The Red Ribbon

by H. B. Lyle

  “Oh, Kell,” Quinn said absently, grabbing something from the table. “Don’t forget your wanted posters. If you could, ah, well, show your assistant, that would be grand.”

  Kell took the three posters and glanced at them. The first one, a photograph of a nasty-looking man with dark eyes, too much hair, and a large mustache; the second, much the same, although this fellow also looked filthy, with a tatty scarf at the neck. The third poster was an artist’s impression, done with charcoal or something similar, with WANTED printed across the top: the man had longish hair, piercing eyes, and a strong, clean-shaven jaw. The face looked familiar. Kell squinted and then, with a thrill of horror, realized why.

  It was a picture of Wiggins.

  PART 3

  20

  Great, dead geese hung in bunches over Leadenhall Market; the carts of Covent Garden teetered and sagged with horse chestnuts, brussels sprouts, and sacks upon sacks of potatoes; the pubs overflowed with beer and port and Christmas cheer; the streets of the West End bristled with shoppers, harried, burdened, scowling; the stores of Regent Street were festooned with spruce and holly; and the air hung heavy with the scent of burning nuts, hot cider, and cloves. And carol singers at every corner.

  Bloody carol singers, Constance thought as she pushed past another knot of depressingly jolly warblers. She’d lost the knack of Christmas shopping, and Oxford Street made her melancholic. It was the department stores, Selfridges and John Lewis—the idea of a shop that had everything—she found unutterably sad. She turned down Regent Street and stopped for a moment outside the window of Boots the Chemist. The same window she’d almost put a knobkerrie through.

  She’d not seen Dinah since the conversation in Barons Court in the aftermath of the protest in Westminster, a month or so earlier. Many in the movement were already calling it Black Friday, and it was common knowledge that at least one woman had died, probably as a result of a beating. The government and courts had done nothing. A publicity battle raged. The Pankhursts were trying everything to get the real story in the papers; the government was trying everything to kill it. Radicalism gripped even the Hampstead ladies. Dinah’s remarks would be more than welcome now. If only she could find her.

  There’d been no answer for weeks on the Barons Court telephone number. When Constance had finally gone round there, a woman in her thirties with a paint-flecked face and bare feet answered the door. She said something vague and distracted about young people coming and going. Dinah, Abernathy, and Nobbs had gone. Constance didn’t even know Dinah’s full name, and she had no way to trace any of them.

  She drifted back onto Oxford Street. A newsboy raced past. “Funeral of dead police set for St. Paul’s. Alien gang at large.” She worried for Dinah, worried what the girls might think it necessary to do. There were a slew of women already starving themselves in Holloway, and Abernathy’s talk would be wilder than ever. Black Friday might have realigned the priorities of most suffragists into more active protest, but it would surely send Abernathy and Nobbs into a whole different order of militancy.

  Black Friday had had a rather different effect on her, Constance mused, as she wandered toward Tottenham Court Road, all thoughts of shopping gone. For one thing, it had saved her marriage. To see her husband intercede on her behalf—and not just hers, but Ada Wright’s too—against the police deeply moved her. For him to act against the state’s representatives in such a way showed that to do the right thing, he was prepared to overturn all that he thought and had previously believed in.

  Kell had also given her a job. She’d had to sign the Official Secrets Act, and she could never be referred to by her real name in any of the correspondence, but he’d recruited her in the role of an “adviser” or “analyst.” After his bang on the head, he’d told her she was the cleverest person he’d ever met. And at that very moment, he was doing the first thing she’d suggested.

  She looked down at the shopping list in her hand, not one item crossed off. Then she tossed it into the air and hailed a cab. She was a liberated woman. She would empower the nanny to buy presents.

  The taxi took her down the rest of the street, then north up Tottenham Court Road. “Stop!” she screamed.

  “Wot the hell?” The driver slammed on the brakes.

  “Wait here!” she cried as she tumbled out onto the pavement and back ten yards to what had caught her eye.

  She’d finally found Fairyland.

