Blood on the Line

by Edward Marston

  ‘My guess is as good as yours, sir,’ said Colbeck, ‘but I know one thing. If they are to emigrate, they’ll need time to arrange everything. We might catch them before they go.’

  ‘How do you intend to do that?’

  ‘We’ve seen before that Irene Adnam still has feelings for her father. I don’t believe that she’d leave the country without paying him a last visit.’ He picked up a pin and jabbed it into the map. ‘This is where I believe we should go next, sir – Manchester.’

  Even in the relatively short time since she’d last seen him, Silas Adnam’s health had visibly deteriorated. Irene saw that his cheeks had hollowed, his eyes were bloodshot and his skin pallid. His cough was now almost continuous and causing him so much pain that he kept putting a hand to his chest. Adnam’s voice was hoarse.

  ‘I’m surprised to see you again, Irene,’ he said.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘My lungs are on fire. It’s getting worse.’

  ‘You should have spent some of that money I gave you on a doctor. You need help, Father.’

  ‘I’m past helping.’ He came forward to glare at her. ‘I never thought that it would come to this.’

  ‘It was your own fault,’ said Irene.

  ‘I’m not talking about me – I’m talking about you.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘A detective came to see me. His name was Inspector Colbeck. He told me exactly what sort of a daughter I have.’

  She reeled. ‘The inspector came here?’

  ‘Yes. It looks as if I helped to bring a monster into the world.’

  ‘Don’t believe everything you hear,’ she warned.

  He went on the attack. ‘You don’t work as a governess in London, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t, as it happens.’

  ‘Then why did you tell me that you did?’ he said, resentfully. ‘Why did you tell me lie after lie? There was I, thinking that I had a dutiful daughter, when all the time she was stealing from the people who employed her.’

  ‘They deserved it,’ she countered. ‘They treated me like dirt.’

  ‘So it’s true, then?’

  ‘I don’t deny it.’

  ‘What about the murder?’ he asked, searching her face with widened eyes. ‘Did you really shoot a policeman?’ She was lost for words. ‘Tell me, Irene. Try to be honest with your father for once in your life. Did you or did you not kill someone?’

  She lowered her head. Taking her silence as a confession of guilt, he let out a gasp of horror then had a coughing fit. He flopped down on the bed and put a palm to his chest. Irene was mortified that he now knew the truth about her. The fact that Colbeck had actually been to see her father was more than unsettling. It induced instant panic. Irene could simply not understand how he’d made contact with the old man. It altered the whole situation. Having come to tell him a rehearsed story about going abroad with the family for whom she worked, she had to think again. Before, her father had been no more than a pathetic ruin. Now, however, he was a potential danger. Shocked by the ugly truth about his daughter, he might be tempted to report her visit to the police.

  Irene knew exactly what Oxley would do in her position. There’d be no hesitation. Faced with the possibility of betrayal, he’d kill the old man without compunction. He’d only be shortening a life that had very little time to run. That option was not available to Irene. She had no weapon and she was held back by a vague sense of duty to the man who’d fathered her. Besides, her conscience already had far too much to accommodate. Irene decided to buy his silence.

  ‘I’m leaving the country,’ she told him.

  ‘Good riddance!’ he said.

  ‘You’ll never see me again, Father.’

  ‘That won’t trouble me. I want nothing to do with a killer.’

  ‘I had to do what I did,’ she said. ‘It’s no good explaining because you’d never understand. But before you start to look down on me, you should remember how much money I’ve given you over the years. I’ve kept you alive, Father. I had no need to do that.’

  ‘If I’d known where the money came from, I’d never have touched it,’ he said, rising to his feet to strike a pose. ‘I don’t have much to call my own but I do have moral standards. I used to think that I’d instilled them in you.’

  Irene was blisteringly honest. ‘What good are moral standards when your father drags you from a decent life in a proper home into a kind of hell? What use are they when you’re a mere servant and your master starts to molest you? Do you know what it’s like to be at the mercy of lecherous old men?’ she demanded. ‘Do you know what it’s like to be treated like an unpaid prostitute? That’s what you did to me. That’s the sort of father you were.’

