by Andy Emery
Greatorex waved a hand. ‘Inspector, the medics say I am, so I suppose so. It was a terrible shock, as you may imagine. But there was no lasting physical damage.’
‘That’s good, sir. It was an unusual crime in several ways, and we’d like your help in understanding some of the more peculiar aspects. By the way, my companion here is Mr Lucas Gedge. He doesn’t work for the police, but he’s an associate of mine, and you can speak freely in front of him.’
‘Well, I suppose I’ll have to take your word for that. But what are these “peculiar aspects”? Surely it isn’t so hard to understand. Some half-witted thugs breaking in, braining me and making off with next to nothing?’
Gedge spoke up. ‘The robbers evidently knew a good place to enter, via the back door, which wasn’t very secure, and it’s a suspicious coincidence that they struck on a day when your usual night watchmen weren’t working. Also, we’ve been wondering if that small item they took has a significance belying its size. To be honest, their knocking you out is the most easily explained part of the incident.’
Greatorex’s brow furrowed. ‘And is this your view as well, Inspector?’
‘It is, sir. You’re absolutely sure that nobody at the museum could have tipped someone off about the lack of guards that night?’
‘I’d stake my reputation on it. Of course, I realise that we made a grievous error in not providing security, and it’s something we won’t repeat.’
‘Good. And the shabti. Could it have a particular value to somebody? For some esoteric reason, perhaps?’
Greatorex shot a sharp look at Cross. ‘Well, I suppose individuals can prize objects for strange reasons of their own. Perhaps somebody read about shabti and just liked the sound of them. But that’s just conjecture, gentlemen. I’ll say again, the object had no intrinsic value, certainly not to anyone with any knowledge of the field.’
Cross steepled his hands. He thought for a moment, then took a piece of paper out of his pocket.
‘Mr Greatorex, the handwriting on this envelope. Is it yours?’
The museum director peered closely, swallowing hard. ‘It seems to be, er, the address of the police station at Holborn.’
‘Quite so. The nearest station to this museum. Somebody wrote a cryptic letter, warning of some sort of criminal activities associated with a secret cult. Sounds fantastic, I know. You don’t know anything about this, do you, sir?’
‘Of course not, inspector! It’s nothing like my handwriting. Why would you suspect such a thing? Is it connected to the incident here?’
‘Not as far as we know, sir. It’s just that it refers to ancient Egypt, your special subject. And it arrived a few days before the night you got laid out. Another coincidence?’
‘Yes, I suppose it must be. It’s getting a bit hot in here, isn’t it? Let me open a window.’
Gedge looked at Cross as they walked away from the museum. ‘He was lying, of course?’
‘About the note? Yes. While we were waiting, you probably noticed me take a look at that pile of correspondence on his desk. I may not be a handwriting expert, but if he didn’t write that note, I’d be extremely surprised. All in all, I’m sure he knows a lot more than he’s saying. It’s got all the hallmarks of an inside job.’
‘But to what end, if that shabti is really worthless? Do the gang have something on our boffin?’
Cross shrugged. ‘The fact is, with Greatorex recovered, and the only stolen item being of little value, there’s no reason to look into this matter any further. On the surface, at least.’
‘But in terms of Claude Rondeau’s death, it could be very relevant.’
‘Yes, perhaps. That esoteric bookshop might be a key to this. It stands to reason they might have connections to anyone involved in these cultish activities. There can’t be many such shops in London.’
‘We’ll see. I’m off there with Darius tomorrow. I’d have gone with my new friend Cotter, but he’s got something else he needs to deal with.’
‘Well, the Persian will be the more useful helper if any rough stuff is called for.’
Gedge laughed. ‘I know you think I attract trouble, but even I can ask a few questions of a shopkeeper without violence breaking out.’
13
St Petersburg, Russia
29th September 1882
Nicolai Volkov turns right onto the wide expanse of the Nicolayevsky Bridge, and saunters towards the middle. Ahead of him on the northern bank sits the huge edifice of the university buildings. Many would consider the sight majestic, but to Volkov it’s just another symbol of the hated Tsars. Below, the River Neva boils, the recent heavy rain having swollen the flow, causing random items of garbage to be carried along by the grey-brown eddies.
