by James McGee
Lomax sat back. “God Almighty. You’ve got a bloody nerve!”
“One other thing,” Hawkwood said, nodding at Lomax’s blue coat and scarlet waistcoat. “You won’t need the uniform.”
There was a long silence. Finally Lomax leaned over and cast his good eye into Hawkwood’s glass.
“Best drink up, then,” he said.
18
Sawney, nursing a mug of grog, was re-living his black dream. He was in the Dog, on his own, seated in his usual booth. The pub was moderately full, but Sawney was oblivious to the activity going on around him. He was in the dark cellar again and in his mind’s eye he could see the figures in their beds and he could smell the stench of them and see the fear in their eyes, which, in his dream, had been his own eyes staring back at him. The image faded. He looked down and found that his hand was clenched tightly around the waist of the mug. Beneath the skin, his knuckles gleamed white in the candlelight.
It had been in the Peninsula, close to a village, the name of which escaped him; a sad, dusty little hamlet, hardly deserving of the description. A field hospital had been established in a local monastery. Sawney, as a wagon driver, had been tasked to transport the wounded from the battlefield to the surgeon’s operating table. Thomas Butler, his coconspirator in the resurrection trade, had been working as an orderly, tending to the wounded and preparing them for the ordeal of surgery. It had been Butler who, with contacts back in England, had secured buyers for the teeth and trinkets that Sawney and others prised from the bodies of the dead and dying that lay strewn across the bloodied terrain like discarded pieces of offal. Sawney had been better at it than anyone and because of that it had been Sawney whom Butler had approached with a proposition that went beyond the scavenging of canines and molars. Butler wanted more than teeth recovered, he wanted the bodies of French soldiers; wounded ones, not dead. Sawney was to ask no questions. That way, if anyone were to intervene, Sawney could legitimately say they were being transported to the surgeon for treatment; in the same spirit that French army surgeons tended to British wounded.
Only Sawney hadn’t delivered the bodies to the main hospital wards. Under Butler’s direction, he’d taken them to one of the distant outbuildings, the monastery’s winery.
Sawney wasn’t sure how many French casualties he’d delivered into Butler’s hands. Perhaps a couple of dozen, all told, roughly half of whom had been in a very bad way, with a slim chance of survival.
He had never set foot in the outbuilding; never had reason to. All he did was transport the bodies. That was as far as his responsibilities went. Until the day his curiosity got the better of him.
The heat had been oppressive and the brackish water in Sawney’s canteen had failed to alleviate the dryness in his parched throat. Racking his brain for ways to quench his thirst, it occurred to Sawney that the answer was staring him in the face. The winery.
It stood to reason there’d be booze around somewhere; be it wine or brandy. Probably cellars full of the stuff, wall-to-wall barrels, just waiting to be liberated. Bloody officers had probably been helping themselves already, but the buggers couldn’t have drunk it all. Hell, Sawney thought, even the dregs at the bottom of those barrels would be more palatable than the stuff in his canteen. So he had stepped down from his wagon to explore.
Avoiding the main entrance, he had approached the rear of the building. There, he had found what looked to be a long-disused doorway. At the base of an adjacent wall, there had been a set of wooden trapdoors embedded in a stone surround. They’d reminded Sawney of the kind found outside pubs back home, through which the delivery of ale and spirits were made. Old, bleached by the sun and half-hidden beneath overhanging weeds, they hadn’t looked very promising – indeed, the buildings themselves didn’t look as if they’d been in use for a while – but Sawney, sly and greedy and drawn by the possible proximity of a hidden trove, had pressed on. When he came across the stone stairway his excitement had soared.
He’d chanced upon a stub of candle and the light had given him added confidence. It had taken him a while and it had involved a lot of stumbling around, but Sawney’s suspicions had eventually been proved correct. The winery did have cellars, though what with all the winding passages, dead-ends and stairways the place had seemed more reminiscent of an underground maze than a bodega.
It had been through accident rather than design that he’d finally found himself in the main cellar, after what seemed like hours of wandering in the dark. Drawn down a side passage by a faintly flickering light, he’d emerged from the gloom, thinking he’d struck gold at last, only to discover the place was stocked with neither casks nor corks. In fact, there hadn’t been a barrel in sight, only makeshift beds. And they had all been occupied.
