by BK Duncan
Peroba Wood from Bahia in the forests of Brazil.
And when they did ask him, he’d pretend to be weighing up chips or sawdust in either hand, but would give them the same answer every time. Passing the huge doorway, open to allow the wood to season slowly in the foggy dampness, May felt sure she could smell the earth and leaves and sunshine that had once caused the trees to grow so big they were worth chopping down. Dead forever now, she hoped whoever was sitting in a chair that had once breathed in a forest thought it was worth the sacrifice.
The spice warehouse was set a little way back. A sign spanning the brick frontage read: The Barley-Freeman Cough Linctus Company. A small door sat off to the right of the large loading ones. It was ajar. The glow from the lamp at the end of Anchor Wharf barely stretched this far but May could smell the acrid tang from the burnt-out Elliott Shipping office. She stepped into the relative warmth, and perfumed gloom, of the building. She called out but received no response. Could Alice have evaded her to board the steamer after all, or was she at this moment sailing away from the distant East India Dock Pier? But, if she had done either of those things, Vi would still be here waiting for Horatio - someone must’ve opened up and she had the key. Perhaps they had given way to tiredness and fallen asleep; the air was heavy with enough soporific smells to cure the most hardened of insomniacs. May took a couple of steps further inside.
The wedge of lightness from behind narrowed to a sliver. Then, that too, vanished. Someone had shut her in. She hadn’t heard them approach. But the clank of a metal bar being dropped into brackets was like a clap of thunder. The ring of a heavyweight padlock rattled in its hasp. May lurched at the door. She shouted and banged her fists on the wood until her voice was croaky and the sides of her hands pierced with splinters. Panic started tears coursing down her cheeks. She took baby steps backwards until she could press herself against the comfort of one of the large chests. All she knew now that she was alone: if Alice or Vi were in the warehouse then they’d have come rushing to her side the minute she’d started raising enough noise to wake the dead.
Breathe. In... count to three... out... count to four... again... in... out... May tried to squash the writhing in her stomach. Think. Nothing was going to happen to her now. They’d had the chance to stab her in the back but hadn’t taken it. They wanted her alive. Clinging on to that as a sailor would to driftwood in a shipwreck, May lowered herself to the ground, curled into as tight a ball as her trembling limbs would permit, and allowed the warm scents of exotic lands to soothe her nerves. Any moment now Horatio would arrive. One sound from the other side of the door and she’d scream until even a steamship’s stoker deafened by engines would hear her.
By the time the West India Dock clock chimed eleven, she knew he wasn’t coming. Perhaps he never even left his father’s celebration party; after all, promises were glibly given, and just as easily forgotten, in a champagne haze - it wasn’t as if Alice was his problem to worry away at the top of his mind. With the morning would come a way of getting herself out of this. She was May Louise Keaps, Poplar’s resourceful coroner’s officer, ex Great War ambulance driver, daughter of a man who braved Alexander Laker nose-to-nose and had stood up to and overcome every challenge thrown at him. All except the final one. She shivered and whimpered until she’d shaken away the last of her energy.
Sleep was a long time coming but eventually, thankfully, it stole up and granted her peace.
***
May opened her eyes. The lids were swollen and gummed together with dried tears. The concrete at her feet was patterned with stripes of watery sunlight. She craned her stiff neck. Barred windows ran under the roof line as far around as she could see. They were too high and the bars too close together to afford any means of escape but they let in a little of the outside world and that was consoling in itself. Her spine clacked and grated as she stood, and a sharp pain shot down her left leg: the mercy of physical discomfort. It was something she knew how to deal with. She limped over to the corner to empty her aching bladder then paced in front of the double doors to loosen the kinks in her muscles. By the time her strides were long and brisk and she could stretch her arms above her head her mind had begun to focus on what she needed to do to cope with incarceration. Activity. In the field hospital the worst times had been the waiting, the loading and unloading of half-dead soldiers had been nothing compared to that. So she would explore her surroundings, formulate plans, devise schemes to evade her captors when they came for her, and not give the snakes of fear anything to feed on.
