Blackstone glared down at him for perhaps half a minute, then said, ‘I don’t know what you hope to gain by trying to blacken the name of a dead hero, but it won’t do you any good at all.’
‘But I’m only telling the truth,’ Robertson whined. ‘Yardley was part of the gang.’
Blackstone had made a promise to himself he would remain calm once he was back in the office, but now he grabbed Robertson by his lapels, and pulled him clear of his seat.
‘I could kill you easily,’ he growled. ‘I could snap your neck, and you’d be dead.’
He felt a hand gripping his shoulder tightly, and heard Inspector Drayman say, ‘That’s enough, Sam!’
Yes, Blackstone thought, it was enough. It was more than enough. He was a police officer, and there was no excuse for him behaving as he was.
He released his grip on Robertson, and the clerk flopped back awkwardly into his chair.
‘Convince me that what you’re saying is true,’ he said, much calmer now. ‘Give me one good reason why Bickersdale would have wanted Tom as a member of his gang.’
‘Once he’d come up with the idea of using the Melbourne Mine as a base for his new operation, he moved all the men who’d been working here to his other mine,’ Robertson said, with a tremble in his voice.
Blackstone nodded. ‘Yes, he would have had to do that, wouldn’t he? He couldn’t possibly put his vile plans into effect while there were still ordinary, decent working men around.’
‘But that left him with a problem,’ Robertson said. ‘Once his miners had gone, he had no idea what was being said about him in the village.’
‘And why should he even have cared what was being said?’
‘Why do you think? Because if the villagers were getting suspicious, he wanted to know about it. He didn’t want to wake up one morning and find himself surrounded by policemen. If anything was going to go wrong, he needed time to cut and run.’
‘So why didn’t he send one of his gang down to the pub to hear what was being said?’
‘Because that wouldn’t have worked. People in Marston would never speak openly—in front of outsiders—about what they were thinking. They needed to be in the company of somebody they knew—somebody they trusted. Somebody born in the village. And that person was Yardley.’
‘Then you’re claiming that Torn Yardley was no more than Bickersdale’s nark?’ Blackstone asked. ‘In that case, he wasn’t really one of the gang at all, and probably had no more idea of what was going on up here than anybody else in the village?’
‘He knew,’ Robertson said.
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘You’ve seen the cells that Mr Bickersdale kept the girls locked up in, haven’t you?’
‘Yes?’
‘They’re carved out of solid crystal rock. That’s a skilled job. The cut-throats Mr Bickersdale brought in from the outside were only pretending to be miners. They would have had no idea of where to even begin.’
‘Tom did that?’
‘Yes, he did.’
*
The cells are, in many ways, things of beauty. When the light from the oil lamp catches them right, they glisten, and the shadows melt into the crystal to create strange and wonderful patterns.
Bickersdale never notices this. All that matters to him is that they are carved out of solid crystal rock, and that the only way in or out of them is through doors so sturdy that even the strongest man could not break them down.
But there is one cave with a door that is even sturdier—and this cave, the men have been told, they must never go near
They know what it contains. It is here that Bickersdale stores the money he has made from the white-slave trade, and rumour has it that it amounts to more than six thousand pounds.
It torments the men that they cannot break down the door and take the money. But hard and ruthless as they are themselves, they are still afraid of Bickersdale. They remember what he did to Davis—how much the man screamed, and how long it took him to finally die.
Besides, it would be impossible to escape with the money once they had it. The only way in and out of the mine is in the cage, and every time that cage goes up or down, Bickersdale is standing there—a pistol in his hand—watching it.
So while they might dream of the money—might lick their lips at even the thought of it—it is as safe at the bottom of the mine as if it were in the vault at the Bank of England.
Or so they think.
And so Bickersdale himself thinks.
But there is one man who has other ideas.
*
‘Are you actually saying Torn Yardley stole Bickersdale’s money?’ Blackstone demanded.
‘Yes, he did.’
‘But how is that possible?’ Blackstone asked. ‘How could he have done it, when there was only one way in and out?’
But even as he was speaking he was remembering what he and Bickersdale had said to one another at the bottom of the mine.
There’s only one way out, and that’s under the control of four armed police officers, he’d told Bickersdale.
You’re quite wrong about that, the other man had replied. There’s a second way out—as I’ve recently discovered to my cost.
‘There wasn’t only one way.’ Robertson said. ‘Not for an experienced miner like Tom Yardley.’
*
It is a little after eight o’clock in the morning when Bickersdale goes down into the mine. The pockets of his frock coat are weighed down with the gold coins they contain. He walks along the passageway to his strongroom, takes out his key, and inserts it into the lock.
He knows that his men believe he has six thousand pounds stashed away here, but they are wrong. The figure is closer to ten, and today he will he adding another thousand.
He opens the door and senses immediately that something is wrong. The air in the room is colder than it normally is, and he can feel a draught where there should not be one.
He advances into the cave, holding his oil lamp in .front of him. The first thing he sees is that his iron chest is open and the money gone. The second thing is that there is a hole in the base of the back wall.
