Mind of a Killer

by Simon Beaufort

  ‘I don’t see anyone …’ said Lonsdale. But, even as he spoke, he saw a flash of silver in the dim yellow light that spilled through the thick glass of the window. Hulda was right.

  ‘Oh, it’s a policeman,’ he said in relief. ‘I can see his buttons and the striping of his cuffs. He … My God! It’s Iverson!’

  ‘How can you tell?’ breathed Hulda. ‘Can you see his face? I can’t.’

  ‘No, but I recognize his posture and shape. It’s him, Hulda, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘So what are we going to do? Can we take him into custody? With this, perhaps?’

  She produced a handgun with a long barrel. Lonsdale gaped at it, stunned not only that she should have armed herself so, but that she had kept such a massive thing concealed all evening. It was too large to have been in her handbag.

  ‘Where’d you get that?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a family heirloom.’ All Hulda’s attention was on Iverson. ‘Damn! He’s too far inside the doorway for me to get a clear shot.’

  ‘You can’t just kill him,’ gulped Lonsdale, horrified.

  Hulda glared at him. ‘Of course I won’t kill him – just give him a fright, so he surrenders without a struggle.’

  Instinctively Lonsdale knew it was a very bad idea. ‘We should let the police deal with him.’

  ‘But they’ve been hunting him for months with no success. Come on, Lonsdale, we can’t just walk away. Imagine what your friend Peters will say if he learns you had Iverson in your sights and let him go.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’ asked Lonsdale reluctantly.

  ‘We trap him in a pincer-like movement,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ll stay here – you get on his other side. Then we pounce. What could go wrong?’

  A lot, thought Lonsdale, but nodded agreement.

  ‘But for God’s sake don’t tackle him until I’m ready.’

  Hulda pulled a face that indicated she would do what she liked. ‘Well, go on, then,’ she hissed when he still hesitated.

  He set off at a run, terrified that if he took too long, she would do something rash. He skidded on mud, and when he reached out to steady himself, he felt a wall, moist and sticky with filth. Wiping his hand on his trousers, he hurried on. Eventually, he reached a point where the Fountain and Grapes was between him and Hulda, its yellow lights spilling through the fog like phosphorus eyes. He peered out carefully and saw the mist had thickened in the few moments he had been gone. He could see Iverson’s doorway, but not him. Was the fugitive still there? Lonsdale could not tell. He began to inch forward, his hands balled into fists, ready for action. He froze as he trod on broken glass and it cracked under his foot. He tensed, expecting Iverson to come out of the shadows, but nothing happened. He took another step towards the doorway, and then another, then jumped to the doorway ready to lay hold of his quarry. But Iverson had gone.

  Lonsdale glanced around wildly. He still could not see Hulda’s hiding place through the fog. He groped in his pocket for his Alpine Vesuvians, and lit one with unsteady fingers. He held it up, half expecting Iverson to be crouching in the shadows at the back, but the doorway was empty. He experienced a gamut of emotions – relief, frustration, but strongest of all disappointment, and a sudden pang of concern for Hulda.

  What happened next was a blur. There was a sharp crack as more broken glass snapped under a heavy boot, and something struck him hard across the shoulders. He fell forwards and out of the corner of his eye saw Iverson holding a truncheon in one hand and a knife in the other.

  As Lonsdale put out his hands to scramble to his feet, he felt a sack of rubbish. He grabbed it and swung it hard at Iverson’s knees. It exploded, sending foul-smelling kitchen waste and a cloud of cold ashes scattering across the alley. Iverson staggered, then charged, slashing wildly with his knife. Lonsdale raised an arm to protect himself, and felt the knife nick him as it sliced through his coat. He scrambled upright and his left fist shot out at Iverson’s chin. Iverson staggered backwards two steps, then circled to his right.

  Lonsdale dived at him and managed another punch, this time to Iverson’s chest. But Iverson fought back like a wild animal, flailing with the dagger with one hand, while the other tried to grab Lonsdale’s throat. As they grappled, Iverson’s face was briefly illuminated by the tavern’s lights, and Lonsdale saw his eyes burning like coals, dark and filled with rage.

