Her fingernails dug into Bowman’s arm.
“There was nothing left of my Christian either. The master and mistress refused to pay for his funeral, because it was a sin. A pauper’s grave for him who’d taken care of their house for so long, their house that had already taken our son.”
Suddenly she let go of him, shoved her chair back, lifted up her apron and buried her face in its white cloth. Bowman got to his feet, cap in hand. She apologised, without being able to stop sobbing. She tried to wipe Bowman’s jacket with a cloth. He told her it didn’t matter, took four pound notes from his pocket – his change from the purchase of the knife – and put them on the table.
“That’s for Bufford and your son. For a grave. Or some other kind of monument. Whatever you want.”
As with the money he’d given to Clements, the result was catastrophic. The widow collapsed again on the table and started sobbing even harder.
“Pardon me, ma’am, but Bufford . . . did he leave before or after the rain?”
The widow lifted her head. The question had interrupted her tears.
“What did you say?”
“Your husband, Bufford, did he leave before or after the bad smell ended?”
The question, rather than seeming absurd or out of place, seemed to light up something in the woman’s dark eyes.
“Before. He died in the middle of that stink, sir. That’s what took him away!”
Bowman thanked her and left her sitting there at the table, straight-backed, her eyes wide open and shining. He put on his cap and walked as fast as he could across the park. When he crossed London Bridge, an image came to his mind, an image that stopped him in his tracks. Maybe it was the widow with all her misfortunes and her pretty face, but his eyes were smarting. Even though he knew Bufford was a rough brute of a man, even though his wife was sending flowers to heaven when he was in hell, fighting over a bit of tripe, that image still brought tears to his eyes. It was the image of Private Buffalo, on the deck of the junk, soaked by rain, with the corpse of Feng’s little slave in his arms. Bufford embracing the child’s dead body as he thought of his own son on the other side of the world. Little Elliot, drowned in his masters’ house.
*
He crossed the street, pushed through the gate and knocked at the door.
When he asked the maid – all in black, with a headscarf on her head – if he could see Captain Reeves, she broke down and started to scream that it was all his fault, that he had brought misfortune to this house and she was going to call the police. Bowman ran away through the gardens and did not slow down until he had left this posh district and returned to the port. He wondered if Reeves had croaked of old age or if the captain had, after bringing him the envelope, blown off his own head with a pistol. Bowman thought about this for a moment, as he was crossing through the tunnels of China Court in order to keep out of sight of the Wapping guards.
But, in the end, who cared? However it happened, old Reeves was now six feet underground, and he’d lived long enough anyway.
Inside the hut, he relit the stove, put a pan on top of it and threw in a slice of butter, four eggs and some lard, then put some potatoes to cook in the embers and slowly drank a few mouthfuls of wine. He ate quickly, and crossed Bufford’s name off the list. Unable to sleep, Bowman put his cap back on and went out walking until he reached Dunbar Port, where he strolled along the docks, looking out at the black water and the black sky.
Another seven names still to go. Two in London, and then he would have to leave this city to find the others.
8
Bowman stirred the coffee on the stovetop. Frank came closer to the fire and rubbed his hands above it.
“It’s really freezing now.”
The fisherman looked around him.
“Looks like you’ve made yourself at home.”
The hut was tidy. Bowman had piled up the crates and tools on the shelf, put the nets in a corner and spread the blankets over the floor near the stove. On another crate, the fisherman saw the inkwell, pen and papers. Bowman grabbed his jacket and threw it on top of them. Frankie blew into his hands as he stared at the long dagger hanging from the former sergeant’s belt.
“How’s your search going?”
Bowman filled a cup and handed it to Frank. They cut the coffee with hooch and drank it in silence.
“Well, I’d better leave you be. Need to catch the tide.”
Bowman stopped him before he left.
“Don’t ask. It’s better that you stay out of it.”
Frank smiled at him.
“You look in better shape, Sergeant.”
He waved goodbye and closed the door behind him. Bowman got ready.
*
Collins’ address was in Millwall, on the Isle of Dogs. Bowman went out of the cabin and into the cold air. He had started counting the days again. Today was September 13 and it already felt like autumn. After the summer heatwave, the temperature drop seemed very sudden.
He left Limehouse and walked to Canary Wharf, going deeper into the peninsula – West India Company territory – until he reached the construction site of the Millwall basin. Hundreds of men at work; columns of cattle pulling carts full of earth; cranes and hoists; ditches spanned by bridges on stilts, on which stood groups of engineers, looking through theodolites mounted on tripods, making calculations and shouting orders. The excavated mud was poured into the channels, where it mixed with the water pumped into the Thames and came out further downstream on the peninsula’s wastelands. Navvies, covered with mud, standing knee-deep in earth, pushed the waste from the building site away from the mouths of the pipes, where black water poured in a continuous flood. The port was hundreds of yards long, its dimensions equalled by the number of men bent over their shovels and pickaxes. The Port of London was constantly growing and, as during the construction of St Katharine’s Dock, the houses in the area had been razed to the ground to make space for the Company’s plans, pushing the dockers and their families to its edges, all crammed into the overcrowded little buildings on the docks.
