Death and the Dreadnought

by Robert Wilton

  He puffed at his own cigarette, and looked into the smoke. ‘I cannot think of any reason why anyone would want to kill David Sinclair. Personally or professionally.’

  ‘You’ll pardon me for saying so, but – from my limited acquaintance – he wasn’t always the steadiest with money.’

  He considered me for a long time. Then a heavy smile. ‘No. No he wasn’t. But then… a creditor would be more likely to want him alive than dead. Which, I gather, is the main argument in your favour.’

  ‘And my impeccable manners. Was he borrowing?’

  ‘Not from anyone who’d use violence. He’d let a gambling debt ride for a while; with people he knew. And… well, he was happy enough to touch a friend if things got difficult.’

  ‘And your business? The Thames Ironwork Shipbuilding Company, yes?’

  ‘What about it?’

  Still the dark, steady, reliability. ‘Not wanting the commercial secrets, but – going well? Bitter rivalries? Impending disasters?’

  ‘You seem to find my friend’s death comical, Delamere.’

  ‘I spent the night in a police cell, Stackhouse. That’s how funny I’m finding this.’ I puffed the last of the cigarette and stubbed it in a plain solid ashtray. Its plain solid owner waited. ‘I’m a bit of a dullard at these business things: what were your roles in the company? How did Sinclair fit in?’

  ‘There’s a Board of Directors at the top. Great names; great beards. Meet once a year to nod at the Report. Below them are the tier of chaps who manage things day-to-day. Among others, that’s me and that was Sinclair. We all have a general idea of what’s going on, and we’re each responsible for something in particular. I look after the finances. Sinclair did the legal side of things. Contracts, that sort of stuff.’

  ‘And trade has been…?’

  He left it a moment to see if he could wait me out. Eventually, he said: ‘His Majesty’s Government has commissioned us to build one of its newest battleships. That, of course, means financial stability for us. It’s also proof of our reputation. And it means that even if there were trouble the Government would help us through it.’

  ‘Sounds peachy. So why did Sinclair want to drag me to your yard in the middle of the night to talk about something terribly urgent?’

  He thought hard about it. ‘I have no idea. He didn’t tell you any more?’

  ‘He did not. No trouble at the yard?’

  The handsome face hesitated, frowned, and then opened in interest. Then it closed again.

  ‘Come along, man. I ain’t a shareholder.’

  He smiled heavily. ‘You should consider it, given how involved you’re becoming. I was going to say that I can’t see how it’s relevant, but we do have some labour difficulty at the moment. The yard’s still working, but there are complaints, and demands for more pay – of course. There was supposed to be some march today.’

  ‘I bumped into it. Or it bumped into me. You don’t know more?’

  He shook his head. ‘Sinclair’s business. I authorised an extra ha’penny a man when we got the contract for the Thunderer, and told Sinclair to camp on that; nothing more to do with it since then.’

  ‘Who might know?’

  ‘Yard manager, perhaps. MacNeice.’

  ‘MacNeice?’

  ‘Generally seen as indispensable. And, indeed, hard to miss.’

  I was running out of ideas. ‘Ever come across a chap named Greenberg? Sinclair mention him?’

  ‘No… Wait though. Greenberg?’ I shrugged. ‘Samuel Greenberg. Bit of a crank. Runs an outfit called the… what is it now? – the Commercial Correspondence Confederation. Has romantic ideas about industrial co-operation across borders. Sort of chap one gets stuck next to at company dinners.’

  ‘What was he to Sinclair?’

  ‘God knows. I think Sinclair mentioned him once or twice. They’d probably bumped into each other at some business shindig, and Sinclair would have given him a more patient hearing than most.’

  ‘Any reason why Sinclair should have been depressed after seeing him?’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘I suppose anyone who cares about international co-operation might be a bit down these days.’ He frowned. ‘Look, Delamere…’

  ‘That’s my five minutes, and I’m grateful for every one. Back door, or do you want me to wait for the police and see if I make a dive for the window?’

