The Red Ribbon

by H. B. Lyle

  Tommy turned away, rolled his shoulders, and looked about him, hungry-eyed.

  “I need a word,” Wiggins called from the center of the gym. “Tommy!” he added angrily. People turned, someone stopped skipping. All looked up at the ring.

  Tommy spat into the corner bucket, straightened up. “I ain’t Tommy no more,” he said. “And this is where I do my talking.” He pointed to the canvas beneath his feet.

  Wiggins hesitated. Then he nodded and began taking off his jacket with exaggerated care. A ferret of a man appeared at his elbow, took hold of the jacket, and then grasped Wiggins’s hands.

  “’E’s a big fella, but slow.”

  The man had a deep-brown bald scalp, leathered by decades of sun. “Navy?” Wiggins asked.

  “Merchant,” the old man said, massaging Wiggins’s hands. “Seen fights on half the ships of the fleet.”

  He held up Wiggins’s left hand close to his face, then began winding white tape around it. “Not hard, T—he’s amateur,” the man shouted across the ring to Tommy.

  “He can handle himself, Bulldog, don’t worry ’bout him,” Tommy grunted.

  “Bulldog?” Wiggins whispered.

  “I could fight, once. Now, concen—he’s a nasty bastard, so lamp him for me.”

  “Hurry up, Bulldog, this ain’t no nursery,” Tommy said.

  Bulldog finished taping, held both hands together and stared straight into Wiggins’s eyes. “He’s big enough for two of you, but he’s slow ’n’ all.” He slipped the light gloves onto Wiggins’s hands and bashed them together.

  Wiggins clambered into the ring as Bulldog continued to whisper, “Get him on the inside, son, the inside.”

  “Wot?” Wiggins hissed back.

  “Folks is feart of getting close to T, but it’s the only way, son, on the inside—”

  “Fack off out of it, Bulldog, I’m getting bored,” Tommy boomed from the far corner.

  Wiggins looked up. Tommy rose, massive and close, even though he was on the other side of the ring.

  Bulldog slunk back without a word, leaving Wiggins alone. “No ref?” he said.

  “Frightened you ain’t got the old man to run to?” Tommy said. Then, “The lads’ll call it.”

  Wiggins glanced around. A small crowd had gathered about the ring—in fact, everyone in the gym had stopped to watch. Even the little busboy poked his head through the bottom rung, eager for the fight.

  Tommy waited in the ring, monumental, slicked with sweat from his last bout, his muscles visibly moving as he eyed Wiggins’s approach.

  Wiggins shuffled from one foot to the other, trying to trick his body back into good habits.

  “Why you have to kill her, Tommy?” Wiggins said through his gloves.

  “I ain’t killed no one. You here to fight or what?”

  Wiggins ducked forward, threw a speculative jab, then bounced away. Tommy grinned. “That all you got?”

  “I see her once,” Wiggins said again, circling. “Next time I see her, she’s down the Ferry.” He breathed heavily, and he felt the heat rising in his face. Tommy was a big man and Wiggins hadn’t had a rumble in over a year. He’d gotten slow and lazy. And soft. But it wasn’t just the exertion, it was the anger. Tommy hadn’t even flinched when he’d mentioned Poppy’s death. Like she was just another whore, dead by twenty.

  Wiggins stepped inside, feinted a right hook and—“Oof!”

  Next thing he knew, Bulldog was squeezing cold water over his face as his head rested on the canvas. In the background, he could hear the men around the ring chanting, shouting almost. “TWO, THREE, FOUR . . .”

  “I thought you said he was slow?”

  “I said he was slow, not stupid.”

  “FIVE, SIX . . .”

  “Don’t walk into ’em.”

  Wiggins got to one knee and shook his head.

  “SEVEN . . .”

  “You move like a cat, son, make it count.”

  “EIGHT, NINE . . .”

  Wiggins straightened and held up his gloves to the onlookers. This provoked a great cheer and laughter. “He’s a boy, ain’t he?” someone shouted. “Fink he’ll give Young Joseph a run.” More laughter. Wiggins sensed they still wanted to see blood—his blood—but that they weren’t all for Tommy either. They liked their own, but they liked a trier too.

  He ducked in close to Tommy, swayed inside a jab, then under a hook and away, out of range. “Why she die, Tommy?” he gasped. “What you hiding?”