It’s mid-morning. Road traffic is steady, without the frantic congestion of rush hour. There are few pedestrians.
Just over halfway across, Volkov stops and looks around. A charabanc is offloading a party of schoolchildren a hundred yards away on the other side of the bridge. Their teachers shepherd them together as the vehicle moves off.
There are a few minutes to kill before his meeting. He turns and leans over the parapet, stares down at the river. Another pedestrian coming from the south, a short man wearing a large fur hat, stops ten yards away, and, like Volkov, gazes down at the water. He looks up, their eyes meet, and they exchange polite smiles. The other man straightens up and opens a newspaper.
Volkov considers. What is the likelihood of another man stopping and waiting on the bridge? It’s not exactly warm weather. A scintilla of doubt enters his mind.
His fob watch tells him it’s a minute to the time of the rendezvous with Yuri. His cousin should be approaching now. On foot, he assumes. He cannot see him, but he does notice several men clustered at the northern side of the bridge, looking in his direction.
He realises. The bus that had dropped off the children a few minutes earlier must have turned round on the northern side. It is now heading towards him at speed, past the group of men.
He looks across the bridge. Two of the supposed teachers have parted company with the school party and are running across the lanes of traffic towards him. One of them reaches inside his coat for something. A shout goes up.
Ice enters Volkov’s heart. He turns and sprints southwards. The short man throws down his newspaper and tries to block his path, but Volkov is on him in a second, shouting.
‘Filthy lackey!’
He grabs the man by the shoulders and propels him into the balustrade. He crumples in a heap.
Volkov runs on, as a shot rings out from one of the ‘teachers’. He pulls his own revolver out of his pocket, and turns and fires in one action. The nearest pursuer takes the bullet in the shoulder. But the charabanc is only yards away, and he can see policemen inside. Groups of plain-clothes men run at him from both sides of the bridge. They must consider him a big catch to commit so many men to the operation.
If the river had not been in full flow, he might have considered jumping into the water, but that would be suicide now. Better to limit the damage, live to fight again another day, if he can possibly escape them at a later date. He comes to a stop, places his revolver on the ground in front of him and raises his hands.
The charabanc reaches him first, its brakes squealing. Four burly policemen leap out. They ignore his raised arms and hurl him to the ground, raining blows on his head and body. He rolls himself into a ball. They back off, and the short man appears, holding his side and replacing the fur hat on his head.
‘Nicolai Volkov. You’ve led us a merry dance, as we were led to expect. But your capture was inevitable. You will be charged with sedition, and a good number of other offences, I shouldn’t wonder.’
The pain Volkov feels makes it difficult to speak. ‘How did you know? Who betrayed me?’
‘I thought you’d be interested in that. A big bearded fellow. Sergei Medved by name. He’s a touch too loquacious for the cloak and dagger game. I’d have got rid of him, if it’d b
een me. Shot his mouth off once too often in a tavern, and then gave up more in our interrogation room. With a little encouragement. The other members of your little gang will be picked up over the next day or so. Mythology has sprung up around you, Nicolai. A shadowy figure, orchestrating resistance. An avenger who will free the people from dreadful tyranny. Et cetera, et cetera. But you’ve ended up just like the rest of them, lying beaten in the gutter. Your future lies not in the glorious freeing of the motherland, but in an unending hell in the wastes of Siberia.’
Volkov closes his eyes.
The man turns to the policemen. ‘Alright. Just a few more minutes, then take him away.’ He stands aside. The policemen resume laying into Volkov’s prone body until he is unconscious.
14
Gedge and Darius got off the omnibus on the East India Dock Road by the Limehouse Basin. The street was thronged with horse-drawn vehicles carrying various items of freight between the wharves. Men hurried this way and that, pursuing their mercantile endeavours with stony-faced determination.
