by H. B. Lyle
It was something Martha had said that kept going through his mind, Martha and Poppy: We all go sometime. The ferry takes us, every one. What ferry? he’d wondered. The boatmen on the Thames called death “the ferry ’cross the sticks,” but it was something else that snagged. Close by Kell’s office, and not more than a mile away from the Embassy itself, stood Horseferry Road Magistrates’ Court. Beneath it, the mortuary dealing with the river deaths of West London: the Ferry.
He looked up at the legend above the door, then ducked around the side of the building and down the stairs.
An attendant sat with his feet up on a desk, cleaning his nails with a nasty, medical-looking spike. He barely glanced up as Wiggins came in. “We’re busy,” he said.
“An inquiry is all.”
“All inquiries must go through the coroner.” The attendant spoke through his nose and didn’t look at him. “I am not at liberty to discuss details with anyone off the street.”
Wiggins examined the attendant, noted the flashy tie, saw a reflection in the man’s shoes. Cigar ash littered the desk. Wiggins kept his voice level. “I need to look at who’s come in this week. And any personal effects unclaimed this year.”
The attendant shook his head. “Do you want me to call one of the constables? It won’t take a moment—we have our own cells.”
“Save me the bother,” Wiggins grunted.
The attendant looked up sharply. His weasel eyes narrowed. “What’s that s’posed to mean?” he said. Not quite as hoity-toity as he appeared.
“Knocking off body parts cheap still a crime, ain’t it? Teeth. Hair. How much are marrows going for down Limehouse these days?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he blustered.
“Coppers will,” Wiggins said, simply.
The attendant sat up straight in his chair, shot his arms out, and breathed in deeply. “If you’ll excuse me, sir, I must avail myself of the facilities. I will be no more than ten minutes. Please do not look at any of the cadavers stored down there, and I especially warn you to steer clear of the tray of unclaimed effects. Which is just to the right there. And here is the list of admissions over the last few months.” He tapped a leather-bound ledger with his hand. “I trust you’ll be gone by the time I get back?”
“I’ll be gone,” Wiggins said.
Wiggins flicked through the ledger quickly. Then he turned his attention to the drawer of unclaimed items. Necklaces, lockets, purses, wallets—no cash, of course, except foreign coins, the attendant and his chums saw to that—cheap rings, a wooden leg, false teeth, fishing tackle, a hook, a cigarette case, damp and soiled visiting cards: the flotsam and jetsam of life, so important on the living but in the hands of the dead nothing more than junk. Then he saw it.
Nestled in a box of twisted metal trinkets, a small St. Christopher, an exact match for the one Jax had shown him only days ago. A bedraggled red ribbon ran through a small ring at the top of the figure. Wiggins swept it into his pocket and glanced back at the exit.
Bodies on trestle tables lined the cavernous chamber, fifteen or sixteen of them, covered mostly with sheets. Millie couldn’t be among them, Wiggins knew. If she’d died when she’d disappeared, her body would have been buried long ago—and in an unmarked grave too, for the unclaimed items belonged to those who couldn’t be identified. He didn’t even know what she looked like, other than Jax’s description, but he felt compelled to look at the cadavers.
The room smelled something rotten. Not like the dead he’d seen at Ladysmith, turned rank in the heat, feasted on by flies as big as your fist. This smell felt worse, unnatural. The tang of dead flesh was in the air, but mixed with carbolic and lime too. This was a room seeped in semi-sanitized mortality.
Wiggins paced down the line, dipping his head into the faces of the dead. Of the women, two were old, one was pregnant, and the other was a young child.
At the far end, deep into the bowels of the dark, brick archway, somewhere under the courtroom, stood the last trestle table. The mains light didn’t penetrate this far and he swiped a hissing gas lamp from the side. He slowed his pace when he saw the feet—small, shapely, a young woman’s. Wiggins took a deep breath, reached down with his free hand, and pulled back the sheet.
Poppy stared up at him, paler than she ever was in life. She would go to church no more.
7
Fucking Tommy. Fucking Martha. Fucking Delphy. Fucking whores. Fucking fucking fucking.