The warehouse was large but not nearly as big as the timber shed next door. Stacked crates covered the floor with shoulder-width passages between them. May chose to plunge down the one immediately in front. The crates towered above her and she hoped they’d been positioned firmly on top of each other and wouldn’t come crashing down. Words were stencilled in black on their rough planking: the names of the Barley-Freeman and Elliott Shipping companies, the contents, and origin. The ones on her left contained Lotus Root, Jujubes, and Apricot Kernels - all from China. On the right, crates of Liquorice Root from Russia were topped by a row containing Black Haw Bark from America. She walked on, trailing her fingertips on each crate she passed until she reached a branching aisle that seemed to stretch to the back wall. Barrels were ranged along this one. She reached the end. The stencils were less easy to read, even though the light was better, and she guessed they had either been here for some time or had suffered from being rolled across the concrete quayside on their way into storage. She could make out Fenugreek from the Lebanon; Black Pepper from Singapore; Cinnamon Flowers all the way from the East Indies. In different circumstances (very different circumstances) this would come close to her idea of heaven as film pictures played in her head of natives with hoppers on their backs picking spices in the hot sun. Another twist and turn and she arrived at barrels marked Aniseed Bold, Spain.
The muffled sound of the clock over the East India Dock gateway chiming the hour reached in through the windows high above. May held her breath between each bong. It was ten o’clock already. She found her way back to the doors and shouted and pounded on them in the hope of attracting the attention of any of the lightermen who might be down this end. But it was for form’s sake really because with Elliott Shipping closed, and fresh cargoes of timber not due until the winter months, they would be seeking work on the riverside wharves. It had been a stupid thing to do anyway as now her throat was scratchy and raw and she needed a drink. A bubble of laughter escaped from between her lips at the irony of being surrounded by all the ingredients to make cough linctus, but not a drop of water to dissolve them in.
But the lack of response had served to remind her that she was shut up in this warehouse against her will - however many games she might play to distract herself from the fact. No escape plans had come whilst she’d been conducting her own amateur inventory. Her breath fluttered in her lungs like a ship’s gaff-flown ensign in a cat’s paw breeze. She mustn’t give way to panic again like she did last night or she would be next to useless if an idea did surface of how to get herself out of this. Not to mention when the door was finally opened and she had only a handful of seconds to take them by surprise by springing through it. This last thought made her opt for sticking to this end of the warehouse so she could hear the moment someone started to grate the key in the padlock. She walked over to the far long wall. The air was thicker as if it had never been disturbed or replenished by new forcing its way through the doors. Hessian sacks stuffed so full as to resemble boulders were propped side by side, their stencils eaten into ragged shapes by the coarse weave. Zanzibar Cloves, Wild Cardamoms from the East Indies. Once she’d passed these, the aromas waiting to be identified were softer and had an edge of mustiness about them. This must be where the dried herbs were kept.
May decided to allow herself the luxury of one more flight of fancy before she settled down to rational thought. She would walk down the
line with her eyes closed and see if she could guess what the sacks contained; she was no expert in botany but her countryside rambles - and Roger’s obsessive need to categorise every plant and flower - had given her a better than average knowledge to marry with her naturally keen nose. She put her hands up to her face so she wouldn’t be tempted to cheat, and took enough steps to leave behind the cloying scents of the exotic spices. The first pillow of fragrance was peppermint. The next, thyme. Another half a dozen paces before the tone of the air changed again. This one was more difficult. A flower of some sort. She’d smelt it growing. Could conjure up an image of pressing her nose into sprays and inhaling deeply; soft, ethereal, white. But the name wouldn’t come... and then it did. Elder blossom. She allowed herself a little smile of congratulation.
