Underworld

by Oliver Bowden

  No answer.

  “Or perhaps you’re protecting him out of the goodness of your own heart?” said Abberline, only now the man looked up at him with sorrowful eyes and Abberline knew he was on the right track. He pressed the point home. “What if I were to tell you that I had my own suspicions about this young Indian man? What if I were to tell you that I think he might well have saved my life a while back, and that in fact, far from trying to put this guy in the clink, I’m actually beginning to wonder if he might be on the side of the angels?”

  Another pause then the bodyguard began to speak in a voice that rumbled from between his hunched shoulders. “Well, then you would be right, Constable, because if you ask me, he is indeed on the side of the angels. He’s a good man. A better man than either you or I will ever be.”

  “Speak for yourself. So he was in the churchyard that night, then?”

  “He was indeed and there wasn’t no ‘setting upon’ anyone being done. There was a wrong—a wrong with which I was involved, to my shame—a wrong that he put right. My employers at the time, two nobs, were doing down a slattern, just for kicks, because they could. And me and my mates were looking out for them. Ours not to reason why and all that.”

  Abberline gave a thin smile of recognition.

  “And this young man turns up, the only passerby who did anything more than react to her screams with mild puzzlement. And when the two nobs wouldn’t stop their game, he stopped it for them.

  “I’ve never seen anything move so fast, I’m telling you, boy, man or animal. He bested all of us, including yours truly, he did it in the blink of an eye, and we deserved it, every last one of us, we had it coming.

  “So if you’re asking why I didn’t identify him at the rail works, and if you’re sincere when you say you believe he fights for good, and as long as you’re asking me in the parlor of The Ten Bells, knowing I’ll deny it at the site, at the station or if I’m up before a judge, then yes, it was the same man. And bloody good luck to him.”

  * * *

  “Of course it was the same man.”

  Marchant and Cavanagh had met Hazlewood at The Traveler’s Club on the Strand, where they took him to the smoking room overlooking Carlton Gardens.

  Cavanagh was a member at the Traveler’s, nominated by Colonel Walter Lavelle, shortly before Cavanagh killed him; Marchant, as Cavanagh’s right-hand man, was also familiar with the club; Hazlewood, on the other hand, was agog or, as he’d later say to his wife, “as excited as a dog with two cocks.” Men like him weren’t accustomed to being entertained in The Traveler’s Club on the Strand, and he smelled money, as well as maybe the chance to solve this bloody case into the bargain. Maybe, if he played his cards right, the chance to solve the case and make a bit of extra chink on the side.

  Not forgetting, of course, the fact that it was a swanky old place, and no mistake.

  Around them was the laughter and raised voices of drunken lords and gentlemen getting even drunker, but it was hard to imagine Cavanagh participating. He sat in a voluminous leather armchair with his hands on the armrests, wearing a smart black suit with flashes of white shirt at the collar and cuffs. But even though he fitted in among the toffs and swells, Cavanagh radiated a certain danger, and it was telling that when the occasional passing gentleman greeted him with a wave, the gentleman’s smile dipped momentarily, more as though he was paying his respects than saying hello.

  “You think the man who attacked your client and my employee Bharat Singh are one and the same?” he asked of Hazlewood now.

  “I’m sure of it, sir.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because when I hear hooves I look for horses, not zebras.”

  Marchant looked confused but Cavanagh nodded. “In other words you think logic dictates it must be the same man.”

  “That I do—that and the fact that I spoke to our friend the bodyguard afterward and it was pretty obvious that for reasons best known to his own self, he was keeping quiet.”

  “Then perhaps we need to persuade the bodyguard,” said Cavanagh, and Hazlewood thought “money,” and wondered if some of it might be coming his way.

  “Tell me,” said Cavanagh, “if this young Indian man set upon the bodyguard, and—what? Four other men?—in an unprovoked and vicious attack, then why would the bodyguard want to protect him?”

  Hazlewood looked shifty. At a nod from Cavanagh, Marchant took folding money from his pocket and laid it on the table between them.

