The Sign of Fear

by Robert Ryan

  Holmes’s eyes widened. ‘The Bank of England! Then Carlisle is a dead man first.’ He picked up the newspaper and thrust the pictogram at Watson. ‘Ling-ch’ih. Better known here as the lingering death or death by a thousand cuts. One of the execution methods used by the Chinese up until a dozen years ago. We are dealing with twin urges here, Watson. Your man Garavan is a psychopathic sadist and a thief. Carlisle will provide the satisfaction of slicing through a human being. Arnott will provide the cash.’

  ‘But how?’

  The thump of a maroon fired from nearby made them start. A warning rocket. They heard a second detonation, some way off, the echo seeming to pulse on for several seconds before diminishing. There would be a raid tonight. Both men listened carefully, but there were no engine noises. The authorities were giving plenty of warning this time.

  The two men could feel the change in the mood of the city, the sudden paralysis, followed by frantic activity. ‘Take cover!’ the policemen would be yelling. And, driven by fear of what the night sky might bring, London would flee underground, leaving the blackened streets deserted.

  Holmes slapped his forehead with his palm. ‘How? How? With that.’ He pointed through the window.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Gotha Hum.’

  Bullimore arrived, breathless and wan before Watson could ask Holmes to expand. The policeman was in no mood for small talk. ‘They’ve found Carlisle.’

  ‘Alive?’ Holmes asked.

  Bullimore shook his head.

  ‘How did he die?’ asked Watson.

  The face wrinkled in distaste and horror. ‘They sliced him into pieces.’

  Watson and Holmes exchanged glances. ‘Ling-ch’ih,’ said Holmes bitterly. ‘Gentlemen, whatever is happening here, I feel tonight it will reach its climax.’

  ‘I am not at all pleased!’

  It was the matron, her fist-like face underlining her words. ‘This is a hospital, not some sort of detection club.’

  ‘We were just leaving,’ said Watson.

  ‘You can’t,’ said Matron.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘A phone call. You are to stay here. A car is on the way to fetch you.’

  ‘A car? From whom?’

  ‘From a Miss Adler.’

  Holmes started at the name. ‘What? Here?’

  Watson put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Not that Miss Adler.’

  Holmes realized what Watson was trying to convey with his eyes. ‘Oh, that woman. Will we never be rid of her?’

  Bullimore said nothing, simply made a mental note of the exchange. Now he knew there was more to Miss Adler than met the eye.

  ‘I am here to see Mr Mycroft Holmes.’

  The words seemed to flee along the corridor like a swarm of bats, swerving this way and that, filling every alcove and every crevice, growing in strength as they went.

  The response was a great groan of dismay from within, underpinned by the snap of newspapers and the sudden ejection of half-swallowed drinks.

  ‘I am sorry,’ said the porter of the Diogenes Club. ‘The Conversation Parlour is closed for the evening.’

  Miss Pillbody stepped closer, forcing the double doors open a few more inches, allowing her voice the opportunity to penetrate even deeper into the marbled vestibule and beyond.

  ‘Is Mr Mycroft Holmes in?’

  ‘I am not at liberty to—’

  ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘That’s all right, Bishop, I’ll deal with this.’ Mycroft came striding out into the hallway, face like thunder. ‘I’ll take the lady outside.’

  Mycroft brushed past her and walked down the steps, lighting a cigar as he did so. London was unnaturally quiet. The maroons had been fired, but as yet no enemy aircraft had appeared. The city had closed its eyes and was praying for deliverance.

  Mycroft turned. ‘What is the meaning of this, madam?’

  ‘I come from Major Watson.’

  ‘You have the advantage of me.’

  ‘Elsie Adler, at your service.’

  ‘At my disservice. There will be questions about this.’ He pointed at the club.

  ‘I thought there was no speaking in there.’

  ‘Written questions, madam.’ He peered through the curtain of cigar smoke he had created. ‘Do I know you?’

  She was fairly certain he didn’t. She couldn’t think of an occasion when the brother had actually laid eyes on Miss Pillbody up close. He knew her by reputation only.

