For maybe the first time ever, Abberline found not that he didn’t care, but that him caring was in abnormally short supply. He chuckled. “And tell me, what did he look like, this man who was not even a man? I’ll keep an eye out for . . . what? A monster, perhaps, six feet tall and armed to his jagged pointy teeth, with talons for hands and a roar to split the night?”
The private detective rolled his eyes. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d been drinking, Constable. No, when I say not quite a man, I don’t mean more than one, I mean a young lad.”
“A young lad?”
“That’s right. An Indian boy, with bare feet. And they say he fought like the devil. Quite the acrobat, he was.”
Abberline looked at him, suddenly serious as everything else fell away, and all other considerations were sidelined.
“An acrobat, you say?”
THIRTY-SIX
The next day, The Ghost stood by the shaft, overseeing the work. He clutched laced-up files full of dockets, manifests, schedules and work rotas to his chest—Marchant had off-loaded almost every aspect of his clerk’s work onto The Ghost—and tending to them all was proving more taxing than anything he could remember doing ever, and that included learning the finer points of the kukri with Ethan Frye.
One of the foremen approached, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “Shall I toll for the shift change, Mr. Singh?”
The Ghost looked at him without seeing, trying to focus on words he wasn’t used to hearing, specifically the words “Mr. Singh.”
“Oh, yes,” he said at last, “thank you.” He watched as the foreman touched a hand to his forelock and stepped away, still not quite accustomed to this sudden change of events. “Indian” was what they had called him, the men, up until he started at his new post. But now . . . Mr. Singh. It had respect—power, even—because, yes, what was respect, if not a kind of power? For the first time in his life, The Ghost could understand its allure and the constant pursuit of it. For with power came money and influence and perhaps most importantly, it meant being heard, and these things were as seductive as love, friendship and family, probably more so because they spoke to selfish ego rather than the gentle heart.
Yes, he’d allowed himself to think, I could, in another world, get used to being called Mr. Singh. I could come to truly enjoy that.
Indeed, he had no choice, what with his new, exalted position at the dig.
Through Marchant, Cavanagh had insisted The Ghost smarten up. Hardy had handed him a brown-paper-wrapped bundle. “Here you go, mate, some new trousers and boots, shirt and a jacket for you. Hat in there, too, if you want it,” and that night at the tunnel, The Ghost had tried on his new ensemble for Maggie’s approval.
“Well, what a swell; you look quite the man about town,” she told him when he was all tarted up. “You’ll have all the ladies after you—if they’re not already.”
The Ghost smiled and Maggie felt her heart open at the sight of that smile, just as it had on the night they met, and now, just as she had then, she thought to herself, If only I were forty years younger . . .
In the event, The Ghost had done away with the hat. He never much liked his railwayman’s cap and he’d give it to someone farther up the tunnel. The trousers were way too short, and The Ghost thought this was probably Hardy’s evil trick. But the punisher would have been disappointed to know that the shorter trousers, flapping just above the ankle, suited The Ghost just fine. He gave the boots to Maggie. She gleefully tore out the laces before putting them on. Her old ones she’d pass to another tunnel dweller.
The next day he went back to the site, literally a changed man.
The work was demanding. Kukri-training hard. All his time was spent scratching out names and numbers on the various schedules Marchant presented to him, as well as keeping up with the constantly changing shifts or liaising with the many foremen, some of whom had taken “Indian’s appointment” better than others. Interestingly, he’d found that a sharp but soft word accompanied by a glance to the office was enough to set any recalcitrant foreman straight. It wasn’t respect that ruled, he knew. It was fear.
Nevertheless, his primary purpose for being here was not to ruminate on ideology or learn new workplace skills. It was to spy on behalf of the Brotherhood, to ascertain exactly what the Templars were up to, and in that regard he’d been slightly less successful. For a start, his new work kept him busy; secondly, he rarely had an excuse to visit the office, where the plans were kept.
One day he had looked up from his vantage point by the cranes to see Crawford Starrick and Lucy Thorne arrive, the two of them picking their way across the mudflats before disappearing inside.
Now’s the time, he had thought, and trod across the mud to the office on the pretext of delivering some dockets—only to be stopped by Mr. Smith and Other Mr. Hardy, the two punishers guarding the portal to the inner sanctum. They’d taken the documents from him and sent him away. The Ghost’s introduction to Cavanagh’s immediate circle was only theoretical, it seemed. Perhaps they were still testing him; indeed, not long after that day was an incident that The Ghost was still puzzling over.
It came one late afternoon when The Ghost approached Marchant on the mudflats. Shouting to make himself heard over the racket of a steam engine laden with spoil, he had tried to hand the site manager the rota, just as he did at the end of every shift.
“All in order, sir,” he said, indicating the hive of industry behind him: men were swarming on the cranes, buckets of earth swinging black against the dwindling gray light of the day, filthy-faced laborers with spades and pickaxes slung over their shoulders, leaving the trench like defeated men on a retreat. The conveyor was rattling, always rattling.