  Tommy unleashed a swinging right hook. Wiggins jerked his head back and the punch slid off his cheek. “I should be asking you,” he grunted. “She’s sound as pound till you show up, now she’s gone.” He lumbered forward and pinged a body shot into Wiggins’s side.

  Wiggins skipped away, but the punch hurt. “Keep moving, keep moving,” he whispered to himself. “I never pegged you a killer,” Wiggins went on. “A pimp, yes.”

  Tommy roared. Wiggins feinted left, then right, and landed a straight right to Tommy’s neck. The big man staggered. The onlookers cheered. Tommy wheeled round to face him, his face like thunder. “Ain’t no pimp, ain’t no killer. And I ain’t no toff’s lackey neither.”

  Suddenly he was in Wiggins’s face. A barrage of punches, lefts, rights, to the body, the arms. Wiggins ducked, weaved, sprang away once more. From the corner, he could hear Bulldog wheezing, “Inside, son, inside.”

  Wiggins looked up. Tommy came at him again. This time, instead of stepping away, Wiggins ducked inside the right lead, feigned a body punch, then caught Tommy’s chin flush with a left uppercut. Tommy wobbled, eyes blank. Wiggins leaned in, shocked by the clarity of his punch. As he did so, Tommy grabbed his shirt collar with his left glove.

  The two men tumbled across the ring, Tommy going backward, Wiggins caught in the fall. As they went down, Tommy swung his free fist around. The last thing Wiggins heard was Bulldog shouting above the hubbub, “NO!” and then he heard no more.

  “Facking rabbit. Facking cheat.”

  Wiggins opened his eyes. He coughed violently. The foul reek of smelling salts filled his nose. Above him, Bulldog waving them in his face like he was poking a fire, muttering to himself, “Facking rabbit, facking cheat.”

  “Rabbit?” Wiggins said, pushing the vial away from his nose. “What the hell is that, anyway?”

  “Volatile Sal,” Bulldog said, looking at the vial.

  “I meant ‘rabbit,’” Wiggins replied, holding on to Bulldog as he got up on one knee.

  “Punched you round the back of the head, didn’t ’e—facking cheat. You all right?”

  Wiggins felt his ribs, his jaw, the back of his head. All right wasn’t the term that sprang to mind. “I’ll live,” he said.

  “You sure?”

  Tommy stood above them, pulling on his jacket. He held himself tall, legs apart, every inch a winner, although Wiggins noted the purpling bump above his left eye. Not quite such a big man now.

  “I’ll live longer than Poppy, any roads.” Wiggins spat.

  Tommy shook his head, straightened his arms. “Whores die every day,” he said, simply. “And so do nosy fucking bastards.”

  “That right?”

  “Stay away from me, stay away from the Embassy.” He clambered out of the ring and began striding to the door.

  “Two years on the streets, and that’s it?” Wiggins called after him. “We saved ya.”

  He stopped but did not turn. “Why do you think I let you get up?” Then he relaxed his shoulders, turned, and offered more softly, “I’ve put a pin behind the bar for ya, have a drink or two on me. But ya can’t come back, Wiggins. Not this time.” He nodded, and was gone.

  “Let you get up, my arse,” Bulldog muttered as he hauled Wiggins upright. “You had ’im beat, son. Or would do, once you got in shape.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’s flabby. Slow. But yous still move like a cat.”

  “Well,” Wiggins said at last. “This cat needs his milk.”

/>   “I’m not sure we should be discussing this on the telephone.”

  “Cripes, what do you mean?” Dinah’s giggles crackled down the line.

  “Such activities.”

  “But we were just talking about it at tea! Don’t be such a sourpuss. Abernathy and Nobbs will come too, we could . . .”

  Constance grinned despite herself. She listened as Dinah’s enthusiasm fizzed off the telephone like electricity.

  “There’s so much more to be done, silly,” Dinah went on. “This bill.”

  “The Conciliation Bill.”

  “Is that what it’s called? How funny. Anyway, it needs to pass, but that’s only the beginning. We must push, push, push, and you need to help!”

  “I still have my work with the Hampstead ladies.”

  “Boring.”