Wiggins raged as he strode across the Thames at Vauxhall Bridge and headed to Sal’s cab hut. He raged at the Embassy and all who worked there; he raged at the high-and-mighty punters; he raged at a world where young girls like Millie and Poppy had to sell themselves to make a living; and most of all, he raged at himself. Poor, pale Poppy would never have died if it weren’t for him. He knew that like he knew the streets.
He didn’t know what had killed her, though. There was no obvious wound, and she wasn’t bloated from drowning, though she looked all bleached out, like she’d been in the river. She wasn’t strangled either, as far as he could tell.
What he did know, however, was that she was seen talking to him, and now she could never talk again.
“Watch it!” Sal called, as Wiggins crashed through the door of the hut.
“Jax about?”
“Where else she gonna be, Buck House?”
Jax was out the back of the hut, sluicing out the bins. She straightened up when she noticed him, and threw down the last of the bins hurriedly.
“Not at the Cheese?”
“Well deduced, Mr. Holmes.” She saw the seriousness in his face and said, “Someone’s got to help me ma. I’m going back up later.”
Wiggins nodded. He pulled out the small St. Christopher. “Found this.”
She swiped it from him, then took out her own. “It’s hers, I know it. See, zackly the same.” She held both of them up in front of him.
“What’s the red ribbon mean?” he said.
“Dunno. Where is she? Where’d you get it?”
Wiggins hesitated. “In the bone house, down Horseferry Road.”
“She’s dead?”
“Didn’t see no body,” Wiggins said slowly. He didn’t look at Jax as he went on. “Don’t mean much. She left work, few months ago—walked out one night. No one’s seen her since.” The implication was clear. What he didn’t want to do was tell Jax about Poppy.
“Wot you mean, work?”
“It’s an academy, Jax. She worked in a whorehouse. Up west it is, dead posh.”
“Posh!” Jax cried. She put her hand to her mouth and breathed heavily for a moment.
Wiggins let the news settle. “Why didn’t you tell me she was on the game?”
“I didn’t know,” Jax said. “I thought maybe. But you wouldn’t have bothered, would you? No one cares.”
Wiggins opened his mouth to respond, stung. But maybe she had a point. Not about him caring, but who goes after missing whores? It’s the old story. He looked out into the traffic filtering toward Waterloo. Straggly pigeons pecked and fluttered aside as best they could. A horse neighed right by them, one of the waiting cabs.
Eventually, Jax said, “You didn’t see no body?”
“Nah.”
“Then there’s a chance.”
“I didn’t see nothing in the ledger, neither, that said it was her like. A couple of possibles, nothing certain. Did she look old for her age?”
“No,” Jax said quickly. “At least, she didn’t when I last saw her. But you mean there’s a hope?”
Wiggins frowned. He was still stunned by Poppy’s death, her pale face staring up at him. The Embassy wasn’t a nice place. But cold, hard reason, the old boss’s favorite kind, said: “There’s a hope.”
He dodged back into the hut. Wiggins watched as Sal took tea to a couple of customers. She shared a thin joke with them, then walked back to him with questions in her eyes.
“What you want with Jax now?”
“Leave
it, Sal.”
“You’s jumping about like a jack-in-the-box, Wiggo. You need to calm down. Twenty-five years later, and you’re still running.”
“And you’re still making tea.”
Sal stepped back, surprised. By this time, more cabbies were coming in the door. The pre-rush-hour rush. She turned away, hurt. Wiggins stood for a moment, hating himself. Her hands, red raw, scalded many times, nails bitten to the quick, flitted between the cups and urns and hastily sawed hunks of bread.
He left quietly out of the front door. Jax was waiting for him.
“Ain’t no body?” she repeated.
“Ain’t no body. But don’t go to the Embassy, Jax, whatever you do. It’s a dark place.”
She didn’t reply, didn’t even move. Finally, he added, “I’ll sort it. I promise.”
