Praying for the right outcome, Ethan watched the indecision flit across the other’s face.
“I would need to talk to Hamid,” said Arbaaz thoughtfully.
“You would,” said Ethan, and suppressed a burst of relief. Arbaaz had no desire to see Jayadeep put to the sword; Ethan was offering him a way out of a situation that would have torn his family apart, and all with no loss of face. What’s more, “I think you will find that conversation an easier one than you might imagine,” continued Ethan. “I saw Ajay and Kulpreet today, and if their mood is representative of the Brotherhood as a whole, then they no more wish to see Jayadeep executed than you or I. Let the punishment be exile. There are many who consider it even worse than death.”
“No,” said Arbaaz.
Ethan started. “I beg your pardon.”
“The punishment must be death.”
“I don’t understand . . .”
“If this assignation is as undercover as you suggest, then wouldn’t it be advantageous if the agent did not exist? Who can link him to Jayadeep Mir if Jayadeep Mir is dead?”
Ethan clapped his hands. “A ghost?” he said happily. “That’s a stroke of genius, Arbaaz, worthy of the great Assassin I know.”
Arbaaz stood then, came round the table and finally took his old friend in an embrace. “Thank you, Ethan,” he said, as the Assassin stumbled clumsily to his feet, “thank you for what you are doing.”
And Ethan left, thinking that, all in all, it had been a good afternoon’s work. He had not had to use the letter in his pocket, the one in which Arbaaz explicitly rejected Ethan’s advice, a letter that proved that any charges of incompetence or negligence lay not with Jayadeep but with his father. What’s more, he had saved the life of a boy who was as close to his heart as his own two children, and quite possibly saved the marriage of Arbaaz and Pyara into the bargain.
Also, he had an agent, and not just any agent. The most promising Assassin it had ever been his fortune to train.
SIXTEEN
Two years later Jayadeep, now The Ghost in name and deed, knelt astride the upper-class pleasure seeker in the churchyard at Marylebone and raised the short sword, ready to deliver the death blow.
And then, just as he had on the night of his blooding, he froze.
Froze. In the face of the moment. His mind went back to the open mouth of Dani, the blood-streaked dull gleam of his father’s blade inside the dying man’s mouth and he saw again the light blink out in Dani’s eyes and knew he had watched death: fast and brutal and delivered remorselessly. He could not bring himself to do it.
The toff saw his chance. The man had never fought a fair fight in his life. Any military service would have been spent toasting his good fortune in the officer’s mess while the lower orders went out to die in the name of his Queen. But like any other living being, he had an instinct for living, and it told him that his attacker’s moment of hesitation had given him his best chance to survive.
He bucked and writhed. He thrust his hips with such sudden, desperate strength that it reminded The Ghost briefly of being back at home, taming wild ponies as a child. Then he found himself thrown to the side, still dazed, but with his mind sent in a turmoil by this latest failure of nerve. The short sword tumbled from his fingers and the toff made a dive for it, a cry of triumph escaping his lips at the same time. “Aha!” And then the toff swung about, ready to use the blade on The Ghost, and as amazed by the sudden favorable turn of events as he was enthusiastic to take advantage of them. “You little bastard,” he spat as he lunged forward, arms straight, the point of the sword aimed for The Ghost’s throat.
It never got there. From their left came a cry and the night tore open to reveal the woman, her long gray hair flying as she came shrieking from the darkness and barreled into the toff with all her might.
As attacks went, it wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t even decisive. But it was devastatingly effective and with a shout of surprise and pain and anger, the high-class lout was sent tumbling into gravestones. He tried to raise the cutlass again but the woman was there first, jumping on his sword arm and breaking it with an audible snap then using her other foot to stamp on his face so that for a second it looked as though she were dancing on a carpet of toff.