  Adnam was hurt. ‘I did my best for you, Irene.’

  ‘The only person you ever thought about was yourself.’

  ‘It was your mother,’ he whimpered. ‘When she died, I lost my way. One thing led to another. It wasn’t my fault, Irene.’

  ‘You turned me into someone else’s slave and I’ll never forgive you for that. I had two choices,’ said Irene, temper colouring her cheeks. ‘I could either submit or I could fight back. I could either let my employers use my body whenever they wished or I could steal what I wanted from them and run away.’

  ‘So you turned into a thief.’

  ‘It was the only way I could survive, Father.’

  His eyes began to water and another coughing fit seized him. When the pain finally eased, he looked at her with a disgust laced heavily with curiosity.

  ‘When will you go?’ he asked.

  ‘At the end of the week.’

  ‘Where will you sail from?’

  ‘Liverpool.’

  ‘Who are you travelling with? Is it that man, Oxley?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, irritably. ‘The point is that I’m going out of your life for ever. I’d hoped we could have a proper farewell.’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘You’re still my father. I came here to give you some money.’

  Adnam’s expression slowly changed. The look of contempt in his eyes was eventually replaced by a glint of self-interest. He despised what she’d done and was glad that she was going far away from him, but he was too wretched to be able to refuse the offer of money, even from such a tainted source. After wrestling with his conscience for a while, he eventually got the better of it.

  ‘How much money?’ he asked.

  Inspector Zachary Boone gave each of them a warm handshake. He had been warned by telegraph that Colbeck and Leeming would be coming to Manchester again and the message had contained a request for him. It had asked that Silas Adnam be brought to the police station for questioning. Boone had bad news for the visitors.

  ‘He’s not there, I’m afraid,’ he said.

  ‘Did your officers go to his lodging?’ asked Colbeck.

  ‘They did, Robert. They talked to everyone else in the house, to his neighbours and to the landlord of the pub where Adnam is well known. Nobody has any idea where he is. Or if they do,’ added Boone, corrugating his brow, ‘they’re not telling us. We don’t get much help from people in Deansgate. They think policemen are vermin.’

  ‘We have people like that in London,’ said Leeming. ‘They’d sooner die than be seen giving assistance to the police. We’re the enemy to them.’

  ‘There’s one possibility,’ suggested Colbeck. ‘Adnam is a very sick man. Since the time I was last here, he may even have died.’

  ‘I considered that,’ said Boone, ‘so I told my men to check on the local undertakers. None of them had been called to collect the body of Silas Adnam. He’s still alive.’

  ‘Then where is he? The fellow can’t have left Manchester. He’d have no money to do so. Unless …’

  ‘What are you thinking, Robert?’

  ‘His daughter got to him before your men did.’

  Boone’s office was more cluttered than ever. Files had now been stacked on t
he floor and the desk was invisible beneath a blizzard of paperwork. He presided over the general anarchy with the confidence of a man who had everything supremely under command. In one deft movement, he plucked a telegraph from beneath a pile of documents.

  ‘All that this told me,’ he said, ‘was that you were coming to Manchester and that you needed to speak to Adnam. Could I have some more detail, Robert?’

  ‘How much do you already know?’

  ‘I read the London newspapers, so I know about the death of Constable Peebles. Such a pity – I liked him on sight.’ He smiled at Leeming. ‘I was a little more wary of you, Sergeant.’

  ‘I sometimes have that effect on people,’ said Leeming.

  ‘No offence intended.’

  ‘None is taken, Inspector. My face never wins friends.’

  ‘It does when people get to know you, Victor,’ said Colbeck, patting his shoulder. ‘But let me fill in the gaps in Zachary’s knowledge of the case. A lot has happened in the last few days.’

  Amplifying the details given in the press, Colbeck told him about the flight of Oxley and Irene, the arrest of the two suspects and the abundance of information that had come in, enabling them to place the suspects at various hotels at specific times. Boone agreed that the fugitives might well consider emigration as their only viable option.

  I think you’re right, Robert,’ he said. ‘If she’s about to shake the dust of this country off her shoes, Irene Adnam is very likely to pay a last visit to her father.’