He set out west, his stride fast and angry. He looked at his watch, looked up at the sky. He was due in Victoria Street to see Kell, get the addresses, start the surveillance on the high and mighty of the land. But as he walked, his mind jumped faster and faster, and he almost broke into a run. His temper was up. He’d go to Hampstead later, catch Kell at home, but now there was somewhere he absolutely needed to be; something he absolutely needed to say; and someone he absolutely needed to batter.
“I need information, Kell, eyes and ears. We have many dangers ranged against us.”
“Were you thinking of any dangers in particular, sir?”
The home secretary, Winston Churchill, stopped pacing and glared at Kell. That afternoon, after Wiggins had gone to Horseferry Road, Kell had been summoned by Churchill for a private audience. He strode about his huge corner office like a prime-minister-in-waiting. Big windows cast a late-afternoon glow. Kell couldn’t help wondering how it was that such a vain, objectionable man could continue to ascend the slippery pole of politics.
Churchill stabbed his smoking cigarette in Kell’s direction. “The country is about to descend into turmoil. The death of a monarch always unsettles people. Anarchists, alien terrorists. Trade unions. The Irish. Indians—have you not heard of Madan Lal? And women. This vote business is turning nasty.”
“So you need me to keep watch on immigrants, trade unions, the Irish, the Indians, and women?”
“Don’t forget the Germans, the Russians, and the French.”
Kell frowned. “What about Special Branch?”
“Special Branch aren’t to be trusted. At least, not always.”
“But my remit, sir, is very tight. I am to find German spies. My resources too are limited.” Kell shifted his eyes. He was expecting Wiggins back in the office any moment, and he was going to commission him to look for German spies among the very ranks of people like Churchill and his closest aides. This was not something he would share with the man in front of him.
Churchill stubbed out his smoke. “You are my man now. I haven’t forgotten about Agent W, that business with the Tsar last year. Capital work.”
“But, sir—”
“Pish-pash, I don’t expect you to take over from Special Branch. Sir Patrick Quinn will get on with it in his own way—though why we entrust the branch to an Irishman, I’ll never know. I need all the resources I can get my hands on. And that means you. You and Agent W.”
Kell blinked. It was never easy to contradict Churchill, and almost impossible now that he was home secretary. “But we work to Haldane in the War Office. I am army. The chain of command.”
“Chains restrict, chains limit, chains imprison. We will not be shackled, eh, Kell?”
Kell sighed, not sure about that “we.” Churchill suddenly smiled. A gruesome surprise. He gestured to a forest of spirit bottles on a side table. “Whisky,” he said. Kell thought for a moment he was offering him a drink and was about to accept until he noticed Churchill’s outstretched hand. Damn the man. Kell poured them both a drink, handed one to Churchill, and waited for him to continue.
“I want you—or your agent, W—to go wherever I put you. I am the home secretary. I must know more than anyone, more than Quinn, more than Haldane, more than the Admiralty. Understand?”
“Of course, but my—”
“Oh, carry on with the spy hunting, of course. I shan’t call on you every day. I do have the police on my side. But the country is fermenting, Kell, the people are boiling up, in the mines, in the factories, in the dockyards. I can feel it. This summer could be very bad indeed. And what I need W for is the specialist jobs, inside the inside, my man and my man alone. You must tell no one of this.”
“And if I . . .” Kell ventured the thought; dared to think but not quite to say, disagree?
“I wouldn’t finish that sentence if I were you.” Churchill smiled again, and swirled the last of his Scotch. “Very good. I will contact you with a mission soon. Slàinte!”
Kell hurried back to the office, only to find that Wiggins had not yet returned. Simpkins handed in a sheet of paper with the addresses of the top ministers of the Committee and, more importantly, their close aides. It wasn’t that easy to find out where people lived, and Simpkins had been to the records of three government departments already. No one trusted Kell, and he had no authority to demand any records at all—as Quinn had been so pleased to tell him.
He glanced back with longing at his new filing system. He had more accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensive data on most of the Germans living in the country than he did on half the people in government. Yet—and this was something his masters had only just realized—the greatest danger came from your closest confidants.