The man pulled away, snarling, his face a mask of fresh blood as he grabbed for the blade with his good arm and rose at the same time. Off balance the woman fell, and the tables were suddenly turned again, the sword about to have its say, but The Ghost had gathered his senses and he wasn’t about to let the high-class yokel finish what he had started, and he struck, ramming the flat of his hand into the shoulder of the man’s wounded arm, causing him to spin and scream in pain at the same time.
The scream was abruptly cut off as The Ghost delivered his second blow—the death strike—again with the heel of the hand but this time even harder and into the spot just below the toff’s nose, breaking it and sending fragments of bone into the brain, killing him instantly.
There was a thump as the unlucky aristocrat hit his head on a gravestone on the way down and came to rest on the untended grass. Dark runnels of blood and brain fluid trickled from his nostrils. His eyelids flickered as he died.
The Ghost stood, shoulders rising and falling to catch his breath. Sprawled by a nearby headstone, the old woman watched him, and for a long moment the two of them regarded each other cautiously: this strange gray-haired old lady, thin-faced and weathered and bloody from the beating, and this strange young Indian man, filthy from his day’s work at the dig. Both were clad in torn and dirty clothes. Both exhausted and bruised from battle.
“You saved my life,” he said, presently. His words seemed to evaporate in the silence and gloom of the graveyard, and the woman, feeling reassured that he wasn’t a man on a killing spree and about to do her in with a final flourish of nocturnal bloodlust, pulled herself painfully up to rest on one arm.
“I was only able to save your life because you saved mine,” she said through broken teeth and raw and bloody lips.
He could tell she was badly injured. The way she held a hand to her side, she probably had a broken rib or two. The wrong movement and it might easily puncture a lung.
“Can you breathe all right?” He scrambled over the body of the toff to the grave marker where she lay and put gentle hands to her flank.
“Hey,” she protested, suddenly flustered again, thinking maybe she might have been a bit premature in relaxing, “what the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m trying to help you,” he said distractedly, feeling for broken bones, then adding, “You need to come with me.”
“Now look here, you. Don’t you be going and getting any ideas . . .”
“What else do you suggest? We have a dead man here and three injured men back there, and somewhere is yet another man who’s either going to be looking for the constables or reinforcements or maybe both. And you’re injured. Stay here by all means, but I’d prefer it if you didn’t.”
She looked at him warily. “Well, where are you going to take me? Have you got a boardinghouse somewhere? You don’t look too prosperous.”
“No,” he said, “it’s not quite a boardinghouse.”
At this he gave a wry smile, and to the woman, whose name was Maggie, it was quite a sight to see, like the sun peeking through the clouds on an overcast day. She was in her sixties but perhaps because he had saved her life and perhaps because of that sun-and-moonlight smile, Maggie fell just a little bit under his spell, and she accompanied him to the tunnel that very night. From him she learned his name was Bharat and he worked as a laborer at the railway works up near Regents Park.
She rather took to life at the tunnel. At night she and The Ghost slept in an alcove back-to-back for warmth: together, but alone with their thoughts, and she never gave much consideration to the other men who were there that night. Two of the men were too busy be
ing fed by uncaring sanatorium staff to care, but two men were still out there. The last bodyguard and the surviving toff had also seen The Ghost in action. They, too, knew he was a most unusual young man.
SEVENTEEN
When Abberline made a return trip to Belle Isle, it was with the ridicule of his fellow bobbies still ringing in his ears.
Not so long ago they’d been calling him “Fresh-faced Freddie” because of his enthusiasm and tireless pursuit of justice, and on that score they were right: he had no wife or family; he was devoted to his job, and it was true that he did regard his colleagues as men who could always be depended upon to take the path of least resistance.
But what was it they were calling him now? “The no-body bobby.” “The cadaverless copper.” Or, slight alteration, “the copper without a corpse.” None were witty or funny. In fact, as far as Abberline could tell, they consisted solely of an alliterative connection between one word for a dead body and another word for a law-enforcement officer. But even knowing that didn’t help. It failed to alleviate the considerable pain of his colleagues’ taunts, not to mention the fact that when all was said and done, they had a point. He had, after all, lost a body. And without a body there might as well have been no murder. Which meant . . .
