The North Water

by Ian McGuire

  “Down by the river. The old timber yard on Trippett Street, past the foundry.”

  Baxter nods and smiles.

  “There aren’t too many men like you out there, Henry,” he says. “There’s plenty who will talk but precious few who will pull the trigger when required.”

  Drax blinks twice. His mouth drops open, and his thick tongue swells and stretches like some eyeless creature newly birthed.

  “I’ll be needing a bigger share,” he says.

  Baxter sniffs and picks a tangling piece of cobweb from off the thigh of his pin-striped pants.

  “Five hundred guineas is what we agreed on,” he says. “It’s more than I offered Cavendish. You know it is.”

  “But this is extras, int it?” Drax says. “Above and beyond.”

  Baxter thinks for a moment, then nods and gets to his feet.

  “Five and a half then,” he says.

  “I like the sound of six better, Jacob.”

  Baxter makes to speak but doesn’t. He looks at Drax, then checks his pocket watch.

  “Six then,” he says. “But six is the fucking end of it.”

  Drax nods complacently, then picks up his feet and lies back down on the greasy and pungent camp bed.

  “Six is the end of it,” he echoes, “and if you could send that cunt Stevens up with another bottle of brandy, and get him to empty out this pisspot while he’s at it, I’d be monstrous fucking grateful, I’m sure.”

  Baxter descends to the first-floor landing. He waits there a moment and then calls down to Stevens, who is sitting in the hallway with his bowler on his knees reading the Hull and East Riding Intelligencer. They go into the study together and Baxter gestures for him to close the door.

  “You have the revolver I gave you,” Baxter says, “and you have the bullets also?”

  Stevens nods. Baxter asks to see the gun, and Stevens takes it from his pocket and places it on the desk between them. Baxter looks it over, then gives it back.

  “I have a task for you tonight,” he says. “You listen carefully now.”

  Stevens nods again. Baxter notes with pleasure his docility, his doggish eagerness to please. If only, Baxter thinks, they were all like that.

  “At midnight you go to Patrick Sumner’s room in the Pilgrim’s Arms, and you tell him I need to see him urgently at my house. Tell him I have important news about the Volunteer and it can’t wait until the morning. He doesn’t know the town, and he doesn’t know where my house is neither, so he’ll follow wherever you lead him. Lead him towards the river. Go up Trippett, past the foundry, until you reach the old timber yard. If he asks what you’re doing, tell him it is a shortcut—it makes no difference whether he believes you or not, just get him inside somehow. Henry Drax will be waiting in the yard. He’ll shoot Sumner, and after he shoots Sumner you’ll shoot him. You understand me?”

  “I don’t need Drax there,” he says. “I can shoot the surgeon myself.”

  “That’s not to the purpose. I need Drax to shoot Sumner and you to shoot Drax. After you’ve shot him you put this revolver in Sumner’s hand, empty out his pockets and Drax’s too, and then you make yourself fucking scarce.”

  “The constable at the dock will hear something for sure,” Stevens says.

  “True enough, and no doubt he’ll come running and blowing hard on his whistle. When he gets to the yard he’ll find two dead men each holding the gun that killed the other one. There are no witnesses anywhere, no other signs or indications. The peelers will scratch their heads awhile, then take the bodies to the morgue and wait for them to be claimed, but no one will claim them. And what will happen next?”

  He stares at Stevens, and Stevens shrugs.

  “Nothing will happen next,” Baxter says. “Nothing at all. That’s the beauty of the scheme. Two unknown men have killed each other. There are two murderers and two victims. The crime solves itself, and I am free of Henry Drax at last, free of his threats and his gouging, and free of his mad stench.”

  “So after he shoots Sumner I shoot him,” Stevens says.

  “In the chest, not the back. In the back will only provoke questions. And put the gun in his right hand, not his left. Do you understand it now?”

  Stevens nods.

  “Good. Now take this bottle of brandy up to the attic for him. Empty his pisspot while you’re there, and if he speaks to you say nothing back.”

  “That filthy bastard’s time is coming, Mr. Baxter,” Stevens says.

