Saviours came in many guises. The bruising bouncers of the Gaiety Theatre had proven unlikely ones – shielding them as much for their own benefit; keeping the police at bay, waiting till the coast was clear, then leaving them to their own devices.
It was while huddled in that backstage corridor, beneath the gaslight – the very same one into which he had sneaked to see Vesta Lane – that they had opened the envelope and read its contents, that superficially innocuous yet ultimately ominous sheaf of papers, the pair of them slowly absorbing the information in stunned silence.
“How long do we stay?” Annie asked.
“Don’t know.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to complicate things … I need to use the ladies’ room.”
The public washrooms were about 20 yards away, Finch saw, the entrance partially obscured by the newspaper kiosk. Above it, hanging from the ceiling, the big station clock said eight minutes to six. Time meant nothing here. Barking NCOs had already worked their way up into full voice.
On the departure board, local trains were still listed as running normally around the city suburbs and the branch lines of the Western Cape. The line remained open further along the coast, east to Port Elizabeth. But the rest of the destinations – the ones heading north on what would have been the route to Kimberley, or veering off to Bloemfontein and on to Johannesburg and Pretoria – had been blacked out.
The main line and its rolling stock had been commandeered for military purposes, the armada of troop transports heading on to Beaufort West, De Aar and then Hopetown, now the railhead for the Front.
“Okay, you see where the WCs are?”
She nodded.
“Straight in. Straight out. Don’t talk to anyone.”
She handed the jacket back and he slid his hand in the pocket, ensuring that he could withdraw the revolver this time, should he need it.
“Got you covered. Now go!”
“Just one thing. And I hate to ask.”
“What?”
“Do you have a penny?”
“Again?”
He smiled, fumbled in a pocket and pulled one out. The copper was old and worn. Queen Victoria still had ringlets. He flipped it towards her. She caught it mid-air.
Finch turned to lay on his front, propped on his elbows, and watched Annie move briskly away. He glanced up at the clock. He would allow her five minutes before deciding on any action. Ten minutes and he would send someone in to find her.
He was lost in thought about the options before them; how they might extricate themselves from this almighty pickle.
Then he felt it, a tap, a light kick, delivered to the sole of his right boot. His insides contracted. Discreetly, he slid his hand onto the grip of his pistol.
“You’re proving a tricky bugger to find,” came a familiar voice.
Finch rolled over and sighed. That warm wave of relief; Brookman was staring down at him.
The detective crouched down. He spoke in a forceful hush, his dark eyes darting this way and that. He put his arm on Finch’s.
“Come on, we need to hurry … Before the MFPs spot us.”
He nodded over to the entrance. Now Finch saw it. There were military police moving in.
“Where’s Nurse Jones?”
“The lavatory,” said Finch.
He pointed in its direction.
Brookman nodded again, a signal to an unseen someone across the concourse.
“Okay. We’ve got her covered,” he assured. “Better you leave here separately anyhow. Let’s go.”
Brookman stood and walked towards the side entrance to the station and bade Finch follow but keep a few yards behind. They moved indirectly, using the cover of pillars, assembled soldiers, an army mess wagon.
Finch threw a glance over this shoulder. The MFPs, about eight of them, were combing through the crowd.
“Down here,” he said, motioning Finch towards the street.
They descended a few steps to the pavement. Immediately, a sporty one-horse buggy trotted out. Its roof was up. Finch recognised the driver as Corporal Pienaar, only this time in plainclothes. He was beckoning for them to get on board as fast as possible. They climbed in, he twitched a whip and the lean, high-stepper trotted off at speed.
Brookman waited till they had moved clear, satisfied that they weren’t being followed.
“Sorry to have put you through all this,” he said, keeping watch continually. “It was for your own protection. It’s been a crazed 24 hours. Some significant developments.”
“Developments?”
Brookman cleared his throat.
“Well Rideau’s dead, for one.”
“Dead?”