Sawney had become inured to death and corpses and the wounded. Or so he had thought. He’d certainly grown used to the scenes outside the surgeons’ tents, where it wasn’t unknown for men to wait in line for days to receive treatment. That view never altered: blood-spattered uniforms, listless faces, sunken eyes and bloated limbs, all marinated in the sweet, sickly smell of gangrene that hung as heavy as a blanket in the fetid air around them. He remembered the surgeons, stripped down to shirt and breeches, arms and clothing caked with gore as they worked on the laid-out bodies, on tables that were no more than wooden doors supported by wine casks.
He remembered sounds too; the continuous creaking of the wagon wheels, the whimpering of the men as they were transported over terrain that would have tested the agility of a goat, and the constant drone of the flies feasting upon the open sores in swarms as black as coal.
This time it had been different. In that underground room, it hadn’t been the sight of the beds’ occupants, the blood or the nature of their wounds that had unnerved him, or even the low moans of discomfort. At least, not at first. It had been the scream.
It had not been uttered by a man. No human throat could have produced that sound or anything like it. It had been more like the screech of an animal, a fox caught in a snare or some kind of ape. Sawney had seen apes and monkeys in his travels. He’d heard the animals shrieking and clamouring, usually in tussles over food, and the noise in the cellar had been remarkably similar in tone and volume. But even as his mind tried to grapple with that unlikely possibility, he had known deep down that he was fooling himself and that even the most vociferous ape could not have made the ghastly cry.
He had never seen the face of the person holding the knife. All he had seen had been the shape of him, the curve of his shoulder, but the image and that piercing scream, allied to the things he had seen, or thought he had seen, in the other pallets further down the cellar had been enough to make him turn tail and run from the cellar as if the hounds of Hell had been snapping at his heels. Sawney had never referred to the incident, not even to Butler. He’d never returned to that hospital. He’d been assigned other duties, transporting equipment on the long journey to Badajoz. It was only after Hyde had revealed his true identity the previous evening that Sawney realized who the man in the cellar must have been and why he’d had that flashback when Hyde had introduced himself as Dodd. Only in the dream had the figure’s face been revealed. Now he’d seen it for real. Sawney’s life had come full circle.
Sawney raised the mug to his lips and took a sip. It tasted like gunpowder on his tongue. He looked about him. Maggett and the Raggs were around somewhere. Sal, too, plying her trade, he supposed. Thinking about the Raggs made Sawney tighten his grip on his mug.
He’d given them a simple job. All they’d had to do was retrieve the woman’s corpse from Hyde’s underground stable and dispose of it. After the last balls-up, there had been no thought in Sawney’s mind to sell it on to any of his usual customers, so he’d given strict instructions to the brothers to make sure the thing disappeared, permanently, and not too close to home. The Raggs had assured him that had been done and, like a fool, Sawney had believed them. Then news came that a woman’s naked corpse had been found high and relatively
dry on a beam over the Fleet not much more than a hop and a skip away, which meant they’d transported the thing halfway across London to drop it virtually on their own doorstep. Sawney had let rip; told them they were useless bastards and as much use as a pair of one-armed fiddlers, which had left Sawney drinking on his own, his crew subdued and scattered around the pub. Sawney knew the bad feeling wouldn’t last for long. It never did. Not when there was a lucrative living to be made by sticking together. They made a good team, the five of them; but that wasn’t to say there weren’t times when he would have swung for them, cheerfully.
Sawney’s gaze moved to the couple over at the next table. The man had his hand on the woman’s knee. Sawney watched as the hand disappeared under the dress. There was no squeal of protest, just a giggle as the woman repaid the favour by stuffing her hand down the front of the man’s breeches. Sawney felt himself stiffen. He looked for Sal, spotted her over in the far corner, talking to one of the Hanratty boys. Bastard’s probably thinking about getting his hand down her blouse, Sawney thought. Well, bugger that. If anyone was going to get his hand down Sal’s blouse tonight, it was going to be him. He drained his mug and stood up. As he did so, he caught Sal’s eye. When he jerked his head towards the door at the back of the room, Sal winked and stuck her tongue into the inside of her cheek to make it bulge. Sawney knew that meant she was in the mood too. He felt himself grow harder. Nothing like an inventive whore to get the blood flowing.