  ‘There’s a big difference this time,’ noted Colbeck.

  ‘Is there?’

  ‘Yes, Zachary – her father knows the truth about her. When she kept supplying him with money, he was happy to believe the fiction that she worked as a governess. After all, he could take some credit for having got her the education that qualified her to take on such a post. Teaching the sons and daughters of the wealthy would seem to be a worthy occupation to someone who’d sunk as low as he has.’

  ‘If his daughter did go to see him,’ said Leeming, ‘how do you think Mr Adnam would react?’

  ‘I think he’d condemn what she did. Any father would.’

  ‘That would take her by surprise. Irene Adnam had no idea that you’d visited her father and laid the whole facts before him. She’d be expecting to be able to wear the same mask as before.’

  Colbeck nodded. ‘That’s a good point, Victor.’

  ‘If he started yelling at her, she’d be very upset. Her first thought would be that he might even report her to the police.’

  ‘I don’t think he’d do that somehow.’

  ‘It’s a possibility she’d have to consider, sir,’ said Leeming, as he tried to imagine the confrontation between father and daughter. ‘If he did threaten to turn her in, what would she do?’

  ‘Get away from there as fast as she could,’ answered Boone.

  ‘That wouldn’t solve the problem. She’d have every policeman in Manchester looking for her. I’m wondering if she acted on impulse.’

  Boone sniffed. ‘She’d never kill her own father, would she?’

  ‘We know that she’s capable of murder. If she was desperate, there’s no telling what she might do.’

  ‘I think it’s unlikely that she’d resort to violence,’ said Colbeck, mulling it over. ‘In her own way, she still loves her father. Otherwise, she’d have disowned him years ago. Anyway, why else bid him farewell unless she had a parting gift for him? If he decided to report her to the police, he wouldn’t get anything. That’s what it may come down to in the end,’ he concluded. ‘What price will he put on his silence?’

  * * *

  Two whole days and nights apart from Oxley had left Irene in a state of agitation. They’d arranged to meet on the third day in Liverpool. She spent the intervening time buying a cabin trunk and filling it with all the items she felt that she’d need to begin a new life in America. Without Oxley beside her to offer support, she began to lose heart. Far too many things could go wrong. What if her father made contact with the police, after all? What if Colbeck caught them before they sailed? What if Oxley made another serious mistake? Even if they did get safely away, what if the ship sank in a violent storm? What if they were refused entry to America? What if they were forced to return to England? Worst of all, she kept asking herself, what if Oxley failed to turn up? Supposing that he’d already fled the country on his own?

  By the time that the third day dawned, she was convinced that their escape would somehow founder. Having spent the last night in a hotel in Liverpool, she had her trunk sent down to the harbour, more in hope than in certainty. A cab took her to the designated place. It was a windy day and, as she alighted from the vehicle, she had to put a hand to her hat to keep it on. She looked around for Oxley and was horrified to see that he was not there. He’d been very specific about the time and place of their reunion yet he had not turned up. That raised the question of whether he’d ever intended to. Had he waved the possibility of emigration in front of Irene solely to get rid of her? She would not be the first discarded mistress. She was keenly aware of that. Had the others also been tricked into thinking they were starting a new life abroad with him?

  The longer she waited, the more she fretted. Standing on a corner near the harbour gates, she was also bothered by a succession of men who offered to carry her valise in order to ingratiate themselves with her. One drunken sailor even tried to steal a kiss. Irene pushed him away but the man lunged at her again. He did not even touch her this time. Oxley grabbed him from behind, spun him round then felled him with a punch to the jaw. As the sailor sagged to the ground, Oxley stepped over him and took Irene in his arms.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ he said, holding her close.

  She was tearful. ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’

  ‘Have I ever deserted you before?’

  ‘No, Jerry, you haven’t.’

  ‘Then stop having such silly thoughts. I’m here now.’

  ‘When do we go aboard?’ she asked.

  ‘Fairly soon – they give us a medical examination.’

  ‘I sent my luggage on ahead, as you told me.’

