by H. B. Lyle
Before the police murders in Houndsditch, Gardstein hadn’t been a name on anybody’s lips; no one cared. But by now, more than two weeks later, he and his gang were the most famous people in London. Gardstein had bled out in a small room in the East End, grassed up by the doctor, but his accomplices—at least four of them, according to the press and police reports—had escaped. A week later, the police had arrested Yakov Peters. When Wiggins knew him, Yakov had been Peter’s right-hand man, a stinking, violent bomb-maker. It confirmed Peter’s involvement, though by now the City of London Police were after him by name—along with two other named gang members, Fritz Svaars and Joseph Sokolov.
Fine snow wafted through the pools of light cast by the gas lamps. It would have been beautiful, Wiggins thought, if it weren’t colder than death. He began to sing. “Hoorah, up she rises, hoorah, up she rises.” His voice echoed down the empty street. Even the Rising Sun looked dead. No one out on such a night now, not with the police and the gangs and the snow all over the East End like a pall. And still Wiggins sang at the top of his voice. He reeked of the gin he’d doused his scarf with, and he swung the half-empty bottle by his side as he walked.
He stumbled along Charley Martin’s Mansions, battering at the windows, shouting inanities, and continuing to sing. “More booze,” he shouted, as he reached the door of number 100. He hesitated for a second. He couldn’t be sure Peter and the remaining gang members were inside.
When he’d rung Kell, he’d made sure he sounded convincing. But he was far from certain. It was based on evidence—the design of the houses, the photographer/landlord—but it was still only a hunch, the kind of hunch that would have disgusted Sherlock Holmes. But this wasn’t a nice little problem about a missing jewel, or the recovery of a compromising letter—this was a gang of heavily armed, volatile men on the run, who’d killed three coppers and would kill more if they had to. Peter had already almost killed Wiggins once. He had to make sure.
Number 100’s front door stood one down from a doctor’s surgery. The ground-floor windows were black. All he could hear was the hiss of the gas-lamp globe that hung on the corner of the street. He could just make out the lettering on the surgery window: DR KRESTIN, LONDON. The street was still empty, the snow still fell. It was as dark as hell and twice as cold. He knew he should walk away, wait for Kell and the cops. But he also knew he had to make sure, if only for a moment. The last time, the cops had been too late.
He slammed the front door with his fist. “Doctor Krestin,” he shouted, “I needs a doctor! Help, please.” Nothing moved. He tried again, rapping the glass in the door and screaming.
Suddenly, the door sprang open. Wiggins stumbled headlong into a tight, dark hallway. He fell flat on his face, arms out in front of him.
When he twisted around, he saw a woman standing over him, holding a candle. She’d opened the door to him, and she now gestured next door. “Doktor,” she muttered, urgently. She pointed again, eyes wide with fear. “Sorry, love,” Wiggins slurred. “I’m looking for the bones.” He tried to stand up, then pretended to stumble into the open doorway off the hall, the front room.
A small child said softly in the dark, “Bagrisn fremder.” The woman—probably the child’s mother—called out softly, “Shtl, Rosa.” Then she stepped toward Wiggins. “No Anglish,” she implored.
Wiggins righted himself and turned to her, suddenly ashamed. He put his hands up in apology. “I’m going, I’m going. No fear.”
“ZAKROY DVER!” someone unseen shouted from the top of the stairs.
The woman looked up, beyond Wiggins, startled. She stepped back, and shut the front door. Wiggins arched his neck, trying to see up the stairs into the darkness.
A pair of rough boots came into view. The stairs creaked. Wiggins peered into the gloom; too late to run. “Sorry,” he said again, keeping in character. “Looking for the bones, is all. The doctor.”
“If you said you were looking for drink, then maybe I believe you.”
Peter the Painter stepped down the stairs and into the candlelight. “Come upstairs, old friend, join us. A long time.” He pointed an ugly pistol at Wiggins.
Wiggins shrugged. “Do I have a choice?” he said.
Peter weighed the Mauser in his hand. “Today, I don’t think so. Sometimes bear must do what master says. And sometimes bear eats master. Up.”
