge bear of a man pushed past Carter and grabbed him around the neck. “He’ll do,” he cried, and dragged Wiggins into the house.

  The next morning, Constance Kell said goodbye to the children in the nursery of her Hampstead home and went downstairs. She went straight to the hatstand and gathered up her coat, hat, umbrella, and handbag.

  “Not hungry?” Kell said, standing at the door to the breakfast room.

  She shook her head.

  “I wanted to say . . . er . . . the King’s funeral—I’m to be part of the security detail. I won’t be able to attend with you.”

  “I wasn’t going to go.” She heaved on her coat.

  “Busy?”

  “Hmm?” She adjusted her hat, a wide-brimmed red felt affair with a peacock feather arcing into the air.

  “Now, are you busy?”

  She stopped and looked at her husband. “Coffee morning, for veterans, in Chalk Farm. Meeting the ladies.”

  “Right.”

  “Must dash.”

  She walked quickly to Hampstead Underground station and caught the train south. She did not get out at Chalk Farm. Instead, she went on to Euston, where she changed lines and finally alighted at Marylebone Station.

  Constance pushed against the tide of late-morning commuters bustling out of the station, and looked at the departure board above the platform entrances. No copying please. Thank you ran across the top of the board in freshly painted white. She smiled at the stationmaster and hurried to her train.

  The first-class compartment she had reserved was empty. She went out into the corridor and looked up and down, then thrus
t her head out of the nearby window. A cascade of closing doors reverberated up the train. There was no sign on the platform either. She checked her wristwatch in irritation, then went back to sit down.

  She slid open the compartment door. “Morning, Mrs. Kell,” Wiggins said. He sat by the window.

  “Good day, Mr. Wiggins,” she said in the crispest of tones. “I’m so glad you could come. You got my message, I see, and the ticket.”

  Wiggins nodded. “A woman’s writing, a woman’s scent on the letter. You’s the only woman who could possibly have known I’d be at that address. So here I am.”

  Constance grinned. For all Wiggins’s low birth and shabby attire—he looked like he slept on the streets—she did enjoy speaking with clever people. She took a seat opposite. “I need your advice,” she said.

  “You didn’t have to do the old cloak-and-dagger, ma’am.”

  A whistle sounded. She looked out onto the platform as the train clanked into action. A rap-rap-rap of closing doors. Packages, people, smoke, steam drifting across the expanse of the double platform as a newly arrived train disgorged a riot of commuters tearing off into the city. Finally, their own train picked up speed and she turned her eyes to Wiggins.

  “I’d rather my husband didn’t know we met.”

  Wiggins shifted in his seat and wouldn’t meet her eye.

  “Mr. Wiggins, what is the matter?”

  “I don’t like leaving London.” He nodded out the window.

  “Tosh. We haven’t even made Dollis Hill. We’ll be back at Marylebone in no time. Now, out with it.”

  “I can’t, against the chief, I mean, I don’t . . .” He fumbled to a halt.

  “Come on,” Constance commanded.

  Wiggins breathed in. A half-built terrace sped by. “I can’t help ya cuckold the chief. It ain’t right.”

  Constance stared sharply at him for a moment. Then she burst out laughing. “You think I intend to cuckold Vernon?”

  “You want to know some tricks, right? Some of the old duck and dive. That’s why we’re here.”

  Constance laughed again. “Isn’t that just like a man,” she said at last, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. “To think that’s all we care about. Vernon always said that women were your blind spot.” She straightened her shoulders, held her hands together, and looked at him steady once more. “You are right insofar as I want some advice. But I would never be, er, unfaithful to Vernon. Ever. Understand?”