They met at the door.
“You want me to bring one of the other girls?” Sal asked. “Make it a threesome? Rosie’s feelin’ a bit frisky.”
Sawney shook his head. “Not tonight. One’ll be enough.”
Sal looked at him and grinned. “More than enough,” she said, and taking his hand she led him through the doorway and up the stairs.
“God’s teeth,” Lomax muttered. “When you said we’d be on foot, this wasn’t at all what I had in mind.”
“Silence at the back. No talkin’ in the ranks.” The instruction was followed by a rasping chuckle. The sound carried eerily in the semidarkness.
“You’re enjoying this, Sergeant. I can tell.” As the light from Jago’s lantern played across Lomax’s ravaged face, his left eye gleamed demonically.
“Away with you, Major. A drop o’ water never hurt anyone.”
“Water, my arse,” Lomax said.
Jago grinned.
They were at least twenty feet below street level and they were wading through shit. Literally.
Odd how natural the short exchange had sounded, Hawkwood thought, as he listened to Jago and Lomax address each other by rank. It had been interesting, and not a little amusing, seeing the two meet for the first time, watching the way they had sized one another up. From their immediate rapport, it was clear that each of them had recognized in the other a man you’d want on your side, no questions asked. He was reminded of Hyde’s comment back in the alleyway: Once a soldier …
“You think young Hopkins’ll be all right?” Lomax asked.
“Micah’s watching his back,” Jago said. “He’ll be fine.”
“Doesn’t talk much, does he?” Lomax said.
“Who?”
“Micah.”
“Doesn’t have to,” Jago said.
And that was the end of that conversation.
Another lantern wavered twenty paces ahead of them, casting an eerie molten glow across the walls and roof of the tunnel.
“How are we doing, Billy?” Jago called softly.
The reply came towards them in a broad Ulster brogue. “Not far now.’ Bout quarter of a mile.”
“Christ,” Lomax said. He gazed down with disgust at the slow-moving tide of filth running alongside them and cursed again as his boot squelched into the soft and yielding morass.
They had gained access to the tunnel through the cellar beneath Newton’s Gin Shop. It had been at Jago’s suggestion, prompted by Hawkwood asking if there was any way of approaching the Dog without being seen.
There was, the sergeant had told him, but it wouldn’t be what you might call fragrant.
Jago had certainly got that right, Hawkwood reflected. The smell coming off the river had been bad enough topside. Down below, it went way past grim. It was unspeakable, almost beyond description.
Like Lomax, they were wearing neck cloths tied around their lower faces, but the protection this provided against the foul stench was marginal, which was to say non-existent. And, as they had soon discovered, the smell wasn’t the only horror that lay in wait for them. The body that had been discovered earlier and which was now with Surgeon Quill had already provided ample proof that the Fleet’s reputation as a communal midden was well deserved. In the dark, dank and dripping tunnels the evidence was even more explicit.
The glutinous stains that ran along both sides of the tunnel extended well above waist height. It was an indication of how high the water level could rise after a heavy rain or if there was a blockage further downstream, hindering the flow. All around them, the brickwork was black with effluence that had been marooned by the retreating tide. It hung in globules, as thick as pitch, and oozed down the walls leaving slug-like trails in its wake.
Their path, which was not much more than a narrow ledge, was swirling with overflow. Each man had lost his footing at least once and had only been saved from sliding over the edge into the noxious soup by the prompt action of one of his companions, who’d been able to reach out a steadying hand.
Upstream, the underground channels were a lot narrower, Jago told them; during times of flooding the water would fill the tunnels in the upper reaches almost to the roof. The former sergeant had grinned. “It’d be like tryin’ to crawl up a cow’s arse.”
A colourful turn of phrase, but it hadn’t been hard to picture the image.