He gets down on his hands and knees and crawls along the low tunnel. When he has gone no more than a hundred yards, the tunnel opens up into a higher, wider passageway. He understands immediately that this passageway belongs not to his own mine but to the abandoned one that lies beyond it.
He is not sure whether to go to the left or the right, but finally chooses the right. He. follows the passageway for another hundred yards, until a second one intersects it. He is forced to accept that he is in a maze—in a honeycomb of tunnels that connects both to mines that have long ceased to function and mines that are still being worked. He knows that if he carries on much longer he will lose his sense of direction and might be wandering about for days.
He retraces his steps carefully and, as he does so, he is thinking. The men who work for him are thugs and murderers. Though they might pretend to be miners, they would be as lost down here as he is himself. But there is one man who wouldn’t be—one man brought up in the village who could .find his way around below ground as easily as he could above.
And that man is Tom Yardley.
‘So then he had Tom killed, did he?’ Blackstone asked.
‘No,’ Robertson said.
‘You’re lying to me again!’
‘I swear I’m not.’
‘If Tom had really done what you say he did, Bickersdale would never have let him get away with it.’
‘You’re right,’ Robertson agreed. ‘But he wouldn’t have had him killed like that, either.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he didn’t know what Yardley had done with the money! Bickersdale’s plan was to have his men grab Yardley when he was leaving the mine and bring him up here. If Yardley had told Bickersdale where the money was right away, he’d would have been killed right away. If he hadn’t, he’d have been tortured until he did tell, and then he’d hav
e been killed. But Yardley never did leave the mine. Before he ever came back to the surface, he blew himself up.’
Blackstone shook his head, slowly and mournfully, from side to side. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that’s what happened at all.’
Twelve
‘There were two of them—Blackstone and the drift manager—in the cage that was descending to the bottom of the Victoria Mine.
‘I don’t know what you expect to find down here,’ the drift manager told Blackstone. ‘After the explosion we searched the gallery thoroughly, just to make sure we hadn’t missed anything. So I can assure you that all Tom Yardley’s body parts—however small and however bloody—were buried with him.’
‘It must have been a messy job,’ Blackstone said.
The drift manager shuddered. ‘I like to think I’m not a squeamish man myself, but I couldn’t eat for a day after. All that raw meat! All that splintered bone! It was terrible.’
The cage bumped against the floor and they stepped out of it.
This was the second time in just a few hours he’d been in a cavern like this one, Blackstone thought, looking around at the flickering oil lights and huge salt pillars. He could only hope that this time there was no blood-letting.
The drift manager led him along the gallery to the rock face. ‘There’s not much to see,’ he said. ‘After we…After we cleared away Tom’s remains, we cleared the salt as well. We couldn’t waste it. The work of the mine has to go on, you know, in spite of personal tragedy.’
‘I can quite understand that,’ Blackstone agreed, lifting his oil lamp and studying the rock face.
There was no longer any evidence at all of the huge explosion, he thought, but then there wouldn’t have been. The excavation of the drift had probably advanced several inches—or several feet, for all he knew—since then.
He followed the wall along, and when he had almost reached the corner he saw the tunnel. ‘Where does that lead?’ he asked the drift manager.
The other man shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s been there for as long as I’ve been working here. There are dozens and dozens of tunnels under this village, you know. Some of them lead to other mines, which was why they were excavated in the first place. But others just peter out, so you’ve no idea what their original purpose was. To tell you the truth, it doesn’t really interest me. When I go back up in that cage, I like to leave all thoughts of this bloody mine behind me.’
‘I imagine you do,’ Blackstone said.
He walked over to the tunnel, and held his oil lamp up. The lamp illuminated the first few yards, but further away the walls became fainter and fainter, until there was only darkness.
‘I’d like to explore this tunnel,’ he said.
The drift manager showed no enthusiasm at all for the idea. ‘I didn’t mind bringing you down here,’ he said, ‘but like I told you, the sooner I’m out of this mine, the happier I am.’
‘I don’t want you to come with me,’ Blackstone said. ‘You can go home if you like, as long as there’s some way for me to get out of here once I’ve finished what I have to do.’
‘Oh, there’s no problem about that,’ the drift manager replied. ‘There’s a rope next the shaft. Pull on it, and it rings a bell topside. Then they’ll know that you want to be brought up.’ He paused. ‘But it’s not a good idea to go exploring on your own. That tunnel could come to a dead end in a hundred yards, or it might run for miles and connect with half a dozen other tunnels. You could get hopelessly lost.’
Blackstone pulled something out of his pocket. ‘Not if I fix one end of this to my starting point and trail it behind me as I go,’ he said.
The drift manager looked at what he was holding in his hand. ‘A ball of string!’ he said in amazement. ‘Whatever made you think to bring a ball of string with you? Did somebody tell you about this tunnel?’
‘No,’ Blackstone said. ‘But I was almost certain that it would have to be here.’
*
The tunnel forked less than fifty yards from its opening. Blackstone took the left fork, for no other reason than that it seemed a little wider than the right.
If he found nothing along it, he told himself, he would return to the junction and explore in the opposite direction. And if that didn’t work, he would search for other branch tunnels off the main ones.