21
Kell took a cab to Leman Street police station in Stepney.
It was a foul night. Rain and snow and wind lashed the windscreen and he could see almost nothing. On receiving Wiggins’s call, Kell’s first thought had been to telephone Special Branch, to give Quinn the news.
“No,” Constance said. “You must go to the local police in person. Involve yourself. Only then do you inform Quinn and Churchill. That way the Bureau will be guaranteed the credit.”
“Or the blame,” he said.
He got to Leman Street at about eleven in the evening. “I need to speak to an inspector,” he said at the charge desk, waving his credentials.
The inspector came out shortly after, and took him into his office. “You’re the Secret Service Bureau, you say? That would explain why I’ve never heard of you. And you know they are there? How sure are you?”
“Sure,” Kell said. “At least that one of them is there.” He wasn’t sure, but Wiggins was in the field. If in doubt, trust Wiggins.
The inspector considered for a moment. “We must wake up the division commander, Superintendent Mulvaney. He lives on Commercial Road. I will make a telephone call to Arbour Square station, then you will join me, if you please.” He picked up the telephone on his desk.
Then they walked to the divisional commander’s house to wake him up.
“And you’re sure?” Mulvaney asked Kell. The three men stood in the hallway under a bare electric bulb.
“I’m sure,” he said.
Mulvaney turned to the inspector. “You’ve told Arbour Street? Good.” He looked back at Kell. “We will need as many men as possible, if it’s who you think it is. Of course, that means if you’re wrong we will be the laughingstock of London.” He tugged at his overcoat. “Very well, let’s get back to the station.”
Back at Leman Street, gone midnight, Kell stood as a silent observer while Mulvaney corralled his various commanding officers.
“We have a hundred men from the City force to match our own hundred. The first thing we must do is seal off the house.”
“Why do we need so many?” someone asked. “Aren’t there only two or three of them left?”
Mulvaney glanced at Kell, as if looking for confirmation of the numbers, but then went on briskly. “They are heavily armed. Remember what we found at Gardstein’s. Mausers. Semiautomatics. Bomb-making materials. Enough rounds to take on Aldershot. And I know these houses. The passage and stairway is very narrow. If we storm the house, they will have a clear shot at anyone coming up the staircase. It’s so narrow that it would become blocked with bodies. It will be a bloodbath.”
“So we surround the area and wait. Do we know who else is in the house?”
An inspector coughed. “One of my constables knows it, sir. A tailor named Fleshman, or some such, lives in the ground-floor front room with his family. Another older couple in the back room. Then he rents out the first and second floor to all sorts, and has his workshop in the attic.”
“Thank you, Inspector. I think it’s safe to assume if they are in there”—he glanced at Kell—“then they’ll be on the upper floors.”
“If, sir?” the inspector said. “You mean we ain’t sure?”
“I’m sure,” Kell said.
Mulvaney looked at him carefully for a moment and nodded. He pulled a pipe from his pocket and addressed the men once more. “It’s almost twelve thirty now. First job is to secure the exits out the back and along the street. I believe there’s a sawmill opposite. Commandeer that. We have rifles? Good.”
He stuffed his thumb into the bowl of his pipe in an irritable gesture and wen
t on. “Now, I don’t want any married men on this detail, clear?”
The ring of inspectors nodded gravely and shuffled their feet. Everyone knew what this meant, including the constables. Mulvaney never liked risking a married man if he could help it. An improvised map of Sidney Street and the surrounds was laid out on a table. Mulvaney gathered them all round. Their heads dipped into the light.
“You see your sections. Now you . . .” he pointed to the inspector who’d given the details about number 100 “. . . lead the evacuation of the neighboring houses. And try to get the family out from the bottom of the house. If we do this quickly and quietly, we can get them out before the anarchos are any the wiser. Understood?”
The inspectors nodded and retreated through the door to their men in the call room. Mulvaney finally lit his pipe and took a long drag before turning to Kell.
“It’s a nightmare. We can’t shoot at them until they shoot first.”