  ‘I’m a niece of Major Watson’s wife.’

  ‘Which one?’ Mycroft asked gruffly.

  ‘Emily. Look, the major is with your brother. But there is something he desperately needs to know, even if he doesn’t yet realize it.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘There is a D-Notice on a building near Old Street. St Luke’s. You know it?’

  ‘Of it.’

  ‘Whatever is happening with the War Injuries Compensation Board, it has something to do with the asylum and its current use. Someone like you could find out what that use is.’

  Mycroft’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you sure we haven’t met?’

  ‘Positive. Look, sir, we don’t have much time. Can you help or no?’

  Mycroft puffed on the cigar for a few moments. ‘If this is some sort of trick—’

  ‘Trick? There are men’s lives at stake here. Englishmen’s lives.’

  They both felt the change in air pressure and involuntarily glanced up into the clear night sky.

  ‘And it is something to do with the bombers,’ she said.

  ‘Bombers? How? Give me facts, madam.’

  ‘I can’t. All I can do is ask for your trust.’ She held her breath, wondering if she had gone too far. Nobody in their right mind would trust Miss Pillbody. They might just trust the plucky, wide-eyed Miss Adler.

  ‘Wait here.’

  Mycroft disappeared inside, leaving Miss Pillbody to listen to the distant crack of anti-aircraft guns. A faint red glow, like a smear of rouge, had started to grow from the east. The first fires had started.

  Mycroft returned, the cigar abandoned, his features set into a frown. ‘You can drive?’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘You strike me as the sort of woman who might.’ There was no suggestion of approval. ‘There is a car coming round. Take it at once to Watson. I am going to ask Sir Francis to send the Bank Guard reserve to meet you at the premises in Old Street with a view to securing the building.’

  She knew Lloyd was effectively the governor-general of London. ‘Why, what is it?’

  Mycroft handed her a sheet of paper. ‘Robbery, madam. Robbery on a grand scale.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ‘Why would he play games?’ Bullimore demanded. ‘Why go to the lengths to obfuscate?’

  Watson was in the front seat of the car. Miss Pillbody was driving with a speed and precision that both impressed and terrified her two male passengers. He turned to look at Bullimore, who was busy checking two revolvers, one of which was for Watson’s use. ‘I know his type,’ said Watson. ‘Sometimes the crime isn’t enough. It’s the game. It’s not enough to steal from somebody, you have to make them look and feel ridiculous.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘That, and a love of causing pain, I suspect.’

  Bullimore cursed as the Crossley’s solid tyres failed to grip on a corner and the vehicle slid around the bend.

  ‘Sorry,’ Miss Pillbody shouted.

  Bullimore handed Watson the gun. ‘Mycroft is sending troops?’

  ‘From the Bank of England,’ she said.

  ‘Precious few other soldiers left in London,’ said Watson. Ever since the Gordon Riots of 1780, the Bank of England had been guarded by a ‘picquet’ of armed men, a military detachment that stayed on the premises overnight. There were always two units on rotation, and Mycroft would have asked Sir Francis Lloyd – the man who controlled all military matters in London – to release the reserve.

  They had already passed the mighty edi
fice of St Pancras Station. Now they were on the City Road. The moonlight and the slit beams of the Crossley gave Miss Pillbody enough to navigate by. There was precious little other traffic on the road and it thinned significantly as they passed Angel. The pavements, too, were deserted, apart from the odd scurrying pedestrian or a policeman still wearing his ‘Take Cover’ placard around his neck. It wasn’t difficult to see why London had disappeared. The sky ahead of them was glowing scarlet and, although they couldn’t hear it over the clatter of the Crossley’s tappets, they knew the air was thrumming with the sound of German engines.

  Watson wondered what the city would look like if you could see all the prayers being uttered at that moment. They would stream upwards, like a reverse rain, a never-ending procession of pleas and petitions, to what? Fall on deaf ears? Perhaps all the prayers filling the skies above Berlin, a negative to London’s positive, asking for the survival of young Fritz and Frieda, cancelled each other out. Perhaps God thought they all deserved whatever they got. Perhaps God didn’t play favourites. Or maybe there was nobody to listen after all.