He was well aware it might take him a long time, but he was quite prepared for that, because he was convinced that in the end—by patiently eliminating all other possibilities—he would blunder across what he was looking for.
It simply had to be down there.
The moment he saw the bedding, he knew he had made a lucky choice first time out. It wasn’t much—a couple of rough blankets and a pillow—but it was enough to tell him that someone had been camping out here.
There was other evidence, too—a spirit stove, a kettle, a saucepan, a cup, a drum of water and several cans of tinned food. And there was a newspaper, which was already several days old.
Blackstone picked the newspaper up, and was not surprised to find that one article in it had been ringed in red pencil.
‘Another horrendous murder!’ the headline read:
The body of a young girl, Emma Walsingholme, was discovered in a drainage ditch in Staffordshire yesterday. The murder appears to be the work of the Northern Slasher, and brings the number of his victims up to nine.
Scotland Yard has informed us that due to the temporary indisposition of Superintendent Bullock, who has investigated the previous killings, the inquiry in this case will be led by Detective Inspector Samuel Blackstone.
Blackstone flung the newspaper to the floor in disgust. It not only represented the last piece of the puzzle, it also answered several questions that had been troubling him for some time—and should have been troubling him for even longer.
There was a sound of footsteps some distance away. Blackstone snuffed out his oil lamp, and waited. A light appeared out of nowhere, as whoever was carrying it turned a corner.
Blackstone did not move, and the light came closer and closer.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Blackstone called out. ‘To the latrine, I suppose. That’s your army training for you. They always taught us never to shit close to where we were camped, didn’t they?’
The light stopped, and hovered in the air like an indecisive firefly; then a voice said, ‘Sergeant Blackstone?’
‘That’s right,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘Why don’t you come a bit closer; then we can talk like civilized men?’
For a moment the light did not move, then Tom Yardley began to walk towards him.
Blackstone bent down, relit his own oil lamp, and picked up the newspaper again.
‘It must have been this article that gave you the idea,’ he said, waving the newspaper at Yardley.
‘What idea was that, Sarge?’
‘How did you manage to fake your own death, Tom?’ Blackstone asked, ignoring the question. ‘What other poor bugger had to die so that you could go on living?’
‘I’d never kill anybody, Sarge. You know that. Not a white man, anyway.’ Yardley chuckled. ‘Remember how we fixed them nigger warriors in that cave back in Afghanistan? How I had to finish them off, because you’d gone and got yourself knocked out?’
‘I certainly remember some of that,’ Blackstone said. ‘But I’d rather talk about the question of your “death”. If you didn’t kill anyone, where did you get the body from?’
‘Dug him up from the graveyard,’ Tom Yardley said. ‘It wasn’t difficult. He’d only been dead for two days, and the earth hadn’t properly set.’
‘You despoiled a grave!’
‘I didn’t like doing it, Sarge. It didn’t seem right at first, an’ I almost couldn’t go through with it.’
Liar! Blackstone thought. ‘But in the end, you managed to talk yourself into it,’ he said aloud.
‘That’s right,’ Tom Yardley agreed. ‘I told myself that he was already dead, so whatever I did
wouldn’t hurt him. An’ havin’ known the man as he’d been in life, I didn’t really think he was the sort of feller who would have begrudged me the opportunity to survive.’
‘And once you had the stiff, the rest of your disappearing trick was easy, wasn’t it?’
‘Pretty easy, yes.’
*
Yardley packs the rock face with explosive—far too much explosive.
‘I’m setting the fuse now, so take cover’ he says.
His crew disappear behind the closest pillars, as they normally do.
‘Not there,’ Yardley shouts. ‘This is a bloody big charge I’m usin’. I want you at the very end of the gallery.’
Tom is the blaster He knows what he’s doing. The crew obey his instructions without question.
Yardley waits until they can no longer see him, then moves quickly to the tunnel. The corpse he has left there has been dead for two days. It has started to stink, and under the overalls he has dressed it in the maggots are probably already at work.
But neither of those things will matter The overpowering stench of the cordite will easily cover the smell. And the force of the explosion will disintegrate the worms.
He carries the corpse to the rock face. This is the tricky part, because if any of his team chooses that moment to look around the pillar, the game is up. But none of them do—and why should they?
He lights two fuses—one running to the explosives on the rock face, the other to the explosives he has packed in the corpse’s overalls—and returns to the mouth of the tunnel.
‘I’m going to light the fuse now,’ he calls out, then ducks into the tunnel. And because he has timed it so perfectly, the explosion conies no more than a second later.
When the air finally clears, all his men can find is a few body parts that could easily have once belonged to Tom Yardley—but didn’t.
*
‘Clever, wasn’t I?’ Tom Yardley said.
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ Blackstone told him. ‘It was certainly a very effective plan—but it wasn’t very original. At best, it was no more than a variation on a theme by Bickersdale.’
‘You always were a bit poetic, Sarge,’ Tom Yardley said, sounding perhaps a little hurt.
Blackstone and the Heart of Darkness Page 23