  Here we go, thought Hazlewood, palming it. “Well,” he said, “I only know what I’ve been told, but it seems the Indian lad took it upon himself to rescue a damsel in distress who was being used as a bit of a plaything by the two toffs.

  Cavanagh nodded, eyes flitting around the wood-paneled room. He knew the type. “Getting their jollies, were they?”

  “By the sounds of things. Your man, this Indian boy, was quite the dervish, it seems. He took on the lot of them and won, and by all accounts carried the poor tail they was doing down off into the night.”

  “I see,” said Cavanagh. He paused for nearby laughter to die down. “Well, Mr. Hazlewood, I thank you for your honesty, and for bringing this matter to our attention. If you leave this matter with us, we should like to conduct our own investigations. Perhaps, when this process is complete, and assuming that our findings are in accordance with your own suspicions, we can join forces, so that we can root out the bad apple, and you can get your man.”

  When Hazlewood had left, a happy man, Cavanagh turned to his companion. “We shall be true to our word, Marchant. We shall look very closely into our interesting Indian colleague.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Early the next morning, as was quickly becoming his custom, Abberline was staring at a dead body. Beside him stood Aubrey, and the two constables took off their helmets as a mark of respect. They knew the man who lay sprawled on the street, his face barely recognizable beneath eyes that had swelled shut, a face that was a mixture of purple bruises and open cuts, and a broken jaw that hung at an obscene angle.

  It was the bodyguard.

  “Someone who wanted to shut him up, obviously,” said Aubrey.

  “No,” replied Abberline thoughtfully, staring at the corpse and wondering how many more had to die. “I don’t think they were trying to shut him up. I think they were trying to make him talk.”

  * * *

  Across the city, Cavanagh sat behind his desk at the rail-works office, Marchant on one side, Hardy on the other.

  In front of the desk, sitting on forbidding straight-backed chairs and wearing expressions to match, were the Templar Grand Master Crawford Starrick and Lucy Thorne. As usual, they wanted a report from Cavanagh, the man who had promised to deliver them the artifact but had so far conspicuously failed to do so, and as usual, they wanted that report to include encouraging news.

  “We’re close,” Cavanagh told them.

  Lucy sighed and frowned and rearranged her skirts. Starrick looked distinctly unimpressed. “This is what you said last time and the time before that.”

  “We’re closer,” added Cavanagh, unperturbed by his Grand Master’s irritation. “We have to be. We’re in the immediate vicinity of the artifact’s location.”

  There came a knock at the door and Other Mr. Hardy showed his face. “Sir, sorry to disturb you, but Mr. and Mrs. Pearson have arrived.”

  Starrick rolled his eyes but Cavanagh held out a hand to show it was a matter of no concern. “Ill as he is, Pearson prefers the company of the workers to the hospitality of the office. He’ll have his usual royal tour, don’t worry.”

  Other Mr. Hardy glanced back out of the door. “Seems all right, sir. Like you say, he’s making his way over to the trench.”

  “Even so,” said Starrick, “I believe that concludes our business. Miss Thorne and I shall take our leave. See to it that the next time we vi
sit, you have some more encouraging news for me.”

  When they had gone, Cavanagh looked at Marchant with hooded eyes. “He’s a fool; he knows his time is short.”

  “He is the Templar Grand Master, sir,” said Marchant, and added, with an obsequious smile, “for the time being.”

  “Exactly,” said Cavanagh. “For the moment. Until such time as I have the artifact.”

  And he allowed himself a smile. The ghost of a smile.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, as Cavanagh, Marchant and company were occupied with Starrick and Thorne—and with The Ghost yet to begin his shift—Pearson was doing just as Cavanagh said he would and conducting a small tour of the works, his wife Mary on his arm.

  The men loved Pearson, and on this particular occasion, had cooked up a plan to show him just how much. At the office steps, with Starrick and Thorne making their way to the gates, Marchant watched the men gather around Mr. and Mrs. Pearson, frowning that work seemed to have been abandoned for no good reason he could think of. There was definitely something going on, though. He leaned on the rail to speak to Other Mr. Hardy. “Get over there, would you? See what’s going on . . .”