  ‘Miss Adler,’ Bullimore announced, ‘once we are there, I want you to retreat to a safe distance.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ she said softly.

  Bullimore leaned forward. ‘I’m serious. You’re a civilian and a female at that. I cannot take responsibility—’

  ‘You are not responsible for me.’ She put a hand on Watson’s thigh. ‘And I go where my beloved John goes.’

  Watson gave Bullimore the thinnest of smiles. In truth, Miss Pillbody was probably worth two of him and Bullimore put together, but he couldn’t admit that. ‘She’s very headstrong.’

  Bullimore slumped back in the seat, brooding with unease.

  They reached the junction of City Road and Old Street just as a canvas-sided army truck turned into the road ahead of them. Watson leaned across and parped the horn of the Crossley until the lorry’s driver pulled up and Watson leaped out, with Bullimore on his heels.

  An elderly captain appeared and saluted Watson. ‘Sir.’

  ‘I’m Major Watson, this is Inspector Bullimore of Scotland Yard. You’ve been briefed, Captain?’

  ‘My orders are to secure the building.’ He pointed at the darkened hulk of St Luke’s, which looked like a grounded ocean-going liner, in scale if not design. ‘Until further notice.’

  ‘How many men?’

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘Very well, we’ll . . .’ The thrum that began to agitate the air meant Watson had to raise his voice. ‘We’ll follow you in.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ he said to Bullimore as they returned to the car. ‘That damned hum.’

  It wasn’t just the noise, it was the resonance in his chest, as if it were trying to swamp his heartbeat. He began to feel nauseous and he could see by the look on Bullimore’s face that he was suffering the same effect. There was little respite inside the Crossley, which had began to rattle in sympathy with the vibration.

  The lorry moved off and Miss Pillbody followed.

  ‘Those bombers,’ began Miss Pillbody, glancing up the sky, ‘they seem awfully close.’

  The first explosion was at the far end of the street, a cylinder of flame like a biblical pillar, stretching upwards. Watson saw something flicker and spin away, and ducked as a manhole cover bounced in the road and whirled overhead with a malevolent whoosh.

  A second explosion, orange and red, more ragged this time, burst out from the corner of St Luke’s. An overhead tramline snapped, whiplashing across the road, spitting sparks.

  ‘Stop!’ yelled Watson to Miss Pillbody.

  He steadied himself as she braked, watching helplessly as the third detonation lifted the truck carrying the Bank Guard off the ground. It seem to hover there for a second, before its back snapped in two and the world turned a harsh unforgiving white and he felt the Crossley rear up like a bucked horse. It twisted as a second explosion hit it broadside on and a concussion wave battered Watson’s head, robbing him of consciousness.

  When he came to his groggy senses, the car was on its side. He could hear liquid gurgling and could smell oil and petrol. Miss Pillbody had fallen on top of him, pinning him against the door. He was aware that they were covered in glass. He shook Miss Pillbody, but there was no response.

  ‘Bullimore.’

  A groan from the rear.

  ‘Bullimore!’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’

  ‘You hurt?’

  His response was lost in the crump of another explosion.

  ‘Can you smell petrol?’ asked Bullimore.

  Watson could. ‘We have to move. But Miss Pillbody here is pinning me somewhat.’

  ‘Hold on.’

  There was the sound of his struggling to get out, of the rear door slamming back, and then Bullimore was tugging on the unconscious Miss Pillbody.

  ‘Careful,’ said Watson as he managed to get his arms under her armpits.

  ‘Is she alive?’ asked Bullimore.

  Watson gripped a wrist. ‘There’s a pulse.’

  It took a good five minutes to extricate firstly Miss Pillbody and then Watson from the car, by which time Bullimore was dripping with sweat. They then carried Miss Pillbody to the pavement and laid her down on Watson’s tunic. Bullimore draped a raincoat over her. Only then did they look at the carnage surrounding the truck.