  Again the heavy smile. Good looking chap, in a sturdy sort of way. ‘Back door’s not much use to you, unless you propose spending the night in the garden. Take the front door, and leave me to manage my relations with the police.’

  As I say, I liked him.

  ‘Listen, you should try to talk to MacNeice at the yard,’ Stackhouse said as I was leaving. ‘I remember Sinclair looking a bit rattled after a couple of his conversations with the workers’ representatives. Ugly language.’ He hesitated. ‘Even the suggestion of sabotage.’

  12.

  I needed to clear my head, I needed to re-fill it with something considerably smarter, and I needed to lie low.

  I disappeared into the steam of the Ironmonger Row Turkish baths, as into a magician’s puff of smoke.

  I was stripping off the last of my kit when I realized that the bathing wouldn’t be wasted either. I’d been in the same outfit for twenty-four hours, with only a cold shave in a cup in a police cell by way of personal grooming, and my hygiene was in the same state as my reputation.

  I jumped straight into the cold plunge pool – punishment for having let myself get assaulted, arrested or embarrassed by pretty much every single person I’d met. Then, pink and breathing hard, bare feet slapping on the stone, I stalked through to the steam rooms to wait for a massage.

  In the real world of people who weren’t hunted by the police for murder, it was supper time. The reputable clientele had gone home, where they probably hadn’t been held up by foreign gunmen and set fire to their assailants with grenades of flaming cognac; the less reputable night-time patrons wouldn’t be here yet. I had the place to myself.

  I settled back on one of the white marble slabs. I felt it hard under my skull, my shoulders, my elbows and my ankles. A handy discipline, I’ve found: to take myself back to the very simplest of what I am. Bruised in body or spirit, in a dozen cities from London to Constantinople.

  Time passed. Above me through the steam, the bare white vaulting of the chamber was the inside of my head, ready to be repacked.

  David Sinclair had been distressed. Of a million possible locations, most of them more convenient and many of them more private, he had insisted I come to his shipyard. The shipyard was significant.

  The hot air rasped through my teeth with each steady breath.

  David Sinclair had been murdered. It was surely incredible that his distress and his murder were unrelated. There was something so wrong at or with the shipyard as to cost a man his life.

  Heavy feet flopped wet across the floor near me. Through the steam and my sweat-bleared eyes, a vast flabby figure loomed. He was carrying a wooden bucket of soaps and sponges. Just the kind of brute I wanted for a masseur tonight.

  ‘There’s a tip for you if you really wrench me about,’ I said.

  He grunted. He put the bucket of soaps and sponges down somewhere behind my head.

  I closed my eyes.

  Sabotage?

  A flabby hand came down over my nose and mouth, and an enormous crushing weight on my chest, and there were hands on my legs too. For one stupid instant my brain thought this was the massage, and then he pinched my nostrils together and pressed harder and my eyes opened and I saw the great globe of his bald head and a gaze of remorseless murderous intent and I was struggling for my life. I was trying to struggle. I couldn’t move. The brute had settled his monstrous bulk across my torso, trapping one of my arms under him and grabbing the other. Someone else seemed to be holding my legs. Pinned, there was nothing I could do to stop his careful suffocation of me. I was gulping at nothing under his palm; choking; desper
ate for breaths that wouldn’t come; eyes gaping mad. And still he gazed down at me, and in the nightmare my body wouldn’t respond. My shoulders were wriggling frantically, my hips, even my fingers clenching and straining. Futile. I was paralyzed, and the only thing that worked was my brain, and my eyes, watching my death.

  I’ve been on the brink a few times and, take it from me, if you’re expecting cool resolution and shrewd reflexes you’ll be sore disappointed. It’s bloody horrible and desperate and you panic, and anyone who tells you otherwise hasn’t been there.

  On the slippery stone my writhing became movement, and I twisted slightly under the weight. The weight came down again and harder, and the brute’s grip on my arm bit like a claw. I felt one of my legs give a little, tried to find movement, but the other man got his hold back. I was being buried alive. There was nothing left in my throat to breathe, just the rattle of my tongue, and I felt the panic burning in my chest. The last screaming madness of fear filled my head, and I felt sleep coming, and I knew it would be easier than the horror.