Bowman crossed the building site, watching the labourers slave away, and without realising what he was doing, he began to study their faces, wondering if Collins was somewhere among them, digging in the mud. He saw flour mills along the shore and the masts of boats in dock, where they were unloading their cargos of corn and wheat. He walked along the bank, keeping his distance from the workers and the noise of the steam pumps. He went past the shipyards. In the large holds, on the loading ramps, half-built ships and the same muffled sounds, the shouting of men mixed with hammer blows and the grating of saws. He passed between mountains of wood, piles of planks and beams higher than houses, vast hoists and men pulling on chains, squinting in the clouds of sawdust raised by the wind. When he was a child, the Isle of Dogs had been a place full of farms and fields, the closest countryside to Wapping, where Bowman would sometimes go to steal fruit and vegetables.
He continued walking through the narrow parallel streets of Millwall, each named after the docks to which they went. Ferry Street. Empire Wharf Road. Caledonian Wharf. Mariners Mews. Glenaffric Avenue.
In Sextant Avenue, a few houses were built of brick, but most of the buildings were wooden. Extra floors and extensions, recently built, added on to the older, shaky constructions. These shacks only seemed to stay up by leaning on each other. Bowman stopped outside the building whose address he had noted. An old man opened the door, chewing like a cow, his toothless jaws rubbing together. He had a thick Cockney accent, rendered even more incomprehensible by his lizard’s mouth.
“Collins?”
The old man spat on the front steps of his house.
“I ain’t seen that piece of shit in months! Don’t even want to know where he is! Just look round the pubs in the port. If he ain’t in prison, that’s where he’ll be!”
The old man swore and slammed the door in Bowman’s face. The former sergeant headed towards the docks. At the end of the streets, each blo
ck of houses ended with a few shops, at least half of which were taverns. Some of these were nothing more than a door with a little sign above it or even just some letters painted on the walls.
He entered one of these pubs at random, one of the largest. It was, like the rest of the area, practically empty. A few drunkards and old men sat in front of pints of stale beer, pushing their pieces around a draughts board or holding some worn, old playing cards in their twisted fingers. Bowman ordered a beer and waited for the barman to get used to his presence before he asked his question: “Collins?”
As with the old man in Sextant Avenue, the name did not provoke much enthusiasm.
“What do you want with him?”
“Nothing. I’m just looking for him.”
“Looking for Collins? I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Anyway, you won’t find him in here. He’s banned. I haven’t seen him for months.”
“Is he still in the area?”
“Could be.”
“Any place round here where he’s not banned?”
“No idea. Try the Greenland. Maybe those bloody Irish still serve him.”
“Where’s that?”
“Follow the gutter. You’ll find it.”
*
Of all the pubs he had seen, the Greenland had the narrowest façade and the most rotten door, painted green like the name of the establishment.
He went through a dark corridor, reluctantly breathing in the odours of piss, cold tobacco and beer-soaked floorboards. The room was badly lit, too. At the back, two windows offered a view of brick walls and a little interior courtyard that never saw the sun. A few candles on the tables, an oil lamp hung from a beam, another on the wall behind the bar.
Collins had not lost weight. As if he had wanted Bowman to find him easily, he was sitting with his back to one of the windows, in the sole ray of natural light in the entire pub. At his table, three men sat with him, with dockers’ arms and shoulders. Two other tables were occupied by card-players. The Greenland was a gambling den. The men were playing faro. Coins were spread out in front of them, with a few banknotes tucked under pint glasses. They played for tobacco, too; one of the men had even bet his pipe. Two customers were drinking at the bar, one at each end, their backs turned to the room. The barman, arms crossed over his chest, was looking over at the tables. At Collins’ table in particular. So were the other players, over their shoulders.
Bowman approached the bar. One of the men next to him drank a mouthful of beer and muttered into his glass: “He’s pissed. He’ll start losing soon.”
The barman, a man who was taller than Bowman and twice as wide, rubbed his ginger moustache.
“Shut your mouth.”
Bowman did not have time to order a drink. There were noises behind him. In this order: a hand banging on the table, then a voice in a thick Irish accent saying “Spades”; a silence; a chair scraped over the floorboards; a deeper silence; and footsteps coming towards the bar, making the wood creak beneath them. Bowman saw the landlord uncross his arms, his chest swelling as he took a deep breath.
Collins put his hands on the counter, just next to Bowman, opposite the man with the moustache.
“No luck today. Give me a beer.”
“Shall I put it on your tab?”
“Why’d you say that?”
“No reason.”
“Don’t bloody mention it, then!”
Bowman turned towards Collins.
The last time he had found himself facing him, they had been standing on the deck of the junk and Collins had been hiding a knife under his shirt. Bowman tried to control himself, but it was too late: the fear had already flashed in his eyes.
“Who are you?”
Bowman was paralysed. Collins’ eyelids opened wide, the lines in his face deepened, and his head leaned towards the sergeant.
“Bowman?”
From the corner of his eye, Bowman saw the barman move behind the counter. A growl rose up through Collins’ throat: “Bowman?”