He really wanted to find that body.
He found himself traipsing back into Belle Isle, without the benefit of a horse and cart this time, but a little wiser and more wary of any surprises the slum might have to offer. Over his shoulder was slung a sack. In there was his secret weapon.
He came deeper into Belle Isle, where the stench from the factory and the slaughterhouse was almost overwhelming. Today the denizens of the rookery were hidden by a dense fog. Proper slum fog, it billowed and boomed threateningly, and within it danced flakes of soot as well as thicker, eddying clouds of lung-choking smoke. Devil’s breath.
Every now and then Abberline would see shapes in the fog, and he began to get a sense of figures gathering, tracking his progress as he came deeper and deeper into this godforsaken land.
Good. That was just how he wanted it. He required an audience for what came next.
By now he was at the spot where the children had halted his cart and where, presumably, they had made the switch: his dead body for an equally lifeless pony.
He stopped. “Ahoy there,” he called, catching himself by surprise, unsure what had compelled him to talk like a sailor. “You’ll remember me, no doubt. I’m the plum whose cadaver you stole.”
It was possible he imagined it, but even so—was that a titter he heard from within the veil of darkness?
“I need to speak to the young lad who petted my horse the other day. See, it occurs to me that someone put you up to that caper. And I would dearly like to know who.”
The fog stayed silent. Its secrets safe.
“Did he pay you?” pressed Abberline. “Well, then I’ll pay you again . . .” He jingled coins in his palm, the noise a soft, tinkling bell in the suffocating stillnesss.
There was a pause, and Abberline was about to unveil his secret weapon when at last came a reply, and a young, disembodied voice said, “We’re scared of what he’ll do.”
“I understand that,” replied Abberline, peering into the murk in what he thought was the right direction. “He threatened you, no doubt. But I’m afraid you find yourselves in a location known as between a rock and a hard place, because if I leave here without the information I need, then I’ll be coming back, and I won’t be alone. I’ll be returning with one of them covered carts you see, the ones passing in and out of the workhouse gates . . .” He paused, for dramatic effect. “On the other hand, if I’m given the information I want, then I’ll forget about the workhouse carts, I’ll leave this money behind, and what’s more . . .”
He hoisted the sack from over his shoulder, placed it on the ground and took a cricket bat and ball that he held up. “These as well. No more playing cricket with a kitten’s head, not when you get your hands on these little beauties. Cost a pretty penny, I can tell you—you won’t find a better set.”
The response came again, causing Abberline to jerk his head this way and that, feeling at a distinct disadvantage as he tried to pinpoint the source of the sound.
“We’re frightened of what he’ll do,” said the young voice. “He’s like a demon.”
Abberline felt his pulse quicken, knowing for sure he’d been right to suspect something out of the ordinary about this murder.
“I’ve made my offer,” he called back to his unseen intermediary. “On the one hand I have gifts. On the other I have dire consequences. And I can tell you this: as well as returning with the workhouse carts, I’ll put it about that I was given the information I needed anyway. The wrath of this demon—and he’s not a demon, you know, he’s just a man, just like me—may well fall upon you anyway.”
He waited for the fog to make its decision.
At last it billowed and parted, and from it stepped the same boy who had stopped him the other day. Dirty face. Rags. A hollowed-out, hungry expression. This was a child whose appointment with the grave was surely imminent. Abberline felt bad for the way the boy and others like him were used and abused by him and men like him. He felt bad for threatening them with the workhouse when threats and cold and hunger were all they knew.
“I mean you no harm, you have my word,” he said. He laid down the bat and ball on the ground between them.
The boy looked down at the cricket gear then back at the policeman. Abberline sensed the expectancy of figures cloaked by the fog. “You’ll be angry we took your body,” the boy said, with the reticence and caution of painful experience.