  “Vital,” Constance said. She worried that if she didn’t turn up at the Hampstead meetings, they would do absolutely nothing at all—bar a few very polite letters to their local member of parliament. (An MP who, ironically, had no need to listen to their complaints because they didn’t have a vote.)

  Her loyalty to the ladies of Hampstead wasn’t her only concern. A note of caution chimed deep within her. She knew people were being followed by the police, and Special Branch in particular were becoming ever more interested in the movement.

  She also hadn’t forgotten that she lived with the head of the Secret Service.

  “Perhaps we could meet for tea,” Constance said. “The two of us?”

  “Abernathy will be green not to see you.”

  “I wonder whether Abernathy is quite good company for you, my dear, and Nobbs, for that matter.”

  “Goose,” Dinah chided. “You sound like my mother. Look, it will be just chopsticks if you could come.”

  “Chopsticks?” Constance laughed.

  “The Japanese,” Dinah cried, “eat with them!”

  The front door opened behind Constance. She swung round to find her husband looking at her. “I must go,” she said.

  “Tea tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow.” She put the phone down.

  Kell took off his coat and hat. The silence blossomed.

  “Another committee meeting,” Constance said at last. The line, the lie, died on her lips.

  Kell avoided her eye. As he swept past her into the drawing room, he muttered, “I hadn’t realized they were putting on revues now.”

  She followed him into the drawing room. Her mind screamed at her to say nothing; she felt guilt tingle through her like a mineral cure. But she couldn’t keep quiet. “You think it a great joke, do you? Universal suffrage?”

  “I wasn’t the one laughing,” he said, measuring out a large brandy. He didn’t offer her one. “I haven’t had the best of days,” he went on. “And I really don’t want to talk about who can and cannot vote.”

  “Is that all you can say? Rank dismissal.” She heard the anger in her voice.

  He heard it too, and peered at her for a moment before taking another gulp. “Must we, now? I . . .” he faltered.

  “Always jam tomorrow, eh? Well, I’ve had enough,” she said, sweeping out of the room. As she ascended the stairs, she felt her anger subside almost as quickly as it had come; she felt the shame too. Not the shame of her position—she was right about the vote, of course—but her anger shamed her, for it was not caused by righteous indignation. It was caused by her desire to keep Dinah a secret.

  Had Wiggins taught her too much already? Was it ever possible to unlearn the knowledge of deceit, once it was acquired? She often thanked God for Wiggins, but perhaps she should thank the devil.

  Across town, south of the river, Wiggins had his own devil to deal with—and he’d spent the night chasing it to the bottom of the glass.

  “Is there more left on the pin?” he called to the Ax’s wary barkeeper.

  The barman sloshed another pint. “That’s it.” He leaned in close over the beer. “And that’s all you’ll ever get here, pal,” the Scotsman growled. “Big T was particular on that point. Drink ya pin, an’ oot.”

  Wiggins nodded, took a swig, and wiped his mouth clean. The pub had emptied. Old Bulldog had had a drink with him—“Tonic, with a dash of the bitters, anyfink more and yous lose your edge”—but otherwise he’d drunk through Tommy’s pin steadily. A surprising amount too, Wiggins reflected. Prostitution must pay.

  It didn’t pay for Poppy, though. He reckoned Millie was dead too, for all Jax’s hopes. But it was Poppy’s body that stuck in his head: the pale face paler, in the Ferry, most like because of him. He pulled hard at the pint glass. The Embassy was rotten; something there was wrong, although he still couldn’t quite place Tommy as a killer.

  “Gonna give me ’nother for the road, Jock,” he called out.

  The barman scowled. Reluctantly, he poured a rank-smelling gin into a small glass and pushed it along the bar.

  “That’s it, pal—for the shiner.”

  Wiggins held up the drink, and forced a crooked grin. He was drunk, and that was the only thing about his day—his life—that he liked. Poppy dead, because of him; Jax’s Millie, missing, and him powerless; and Peter, Peter the Painter at large, alive, eating sweets, enjoying life while poor, dead Bill rotted in the ground of Abney Park. Not that Wiggins had been to the graveside. Bill’s widow Emily had remarried almost immediately, and Wiggins couldn’t bring himself to see her either. Not yet. Not while the wound still stung. The gin scorched his throat on the way down. “Ain’t that illegal?” he gasped.