Collins lifted his hands from the bar. The two customers on either side of him moved too. The hands rose towards Bowman’s throat. The sergeant could not move a muscle. They wrapped around his neck, his windpipe crushed by the pressure of those fingers. Then there was a strange sound, like a wooden bell hit with a mallet. Collins’ eyes crossed, then rolled back in his head. His hands loosed their grip and he collapsed at the sergeant’s feet.
A club in his hand, his face still swollen by the effort needed to make the blow, the barman watched Collins slump to the ground. Hands grabbed Bowman by the shoulders and pushed him away. The customer at the other end of the bar leaned over the counter and grabbed a second club. The landlord had come around the bar. The two men stood over Collins, who, still cross-eyed, was groggily touching his bloody head. The two clubs were raised at the same time. The barman yelled: “For O’Neil, you bastard!”
Bowman just stood there, watching the cudgels beat down on the former soldier, who managed to lift his hands at first, to protect his head. Then his broken arms fell and the blows continued to rain down. His jaw hung loose. His face swelled up in a few seconds and exploded. Blood spurted onto the bludgeons. The other drinker had come over too, also armed with a club. The three Irishmen insulted Collins, hitting him as they shouted their friend’s name: “For O’Neil!”
When they stopped, Collins was still alive. Air came whistling through his broken, almost torn-off nose, popping little bubbles of blood. At the tables, the card-players watched in silence. The three dockers sitting with Collins had got to their feet. One of them spat on the floor.
“Got what he deserved.”
Another lifted his glass.
“We told you not to come back.”
The landlord and the two other men, still holding their clubs, turned towards Bowman.
“Why did that bastard want to strangle you?”
Bowman rubbed his throat. He couldn’t speak. He looked at Collins and his fingers that were silently scratching the floorboards.
“What did he call you? Bowman, is that right?”
Bowman nodded.
“Why did he attack you?”
Bowman spoke in a feeble voice:
“The army. Together in the army.”
The landlord of the Greenland turned back to Collins, who was lying on the ground.
“Yeah, that cunt was always going on about how he’d gone to war.”
He spat on Collins’ chest.
“And what a warrior he was! The stupid bastard!”
One of the men at the bar nervously asked what they were going to do. The barman came a bit closer to Bowman.
“Why did you come here?”
“To look for him. Had a score to settle.”
The man rubbed his blood-covered hand over his moustache.
“A score to settle?”
“Yeah.”
“Looks like we did it for you, eh?”
“Been looking for him. A long time. Didn’t know where he was.”
The barman stared at him for an instant.
“This cunt’s been in jail for a year. That’s all he got for stabbing an Irishman to death. We told him not to come back. You turned up just in time, Bowman. A bit later and you’d have missed him.”
The barman smiled. Bowman looked down at Collins. His eyes were half open beneath his smashed brows. He looked at Sergeant Bowman and his lips moved silently in his shattered jaw.
“What are you going to do with him?”
“You didn’t come here, Bowman. We never saw you and you won’t come back. Get out of here. He’s no longer your problem.”
Feeling too tired to walk the seven or eight miles that separated him from Battersea, Bowman hailed a carriage. The driver asked him which way he wanted to go.
“South bank or north bank?”
“The shortest way.”
“Chelsea Bridge, then. It’s just opened. But there’s a toll, sir. On top of your fare.”
“A new bridge?�
��
The driver took the north bank, and Bowman let the jolts of the carriage rock him into a doze. Half an hour later, the driver shouted that they had reached the bridge. He made comments about Queen Victoria, who had come in person to inaugurate it. They went alongside Battersea Park, almost as new as the bridge, and the driver continued to give his tourist commentary. It was a quiet place, and the vegetation acted as a sort of barrier to the smells of the factories on the shore.
Bowman paid his fare when they arrived at Kennard Street.
“Would you like me to wait for you, sir? Out here, you won’t find anyone to take you back.”
Bowman told him he could go.
The street was lined on both sides with recently built houses – low brick terraces, all identical, lined up like a long family of Siamese twins. Kennard Street was a cul-de-sac, ending in a loop, like a long interior courtyard. The place was inhabited but strangely lifeless, as if it were still so new that its inhabitants had not yet made any impression on it; or maybe it was the other way round, and the place had not yet made any impression on its inhabitants. Bowman walked down the street, counting the house numbers until he reached 27. Here, he entered the little garden. An old woman opened the door.
“Erik Penders?”
The old woman smiled at him.
“He doesn’t live here anymore. Can I help?”
She made some tea, which Bowman drank unsweetened.
“My husband and I bought this house six years ago. He was working at the porcelain factory in Battersea. When he died, I had to rent out a room. Mr Erik was my first tenant. He came in the autumn of ’57. He worked at the factory too. He stayed almost a year, but then he quit his job and left, and I haven’t heard from him since. You were with him in India, is that right?”
“In Burma.”
“He used to talk about that period sometimes, his army days.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“No. He didn’t talk much. He was a discreet young man. Very friendly, even if he didn’t say much. He just mentioned his travels two or three times, and I didn’t ask him any questions. Other than that, it was just the usual conversations. Oh, except for books.”
Retribution Road Page 16