  FORTY

  It was a rare afternoon off for Police Constable Aubrey Shaw.

  No, that wasn’t strictly speaking true; firstly, because Aubrey’s afternoons off were comparatively frequent, and secondly because it wasn’t really an “afternoon off.” Not in the officially sanctioned sense anyway. A more accurate way of putting it would be to say that Police Constable Aubrey Shaw had donned plain clothes and was playing truant again.

  As usual, Aubrey’s behavior incorporated a cricketing element. Most of the time this meant hoisting ale in The Green Man but today was a special day. He had taken his business to Lord’s cricket ground in order to watch the annual Eton versus Harrow match. It was a nice sunny day to spend with a spot in the stands (albeit crowded, the event was attended by tens of thousands) a pie and maybe an ale or three, with plenty of bustles and bonnets to catch a man’s eye and the cricket whites blinding in the sun.

  Truth be known, Aubrey didn’t much care for cricket, but the gentleman’s sport was a pastime his wife approved of, and what’s more it involved pies and beer—and meeting those two requirements was central to Aubrey’s journey through life.

  He thought of Abberline. Unmarried Abberline, constantly preoccupied Abberline—the two undeniably connected as far as Aubrey could see.

  “A wife is what you need,” was what he’d told Abberline one afternoon in where else but The Green Man.

  “A fellow bobby who cares more about police work and less about how to get out of doing it, is what I need,” was what Abberline had replied.

  Which was rather hurtful; after all, he, Aubrey, had become almost as involved in their ongoing case as Freddie, and . . .

  Oh no, he thought, as he took his place on the stands, I’m not thinking about Freddie today. Freddie begone. To signal an end to work-related thoughts he began lustily joining in with the cheers, happy to submit himself to the tides of the game and the rhythm of the day. Just another face in the crowd. Worries ebbing away.

  Still, though. He couldn’t help it. His thoughts returned to Abberline and his ongoing obsession with what he called “the goings-on at the rail works.” The two bobbies had asked themselves who beat the bodyguard to death. “One of them fighters from the rail works,” said Freddie predictably, but on this occasion Aubrey had to agree with him. It was plain as the nose on your face that Cavanagh and company were up to no good. After all, weren’t they all? Aristocrats and industrialists and politicians all feathered their own nests and breaking a few laws was a small inconvenience if you had enough influence to ride roughshod over them anyway.

  Bloody hell, thought Aubrey. Hark at him. He was starting to think like Freddie himself. It was catching, that was what it was.

  But they might know—this was what Abberline said. If they’d got it out of the bodyguard, then Cavanagh and company might be aware that Bharat Singh was the boy at the graveyard.

  “What would it matter to them if he was?” Aubrey had asked.

  “Maybe nothing, Aubrey, maybe nothing. Who knows?”

  It was a puzzle, no doubt about it. Like those carved wooden shapes that fitted together. You turned it over in your hands to try to figure out how it worked.

  A combination of cogitation, ale intake, the sheer volume of other spectators and the fact that he was here at Lord’s on an unofficial day off and probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway, meant that Aubrey wasn’t aware of three men who had barged through the crowds to take places at the rear of the stand. They stood with their backs to the fence of the stand, with their arms folded and the brims of their bowler hats pulled down in the universal pose of the man trying to look unobtrusive.

  The three men weren’t watching the game from beneath the brims of their hats. Their gaze was fixed firmly on Aubrey Shaw.

  FORTY-ONE

  The last occupant of The Darkness had been Jayadeep Mir, some three years ago. Nevertheless, the rooms had to be maintained and so, as regular as clockwork, Ajay and Kulpreet would take the steps down from the meeting house to sweep out the chambers and allow fresh air from outside to temporarily banish the dank air of gloom that otherwise hung about the place.