  “Indeed it fucking is.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Drax crouches alone in the corner of the shadowed timber yard. There is an open storage shed running along one side and a sag-roofed, ramshackle cabin at the far end. The ground between is strewn with broken bottles, shattered crates, and planking. Drax has the bottle of brandy in his pocket; every now and then, he takes it out, licks his lips, and drinks. At times like these, when the thirst is on him and he has money enough in his britches, he will drink for a week without pausing for breath. Two or three bottles each day. More. It is not a matter of need or pleasure, not a matter of wanting or not wanting. The thirst carries him forwards, blindly, easily. Tonight he will kill, but the killing is not topmost in his mind. The thirst is much deeper than the rage. The rage is fast and sharp, but the thirst is lengthy. The rage always has an ending, a blood-soaked finale, but the thirst is bottomless and without limit.

  He places the bottle carefully on the ground by his feet and checks his revolver. When he breaks open the cylinder, the bullets drop out onto the ground, and, cursing, he reaches down to find them. He loses his balance, staggers sideways, and then rights himself. When he stands again, the timber yard sways in front of him and the moon tips and wobbles across the sky. He blinks and spits. His mouth fills up with vomit, but he swallows it down, picks up the bottle from the ground, and drinks again. He has lost a bullet, but that makes no odds. He has four more left, and it will only need one to kill the Paddy surgeon. He will tarry here by the gate, and when they walk in he will plug him in the head. That will be that. No warning or chatter. If that queer cunt Baxter or his idiot slavey had anything about them, they could do the job themselves, but, as it is, Henry Drax must do it for them. Oh, the others will talk and plan and make oaths and promises, but there are precious few fuckers who will do.

  The moon is smothered by clouds, and the shadows in the yard have thickened and merged. He sits on a barrel and peers out into the vague, uneven blackness. He can still make out the edges of the gate and the top of the wall running next to it. When he hears men’s voices, he stands up and takes one slow step forwards, then another one. The voices become louder and more distinct. He cocks the revolver and steadies himself to shoot. The gate creaks and begins to open inwards. He watches as they enter the yard side by side: two dark shapes, blank and featureless as shadows. One head, two heads. He hears the squeak and scurry of a rat, and feels the great thirst agitate inside him. He breathes in once, aims, then fires. The darkness splits open for an instant, swallows him, then spits him out again. The man on the left crumples and drops onto the cinders with a muted thud. Drax lowers the revolver, takes a snort of brandy, and steps forwards to check if he is fully dead or if some knife work is required to finish the job. He crouches over the body and lights a lucifer. He peers down as the yellow flame lengthens in his hand, then rocks back on his heels and curses.

  It is Stevens the slavey lying dead. He has shot the wrong fucking man, that’s all. He stands up and looks about. Sumner didn’t run back through the gate—he knows that—and the walls all around are high and topped with broken glass. He must still be in the yard somewhere.

  “Are you in here, Mr. Surgeon?” he shouts out. “Why don’t you show yourself? If you plan to capture me, now’s your best chance. You won’t ever get a finer one. Lookee here, I’ll even lay down my gun.” He places the gun on the ground in front of him and holds up his hands. “I’m offering you a fair fight now. No weapons, and I’ve got a drink or two inside me
to help even things up.”

  He pauses and peers around again, but there is no answer from the darkness and no sign of any movement.

  “Come on now,” he shouts, “I know you’re in here. Don’t be bashful. Baxter says you plan to hunt me down, to hire a man to look for me out in Canada, but here I am right in front of you. Alive and in the fucking flesh. So why not take your chances when they’re offered?”

  He waits a few seconds more, then picks up the gun and walks towards the cabin at the far end of the yard. When he gets close enough to look inside, he stops. The door is half open. There is one window at the front and another, smaller one, at the side. Both are smashed and shutterless. He knows for certain someone will have heard the first gunshot; if he doesn’t kill the surgeon soon, it will be too late and that will be the end of all his good fortune. But where has the sly fucker got to? Where is he lurking?