He leaned back in his seat and lit a cigarette. The first plume rose to the ceiling, curling and disappearing into the air. Was this task he’d been set doomed to fail? Was that the point, in fact? Had Soapy and Quinn set him the trap—to discover a mole that didn’t exist? Soapy had almost said as much. And yet, Soapy was agitated by the leaking of information. Kell had checked—the Italian treaty really had fallen through at the last minute.
And what was he to make of Churchill’s intervention?
The clock struck five. No sign of Wiggins. This unreliability was beginning to grate. Wiggins was living up to his class, or living down to it, more like. Kell looked at the list once more. Could Wiggins really help? His agent’s increasingly long absences, his drinking, his surly mien—and if not surly, downright insolent (Kell refused, even in his own mind, to use the term “cheeky”)—made him almost impossible to deal with. Yet he had no one else.
More to the point, without Wiggins, Kell wouldn’t be in a position to do Churchill’s bidding. As he sat there and smoked, he started to suspect it might only be Churchill who stood between him and one of the newfangled labor exchanges. Army captain. Seeking employment. Work history: classified.
At six o’clock, Kell shouted for Simpkins.
“Any calls?”
Simpkins came running into the office. “The telephone also rings in here, sir,” he said, looking confused. “And I’ve been out most of the afternoon.”
“That’s a no, then? No message from my wife?”
“No.”
“Very good. You can go. Sharp tomorrow, mind. We need this list complete.” He tapped his hand on the desk. As soon as Simpkins closed the door, he slumped back into his seat, then picked up the telephone himself.
“Hampstead 202.”
Kell waited for the exchange to put him through. Churchill’s interference was vexatious. Working for such a man would be intolerable. It was as if Churchill viewed the creation of a secret service as an excuse to spy on the whole country—or rather, to spy on whomever was causing the most trouble at the time, be it trade unionists, Indian independence fighters, or women. Kell had assumed that his job, the job of any secret service, was to battle against agents of enemy powers, not your own people. And yet now even the suffragettes were on Churchill’s list. Special Branch’s photograph of Constance flashed into his mind. Her hat, unmistakable. He thrust the thought aside.
No answer from her on the telephone.
; He looked down again at the list and suddenly realized that one of them might also be called an “enemy within.” But was it actually he who was being naïve in not casting his inward glance wider, deeper even? Was his only use, in fact, to turn the government’s most secret eye onto its subjects while being the holding place for its darkest secrets, to do the deeds and think the thoughts no one else could?
A thin voiced crackled through on the line. “There’s no answer, sir. Nobody’s home.”
Wiggins pushed through the big doors of the Bloodied Ax and strode confidently to the stairway beside the bar. He nodded at the barman, like a regular, and took the stairs two at a time before the muscled barsmith could even make a comment.
He opened the door at the top of the stairs and entered another world.
The Becket down Old Kent Road was the famous boxing pub south of the river. Wiggins had been in there a few times, for a drink and the occasional barney. But the Ax was a different kettle altogether. The Becket was pure Queensberry Rules, straight up and down, strike with the flat. A gentleman could have fought in the Becket, save for the fact that he’d have to go down the Old Kent Road. The Ax wasn’t quite so cozy. They boxed proper at times, and any decent fighter could find a spar soon enough. But they also fought hard and dirty too, and Wiggins remembered the rumors—that some prize fights at the Ax ended in more than just a knockout.
For all that, upstairs at the Ax looked like any boxing gym, with posed pictures on the walls, a bag, skipping ropes, and an array of muscly lumps limbering up. Early-evening sunlight threw diagonals from the high windows; sweat glistened off naked torsos. And the place stank of unwashed shirts and liniment. The room was dominated by a raised boxing ring at one end. And the ring itself was dominated by one man: Tommy.
He prowled the sprung surface like an oversized cat circling a mouse. The opponent in question bobbed and weaved, with some sharp foot movements. Tommy moved, graceful, slow, unconcerned—because he didn’t need to be fast. He angled his head out of one, two, three shots, stepped back, then suddenly a jab jackhammered out of nowhere and the blubber ball tumbled to the deck.