  It had almost separated into its component parts, the chassis twisted and torn, the wooden benches matchwood, the canvas shredded and flung onto streetlamps and what was left of the tram wires. The soldiers from inside the lorry had been cast aside like puppets, limbs splayed at unnatural angles. Not a man moved. Watson did a quick check, kneeling at each body in turn. All were dead, including the driver and the captain he had spoken to.

  ‘Bastards,’ said Bullimore, shaking a fist at the sky.

  Watson, though, was kneeling, examining a manhole cover that had embedded itself in the road. ‘No German bomber did this,’ he said. ‘This was what the trial run with Porky was for.’

  Bullimore looked puzzled. The air was still lively with the noise of German aero engines. ‘How do you mean?’

  But Watson wasn’t listening. He pointed to the shadowy building on the north side of Old Street. ‘Look.’

  Bullimore turned. One by one, the lights of St Luke’s Mental Hospital for Lunatics were coming on.

  ‘Generators are back on,’ said John Crantock, striding back into the basement space that had once housed the electroconvulsive treatment centre for St Luke’s. ‘Any minute now.’ The overhead lights flickered and steadied, settling on a dull yellow.

  Micky Garavan turned off his flashlight and signalled for the Canadians to do the same. There were eight of the deserters, all in khaki, each with a Lee Enfield and a kitbag on his back. Every man had round his neck what looked like a pair of earmuffs, but was in fact a cleverly designed acoustic device designed to keep out the worst of the hum whenever they were in the open.

  Garavan himself was dressed as a captain in the Ulster Volunteers, which appealed to his sense of the absurd. As if he would ever serve. And if he did, with scum like the UVs.

  ‘You haven’t put all the lights on?’ Garavan asked the night-watchman. ‘Just down here.’

  Crantock’s expression told him he had.

  ‘For God’s sake, man. We don’t want to be lit up like a Christmas tree. Eventually, someone will come looking for those soldiers. Let’s buy ourselves time.’ Garavan watched Crantock go. He should have killed him when he learned the bloody idiot had contacted his wife. Still, there was time for that. He was useful for the moment.

  He looked down at Lord Arnott, who was crouching at his feet, a broken man. He prodded him with his boot. ‘Come on, now, it’s time for you to keep your part of the bargain.’

  Arnott’s face was streaked with tears, his voice small. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Now, now, we’ve been through all this. Of course you can. We’re only talking about one day’s p
roduction from these things.’

  He pointed to the three gleaming printing presses that now dominated the subterranean space, each capable of churning out many thousands of pounds worth of crisp notes every shift. There were other machines of varying size and shape, for the production of pension books, war saving bonds, postal orders and foreign notes, but it was the sterling machines Garavan was interested in.

  ‘And it’s all in a good cause. Come on now. All you have to do is give me the combination to the key safe and we’ll take it from there. And you can go home. In one piece.’

  He reached down and pulled the man to his feet. He was like a Guy Fawkes dummy, but with less stuffing. He would have no trouble with him. And once in the vault . . .

  ‘Gentlemen, if you’ll just put the weapons down.’

  Garavan looked up to where two men were descending the iron steps from the upper level of the hospital. One held a Lee Enfield and the other a Webley pistol and each had a clear shot at any of the Canadians. Garavan had posted a guard at the top of those stars, just beyond the door that led into the main entrance hallway of the building. One had clearly not been enough.

  ‘Dr Watson,’ he said to the man with the pistol. ‘I was hoping you’d be a few steps behind me.’

  ‘Weapons down,’ said Bullimore. Conversation was the last thing he was interested in.

  Garavan raised his arms to show he was not carrying a weapon. ‘Do as they say,’ he said.

  Rifles clattered to the ground.

  ‘Move away from them,’ instructed Bullimore.

  The Canadians shuffled towards Garavan and Arnott.

  ‘You there. Step forward!’ shouted Watson.

  Crantock emerged from a doorway, also with his hands up.

  ‘The nightwatchman?’ asked Watson.

  Crantock nodded.

  ‘Then who was the poor soul buried from the school?’

  It was Garavan who answered. ‘A man called Bradford.’