  * * *

  Inside the cabin, Sumner grips a rusted saw blade in both hands. He holds it poised, shoulder high, and waits. When Drax steps across the threshold, he swings it forwards in a hard flat arc. The jagged edge strikes just above the collarbone. There is a hot squirt of arterial blood, a long repellent gurgle. Drax stands poised and upright for a moment as if waiting for something else—something better—to happen to him, then he topples back against the lintel. His head is askew. The ragged wound gapes like a second mouth. Sumner, without thought or qualm, as if moving in a dream, tugs the saw blade back, then drives it deeper in. Drax, half-decapitated, pitches face-first onto the black dirt outside; his gun clatters onto the cabin floor. Sumner stares a moment, horrified by the shape of his accomplishment, then grabs the gun and rushes back across the cindered yard.

  In the silent darkness of the narrow street, he feels suddenly enormous, distended, as if his shaking body has swollen to twice its normal size. He walks back towards the town, maintaining a steady pace, not rushing and never looking rearwards. He ignores the first two pubs he sees but enters the third. Inside, a man is playing the piano, and a moon-faced woman is singing. All the tables and benches are filled, so he finds a stool by the bar. He orders a fourpenny ale, waits for his hands to stop trembling, then drinks it down and orders another. When he tries to light his pipe, he fumbles the match, and when he tries again, the same thing happens. He gives up and puts the pipe back into his pocket next to Drax’s revolver. The barman watches on but says nothing.

  “I need the railway timetable,” Sumner tells him. “Do you have it there?”

  The barman shakes his head.

  “Which train is it you’re wanting?”

  “The soonest one to leave.”

  The barman checks his pocket watch.

  “The mail train is likely gone by now,” he says. “It’ll be the morning.”

  Sumner nods. The woman begins singing the “Flying Dutchman,” and the men playing dominoes in the corner join in with the chorus. The barman smiles and shakes his head at their raucousness.

  “Do you know a man named Jacob Baxter?” Sumner asks him.

  “Everyone knows Baxter. Rich bastard, lives over on Charlotte Street, number twenty-seven. Used to be in the whaling business, but now it’s to be coal oil and paraffin, they say.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since his two ships went down in Baffin Bay last season and he got paid off by the underwriters. The whaling trade is dying anyway, and he got out just in time. You won’t find no flies on Jacob Baxter, I’ll tell you that. You can look him over all you want to, but you won’t find nary a single one.”

  “How much did he get paid for the sinking?”

  The barman shrugs.

  “A good deal, they say. He gave out some to the wives and bairns of them that drowned but he still kept plenty back for hisself, you can be sure of that.”

  “And now it’s to be paraffin and coal oil?”

  “The paraffin is cheap, and it burns a good deal cleaner than the whale oil does. I’d use it myself.”

  Sumner looks down at his hands, pale gray and blood-spotted against the dark wood of the bar. He would like to leave now, escape all this, but he feels a hot animal pressure building in his face and chest like a creature grown large inside him, scratching to get out.

  “How far is Charlotte Street from here?”

  “Charlotte Street? Not so far. You go up to the corner and turn left by the Methodist Hall, then keep on going. You an acquaintance of Mr. Baxter, are you?”

  Sumner shakes his head. He finds a shilling in his pocket, pushes it across the bar, and waves away the change. The woman is singing “Scarborough Sands” as he leaves, and the men have gone back to their games.

  Baxter’s house has a row of spear-top railings in front and five stone steps leading up to the door. The windows are shuttered, but he sees a light above the transom. He pulls the bell and when the maid answers he tells her his name and that he is here to see Mr. Baxter on an urgent matter. She looks him up and down, pauses for thought, then opens the door wider and instructs him to wait in the hallway. The hallway smells of tar soap and wood polish; there is a whalebone hat stand, a rococo mirror, and a pair of matching Chinese vases. Sumner takes off his hat and checks that Drax’s gun is still in his pocket. A clock chimes the quarter hour in another room. He hears the clicking of boot heels across the tiled floor.

  “Mr. Baxter will see you in his study,” the maid says.

  “Was he expecting me?”

  “I couldn’t say if he was or he wasn’t.”

  “But the name didn’t alarm him at all?”