He shook his head sombrely.
“Found strangled. Last night. In his apartment … or that’s what I’m being informed. Bit out of the game at the moment.”
Finch exhaled a whistle.
He had forgotten that Brookman was now an outsider, an unusual position for him to be in, probably.
“But you’ll already know by now that Rideau was involved in this whole Cox business,” the detective said. “And not for the good. Not the great friend he proclaimed.”
“Sadly I do. And it wouldn’t take a wild guess to nail Payne as Rideau’s killer either.”
“Payne?”
“The red-haired man, the one—”
“So his name’s Payne now, is it?” Brookman scoffed. “How sickly appropriate.”
“Not his real one?”
“One of several aliases. Though the person remains unchanged. Hired muscle. A killer. Clinical.”
“They were in it together somehow, the pair of them. Rideau and Payne.”
Brookman sighed.
“Rideau may have believed that to be the case. But Payne … if that’s what we’re now going to call him … doesn’t operate that way.”
“You know the cabbie was confused,” said Finch. “It wasn’t Kilfoyle returning to get into the cab with Cox that night. Most likely it was Rideau.”
Brookman nodded. Finch looked out. The streets of downtown were coming to life, the docks absorbed by hustle and bustle, trams disgorging workers along the quaysides.
Finch remembered Brookman’s interrogation of Kilfoyle and his absolute certainty at the time that he was Cox’s murderer. He knew the error would have stung Brookman deeply.
“Everything pointed to Kilfoyle,” consoled Finch. “It made perfect sense.”
Brookman said nothing.
The buggy wound away from the docks. Ahead lay the sprawling makeshift khaki city at Green Point and, to their left, Signal Hill, down whose slopes they had scrambled not hours before.
They were heading straight into the rising sun. It was difficult to pick out details. To their right, the breakers crashed hard on the windswept beach, great swirls of luminescent foam beating down on the shore. The boom of the waves and the swish of the shingle was visceral.
“Where are we going?” Finch asked
“There’s a judge … Justice Dood,” Brookman explained. “Has been quite vociferous about maintaining the integrity of civil law during the Emergency. Has been helpful to me in the past. I can trust him.”
He returned to look Finch in the eye.
“The plan is this: we go to his place – you, me, Nurse Jones – we tell him everything we know. Everything. He has a stenographer waiting to put it on record. Discreet and safe. Key thing is he’s friends with the Governor, Sir Alfred Milner. Has his confidence. With authority like that – especially amongst people keen to avoid political scandal – one hopes we can straighten this whole thing out and, crucially … get you off the hook. Both of you.”
“And you?”
“Don’t you worry about me. I’ve been in this game a long time. In and out of favour as circumstances dictate. I’m a survivor.”
He yelled an instruction up to Pienaar. The buggy took a left turn.
“Where is he, this judge?”
“Not far, past the Point. The Tw
elve Apostles. In the shadow of them.”
He smiled.
“Actually that sounds rather apocalyptic, doesn’t it …?”
Brookman looked behind them again, through the oblong in the canvas cut for a rear window, making sure they were not being tailed.
“Nurse Jones will be on her way. The plan’s for her to take the inland route, just in case. My regret at your getting caught up in all this, Captain Finch, is only exceeded by my embarrassment at Nurse Jones’ entrapment in it. It’s most unfortunate for her. I’m truly sorry.”
He barked another order to Pienaar.
“Come on. Faster!”
Finch saw the craggy coastal range of the Apostles loom ahead to the left.
“Look, we haven’t got much time so we’d better pool what we know,” said Brookman. “Here’s the situation as I see it – and this is absolutely privileged. You understand?”
Finch nodded. Brookman took a deep breath.
“So, here goes … As we have already established, the Military Foot Police arrested you for the battery of Lady Verity. She was roughed up. That was true. Though in terms of all this, she seems somewhat untouchable. Not expendable like everyone else. Whoever did it didn’t have long. Just a couple of minutes. From what witnesses were saying he was seeking information. They put two and two together and assumed it be you, just like we thought.”