“I’m not best pleased you took my body, no, you’re right about that,” conceded Abberline. “But listen, I understand why you did it. Let me tell you this, if I were in your shoes right now, I would have done the exact same thing. I’m not here to judge you. I just want the truth.”
The boy took a step forward, more to acknowledge a growing trust of Abberline than for any other reason. “There’s not much more to say, sir. You was right. We was paid to distract you in your duties and trade the corpse for the pony. We wasn’t told why, and nor did we ask. A handful of chink was what we got for delivering the body.”
“And the gun?”
“I didn’t see no gun, sir.”
“It was in the dead man’s pocket.”
“Then it stayed with him, sir.”
“And where did you deliver this body?”
The boy hung his head. Instead of answering he raised a hand to indicate where the horse slaughterers would have been, if not for the smog. “Some of us saw the man go in there with it, then not long after come out without it.”
“And what did he look like, this man?” asked Abberline, trying to keep the eagerness out of his voice and failing miserably.
* * *
Not long after, the constable breathed a deep, grateful sigh of relief as he left the choking fog of Belle Isle behind and made his way back to the relatively clean air of his district. He was light some coins, a cricket bat and ball, but his conscience was thankfully clean, and he had a description of this “demon” whose motives were so much a mystery. It was a description that rang bells. He’d heard talk of a man dressed this way, this very particular—you might even say “idiosyncratic” way—who had been involved in some ructions at the Old Nichol a week or so ago.
Abberline found his pace increasing as it all came back to him. There was a bobby in another district he could speak to, who might know something about this strange figure who should be easy to spot—a strange figure who wore robes and a cowl over his head.
EIGHTEEN
Ethan never told The Ghost anything of his home life. The Ghost knew names of course—Cecily, Jacob, Evie—but nothing distinct, apart from the fact that the twins were close to him in age. “One day I hope to introduce you,” Ethan
had said with a strange, unreadable expression. “But that won’t be until I’m certain they’re ready to join the fight.”
That was as much as The Ghost knew. On the other hand, he didn’t pry, and besides, he hadn’t told Ethan anything of his own life away from the excavation. Ethan knew nothing of Maggie or the denizens of the tunnel, and The Ghost hadn’t told his handler that he often lay awake shivering with the cold, his eyes damp with memories of Mother and Father and jasmine-scented Amritsar. Or that the dying face of Dani continued to haunt his nightmares. Lips drawn back. Bloodied teeth. A mouth full of steel and crimson.
He just continued to exist, working shifts at the dig, burying his spade in its special hiding place before going home to the tunnel, looking after the people there.
Then, four nights ago—four nights before the body was discovered at the dig, this was—The Ghost had been making his way home, when as usual he’d glanced into the churchyard—but this time saw the gravestone leaning to the left.
Instead of going back to the tunnel he turned and went in the opposite direction, heading for Paddington. It would be a long walk but he was used to it. It was all part of the daily penance he paid for his . . .
Cowardice, he sometimes thought, in those moments of great darkness before the dawn, freezing in the tunnel.
But he hadn’t been a coward the night he saved Maggie, had he? He had fought for what was right.
So maybe not cowardice. At least not that. Failure to act instead. Hesitancy or unwillingness—whatever it was that had stayed his hand the night of his blooding and heaped such great shame on himself and his family name.
By rights he should have paid with his life, and would have done—were it not for the intervention of Ethan Frye. Sometimes The Ghost wondered if his ultimate act of cowardice was in accepting the older Assassin’s offer.
The sounds of the street—a cacophony of hooves, of traders and a busker’s sawing fiddle—all fell away as he walked, lost in thought, his mind going back to The Darkness. When the door had opened that morning it was to admit his executioner. Or so he had thought. Instead, Ethan Frye had reappeared, grinning broadly from ear to ear.
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