‘So what about Ursa?’ asked Finch. ‘What does it mean?’
He sensed that he had perhaps asked a question too far.
‘Don’t rightly know,’ said Cole, eyes on the water still. ‘Tha’s a word Sid heard on his boat. Like a code word.’
They were three hundred yards off shore. There were still the breakers to contend with.
‘But then, get this – me and Sid. End o’October. After the rumpus with the Fisherman’s Collective. One night, when we know he not around, we go over to Dryden’s house. He live on a back road out in the pine trees. Ole Sid, o’course, he get his Christian cold feet; don’t wan’ a-break in – a sin and all that – so I make him stand lookout instead…
‘But I get in there, Doctor. Smash a pane an’ unlock the back door. Do some snoopin’ around. Ole Dryden, he got this back room he use as an office. There some stuff in there I see… some handwritten notes. But nothin’ as you might say, ’criminatin’… Then again, he’s not going to be printin’ up dossiers o’his misdeeds, is he?’
‘What exactly? What did you see?’
They were no longer running ahead of the storm. The grey sheet was closing in.
‘…I don’t know. I can’t make it all out. An’ o’course I can’t rouse suspicions by takin’ sumpin’ obvious. But I do manage to grab this…’
He reached into the rubber bag under the seat at the bow, the one he’d kept his tobacco in. He pulled out a ripped page from a notebook.
‘Tha’s in Dryden’s own hand. Only thing I could find with any reference.’
He passed it to Finch. It had on it, inscribed in pencil, the words: Ursa, November 4th 1904.
‘What happened on the 4th of November?’ asked Finch.
‘I don’t know…’cept tha’s the day Crabby Stamshaw died.’
‘And he was the first of Pickersgill’s crew… to be killed?’
‘Yup.’
‘So you think it’s an order? An execution order?’
Cole shrugged.
‘Seems a dramatic way a-puttin’ it. But maybe.’
And then the real rain hit, hard – a ferocious lashing.
‘The families…’ Finch asked. ‘Crabby… Bertie… the other one…’
The boat wobbled.
‘Buster…’
‘Can I speak to them?’
They were having to shout now to be heard.
‘Are you out yer head, Doctor? You a marked man. We both are. How the hell you think you gorn do that anyway?’
‘I don’t know… You’re right.’
Finch yelled it out in short sharp bursts, over a wind that was now starting to howl, about his investigation of a company called Freeland operating from an address in Bayswater, west London, and of the two men he had followed – one of them, the ‘lavender man’ who had warned him to stay away from matters which didn’t concern him; and the other, the oversized, strong-looking freakish man, and how he had seen him loitering outside his house the other night.
Cole stopped hauling on his lanyard. Behind the water dripping off it, his face was suddenly stony.
‘You see this man, Doctor, the big ’un, you in real trouble. We all are. I’m serious. Ole Sid heard… I heard, that he once pulled a tongue clean out o’someone’s head…’
‘Pickersgill said that Bertie Brandon had been decapitated.’
‘Tha’s right.’
The way Cole said it carried a weight of implication.
‘So, you go on the run with your family… what happens after that?’
Cole flipped his cigarette into the air. The boat started to pitch and roll. Finch clung on tight.
‘Have to ride ’ar out,’ bellowed Cole and hauled in the sail completely. It was hard work; he collapsed back on the deck, sitting right next to Finch.
‘You mind I have another swig?’
Finch passed the flask to him.
‘Well, I reckon I discharge my duty so far,’ Cole hollered. ‘Sid tell me you might show up…’
He gave the flask back.
‘…He say you do, it probably mean he’s dead. In which case I’m to tell you everythin’ I know. Which I just have.’
‘You were a good friend to him, Nathan.’
‘What?’
Finch yelled it again.
‘You were a good friend to him, Nathan!’
‘But as for what happen next, as you ask?’ replied Cole. ‘I think I just have a change o’plan…’
Finch scrunched his brow. Water streamed off it.
‘How do you mean?’
‘That body o’ ole Dryden. It wash up sooner or later, or the torso will, just like I say. Always do. No matter what you do – weight it, tie it, a body has an uncanny way a-declarin’ itself… ’specially a murdered one. An’ I can tell you now, they’ll want a-pin it on someone. So that’s one problem. And two…’
‘Two?’
‘…There’s not only someone know I do it, but he now also know everythin’ I do about this Freeland, this Ursa business… Everythin’ to do with Sid Pickersgill… And a bit too much more besides…’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I got a wife, Dr Finch, I got a child… They on your tail? They only one step from me. And if this big feller…’
They were two hundred yards from the beach, running parallel to shore.