After walking a hundred yards east, they turned into a narrow passage called Morgan’s Yard. It was quiet in contrast to the thoroughfare. On the left, a rusting sign attached to the wall read Adolphus Ackroyd, Esoterica.
Raised voices. The thumping of heavy boxes being moved. The crash of some metal object falling to the ground.
Gedge exchanged glances with Darius as they reached the shop. The noises were coming from inside.
The green paint on the shop’s window frames was peeling, the glass dirty. Gedge could make out piles of books and pamphlets, and shadows moving between them.
At the door, they waited for a moment. When the sound was covered by a further flurry of shouts, Gedge tried the door. It was unlocked.
He whipped the door open, to the accompaniment of a tinkling bell. Papers and books littered the floor where a bookcase had been pushed over, and a steel filing cabinet had likewise been rendered horizontal, its drawers hanging open drunkenly, spilling out the contents.
There were four individuals in the room. The elderly man standing, or rather wobbling, on the counter, with a noose over his head, was undoubtedly the shopkeeper, Ackroyd. Terrified eyes stared out through the pebble-thick lenses of his spectacles, his lank hair hanging around his shoulders.
But it was the other three figures that demanded more attention. One of them was up on the counter with Ackroyd, tying the rope to a hook in the ceiling, offset by a couple of feet from the counter. The other two had been rifling through the papers they had strewn everywhere. All three were solid-looking fellows, wearing typical workmen’s clothes: short jackets, worn boots and flat caps. But it was another aspect of their appearance that marked them out: they were all wearing masks, complete with real-looking fur, quivering muzzles, vicious pointed teeth and flashing eyes. The three looked for all the world like men with the heads of ferocious dogs or wolves. For anyone of a nervous disposition, or even those who had not seen such creatures in real life, the sight would be utterly terrifying. Even Gedge and Darius were brought up short.
Gedge flexed his fingers by his side. ‘What’s going on here?’ Darius stood shoulder to shoulder with him.
After a moment of silence, the wolf’s head on the counter wrenched the rope tight and kicked Ackroyd’s legs away, sending him swinging into thin air, hanging by the neck. He jumped down from the counter as the other two thugs vaulted over it, all three making for a back way out of the shop.
Darius ran to Ackroyd and grabbed him around the waist, taking the strain, while Gedge tore round the counter after the toughs. They ran through a curtained doorway, then a jumbled store room with a narrow staircase leading upstairs. As the two leading thugs burst out of the back door into a dark alley, the third man tipped a pile of boxes in Gedge’s path. Gedge made a grab for him and held a fistful of fur.
Darius called out from the front of the shop. ‘Lucas! I need you!’
The third man’s mask had come away in Gedge’s grasp, revealing a rat-faced individual with a livid scar across his forehead. Gedge was forced to let him escape, as he turned back to help his friend.
Back in the shop, Darius had his hands full. He was keeping Ackroyd from hanging, by supporting his weight, but the shopkeeper evidently thought he was another of his persecutors and was struggling and letting out hoarse shrieks of fear.
‘Talk to him, Lucas. I cannot release the rope like this.’
In a moment of black humour, Gedge saw the funny side of the situation. The taciturn Persian was seldom at a loss in this way, and was one of the last who would normally ask for help about anything. He subdued a smile. ‘Mr Ackroyd. Please calm yourself. We are, I assure you, your rescuers. We mean you no harm. Now, please let us get you off the end of that rope.’
The old man simmered down, and Gedge climbed up to cut the rope, freeing the noose. Darius brought over a chair and Ackroyd collapsed into it, rubbing his neck. Gedge fetched a glass of water from a sink in the store room and after a few minutes Ackroyd seemed to have recovered his composure.
‘I’m sorry, you fellas. I thought you were more of those beggars. That bloody rope must have been cuttin’ off the supply of blood to me brain!’
‘That’s alright,’ said Gedge. ‘It’s not every day you get strung up in your own shop. Enough to addle anyone’s head. Who the hell were they?’