“It was Payne?”
“Most likely. She, of course, is keeping absolutely shtum. Afraid to say anything.”
“Shtum?”
“Quiet.”
“Oh.”
“Payne was there or thereabouts that night, after all. And is in the hunt. But what the Military Foot Police really wanted was to find out was about the hunt itself … just what you knew about …”
“Moriarty.”
“Exactly. This bloody Moriarty. Now here’s where it gets complicated …”
He paused, assembling his thoughts.
“… The Military Foot Police don’t like the fact that us Cape Police picked up the Cox murder case in the first place. The fact that we know there’s some chicanery going on, something involving restricted information, state secrets even, has got them riled up … don’t want some bumbling colonial bobbies in charge of the investigation. The key to Cox’s murder, and whatever motive is behind it, lies with finding this Moriarty, we’re all clear on that. But it’s not just us in the chase now. As you well know, certain other parties have been on the case, only pursuing this Moriarty far more ruthlessly … and lethally.”
“Like Payne?”
“Like Payne.”
It was Finch’s turn. He explained the events of the past 24 hours – of their visit to Cox’s RAMC office, about the Cape Town Races, Shawcroft, the chemist’s shop, about Pinkie Coetzee and, most of all, what had happened at Rideau’s.
Brookman listened attentively, grunting a ‘yes’ of punctuation here and there. Save for Finch’s mention of their visit to Sammy’s Bar, there was no overt display of surprise by the detective, no eyebrows raised. Finch deduced that it concurred with what he already knew. Brookman seldom asked a question to which he didn’t already know the answer. He had probably had men shadowing them the whole time.
“Did you know that Rideau had been dishonourably discharged from the army in India and had served time for fraud?” Brookman added.
“I didn’t but, given what I know now, it wouldn’t come as a surprise. Sad actually. I quite liked him.”
“Threw a damned good lunch … Seems his involvement in all this was purely for personal gain … the fool.”
He paused again, choosing his words.
“Captain, what if I told you that Payne is on the payroll of the Secret Service … brought in by Military Intelligence, as and when, to make certain ‘problems’ go away.”
“Like Cox?”
“Like Kilfoyle, like Shawcroft, like Rideau, possibly like Cox. And not just because Cox was running around getting his jollies with Lady Verity, scandalous as that may be, but because the pair of them, our star-crossed lovers, were on to something. Something big.”
“Yes, but what?”
“Look, it’s always risky making idle speculation in front of a judge. They’re bigger sticklers for facts than me. But I detect a lack of lateral thinking here on the part of those in the hunt.”
“Meaning?”
“How can I put it? … They’re all working on a certain assumption about this mysterious Moriarty – who he is, what he’s holding. But here’s the thing, Captain. There’s not been one single reference to a ‘him’ … or a ‘her’ for that matter. No description, no sighting, no details of movements, nothing on record anywhere. Which leads me to a conclusion … I don’t think Moriarty – whether it be a code-word or whatever – is a person at all.”
Finch smiled. Brookman’s instincts were second to none.
“I congratulate you on your powers of perception, Inspector. What if I told you Moriarty was, indeed, not a person but …”
“But what?”
“A King Charles spaniel.”
“A dog?” he spluttered.
“And a badly carved one at that … Moriarty is in fact an ornament – a quite hideous wooden statue, sitting cross-eyed in the hallway of Ans Du Plessis’s guest house.”
“Yes, yes. I know the one you mean! On the dresser!” Brookman yelped. “Ugly bugger. Remarked on it myself.”
“Well this ‘ugly bugger’ dog is also hollow and has a flap in the back. That key I showed you—?”
“I’ll be damned,” said Brookman. He exhaled a whistle and rubbed the back of his neck.
Finch reached into his tunic, pulled out the manilla envelope and handed it over.