  The man on my legs adjusted his grip, and for an instant one of my knees was freer. The slippery desperate leg came up and he was clutching again but too late and I kicked out wildly and made contact and suddenly my legs were free. Now I had leverage, enough to get movement in my hips. The mountain of flesh on top of me realized something had changed, glanced round, tried to twist his bulk more completely on top of me. My right arm was numb in his grip, but from under his wallowing belly my left came free.

  It was numb too. I tried to punch him, but could only slap ridiculously against his shoulder. I reached for his face, for those deathly eyes, but he twisted his head up and his palm pressed down on my mouth and nose harder still. My flailing hand fell away. It fell against the bucket behind my head. With the last movement of my life, I clutched at the bucket and swung it up towards the bald dome.

  I didn’t make it. The bucket caught his shoulder and was jarred out of my hand, and a burst of soaps and sponges bounced around us. Dimly, I saw him smiling, felt him moving to grip my arm again and resettle his body on top of me, felt nothing in my nose and mouth as his hand pushed me down into darkness.

  Then I felt nothing at all. Not his hand, not the clutch at my arm.

  He’d trodden on one of the soaps. As he’d shifted position, one foot had found a bar and he went sprawling. I felt a monstrous heave in my gut as his whole weight came on me, and then as he struggled for balance I was free.

  So was his foot. It was beautiful to watch. The vast body cartwheeled backwards, the leg swung up in the best balletic style, and he dropped like a Dreadnought down a slipway. The back of his head caught a marble corner as he fell, and with one grim thump he was still.

  I wrestled myself upright at last, gasping and euphoric. The accomplice had been knocked aside in the chaos, and was now staring at the fallen Goliath. He looked up at me, shocked, angry, just in time to get the bucket full in the face.

  ‘Up yours you toe-rag!’ I yelled triumphant. I tried to yell triumphant; actually it came out as a sort of croak. I staggered away. I think I did a full circuit of the chamber, stumbling and clutching at marble slabs and occasional taps, just trying to find the damned door. I was wheezing desperately, lungs on fire. I couldn’t walk, and I couldn’t see. The white glow of the walls was foggy, and lights flashed as I blinked.

  I found the doorway, and staggered on. Another chamber of marble slabs and steam, then the corridor to the cold pool, and then the first hall with showers and lavatories. My breathing was coming more regular, but the gasps still sounded loud and hoarse. Here suddenly it was cooler, and clearer. A window up in one corner was slightly open, with the promise of fresh night air.

  I took in one deep glorious breath, and opened the door to the lobby and changing rooms.

  There were two men sitting in the lobby, coats and hats and clearly not interested in using the baths, and my appearance in the doorway stunned them. I might have been feeling a bit better, but I obviously wasn’t looking it. I must have seemed a bit wild, and I’d lost my towel early in the fight. And they’d been expecting two men – two men reporting my death – and here was I instead.

  They didn’t stay stunned for long. They both came up and started towards me. I pulled back through the door. I wasted a moment wondering about trying to block it against them – me against two men who hadn’t just dallied on the doorstep of death – then another moment remembering that they still had at least one accomplice somewhere on my side of the door, waking up with a bit of a headache and a strong sense of unfinished business. With a third wasted moment, I reminded myself that there really wasn’t any other way out through the bath chambers, and so I was trapped.

  It had to be the window. Vaguely aware of noise somewhere behind me, I was up on the bench, hands reaching for a showerhead and a cubicle wall, pulling myself up, getting a knee up, and there was the window. It was one of those that tilt horizontally, so I had to stick my head through the lower half and wriggle through, feet scrabbling for purchase on showerhead and wall behind me. Something grabbed at my foot, I wrenched free, and was through.

  I slammed the window shut, and gazed down at my two pursuers. One now, because the other was disappearing through the door towards the street, while his mate considered following me up the wall.