Ackroyd coughed and rubbed at his throat. ‘Oh, I don’t reckon they would have gone through with it. They just thought I’d done ’em wrong.’
‘They looked pretty determined to me. So you do know who they are?’ He held up the mask he’d liberated from the laggardly thug.
Ackroyd winced at the sight of it. ‘I’m afraid I do. Oh, bugger. I’ve said too much already, but what the heck. I don’t deserve to be treated like that. They like to call ’emselves the Death Dogs, on account of them masks. Keeps ’em anonymous, and puts the wind up people as well. Gave me the willies right enough.’
Darius stepped closer. ‘But why the wolf heads?’
‘It’s because they’re members of that cult. “The Mystical Order of Wepwawet” they call it. Wepwawet’s an Egyptian deity with the head of a wolf.’
Gedge nodded. ‘We’ve heard about it. It’s that very cult that’s brought us here. What did you mean about them thinking you’d “done them wrong”?’
‘They’ve got wind that someone’s tipped off the police about what they get up to. They think it was me. I said to ’em, why would I do that? It’s not as though my clientele’s big enough to lose any of ’em, by rattin’ on ’em to the coppers. And anyway, the boys in blue have got more important things to think about than a few herberts gettin’ dressed up in funny gear and carryin’ out ancient rituals. Now, gentlemen, presumably you’re interested in esoterica yourselves, having ventured here? Anything I can help you with?’
Gedge had been casting his gaze over the papers liberally strewn about the floor. Among them were identical copies of a mimeographed pamphlet.
‘This appears to be a monthly periodical. Occult News. Catchy title. A limited circulation, I imagine. And not something you can buy in any old newsagent. I’d guess that you send these out by post, judging by the stack of envelopes next to them.’
‘What about it?’
‘As I said, we’re looking into this Wepwawet cult. We want your mailing list.’
Ackroyd grew edgy. ‘Who are you, anyway? Reporters seeking sensation? Well, you can get out! This is a respectable shop, and your presence makes a mockery of me and my customers.’
Gedge smiled. ‘Mr Ackroyd, we’re not simply going away now. Not after all this. We came here in good faith and we’ve helped you against those hoodlums. We’ll even help you tidy the place up again. But we need something in return. The police have approved our visit. If you refuse to help us, we can call a bobby from the nearest fixed point just round the corner. And then we’ll examine your records together. There have been claims of devil worship and the like associated with this
shop, and frankly, even if nothing actually illegal gets found, the press might accidentally hear about our interest, and might even be able to get hold of some of this salacious material.’ He waved some files at Ackroyd, without having the first idea what they actually contained.
The shopkeeper’s expression changed to a sulk. ‘Who the hell are you, then, if not the press or the police themselves?’
‘Let’s just say we’re concerned citizens trying to right a wrong. Just give us a copy of the list and we’ll be out of your hair.’
Ackroyd stayed sullen for a minute, turning the idea over in his mind. ‘Alright. I’ll let you have it if it’ll get you off my back.’
Darius nodded. ‘It is the right thing to do, Mr Ackroyd.’
‘Yes,’ said Gedge. ‘It might be a matter of life and death, in fact. Thanks for your help.’
They waited while the shopkeeper unlocked a desk drawer and removed a bundle of papers. ‘Lucky I’ve got several copies of it. I hope I’m not going to regret this.’
Gedge took the list and perused it. It ran to several typed pages and must have contained a couple of hundred names and addresses, almost all from the eastern side of the capital, with a few from as far away as Essex and Kent. ‘I gather yours is the only shop of its kind this side of London, Mr Ackroyd?’
‘That’s right. There’s another one over Ealing way, catering to customers out west.’
Gedge turned to Darius. ‘Stands to reason the men we’re looking for could be on this list.’ He ran his finger down the column of names. ‘Ah. Here’s Greatorex.’
Darius leaned in and studied the list. ‘Your friend Mr Cross ought to take a look at this, to see if he can pick out any names that are “known to the police”, as they say.’