“Christ,” Lomax said again. “I was over in St Pancras barely two months back and there were lads bathing. You wouldn’t think it was the same bloody river.” He stopped suddenly and peered ahead. “Jesus, is that what I think it is?”
Hawkwood raised his lantern and followed Lomax’s gaze. The tunnel had widened, as had the ledge upon which they were walking. Blocks of heavy stone lay scattered around them in the mud and shit. They were obviously very old and circular in shape, probably the ruins of a roof column. Lying next to one of them, half covered by a moraine of black sludge, was what appeared to be part of a ribcage and a partially submerged human skull.
“One way to get rid of the old man,” Jago said, without breaking stride. “A knock on the head when he’s drunk, open the trapdoor and Bob’s your uncle. Guarantee that ain’t the first poor bugger that’s been tossed down the well. God knows what else has been thrown down here over the years.”
Hawkwood thought about the two men who’d waylaid him by Holborn Bridge, the spider hand clutching for purchase and the black mud closing relentlessly over the pale-skinned face of his attacker. The body would be down here somewhere. It might even be close to where they were now walking. There was a possibility, Hawkwood supposed, that it would find its way eventually to the Thames, but he doubted it. Most likely it would get caught against some obstruction, and there it would remain until it had been stripped of flesh and reduced to spikes of bone, entombed in darkness until the end of time.
It occurred to him, given his new-found knowledge, that it had probably been either Sawney or the Dog’s landlord, Hanratty, who’d set the duo on to him. Maybe Lucius Symes had spotted him and slipped them the word. The verger was going to be doing some serious talking once he caught up with him.
They moved on without speaking. The only sound was the splashing of their boots as they made their way along the tunnel. A few yards ahead, Billy’s lantern drew them further into the sewer.
Billy Haig looked about seventeen, though Hawkwood suspected he was probably around the same age as Hopkins. His fair hair and blue eyes no doubt stood him in good stead with the girls. The ready smile would help, too; though the shrewd look he’d e
xhibited when the introductions had been made had also hinted at a maturity his boyish appearance belied. Hawkwood had wondered about his inclusion – Micah’s stoic presence had not been open to question – but when Jago announced that Billy had once been a runner for Hanratty and knew the layout of the Dog, the reason for the youth’s selection became clear. Though that hadn’t been the only reason why Jago had enlisted Billy’s help. The lad, it transpired, had also enjoyed the favours of Molly Finn and would therefore be able to identify her.
The lantern suddenly came to a halt. Mindful of the slipperiness underfoot, the three men moved forward cautiously.
Billy was pointing to one side. Set into the tunnel wall was a dark, rectangular recess. There were stone steps, Hawkwood could see, rising into the blackness.
“This is it,” Billy said softly. Holding the lantern up, he inclined his head towards a faint mark scratched into the brickwork by the side of the opening. It was in the shape of a diagonal cross. It looked as if it had been made some time ago. Without the aid of the lantern it was doubtful they would have spotted it, but Billy had known what to look for. Beneath the lower legs of the cross were scored, equally roughly, two letters: BD.
Most of the access points had signs, Billy told them. It was one of the few ways people were able to find their way around the subterranean passages.
“What’s up there?” Jago asked, nodding towards the steps.
Billy lowered his neck cloth, grimacing at the smell. “Trapdoor.”
“How the devil do we get in?” Lomax asked. “The damned thing’s bound to be bolted.”
Billy shook his head. “Levers, both sides. But you’ve to know where to look.” He grinned and tapped the side of his nose.
“See?” Jago said, clapping Billy on the shoulder. “Told you he wasn’t just a pretty face.”
“’Tain’t the only trap, neither,” Billy said. He jerked his thumb towards the tar-black ooze. “There’s another one further up. Opens directly over the water. Hanratty uses it to get rid of unwanted merchandise.” The corner of Billy’s mouth twitched. “If yous know what I mean. Saw him drop a fellow called Danny McGrew through it once. Can’t recall what the poor sod had done to deserve it, but the last anyone saw of Danny was the back of his arse as he went to meet his maker.” Billy looked suddenly pensive. “Not a quick way to go, I’m thinking.”