The astringency of sage. Then citrus lemon balm. Her first defeat came as a blow to her pride. Try as she might she couldn’t recognise it. Forced to peek in order that she could move on, she read Horehound North America, on the front of the sack. That had hardly been fair; she couldn’t possibly have been expected to know that one. She closed her eyes again and resumed the game. Nutmeg was easy, as was valerian - there was a stall in Chrisp Street market sold sachets of it as a sedative. Then a smell she couldn’t place; even though it was somehow familiar with its metallic tinge. She tried to picture a scene where she might’ve come across it before. Except her poor nose was growing confused. She took a step forward to bend in closer. The soles of her shoes met something tacky. Was it, in fact, a barrel of some sort of oil that had begun leaking around the bung? She was leaning so far over it now she feared she might topple forward and hit her head. There was nothing for it, she’d have to look.
May dropped her hands to her sides, and opened her eyes. Then she screamed. She screamed so loud and long she grew dizzy and thought her lungs would burst. There, slumped amongst the sacks and looking so like one she hadn’t at first been sure... was Vi Tremins. The East End Smile of her cut throat grinning with victory at May’s expense.
Chapter Fifty
May thought the retching would never stop. The pungency of the spices had combined with the shock to make her guts want to get rid of even the memory of anything that had ever been inside her. Her legs had refused to function and she was kneeling in blood at the corpse’s feet.
She scrabbled in a crawl along the aisle, her wrists jarring on the concrete floor, her shoulders bumping into crates as she flailed to get distance between her and the appalling apparition. Sounds came out of her; a caught sob, the high-pitched keening of a starved and thrashed dog. The scar on her neck throbbed as if threatening to prise apart like a badly-stitched sole. Her body convulsed every now and then with another urge to vomit but her mind refused to let her: she had to get to the door. Only she’d forgotten the way. Following the line of herb sacks would lead her there but that meant turning around and going past the thing. No. She had to stop that. It wasn’t a thing. It was Vi Tremins. One time actress and Music Hall turn; a person... a body... a corpse... Perhaps it was better to remind herself of who she was, rather than who Vi had been. She was a coroner’s officer. It was her job to deal with death. Now the horror of the find was passing, she had to inhabit that role again and switch off her emotions.
May hauled herself upright with the aid of the protruding corner of a crate. Nothing had changed in the sense that she still had to conserve her energy for when they came. Except everything had changed, of course, because now she knew they intended to kill her. Grateful for the childish distractions she’d indulged in earlier (how she wished for a return to that innocence) she traced her way back to the crates of Liquorice Root via the barrels of Fenugreek, and Cinnamon Flowers. The light from the windows above the double doors was growing brighter; was she actually any closer or was it the sun shifting in the sky?
And then a thought that was so terrible that at first it flitted across her mind too quickly to grasp. But she wasn’t to be afforded such kindness and it resurfaced like a drowned sailor. If they had done that to Vi - would do it to her - why not Alice, too? Was her sister lying gruesomely in wait for her to stumble across? Could she be down the aisle she’d just passed? Or that unexplored passageway off to her right? The words of the song her sister was to have performed in the show came to her complete with all Alice’s sweet intonation: For, if you turn away, you’ll be sorry some day; you left behind a broken doll.
Stripped down to nothing but animal responses, May clawed at the nearest crate. If she could prise off one of the metal bands then she would have something with which to attack the door hinges. She managed to hook her fingers under the soft tin, only for the sharp edge to slice her palm. But she didn’t stop... she couldn’t... if Alice was here then she wouldn’t survive being the one to discover her.
Her hands were lacerated into uselessness before she came back to herself enough to recognise the futility of the effort. She was heaving out dry-eyed sobs. When had that started? She pulled off the scarf from around her neck and caught the rolled and stitched edge in her teeth. It wouldn’t tear. By worrying it against the crate’s now bent and proud metal band she managed to rip it in two. Wrapping each strip tightly around her bleeding palms and keeping them in place with her thumbs, she stumbled her way towards the light.