“Here.”
The detective took it.
“It’s what Moriarty was sitting on. What everyone’s been after,” said Finch.
There was a twinkle in the detective’s eye as he fondled the sheathed documents in his grasp.
“Bloody hell, Finch. You beauty! You bloody beauty!”
Finch turned mournful.
“I’m afraid what’s in here represents anything other than beauty,” he sighed. “Documents, mimeograph copies of cables between the Cape and Whitehall, all stamped ‘Classified’. I’ve read them. They refer to papers from Military Intelligence … This here … South Africa… They’re fighting the good fight all right, but it’s also seen as a test, a rehearsal for a conflict that will feature battlefield horrors as yet unimaginable. It’s all in there, alongside references to meetings between members of military high command, the cabinet, the War Office—”
“What could be more horrific than what has already occurred?” asked Brookman.
“A new weapon,” replied Finch. “Poison gas. Nerve gas. Gas that, when inhaled, can kill and blind and cripple. Vapours that can be wafted into an enemy’s trench and fell him without a shot being fired. A kind of warfare by chemical, if you will. And it’s already being tested right here in South Africa.”
Brookman looked sceptical.
“Come, come, Captain Finch. If the Boers had been attacked with this gas you describe, this magic weapon, they surely would have reported it. It would be to their political advantage … playing the victim and all that. They’ve got huge sympathy internationally.”
“That’s the point. It wasn’t used in combat. Not according to what’s in here …”
He jabbed a finger at the envelope.
“… It was tested … on civilians.”
“Civilians?”
“And prisoners of war … There’s a remote area of the Northern Cape where a series of villages has been systematically cordoned off and gassed; POWs and natives used as guinea pigs – maimed, blinded and dying excruciating deaths, men, women, children. The results were recorded coldly and scientifically … and indeed, according to the documentation, most favourably. Anyone who escaped was eliminated.”
Brookman waved the envelope.
“And that’s all in her
e? … You sure?”
“Believe me, Inspector. My eyes are the first to glaze over when it comes to reading official documentation, but any fool can see what is meant. The way they’re thinking, a war – and no one’s making bones about it not being Germany – it’s seen as inevitable. Within ten years maybe.”
“Not exactly a revelation. The Kaiser seems to be agitating for a confrontation. We’ve got Germans right here on the border in Southwest Africa, remember? And elsewhere … Tanganyika, Kamerun. Like to blow their bugles, stamp their jackboots every now and then. That’s just the way they are.”
“But not in the way hinted at here, Inspector. Generals may talk of swift victories and quick offensives – Lord knows there’s been enough hot air in this bloody show – but those in the know, those really in the know, are talking of a more realistic scenario, of a long, slow battle of attrition right across Europe, with conflict spreading across the associated Empires, the likes of which we’ve never seen. New ways of war. Entire generations in arms.”
“That’s just conjecture. It counts for nothing.”
“Maybe. Only there’s another thing, Inspector. Three days ago, at a refugee camp near Paarl, I met villagers … Nama … who’d escaped from the north, the Karoo. Some of them had been blinded. What they described, the way they described it, it matches exactly what military intelligence claims to have done.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. There was a black man, and a white mother and daughter, the family of a missionary. What they told me at the time, about the slaughter, about the ‘green mist’ that had killed everyone, I hadn’t understood; thought it was superstitious claptrap. But it makes sense now. The Bantu man, he had been there. Had seen a mass grave. He showed me the headgear that the soldiers who had carried out the attacks had worn. It was a covering, a kind of a mask with a breathing filter … He gave it to me. Should have kept it.”
It was the first time Finch had seen Brookman truly flummoxed. The detective sat in silence for a moment. He even stopped his habitual scanning of the road behind him.
“This information … So Lady Verity, and then, by association, Cox, had come into possession of it somehow? They were going to reveal it? Expose it? To the press?”
No Ordinary Killing Page 39