  And as regular as clockwork, Ajay would think it a great joke to lock Kulpreet in one of the rooms.

  Clang.

  He’d crept up on her and before she could stop him, done it again, only this time, instead of standing outside snickering and mocking her as usual, he was making off down the passageway.

  Her shoulders sank with the sheer boring inevitability of it all. Would he ever grow bored of it? Possibly not, because Ajay was nothing if not juvenile and, despite the fact that she had a husband and a little boy at home, was probably a little bit in love with her, too. And in her experience that was a very tiresome combination in a man.

  Exasperated, she called through the viewing aperture, “Ajay, not again,” cursing that he’d been able to sneak up on her like that, the rat.

  There was silence from outside. Ajay had gone. Damn his eyes. She hoped it wasn’t one of those days when he decided to string out the joke. He’d left her in there for half an hour once. Thank heavens she’d long since learned to bring a candle into the chamber with her.

  “Ajay,” she called again, the word falling flat on the dank stone. She rattled the door, the sound bouncing away into the darkness. “Ajay, this stopped being funny months ago. Open up, will you?”

  Still there came no sound from outside and, come to think of it, she hadn’t heard him for a while. Ajay wasn’t one for keeping quiet. Even with him upstairs and her downstairs, he would have been calling to her, making bad jokes and puns, teasing her. In fact, when was the last time she’d heard any voice other than her own? You could lose all sense of time down here.

  From outside the door came a sound that made her jump. “Ajay,” she said sharply, but brought her leading arm to bear, tensing her wrist in readiness.

  Then he was there, face at the window, grinning at her.

  “I got you that time, Kulpreet. You thought they’d come to get us, didn’t you?”

  Right, she thought, and she arched one eyebrow and engaged her blade, precision-controlling its length so that it shot through the aperture and into the tip of Ajay’s nostril.

  Not just one of the Indian Brotherhood’s best swordsmen, Kulpreet was also one of the best with a blade, and it was a perfectly judged, expertly balanced deployment.

  “Impressive,” said Ajay, with a newly acquired nasal twang. He was pinned in place by the blade, knowing that with the slightest movement he could effectively slice open his own nostril, and thinking that by God, she kept that thing sharp. Constantly greasing and recalibrating it, she was. “It’ll never jam, Ajay,” she’d tell him, sliding the blade into
its housing, and then follow it with her best disapproving stare. “Not like some others I could mention.”

  Kulpreet kept her blade where it was. “Toss me the keys,” she said, and then when he’d done as he was told, she was free again, barging angrily past him on her way to the dungeon portal.

  Upstairs they locked up and prepared to leave for the night. Kulpreet studiously ignored Ajay which, she knew, was a far worse punishment than a hidden blade up the nose.

  As she did every night she placed her flat-bladed sword into the wall rack, kissed her fingers and touched them to the fine Indian steel, before joining Ajay at the meeting-house door. The two Assassins said their parting words then slipped outside and locked the door behind them.

  Neither noticed faces in the crowded street that watched them leave with interest—and then moved to follow.

  FORTY-TWO

  What a great day, thought Aubrey as he joined the thousands of spectators leaving Lord’s. He was a little merry if he was honest with himself. Merry enough to decide to coax a flower girl to give him a deal for a bunch, take the flowers home to Marjorie, and tell his wife he loved her; merry enough to have forgotten all about acrobatic Indian boys and mysterious disappearing men in robes; and way too merry to notice the three men who were following him, their heads bowed and their hands in their pockets, in the classic manner of men trying to look inconspicuous.

  He was even merry enough to consider hailing one of the four-wheeled cabs constantly popping to and fro, but then decided against. Best to sober up a bit. Just a bit. So he kept on walking, turning off the main drag into quieter side streets, leaving the crowds and clopping hooves behind as he weaved his way through darker streets where the constant sound of running water reminded him that he needed a piss, and ducking into an alleyway to relieve himself.

  Because in the end it’s the small things that matter as much as the big ones: a stolen pocket watch that is slow, a man in need of a piss.