  Lonsdale twisted away, and landed a third punch, but Iverson grabbed his coat, pulling so hard that both men lost their balance on the slimy, rotting vegetables from the sack. Despite his bulk, Iverson was fast, and while Lonsdale twisted away from the knife, he lashed out with his foot, catching the reporter on the side of the head. Lonsdale fell again, and a meaty hand hit him twice in quick succession. He was dimly aware of a knife beginning to descend.

  The gunshot sounded like a cannon in the enclosed space of the doorway. Lonsdale blinked to clear his vision and was aware that Iverson had gone. He heard receding footsteps, and then a clamour of voices – among them, Hulda’s strident tones. He sat up, disconcerted to find himself surrounded by people.

  ‘Drink this, mate,’ said a voice, which turned out to be that of Barman Bill from the Dog and Bone. He crouched next to Lonsdale, offering something dark brown in a glass. ‘It’ll see you right, and it only costs a penny.’

  Dimly Lonsdale realized Hulda had very wisely returned to the scene of her recent triumph and asked them for help – Frank and Bob were there, as well as Tilly and half a dozen others. Hulda appeared over the barman’s shoulder and gave him the required coin.

  ‘Drink it, Lonsdale,’ she ordered. ‘You’re as white as a sheet. Fright, I imagine.’

  She patted his shoulder condescendingly, then looked with disgust at the muck that stained her fingers, while Lonsdale sipped what might have been brandy. Whatever it was, it burned his bleeding mouth. He climbed to his feet, assisted by several helpful hands, and allowed himself to be guided back to the Dog and Bone, where Hulda ordered him a pint of ‘best’. He grimaced his revulsion at the taste, but Tilly was there to help.

  ‘Put a drop of this in it, to take away the taste,’ she suggested kindly, giving him a very small tot from the bottle he had bought her.

  ‘Why were the police after you?’ asked Frank, taking the stool next to him. The hostility he had experienced earlier, Lonsdale noted, had gone now he had been engaged in fisticuffs with a uniformed policeman.

  ‘He’s wanted for a burglary in Mayfair,’ explained Hulda proudly. ‘The peelers have been after him for weeks.’

  Lonsdale listened in mute horror while she fabricated an elaborate tale about a highly implausible crime, which had her audience agog. She then confided that he had another equally impressive crime planned in Knightsbridge, but that, unless he wanted to lose his opportunity to carry it out, they should be on their way.

  ‘Although we’ll pay our respects to Mrs Greaves before we get down to serious business,’ she said.

  ‘Hulda, no,’ whispered Lonsdale. ‘Not tonight.’

  She ignored him, and they left the Dog and Bone amid nods of approval. Several men shook Lonsdale’s hand, and Bob slapped him on the shoulder in a congratulatory fashion. Frank offered to escort them to the Greaves’s house, and Lonsdale found it easier to accept the offer than to argue. He and Hulda were proudly introduced to everyone they met – an astonishing number, considering it was past midnight – as the woman who shot at the police, and the man wanted for a burglary in Mayfair.

  ‘That’ll teach the peelers,’ said Frank gleefully. ‘They must want you bad, because they know they’re not welcome around here. We only ever see them if there’s a murder.’

  He stopped outside a tall, filthy building with boarded-over windows and a front door that hung loose on its hinges, and told them that the widow lived on the top floor. Hulda thanked him.

  Frank gave her a leering smile, then addressed Lonsdale. ‘If you ever want to do the steelworks, I know where the cash is kept.’

  �
�That might be useful,’ said Lonsdale vaguely.

  Frank scowled. ‘They’re laying me off in a couple of weeks – they got a machine to pour the metal now. I wouldn’t mind paying them back for tossing me out on my ear after twenty years.’

  ‘He’ll be in touch,’ promised Hulda. ‘Good night.’

  ‘No,’ said Lonsdale firmly, as Hulda aimed for the stairs. ‘Not tonight – it’s too late. We’re going home.’

  He expected her to argue, but she only began to walk to where the hansom had dropped them what felt like ages before. Her acquiescence told him that, for all her bravado, he was not the only one who had been unsettled by the events of the evening.

  EIGHT

  The next morning saw Lonsdale emerge from his bed stiff, bruised, and dull-witted from lack of sleep. Ignoring the maids’ horror at the filthy bathwater and ruined clothes, he snatched a hard-boiled egg from the kitchen table and ate it as he walked to Northumberland Street for another day in the archive. Tired and sore he might be, but there was no time for lounging at home.