On this occasion, instead of taking the rota as he would have done normally, Marchant shrugged and indicated the wooden site office behind them.
“In there,” he said. “Leave it on the side near the plans table. I’ll look at it later.”
His eyes betraying nothing, The Ghost nodded assent and made his way across. There was no Cavanagh. No Mr. Hardy, Mr. Smith, or Other Mr. Hardy. There was just The Ghost, stepping into the office, the heart of the operation, alone.
He stopped himself. This was a test. This was surely a test. Conscious that Marchant might be timing him, he lit a lamp, then moved over to the plans table.
Marchant had been very specific about that. The plans table.
Sure enough, there, rolled up on the plans table, were the plans.
Placing the lamp to the tabletop, The Ghost bent to inspect the rolled-up document. If it was a trap as he suspected, then this is how it would be laid, and . . . there, he saw it. A single black hair had been left rolled into the plans, just the tip of it protruding. His heart hammering, The Ghost reached and plucked the hair out of the plans between his fingernails, and then, praying it would be the only trap they set, unrolled them.
There, laid out in front of him, were the designs for the excavation and the building of the railway, but not the official designs. Those he had seen, craning over the heads of fellow workmen as Charles Pearson and John Fowler gave presentations on their baby. Those plans looked exactly like these but for one vital difference. They had the crest of the Metropolitan Railway in the top right-hand corner. This set sported the crest of the Knights Templar.
Marchant would be wondering where he was. Quickly he scanned the drawings in front of him, eyes immediately going to a section of the dig; in fact, the section they were currently digging. Here was a shaded circle. Inside that shaded circle was another, smaller, Templar cross.
The Ghost rolled up the plans, replaced the hair, extinguished the lamp, and left the office. As he left the office with the image of the plans fresh in his mind, his thoughts went back to the events of a few days ago, when boxes had been brought and a makeshift stage built. Cavanagh had taken to it, with Marchant and the punishers standing at the
hem of his coat, and through a speaking trumpet went on to regretfully announce that there had been some instances of theft from the site—that men’s tools had been stolen.
This had elicited a gasp. The men cared about their tools as much as they did their families. More so, in many cases. The Ghost had long since been in the habit of burying his own spade at a spot on the perimeter of the dig, but for many men their spades and pickaxes weren’t just the means of their livelihood, they were symbolic of it. When they walked through the streets with the tools of their trade over their shoulders, they walked tall, with their heads held high, and passersby knew they were in the presence of a hardworking man rather than just a dirty one. Thus, the idea that some wretch was stealing the men’s tools, well, this fellow might as well have been stealing the food from out of their mouths. Cavanagh had the men wrapped around his little finger, and his proposal that men would be searched as they left the site from now on, was therefore met with fewer than expected grumbles. Shift changes now took three times longer but at least the men could be reassured that the Metropolitan Railway had their best interests at heart.
The Ghost hadn’t been fooled, but now he knew exactly what lay behind the decisions. It was because the excavation had finally reached the shaded circle. The end was in sight and though the men were under strict orders to report any unusual finds—with the promise of a reward to match the value of anything precious—there was still a possibility that one of the men might simply purloin what he found. Chances were the Templars were as clueless about this artifact as the Assassins were. They were taking no chances.
Then there was the other issue, the small matter of the persistent police constable Abberline, who had been turning up at the works and, according to Marchant, making accusations against him. “Don’t you worry,” the clerk had said, “we’ve got you covered.” The implication was that their “having him covered” came with a price.
He would see to it that he repaid them. Yes, he would repay them.
Now Abberline had returned with a consortium, two of whom he recognized—the other peeler, Aubrey, and the division sergeant—and two of whom he didn’t—a smartly dressed man who had a habit of tugging at his collar, and a fourth man, who . . .
There was something about this fourth man The Ghost recognized. He looked closer now, feeling as though his brain was moving too slowly as he tried to place the man . . .
Marchant was walking toward him, coming closer, hailing him with a weasel grin. “Oi, you’re needed over here . . .”
Still The Ghost was staring at the new arrival, who had stood slightly apart from the group and was looking right back at him. As their eyes met, they recognized one another.
He was the bodyguard from the graveyard.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Abberline watched him come.
That morning he had stormed into the sergeant’s office, with his new friend Hazlewood the private detective in tow, and told the sergeant that he had something new on the Indian at the dig.
“Tell him what you told me,” he insisted to Hazlewood, who wore an expression that seemed to indicate things were quickly moving away from him, like this wasn’t the way he had planned it: one minute, trading confidences with a contact who might be of use finding this Indian fellow; the next being hauled before the division sergeant by an excited Abberline.
Sure enough, the sergeant looked him up and down before returning his attention to Abberline. “And who the bloody hell is this, Freddie?”
“He’s a private detective, is what he is. He’s a private detective who happens to have information regarding our friends at the rail works.”
“Oh, not the bloody rail works.” The sergeant sighed. “Please not the bloody rail works, again.”