“The law,” Kell nodded.
“And that staircase is a deathtrap. These men couldn’t have chosen anywhere more like a fortress if they tried.” He tapped his pipe out on the table in annoyance, refilled it and then looked at Kell once more. “You have informed Scotland Yard?”
“Not yet.”
Mulvaney’s gigantic eyebrows raised in unison. Kell went on. “I will, when I return to the office. We don’t always get on so well with Sir Patrick.”
Mulvaney hesitated, then barked, “Ha! I can see that.”
“I’ll go now. Do you mind if I come back, to follow the operation?”
“No, so long as you don’t get in the way. You’ll have to take your share of the blame, mind, if your information is flawed.”
“I understand.” Kell put on his top hat and strode to the door.
“You’re absolutely sure of your source—he’s good?”
Kell thought for a moment. “He’s the best.”
Kell’s cab sped across the dark city. He’d hired the car for the night, at ruinous expense to the department, but he reasoned that if the night went badly, there probably wouldn’t be a department in the morning anyway.
He stopped at the GPO and sent long telegrams to Scotland Yard and the Home Office. No one would be in any doubt where the information came from when they arrived for work in the morning, in the event that Wiggins was right (or wrong).
There was no sign of Wiggins in the office in Victoria Street. He dashed off a couple of telephone calls to follow up his telegrams, then took the cab out to Belgravia, and Ranleigh Terrace.
Kell burst in to find Simpkins slumped over the box Brownie at the window of the surveillance post.
“Where’s Wiggins?” Kell shook him awake.
“Sorry, sir,” Simpkins spluttered. “He didn’t come by as usual to relieve me. I thought I should stay in position until he did.”
Kell looked out the window, down at the dark Embassy. He shuddered. “Anything to report?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“And did Wiggins tell you where he was going? Did he leave any clue?”
“No.”
Kell almost stamped his foot in frustration. “Go home, Simpkins. Come back in the morning as planned. There’s nothing more to be done here.”
“Thank you, sir.” He gathered up his coat and gloves, and dropped the camera. “Oh, there is one thing, sir, about Wiggins.”
“What is it?”
“He told me to watch out for a red ribbon in that window yonder, and to let him know if and when it appears in the evening. He’s usually here to see it himself, of course, and it’s been put there every day. But he did mention it.”
“I don’t know what this has to do with me.”
“Well, the thing is, sir, it hasn’t appeared this evening. The red ribbon is gone.”
“You don’t give up, mad Anglish.”
“Why, do you?”
“Maybe you should.” Peter sucked hard on a sweet.
They were in a small, candlelit attic. A large tailor’s table took up most of the room. Rolls of material shot from cupboards about the walls and tape hung down from every nail. Wiggins tried uneasily to shift his weight. His arms and body were bound to the back of an upright chair. The thick curtain cord stung his wrists as he moved. Peter watched on, unmoved.
“If you try escape, I kill you,” he said calmly. He stood by the doorway, twiddling a ribbon in his hand. He didn’t have to pull the gun out of his pocket. Wiggins knew it was there.
“Why don’t you kill me anyway?” he said. “You tried it once already.”
Peter puffed out his cheeks. He still had the good looks Wiggins remembered—the thick shock of hair with the gray streak, the deep, dark eyes, the swagger—but he looked on the edge now. His soiled shirt was ripped at the collar, his left cheek was bruised, and his once immaculate fingernails were black and split. “You think that’s who I am, a killer?”
“That I know of? Bill Tyler up in Tottenham. Three coppers in Houndsditch. Yeah, you’re a killer.”
“These people.” Peter gestured to the door vaguely. “They don’t know when to stop. They want to kill you.”
Wiggins snorted. When Peter had appeared on the stairs, he’d gestured him up at gunpoint to the landing, then up the stairs again. Two men in the front room of the first floor came to the door and glared at him. He recognized one of them from Clerkenwell, the one with the yellow scarf. The two men followed them into the attic and bound him tight, before Peter ordered them out.