  ‘Hulda tells me you’re going back to Bermondsey this evening,’ said Milner that afternoon. Aware that Lonsdale had not left the basement since he had arrived, he had come to bring him a cake baked by Cook’s mother. Hulda had stayed for most of the morning, then had left at Stead’s request to produce a story about the eruption of Mount Etna. She had asked how he was, awkwardly and formally, then had busied herself without another word.

  ‘We’re going to see Greaves’s widow,’ said Lonsdale, barely looking up to acknowledge Milner’s kind thought.

  ‘Are you sure that’s wise?’ asked Milner soberly. ‘Hulda says you were almost killed there yesterday. Moreover, the killer’s still free, and he may try again.’

  Lonsdale disagreed. ‘We fought because I was trying to lay hold of him. It was a chance encounter, and not one that will be repeated.

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ said Milner quietly. ‘Doesn’t it strike you as odd that, with the entire police force looking for Iverson, he hasn’t been caught? And isn’t it peculiar that you and Hulda are the only ones bothered about linking these odd deaths? And didn’t Superintendent Ramsey tell the coroner, the police surgeon and Inspector Peters not to bother about Walker and Greaves?’

  Lonsdale looked up at him, feeling his eyes gritty from tiredness and dust. ‘I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me.’

  ‘That Iverson – said to be insane by some – might not be mad at all, but following orders from a senior officer.’

  Lonsdale frowned. ‘You think someone in authority is involved in a business that involves Greaves being poisoned, Cath’s cut throat, mysterious meetings, and missing cerebra?’

  Milner shrugged. ‘I cannot answer, but the whole affair is very odd.’

  Lonsdale continued to stare at him. ‘What made you come up with this? You said not long ago that it was not going to be important. Now you say there’s a conspiracy.’

  Milner was sombre. ‘You’ve been down here all day, so you haven’t seen the latest reports from the news services. There was a report from the Exchange Telegraph that caught my attention. Here.’

  Harry Cannon, aged fourteen, mysteriously disappeared in the fog last night. While walking along the river to his home in Limehouse, accompanied by his brother and sister, he sat down near the Shadwell Dock Stairs, promising to catch up with them. He was last seen speaking to a man described as being short, strongly built, with thin hair and a long, uneven beard. A search has been made along the river, but nothing has been seen or heard of him.

  ‘Your workhouse lad described a man like that waiting in the background while his friends were enticed away,’ said Milner when Lonsdale had finished. ‘And now read the addendum to the report, which was released an hour ago.’

  Cannon’s brother and sister were not concerned at the time, as when their brother sat down, the man in question was speaking to a police constable. They did not see the policeman’s number, but stated that he was a large man with a scar above one eye.

  Lonsdale decided that six o’clock was the best time to call on Mrs Greaves – a time when most of her daily chores would be done, but before she had settled down for the evening. The city was busy, as people finished work and travelled home, but it was a pretty evening, with a clear blue sky and the sun casting long shadows. They alighted from the hansom and Lonsdale set a brisk pace to Mermaid Court. It was even less attractive in the cold light of day – windows broken and patched, and the roof pitted with holes. The walls bulged precariously and the whole place was in such terrible condition that Lonsdale wondered if it should be condemned as unfit for human habitation.

  Inside, the odour of urine, mildew and dirt made Lonsdale want to gag. Even Hulda’s brazen confidence wavered when they stepped inside. Moisture oozed down the walls in a fine green film, and the floorboards were dark with filth. A dead kitten lay on one step, its bedraggled fur matted with blood. Rats skittered in the shadows; the little corpse would not remain there for long.

  ‘Come on,’ muttered Hulda. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  Her jaw jutted purposefully as she made her way towards the stairs, hand on the gun in her bag, acting not so differently, Lonsdale thought, to some desperado in the American West.

  It was not easy to reach the top floor. The banister had been stolen and the stairs were rotten – some were missing altogether, revealing a drop to the floor below. As they rose, the stench became increasingly foul, as overflowing chamber pots stood on each floor, presumably to save the residents the trouble of going down to the communal latrines.