  While Constance shopped, Kell went to his club. Harry Moseby-Brown startled when he saw Kell come through the big double doors.

  “I can’t stop, Kell. I can’t stop. Italy is revolting.”

  “This won’t take long.” Kell pointed Moseby-Brown to a line of wing chairs that dotted the lobby. The young man from the FO looked as immaculate as ever, with a high polish to his shoes, a perfectly knotted scarf at his neck, and a top hat you could see your reflection in.

  They sat. “You know, I’m not sure how much longer I can—”

  “This is very important,” Kell said, pulling an envelope from his inside pocket. “I have been impressed with your work, Moseby-Brown. You are a patriot and a brick. What I have here is explosive and highly confidential. This is the only copy. It’s too dangerous to reproduce. You understand?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Good. I am trusting you with a national secret. Because I need your help.” Kell leaned in and gestured for Moseby-Brown to do the same. “We in the Bureau,” Kell whispered, “may be forced to act on the information contained in this letter. We’ve been waiting for the results of the general election. If the opposition had won, then of course this wouldn’t be necessary.”

  “I don’t follow, sir.”

  “Read that letter. It is damning, if true. I need to confirm its truth, I need you to do that.”

  “But”—Moseby-Brown unbent his body—“what has this to do with me?”

  “It’s not you,” Kell said with a smile. “It’s Grey. We suspect him. If what we’ve found out, as contained there, is true, then it seriously weakens his position in the Cabinet. You’ll see for yourself. If this gets out, it will massively weaken our position in the world, whatever happens.”

  Moseby-Brown gulped. “Gosh, sir.”

  “Gosh indeed. Take that letter. Guard it with your life. Cross-check its contents against your boss’s movements, what you know of him.”

  “I’m not sure how comfortable—”

  “This isn’t about your comfort, Moseby-Brown, it’s about the Empire. Grey poses a potential threat to that. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Give that back to me after Christmas, once it’s confirmed. Now, off you go. Stop Italy revolting.”

  Kell left the club, stopped in at a grocery on Victoria Street, then went to the office.

  “Any beer?” Wiggins said as he rooted through the bag.

  “You ask that every day, and the answer’s always the same.”

  “I’m a believer,” Wiggins said as he ripped open a packet of biscuits, “that one day you will discover your heart.”

  “Tsk.” Kell sat down at the desk. “It’s done.”

  “So we wait,” Wiggins said, snapping a custard cream in two. “Again.”

  “Look, I can hardly have you running around town in the middle of the day, can I? You don’t think I like you living here, do you?”

  Wiggins scowled, but said nothing. Ever since Kell had come back into the office with that wanted poster, he’d insisted Wiggins stay in the office during daylight. Wiggins had been heading over to the Embassy once it got dark, to check that Martha’s red ribbon was still hanging in the window (it was), and to carry on with the surveillance. At least, that’s what Kell thought he’d been doing each night. “What news from the Embassy?”

  “You do know they’s tooled up proper?” Security had increased tenfold at the Embassy. The door had been reinforced, and Wiggins had noted at least two extra guards and a new gun placement covering the front porch. Tommy wasn’t taking a
ny chances.

  Kell nodded slowly. “I’ve set the hare running now. We wait and watch.”

  Wiggins picked up a tin of Fray Bentos corned beef. He weighed it in his fist. “Any news? Nothin’ in the rags this morning.”

  “The police are still looking. Nothing since Gardstein.”

  Wiggins picked up an old newspaper, with a photograph of the dead Gardstein on the front page. The press called him the leader of the gang. He was the man Wiggins had seen that night with Jax, the one who had pulled a gun on them in Smithfield.

  The papers were full of the Houndsditch murders still, more than a week later. One of the injured policemen had died in the hospital, taking the number of police dead to three. And now Gardstein had followed. He’d been one of the men in the robbery and had taken a bullet from one of his own. The police had arrested him the next day, after a doctor got cold feet and led them to the dying man. But the rest of the gang were still at large, including Peter.