  ‘I did the same.’ Arm around her, he led Irene through the harbour gates. ‘What have you been doing since I last saw you?’

  ‘I’ve been pining for you most of the time.’

  ‘That’s very flattering. Did you see your father?’

  ‘Yes, Jerry.’ She winced at the memory. ‘He knew.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘He knew what you and I had been doing. Inspector Colbeck told him so in person.’

  Oxley stopped. ‘Colbeck spoke to your father? How on earth did he find out where he lived?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but, then, I don’t know how he tracked us to Gordon and Susanna’s house. The one thing I do know is that he’s shadowing us wherever we go. We must get away from England for good, Jerry.’

  ‘We will,’ he promised, hustling her along again. ‘We’ll have three thousand miles between us and Inspector Colbeck. Even he would never try to follow us to America.’

  Leeming was dismayed at having to spend two nights in Manchester while the search for Silas Adnam continued. He doubted whether they’d ever find the man in such a populous city. Colbeck insisted that they had to stay, arguing that Irene Adnam’s father might well hold a vital clue as to her whereabouts. Thinking about his wife and children, the sergeant was desperate to get back to London. Colbeck made a telling comment.

  ‘Do you want to go back empty-handed, Victor?’

  ‘I just want to go home.’

  ‘Would you like to admit that we failed? Imagine what the superintendent will say. Would you like to be the one to tell him?’

  Leeming shuddered. ‘No, I wouldn’t, sir.’

  ‘Then we stay until we get a result.’

  ‘But that could take ages.’

  ‘Adnam is bound to turn up sooner or later.’

  ‘I think he�
�ll be found in a dark corner with his throat cut,’ said Leeming with a vivid gesture. ‘If his daughter gave him money, he’ll start waving it around. It won’t be long before someone seizes his chance. According to you, Adnam wouldn’t be able to defend himself.’

  ‘He’s too old and weak.’

  ‘And no use to us when he’s dead.’

  ‘Don’t be so pessimistic, Victor.’

  ‘I hate all this waiting, Inspector.’

  The sergeant’s gloom was soon dispelled. He and Colbeck were sharing a room above an inn. They were on the point of leaving when a policeman came looking for them with an urgent summons from Inspector Boone. They hailed a cab and set off. When they reached the police station, they were shown straight into the inspector’s office. Hoping to find Silas Adnam there, Colbeck was disappointed.

  ‘Where is he, Zachary?’

  ‘Sleeping off his stupor,’ said Boone.

  ‘You found him, then?’

  ‘Yes, Robert. That was a good guess of yours. His daughter gave him a substantial amount of money and he decided to enjoy it while he still had the strength. Adnam cleaned himself up, went off to a better part of the city, bought some decent clothes for a change, then moved into a hotel and drank his way through bottle after bottle.’ Boone grinned. ‘I wish I had enough money to do that. Anyway,’ he went on, ‘Adnam caused so much disruption this morning that the hotel manager called in the police.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ asked Leeming.

  ‘He’s snoring to high heaven in one of our cells.’

  ‘We must speak to him,’ said Colbeck.

  ‘There’s no need, Robert,’ said Boone. ‘I discovered what you wanted to know. I caught Adnam in a lucid moment and shook the truth out of him. Oxley and his daughter are fleeing the country.’

  ‘From which port are they embarking?’

  ‘Liverpool.’

  ‘On which day are they sailing?’

  ‘He didn’t know that.’

  ‘Thank you, Zachary,’ said Colbeck, shaking his hand in gratitude. ‘You’ll have to excuse us. We need to get to Liverpool and hope that they haven’t left yet.’

  After days of inertia, there was a burst of activity. The detectives made a frantic dash to the station, bought two tickets to Liverpool and spent the journey speculating on which country the fugitives had chosen as their new home. Jerked out of his pessimism, Leeming was exhilarated at the thought of finally catching up with Oxley and his accomplice. It was the tragic death of Ian Peebles that he was eager to avenge. Colbeck, too, nursed sad thoughts of the fallen detective but it was Helen Millington who remained uppermost in his mind. He was desperate to meet Irene Adnam to see just how closely she resembled the young woman to whom he’d once grown so close.