  Each floor boasted six rooms. Lonsdale peered into one and saw a filthy floor and walls with mould. There were at least five people asleep there. From another came the sound of heavy breathing, as a couple snatched some desperate pleasure. Hulda faltered, and Lonsdale pushed her gently, to urge her to continue.

  ‘Close your eyes and think of England,’ he whispered.

  ‘If I close my eyes, I’ll fall and break my neck,’ she muttered, then gave a sigh of relief when they reached the top-floor landing. ‘Here we are at last. Now where?’

  The rooms in the attic had no doors, but some privacy was granted to the tenants by filthy blankets, which were pinned over the frames. Lonsdale pushed one aside and glanced in. It was occupied by an elderly crone who crouched by a dead hearth, her toothless jaws muttering indecipherable words. The next one was uninhabited, and the third belonged to the Greaves family.

  The room was almost bare. The fireplace housed a pile of smouldering embers, and a log lay in front of them to act as a fender. There was a chair against one wall, along with a shelf that held a battered saucepan, a piece of dry bread, and what appeared to be horse bones, almost certainly salvaged from the glue factory. Against the opposite wall was a pile of sacks, greasy and evil-smelling, which served as a bed. On them, ragged, begrimed and bare-legged, perched a girl of about four.

  A woman sat on the chair, rocking a second child who was painfully thin and was missing several front teeth. Something about her reminded Lonsdale of a weasel. A pink scalp shone palely through wisps of fair hair, and her clothes were stiff with engrained grime.

  Lonsdale knocked on the doorframe. ‘Mrs Greaves?’

  ‘I’ll pay you tomorrow,’ said the woman tiredly. ‘I’d be out working tonight, but my little one’s sick.’

  ‘We haven’t come for the rent,’ said Lonsdale gently. ‘We’re here to say how sorry we were to hear about your husband.’

  Fear and confusion flared in her eyes. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

  Hulda pushed her way inside. ‘I’m a friend of Cath’s,’ she declared. ‘A couple of weeks ago, she said that if anything happened to her, I was to see you got this.’

  She held out her hand to reveal a plain silver ring. Mrs Greaves’s eyes opened wide with astonishment.

  ‘She gave you that for me? But why? She’d never done nothing like that before.’

  She reached o
ut slowly and took the ring, as if afraid a sudden movement might make it disappear. She bit it between yellow molars, and then walked to the window to inspect it in the light.

  ‘It’s silver,’ said Hulda, ‘so don’t let anyone give you less than thirty shillings for it.’

  ‘Thirty shillings!’ breathed Mrs Greaves. ‘Then I’ll get my furniture back! They took it two days ago for the rent, as I ain’t been able to pay nothing since …’ Her voice tailed off.

  ‘It’ll buy medicine for the baby, too,’ added Hulda comfortingly.

  ‘So what do you want?’ asked Mrs Greaves, gripping the ring hard, as if she were afraid Hulda might demand it back. ‘People don’t give stuff away unless they want something.’

  ‘Information,’ Hulda replied briskly. ‘People have been saying that Joe often had lots of extra cash. Where did he get it from?’

  The woman’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Go away! I don’t want to talk to you!’

  Lonsdale stepped forward, poking Hulda in the back to warn her to be quiet. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said gently. ‘All we want is for whoever killed Cath and Joe to be brought to justice. Can you tell us anything to help?’

  ‘Why should I?’ demanded Mrs Greaves, suddenly tearful. ‘Especially for Cath. It was her what got Joe killed.’

  ‘How?’ asked Lonsdale.

  ‘She was always in the Dog and Bone, wearing new clothes and drinking her whisky. She took a shine to Joe and said she’d take him to people who’d give him money, too.’

  ‘And did she?’ asked Lonsdale.

  She nodded. ‘Every so often he’d come home with a sovereign or a guinea. He’d give me a shilling, but that was all. His friends at the Dog and Bone did better – it was drinks all round for them.’ Her voice was bitter.

  ‘Where did this money come from?’ persisted Lonsdale.

  The younger child began to cry, so Mrs Greaves sat back down, bouncing it up and down on her knee.

  ‘From somewhere he went after work,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t tell me where. He usually came back in the small hours, mad drunk.’