Peter popped another sweet into his mouth. Then he grasped a handful of colored cloths from the table and slumped onto the floor. He leaned against the door, opposite Wiggins. “Why are you here?”
“I told you, I’m here to pay my debts.”
Peter shook his head sadly.
“I won’t give it up,” Wiggins went on. “I’ll see you in prison or the grave. Either way, you’ll have to kill me if you want me to stop.”
“Or leave London?” Peter said.
Wiggins laughed at that.
Peter wove a red ribbon around his hard felt hat as he talked. “You see, they arrested Yakov. Your friend!” he chuckled. “Gardstein is dead. Joseph and Fritz downstairs and I, we are only ones left.”
“I’m sorry. Sorry Yakov didn’t find a bullet.” Wiggins grunted. His wrists chafed and his back was beginning to ache. If ever a man deserved a violent, lonely end, it was Yakov.
“But he was right,” Peter said. “You are not to be trusted.”
“And you are?”
Peter held his newly decorated hat up to the candlelight. A broad red band now covered most of the hat above the rim. “When will they come for you?” he said.
“I work alone.”
Peter put his hat down carefully on the floor beside him. He got up and began making himself a bed, using material pulled from the tailor’s stock. “I am not so sure of this,” he said. “But I do not know. We go in morning.”
Wiggins grunted again. “Not sleeping downstairs?”
“Fritz and Joseph can have room to themselves. They not smell so good. I stay here so you don’t escape and tell police.”
Wiggins glanced down at the ropes. “At least tie me to the table or something.”
“Ha!” Peter said, and blew out the candle. He lay down on the improvised bed across the door. A manhole-sized skylight above them offered the faintest glow, and a draft.
Wiggins slumped forward, his chest sagging against the ropes. Despite the aches in his back and the cold, he felt his eyelids drooping. He hadn’t slept in over twenty hours, what with the surveillance on the Embassy and being out chasing shadows. “I thought you was a believer,” he muttered into the darkness. “I’ve got nothing to lose but me chains.”
“I could untie you. But you would still be in chains. Chains in your mind. Even now, when they make you most-wanted man, you still do their work for them. You are still a hunting dog, happy to catch prey for master. In return, pat on head.”
Wiggins grunted. Tommy had
said the same thing, near enough. Why are you working for the posh bastards in charge, why aren’t you working for yourself and your own? Shouldn’t he be running with those lads in the docks, or the miners, against Kell and Churchill and their bloody Empire? What had the Empire ever done for him? What had Sherlock Holmes ever done for him, for that matter? Had his whole life been working for the boss man? Was that all he was?
“Why don’t you kill me now?” he mumbled, as much to himself as to Peter. He drifted into near sleep.
“I will exploit you. Just like they exploit you. You are my capital, in case. Capitalists call it insurance.”
Wiggins had a sudden memory of Archibald Carter, the clerk, and his brother, who had invited him in for cards. The bonhomie of the family table, the easy way they asked him about himself, and how he’d had to be evasive, to keep with his cover. But they’d lulled him with their kindness, and he’d told them about the war and before, his life on the streets, and it was all right, and no one had to die, and the fire was warm, and the cards straight and the smiles real. But that wasn’t real, and it wasn’t his family, or his table, or his life.
“No one cares about me,” he said before he fell asleep.
“Captain Kell, welcome back.” Superintendent Mulvaney waved his pipe at Kell. “The man himself.”
“Oh?” Kell pulled off his gloves. He’d gone directly back to the police station and was shown into Mulvaney’s busy office in moments. A large clock behind Mulvaney showed the time as half past two.
The station bristled with action. Inspectors ran to and fro, issuing barked commands whenever they saw a constable. The telephone rang constantly. Doors opened and closed. But Mulvaney stood in his office, still amid the hurly-burly, and smiled grimly. “Your information appears to be correct,” he said. “Your source impeccable. This is it. We’ve run the gang to ground, thanks to you.”
“Thanks to my source. But how do you know?”
“Come with me. I’m about to take up a position opposite the house. I’ll brief you on the way.”