  I was at the bottom of a kind of well between taller bits of building: six feet square, blank walls on each side, no open windows. There was a fair bit of rubbish around my feet and, scrabbling with my hands, I found a piece of tile to wedge against the bottom of the window. It would slow my pursuer, now standing on the bench and testing his weight on the showerhead, if he summoned the nerve to try my window.

  But he didn’t need to, of course. At some point I was going to have to come back in; unless I planned to spend the rest of my life in the roof-well.

  I began to explore the walls, and especially the corners of the well, hands slapping against brick and trying not to think about the moment when I’d tread on a bit of broken glass, or a dozing rat. I only had to get up one storey, before the roof seemed to open out.

  I’ve been up and down a couple of drainpipes in my time. More often down, when I think about it: my sins have tended to be those one must escape from, rather than break in to. It’s not as easy as it’s popularly reckoned; determination, steady momentum and some forward-thinking about hand- and foot-holds are part of the knack. I’ve done it under what you might call competitive conditions too, with the hue and cry after me, and on one occasion a disgruntled French chappie throwing wine glasses and indeed a half-empty bottle at me. But I’d never done it in bare feet.

  I felt for the holds as far up as I could before I started. Then I pushed my toes in behind the pipe, twisting the foot around, on the first bracket. A breath, as firm a grip as I could with my hands, and up. I gasped as my distorted foot took my whole weight. I scrabbled for the next bracket with my hand, found it, realized that I wasn’t concentrating, forced myself to take another breath and try to ignore the pain in my foot, got my grip properly, and placed my other foot.

  It can’t have been much more than three or four yards to the top. Three footholds. I’m not sure I could have managed four. The last stretch, once I got my hands and then elbows on the parapet, I took entirely on my arms and shoulders, feet flapping useless below me. But at last I was up, gasping, toes burning, knees and elbows raw.

  Rooves stretched away and up around me. Looking down, I saw that my pursuer hadn’t yet got through the window, or had settled down with a cigarette and a good book to await my return. I had ways forward and, for a moment at least, I was free.

  And naked.

  13.

  It was a glorious night.

  Absolutely clear sky, with the stars multiplying as soon as one looked up. The cosy glow of a million lamps stretching across the city, promising a million versions of life, of home. All the steeples ghostly in the darkness. Squat and queenly among them the dome of St Paul’s; battles
hip of the mediaeval age. And the chaos of rooves, stone and tile and brick and wood, swooping and plunging like a sea in every direction.

  And in the middle of it all, perched up high in the grand old city, one somewhat vexed gentleman standing stark naked on a parapet.

  I hadn’t, of course, thought this bit through. I don’t think many would call me a conventional sort of chap; but I have some of the conventional instincts, and finding myself in the altogether, in an extremely public place, unsettles me as much as anyone.

  Not to mention the fact – which I acknowledged as I stood there, hands on hips and considering the terrain with a certain frustration – that, with London’s police and a murderous selection of London’s criminals hunting me, my vital priority was to make myself inconspicuous. Loitering on rooftops with my essentials swaying in the night breeze, I was set fair to make myself the most conspicuous man in the city.

  Something rattled beneath me, and I looked down. There was a shadow in the window. My pursuer had finished his reading and found something to stand on, and would be through into the well imminently.

  Come along, idiot. The chase doesn’t end until hunter or hunted is down. I didn’t know if the chap had my experience of drainpipes, but I was pretty sure he had more appropriate footwear for the climb. Come along. I took a breath of the fresh night, and set off along the parapet to where, at waist height, a flat bit of roof stretched away. My feet ached fiercely – I didn’t want to think what condition they were in after being wrenched behind the pipe – and I hobbled and hissed as I went.

  I got up onto the flat bit of roof all right, and walked cautiously to what seemed to be its front edge. I had some instinct of looking for ways down, or away, which was stupid because the front aspect was the least likely to have outbuildings or a sloping roof.

  Stupider still, and unlucky, because the exact moment when I stuck my head cautiously over the front edge of the building and looked down into the street below – so peaceful, so much normality, in the gentle rhythms of a few horses and pedestrians in the evening – was the exact moment when one of a couple of men who were arguing about something happened to glance up.