  The Scot shrugged. Wiggins pushed up from the stool. His legs almost buckled with the shock. He was even more drunk than he thought.

  Outside, the traffic had thinned and the lighting in Lambeth was poor. He leaned against the side of the pub for a second. A far-off voice shouted in the gloom, at a woman, a child, Wiggins couldn’t make it out. He remembered that he needed to report to Kell, that he’d missed a meeting once more. A dog started barking. The shadows shifted. A door closed.

  Wiggins whirled around, alerted, but slowed by the drink. He peered into the darkness. Shapes drifted in and out of view. He closed his eyes, swayed against a wall, and wished the visions away—for all he saw, in that dark Lambeth alleyway, was Peter the Painter, gun leveled at him once more.

  The shadows shifted and he saw not Peter but Bela, his one-time lover, her harlequin face a shadow all of its own. A gas lamp popped somewhere off to his right, shattering the illusion. Bela, not only his lover but Peter’s boss, had gone. She’d flown the country. His love, the one woman he thought of as his own, the woman who’d betrayed him.

  He shook any thought of her out of his mind. Peter lingered; he was a malign needle in London, the biggest haystack in the world. Wiggins had no way to trace him. Except—he brought his head up in a moment of clarity.

  The first attacker came at him clear enough, but as Wiggins raised his arms in defense, pain exploded in the back of his head. He toppled forward, stunned. The first man caught him and smothered his mouth and nose with a stinking rag.

  Wiggins felt the power go from his muscles. He kicked uselessly, then gave in to the choking fumes. It doesn’t taste as bad as the gin, Wiggins thought, as he fell into oblivion.

  PART 2

  8

  Kell kept his distance. He hoped his target wouldn’t take a cab. She walked down Rosslyn Hill, seemingly without a care in the world. Lime trees swished pleasingly in the wind, leaf shadows dappled the road, even the exhaust fumes wisped away and up into the sky rather than clogging up the road. Kell tried to keep Wiggins’s instructions in mind: the hat; no sudden movements; be prepared to walk past your target. Act natural.

  Acting natural wasn’t that easy when you had a costumer’s beard chafing at your chin, and dark glasses that made everything purple. And it wasn’t so easy when you were following someone you knew.

  The woman didn’t pause as they reached the shops of Belsize Park. She quickened her pace as they approached the Underground station. Kell hur
ried after her, unsure whether or not to risk his disguise in the lift. A slight crush at the gate allowed him to get close, but at the last his nerve failed him—instead of joining her in the huge lift, he dodged left down the stairs. Two hundred and nineteen of them, according to the sign. Kell wasn’t counting as he took them two at a time, desperate to get to the platform before the lift arrived. He heard the mechanism clanking and straining as he raced.

  Finally he clattered onto the platform, out of breath and sweating. A moment later, he heard the hiss of the lift doors and then the clicking of heels in the walkway. He skulked behind a cigarette vending machine and waited for the passengers to filter down onto the platform.

  First a couple came onto the southbound platform, then three men, and lastly an elderly man stooping over a cane. No sign of the woman. A rumbling roar grew in the distance: the arrival of the northbound train. Kell hustled across the platform, surprised that she’d be taking the train north rather than into London. He stepped onto the northbound platform into the torrent of hot air, then came the pulsing roar, and finally the train burst from the tunnel.

  She was nowhere to be seen. Doors opened, passengers spilled out of the train and began walking past him to the exit. Kell whipped his head around. Confused, confounded, and worried.

  Not only had he failed to track his wife’s movements, it was now clear to him that she knew she was being followed, and she knew how to evade a tail.

  He boarded the next train south. His wife, who had seemed so unaware, so jaunty on her walk through Hampstead, had obviously stayed in the lift and ascended to the ticket hall while he was waiting on the platform.

  There could, of course, be an innocent explanation—a dropped parasol, a mislaid handkerchief. But Constance wasn’t the kind of woman to drop a parasol, or mislay anything—at least not by accident. Where had she picked up such tricks? The train rocked and rattled.

  He needed Wiggins more than ever, although he doubted his agent would agree to follow Constance. He had a strange awkwardness about women, Kell had noticed, and—for all his rough-and-ready ways, his horribly shabby dress sense, and his quite frankly appalling language—an unusual sense of delicacy. He guessed Wiggins would balk at the job.