  “You gave ’em the addresses?” Wiggins said.

  “Every last one!” Kell snapped. “I’ve told you already. The police have raided half of Stepney looking for your bloody librarians.”

  Wiggins grunted. “Ain’t no good raiding ’em.” He knew the police would bungle it. But when Kell had barreled into the office with that wanted poster in his hand, Wiggins couldn’t think of a better way. He told Kell about the Ivans, and when Symes came up with the addresses of the suspicious readers, Kell had passed them straight on to Scotland Yard.

  “Yes, well,” Kell said. “I’ll pass on your concerns to the Commissioner of Police.”

  “They ain’t found much, have they?”

  Kell tutted. “The leader of the gang is dead. They’ve made a number of arrests. But you’re right, they do believe the murderers are still at large. The entire police force is concentrating on finding those men. Let’s leave it to them, shall we?”

  “I could get out there, help.”

  “And have Special Branch pick you up for murder?”

  “Ain’t never heard of disguise?”

  “No,” Kell said. “Our job, as you well know, is to prove the whereabouts of the diplomatic leak and to safeguard our own future. I’m sure you know the result of the general election.”

  “I don’t do politics.”

  “The Liberals won again, which means if we don’t rustle something up by the time Parliament sits, you’ll be back on the streets.”

  Wiggins scowled at him. “I’ve always been on the streets.”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic.” He paused. “We’re clear, though, yes? Your job is to concentrate on the Embassy at night, rest here by day, and keep out of sight until we can work out why you’re on that blasted poster.”

  Wiggins grunted.

  “And whatever you do, don’t go east of Aldgate.”

  “For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne . . .”

  “Shut the fack up, Jock scum!” The publican of the Rising Sun took the drunkard by the collar and drove him from the bar. None of the daytime drinkers jumped to his aid. He clattered through the pub doors, out into the snow-slicked street. “You’re too facking late! That was yesterday.”

  The drunkard turned to the pub and shouted obscenities at the frosted-glass windows. Then he whirled on one leg and collapsed against the wall. He was wrapped up like a bundle of rags, with a loose balaclava around his head, thick wadding around his hands, and ripped boots.

  Great fat snowflakes drifted down Sidney Street. It would take time to soak you, take time to settle. But it could be a foot deep by morning, enough to bury a drunkard dead.

  Wiggins scratched at his head under the rough balaclava. Being a drunk was one cover story he could play blindfold. The cold gripped his insides as he settled his attention momentarily on a row of houses farther down the street.

  He was in Sidney Street, a long cobbled road that ran between Bethnal Green Road and Commercial Road in Stepney, just east of the ’Chapel, and certainly east of Aldgate.

  Wiggins had not kept his promise to Kell to stay out of the East End. Kell hadn’t come into the office on Christmas Day. Wiggins went east. He found nothing. Kell didn’t come on Boxing Day either. Wiggins went east again, looking for Peter. On those days when Kell did come in, Wiggins would go from the Embassy—always checking that the red ribbon hung in the window—out east. Scoping the Ivans’s addresses, following Ivans, hoping for a break. It was all Christmas trees and mince pies in the West End. Out east, they were too scared for Christmas.

  It hadn’t been like that since the Ripper. But this fear stretched even further east. Half the people in Stepney and Bethnal Green were scared of the police. Many didn’t speak English, Wiggins knew, and came from countries where the coppers could drag you away for sod all. They was keeping shtum. The other half were scared of the gangs. A body was found in Victoria Park, another on Clapham Common—supposedly the feller who grassed up Gardstein.

  No one was talking. No one would ever talk. Which was why Wiggins was now slumped against the Rising Sun and got up in the worst kind of tramp’s gear, freezing his bollocks off.

  The police had drawn a blank with Symes’s list of Ivans. But, as Wiggins repeatedly told Kell, that was because they’d just raided the addresses rather than waiting to see where the Ivans went, and who they spoke to. As soon as the cops came banging, anyone inside just clammed up.