“Now, hold on, hold on a minute.” Hazlewood had his hands held out to Abberline and the sergeant like a man trying to control a small crowd. “I’ve been asked to locate a young thug involved in a brutal attack on a member of the aristocracy who wishes to see justice served. I don’t know anything about any goings-on at the rail works.”
“One and the same, mate, one and the same,” Abberline reassured him. “Now just tell him what you told me before I do it, and believe you me, I ain’t leaving anything out and I may even add a few bits and pieces that won’t reflect at all well on either you or your employers.”
The detective shot him a furious look and directed himself to the sergeant. “As I was telling the”—he paused, for extra contempt—“constable here, I have been employed by some very high-ranking gentlemen in order to help apprehend a very dangerous man.”
“A very dangerous man,” spoofed Abberline. “That’s a matter of opinion. You say that there was another bodyguard there, apart from the two in the sanatorium?”
“There was.”
“Then he could identify the boy. We could take him to the rail works and get him to identify the man who attacked him and your employer.”
“We could do that, I suppose . . .” said Hazlewood cautiously.
“And why would we do that?” roared the sergeant from behind his desk. “I’ve already had Mr. bloody Cavanagh of the Metropolitan Railway giving me the reaming out to end all reamings out on account of your behavior, Abberline, and if you think I intend to risk another one—or worse still have him talk to John Fowler or Charles Pearson and the next minute have the superintendent breathing down my neck—you’ve got another think coming.”
Abberline winked. “Our friend here can make it worth your while, Sergeant.”
The sergeant narrowed his eyes. “Is this true?” he demanded of Hazlewood.
The detective admitted it was true. He could indeed make it worth the sergeant’s while, and the sergeant did a little weighing up. True, there was the risk of another reprimand, but then again he had a scapegoat in Abberline.
What’s more, a little extra would come in handy, what with Mrs. Sergeant’s birthday coming up.
So he’d agreed that if they could produce this bodyguard, then they had enough of a reason to confront the Indian lad at the dig, and now the Indian was coming over the mud toward them. Bloody hell, thought Abberline, he’d gone up in the world. Wearing a new pair of trousers, he was, as well as braces and a collarless shirt open at the neck. Still barefoot, mind, his new trousers flapping about his calves as he came closer toward them, the whole of the group, it seemed, fixed by his dark, impenetrable gaze.
“Bharat Singh?” said Abberline to the group. “I’m pleased to see all those cuts and bruises have healed since the last time I saw you.”
Barely acknowledging them, The Ghost stood before the group, holding files to his chest and looking quizzically from man to man. Abberline watched as the lad’s gaze swept past the bodyguard, and he reminded himself that if even half of what they said about this young man was true, then he might be a very slippery, not to mention dangerous, customer indeed. He readied himself. For what, he wasn’t sure. But he did it anyway.
“Now,” he addressed The Ghost, “if you don’t mind, we have a matter to attend to.” Surreptitiously, he felt for the handle of his truncheon and directed his next question to the bodyguard. “Is this the man who set upon you and your two employers in the churchyard? Have a good long look now, it’s been a while, and he’s spruced up a bit in the meantime. But if you ask me, that’s not the kind of face you forget in a hurry, is it? So, come on, is it him or not?”
The Ghost turned his attention to the bodyguard, meeting his eye. The man was tall, like the three punishers, but not cocky and arrogant like they were. A reduced man; the encounter in the graveyard had left him changed but here was his opportunity to recover some of that lost pride and dignity.
Abberline’s fingers flexed on the butt of his truncheon; Aubrey was ready, too, and the punishers stood with their eyes narrowed, hands loose by their sides, ready to reach for whatever concealed weapons they carried as they await
ed their next set of orders and anticipated bloodshed to come.
Every single man there expected the bodyguard to give the answer yes.
So it came as something of a surprise when he shook his head, and said, “No, this ain’t the man.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
“So, what is the truth of it, then?” asked Abberline.
“I don’t think I know what you mean.”
The impromptu meeting at the rail works had broken up and Abberline had left with his tail between his legs, then, back at the station house, the sergeant had given him a flea in his ear, and, with his tail between his legs and his flea in his ear, Abberline had gone searching for the bodyguard.
Why? Because he’d seen the look on the geezer’s face and he’d seen the look on Mr. Bharat Singh’s face into the bargain and there was something there. Nonrecognition my arse, those two knew each other. They had a . . . well, strange as it may sound, but Abberline would have said he’d witnessed a kind of grudging, mutual respect pass between them.
So the next order of business was to find the bodyguard, which wasn’t difficult; he’d done it with Hazlewood, the previous day, and this afternoon he found the bodyguard in the same place, The Ten Bells on Commercial Street in Whitechapel, a favorite haunt of prostitutes and con men, the occasional police constable and disgraced former bodyguards attempting to drown their sorrows.
“You’re protecting him is what I think,” said Abberline.
Without a word, the bodyguard picked up his drink and moved to a table in the bar parlor. Abberline followed and sat opposite. “Someone paying you to protect him—is that it? Not a man in robes by any chance.”
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