At last she was beyond the first line of crates. The warehouse doors were straight ahead. May lurched towards them, forgetting in her panic to stop so that she smacked herself against their solidity with an almost knock-out blow. She sunk to the ground. Now, for the first time since she’d heard the padlock being fastened, she longed for the Tong to come for her. Because she knew that some of the inmates in lunatic asylums were there with less cause that having to share a gaol cell with a corpse. She clenched her fists tight in a search for the relief of mind-numbing pain.
Then she pressed her back against the sun-warmed wood and cried.
Chapter Fifty-One
It was night again when the small door creaked open. May had been twitching her way through a dreamless sleep punctuated by the West India Dock clock knelling the hours. Her eyes had flicked open immediately at the unfamiliar sound. A man was silhouetted in the orange fringe of the lamp’s glow. Her calf muscles cramped as she leapt up and hurled herself at the figure. She was within a few yards - bloody fingers already curved into talons - when she recognised him. It was Horatio Barley-Freeman.
‘Thank God... thank God... I thought...’ her lungs were finding it hard to refill. ‘The Tong locked me in. They left me here... all night... with... with...’ She shuddered. ‘Vi Tremins is dead. Her body’s in here somewhere,’ she swept her arm towards the crates, ‘you have to fetch the police. They can work out where she is; I can’t go back there, I can’t...’ the words were tearing her dry throat raw ‘...because... because... because of what else I might find.’
She wanted him to step forward and take her in his arms. To comfort her like a parent would a distraught child. Instead he turned and left. He hadn’t said anything, hadn’t reacted, but perhaps he was like her and took refuge in action when confronted by situations impossible to comprehend. He could only have moved a little to the side because now he was back. And he was not alone.
‘Is this who you’re scared might’ve met the same fate as poor Vi? As you can see she hasn’t-’
‘Alice! Where were you? I was supposed to meet you here with... with...’
But the relief was too much for May’s weakened body and she crumpled to the ground. Alice seemed to be in a similar state of exhaustion because she was slumped like a ragdoll against Barley-Freeman, her head lolling forward and her face hidden by a tangle of curls.
‘Is she ill? Where did you find her?’
May waited until her legs felt they would hold her again before getting to her feet.
‘You can leave her with me while you go for the police.’
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you but neither of those th
ings is about to happen.’
He had curled his arm around Alice’s shoulder and he twisted her slightly so that the light glanced off their profiles. He was holding something to her throat. The memory of Vi’s false smile closed down all thought in May’s head. Except it wasn’t a knife. Cradled between his fingers, his thumb poised, was a hypodermic: Alice’s peculiar stance was a result of being drugged.
‘Miss Keaps, May - after all it’s stupid to follow the conventions of formality at a time like this - what I have here is full of cocaine and water. Please believe I will empty it into your sister’s pretty neck unless you co-operate.’
Too many unexpected things were happening for May to understand what was going on. Except for the fact that Horatio held the power of life and death over the most precious thing in the world to her. She wanted to rush him but knew that even if she could summon the energy he’d have the time to carry out his threat before she’d covered half the space between them.
‘I’ll do anything you want, just let her go.’
‘It’s a little late for bargaining and, as you can see, I hold all the cards. I’m truly repentant at having to play them like this but yours is not the only hand being forced by circumstance. Things have happened recently beyond my control and I have to put them right or, like you, I’ll find myself locked out of the game. Now, you can start by telling me what you found in Elliott Shipping that night.’
May’s breathing turned shallow. ‘It was you set fire to the place. Torch it! I heard you.’ She felt lightheaded; her throat, dry and scratchy. ‘You knew we were inside...’
‘Actually, no, not at the time. I only found out later when I overheard one of the lightermen on the wharf.’
And then suddenly the air in her lungs felt as heavy as river mud. He had let himself into the building with the key. The key Bert said Miles always wore around his neck.