  He shifted and chattered to himself. Someone went in the pub and Wiggins shouted at him. “Facking nuts.” Then he flicked his eyes back to the row of houses opposite.

  The locals knew this stretch of terrace as Charley Martin’s Mansions. A terrace of ten houses between two side streets, they were much bigger than the rest of the street—four stories high. Wiggins kept coming back to them. One of Symes’s Ivans had given 102 as his address for his reading ticket, and Kell told him the cops had duly raided the whole row. They found nothing. But that was more than a week ago and Wiggins knew Peter and his gang would be changing rooms as much as possible. And Charley Martin’s Mansions was the perfect place.

  Each house would have at least four families in it, he guessed. Most of them inside wouldn’t speak much English; all of them would be scared—of either Peter, or the cops, or their own shadows. It was the perfect place to hide out, an urban fortress. The huge flophouses of the ’Chapel would be too obvious, and the police were keeping tabs. These Sidney Street houses, on the other hand, had families in. Too many comings and goings for anything to be suspicious, too many people to raise an eyebrow with the neighbors. And Peter was the kind of fly chancer who would choose to stay in places that had already been raided.

  He bashed his hands together against the cold and wondered how long he’d last outside. When he was a kid, the streets were littered with old dead down-and-outs come January, finished off by the weather and the Christmas booze and the bloody do-gooders doling out dinner for one night of the year.

  Just then, a man walked past on the other side of the road carrying what looked like a camera and tripod under his arm. It was wrapped in a white sheet. The man strode quickly along the pavement, then stopped and knocked on the door of 100.

  Wiggins slunk down deeper into his ragged coat.

  A woman answered the door and gesticulated. The man stepped halfway inside, and seemed to shout upward, talking to someone at the top of the stairs. An argument ensued, and then he went inside. Wiggins waited. It was the camera that snagged in his mind, something in one of the reports from the week before. He needed to check with Kell.

  Fifteen minutes later, the man with the camera came out and strode quickly away.

  “Any word from the Embassy?” Constance said, as she passed her husband a glass of whisky.

  “Nothing. But it’s only a matter of time.”

  They stood together, staring into the fire. Nanny had just taken the children to bed, and Kell rested his drink on the mantelpiece and thrust a poker at the blaze.

  “Happy New Year,” she said, raising her
sherry.

  He looked at her and smiled. “Out with it.”

  “It’s about the Bureau.”

  “Oh, Lord, you don’t want a pay rise already, do you?”

  She laughed. “To get a rise, I’d need to be paid.” She twirled her glass and sat down on the chesterfield. “Are you—we—allowed to act in a preventative capacity?”

  He opened his mouth to answer with a question, to ask her what she knew, why and what she was planning, to pin the matter down. But then he stopped himself. The rapprochement with his wife was the happiest thing to happen to him in a long time, and such delicate blessings should not be risked lightly.

  “Yes,” he said, simply. “This is what Wiggins was doing in the provinces. He was trying to identify people who might be spies in the event of war. Do you need my help?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet,” she said, and held her hand out toward him.

  The telephone rang. “That blasted Bell,” Kell said. “I’m sure he was the devil.”

  He strode into the hallway and ripped the receiver from the wall. “Hampstead 202.”

  “Hundred Sidney Street. They’re there.”

  “Wiggins?”

  “The landlord at the Gardstein place was a photographer, right, working out of Cable Street? I sees it in the police report you had in the office.”

  “What on earth? Er, yes, I think you’re right. What of it?”

  “Tell the cops 100 Sidney Street. I’m going back to check, but the rozzers have got to be quick.”

  “I told you to stay in Victoria. Where the hell are you?”

  But the line had gone dead.

  Wiggins limped down Sidney Street, playing the drunk once more. He’d followed the photographer back to the gaff in Cable Street and that’s when it rang a bell in his mind. Perelman, or some such, was his name, and he’d briefly been in the frame because he’d rented Gardstein a room—the room he’d been found dead in.