  The maid frowns and shrugs.

  “I told him what you asked me to, and he said to bring you right to his study. That’s all I know about it.”

  Sumner nods and thanks her. The maid leads him past the broad mahogany staircase to a room at the back of the house. She offers to knock for him but Sumner shakes his head and gestures her away. He waits until she has gone back upstairs, then he takes the revolver from his pocket and checks there is a bullet in the chamber. He turns the brass doorknob and pushes open the door. Baxter is sitting in a chair by the fire. He is wearing a black velvet smoking jacket and a pair of embroidered house shoes. His expression is alert but untroubled. When he begins to get up, Sumner shows him the revolver and tells him to stay just where he is.

  “You don’t need the gun now, Patrick,” Baxter scolds. “There’s no need for that.”

  Sumner closes the door and steps into the center of the room. There are bookcases on two sides, a bearskin rug on the floor, and a seascape and a pair of crossed harpoons over the fireplace.

  “I’d say that’s for me to decide, not you,” he says.

  “Perhaps so. Just a friendly suggestion, that’s all. Whatever exactly has happened tonight, we can resolve it without the need for firearms, I’m quite sure of that.”

  “What was your plan? What did you mean to happen in that timber yard?”

  “Which timber yard would that be?”

  “Your man Stevens is dead. Don’t play the fucking fool.”

  Baxter’s mouth hangs open for a moment. He glances into the fire, coughs twice, then takes a sip of port. His lips are thin and damp, and his face is colorless aside from the faint blue bruise of his nose and the scribbles of broken vein across both cheeks.

  “Let me explain something to you, Patrick,” he says, “before you jump to any quick conclusions. Stevens was a good man, willing, loyal, biddable, but there are some men who can’t be controlled. That’s the simple truth of it. They’re too vicious and too stupid. They won’t take orders and they won’t be led. A man like Henry Drax, for example, is a grave danger to everyone around him; he has no understanding of the greater good; he obeys no master but himself and his own vile urgings. When a man like myself, an honest man, a man of business and good sense, discovers that he has such a dangerous and unruly fucker in his employ, the only question is: how best may I rid myself of him before he destroys me and everything I’ve worked for?”

  “So why
pull me into it?”

  “That was wrong of me, Patrick, I confess, but I was in a tight corner. When Drax came back here a month ago, I thought to make him part of my plans. I knew he was a dangerous bastard, but I believed I could use him anyway. That was my mistake, of course. I had some doubts from the start, but when I got your letter from Lerwick, I understood for sure that I had bound myself to a monster. I knew I had to part from him before he sank his teeth even deeper into my flesh. But how could I work it? He’s an ignorant fucker, but he’s no fool. He’s wary and he’s guileful, and he’ll kill a man just for the joy of it. A brute like that can’t be reasoned with or talked to. You know that as well as I do. Force must be employed, violence if necessary. I realized I needed to set a trap for him, to lure him away and catch him unawares, and I thought I might use you as the bait. That was my design. It was reckless and ill considered, I see that now. I should not have used you as I did, and if Stevens is dead now, as you say he is…”

  He raises his eyebrows and waits.

  “Stevens was shot in the back of the head.”

  “By Drax?”

  Sumner nods.

  “And what’s become of the evil bastard now?”

  “I killed him.”

  Baxter nods slowly and purses his lips. He closes his eyes, then opens them again.

  “Shows some boldness,” he says. “For a surgeon, I mean.”

  “It was one of us or the other.”

  “Will you have a glass of wine with me now?” Baxter asks. “Or sit yourself down at least?”

  “I’ll stay as I am.”

  “You did well to come here, Patrick. I can help you.”

  “I didn’t come here for your fucking help.”

  “Then what? Not to kill me too, I hope? What would be the good of that?”

  “I don’t believe I was just there as a lure. You wanted me dead.”

  Baxter shakes his head.

  “Why would I want such a thing?”

  “You had Cavendish sink the Volunteer, and Drax and I are the only ones who might have known or guessed it. Drax shoots me, and then Stevens shoots Drax, and everything is neat and tidy. Except it didn’t work like that. It misfired.”