‘Way I see it there’s a very simple solution to my problems. Tie everythin’ up neat and tidy in a nice l’il bow – keep my secret safe, my family safe and also hands the authorities the murderer they be lookin’ for.’
Cole rose and lunged for his rifle.
‘Sorry…’
And, with a sharp horizontal swing, he caught Finch square on the left temple. Cole looped the rifle over Finch’s shoulder as he tumbled backwards into the water.
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘See… there…?’ he was told. ‘Take a good look.’
It was four storeys high and painted a soft grey with white sills and frames around the rectangular, multi-paned windows that the British seemed so fond of.
There seemed a presence, an arrogance to the building – those pillars either side of the door, like an image of a Greek temple he had once seen in a school book. Though its most arresting feature was what was hanging over that entrance – a large, horizontally banded tricolour in white, blue and red. Beneath it was mounted the emblem of a black double-headed eagle.
‘Mr Plavinas?’
Mordecai stared at the flag.
The horrors that have been inflicted in its name.
‘Mr Plavinas?!’
‘Yes?’
‘Are you ready?’
It was the valet doing the talking again. His name was Weathers, Mordecai had learned, an appropriate one, he thought, for one who spent most of his time toting an umbrella.
‘The suit. How does it fit?’ asked the man’s master.
The suit?
The rich man stood there, his fur coat round his shoulders, his ridiculous little dog in his arms, nestled on his belly. He stared intently at Mordecai. He made him distinctly uncomfortable.
‘The suit… Is good,’ he said.
‘It is good,’ he was corrected.
They had had him measured up in a street called Savile Row, a far cry from the Jewish tailors who had patched together denim in the lumberyards on the Daugava River – old men who sat and gossiped and kvetched in their dim, cramped workshops about the ongoing Russification of Livonia and shrugged at the creeping curtailment of their liberties.
My, how much better things were under the Germans, they would say – the good old enlightened Germans, friends of the Jew.
Savile Row hosted the finest tailors in London… in the world, the rich man had declared, and put the suit on his account. He had stood and watched while Mordecai stripped – the men with the tape measures fussing over him, prodding and poking and toying with his inseam.
The colour of it was a light brown… ‘beige’ he was told. It was not dissi
milar to the one sported by the rich man, his evident new patron. Mordecai could not believe that such material had been spun from the cocoons of worms fed on mulberry leaves. It seemed like a proposition from a fairy tale. The cloth was as fine and sleek as his old clothes were coarse and rough.
‘Be a dear boy. Turn around for me,’ said the man.
Mordecai complied, reluctantly.
The new plaything.
‘My, you do look splendid. We’ll make a gentleman out of you yet.’
The gentleman… A bit of arse.
Then, lumbering up behind them came the huge, freakish, thick-necked brute, the one whose handiwork in the old warehouse created an image that had proven impossible to shake.
Mordecai wondered again whether he shouldn’t just run.
The Brute… I could outpace him easily… surely?
But he knew it wasn’t that simple. Human bondage took many forms. There were no chains. But there were other ways of holding a man captive. And he had seen what the Brute was capable of. The Brute didn’t speak, just flicked his head in a ‘let’s go’ kind of way. There was no light in his black, close-set eyes. He didn’t even seem human.
Was he human?
The rich man set down his pathetic little dog. He attached a lead to its jewel-encrusted collar. Weathers, the manservant, led the way. They must have been an unusual sight, this unholy caravan, thought Mordecai: the fawning valet; the big-bellied rich man in his fur coat, his cane and his silly little pet; and then the monster, the Brute, the freak of nature.
They turned left onto Lyall Street and followed the line of yet more elegant townhouses. There were cars and horse-drawn taxis going back and forth, delivery men in their carts and wagons. There were members of household staff huddled, furtively puffing on the crafty cigarettes that were no doubt banned within. A scullery maid scrubbed at steps with a bucket of soapy water and a wire brush. She looked up, then quickly looked down again, averting her eyes.
There was no smell here in this part of town. The streets were clean. Even the gutters were clean. There was so much obvious wealth, Mordecai found it hard to be believe they were in the same city – the city of slums and hovels and near-slave labour down at the docks.
‘Now, I require your complete attention, Mordecai,’ said the rich man. ‘You hear me?’
‘Yes.’
‘I want you to memorise this route… this route from the embassy – every street, every path, every cut-through. I want you to know every shopfront, every crossing point…’
They ambled on, reduced to the speed of the pathetic little dog, which got tired after a hundred yards and started whining, forcing the rich man – ‘Daddy’ – to pick it up again. He kissed it and petted it.
They soon arrived at a square, as the British liked to call them – actually an oblong – which extended along the main east–west road, a set of gardens with grand houses lining either side.
The traffic here was much busier, rushing round the corner at one end in an endless stream – carts and wagons and several motorcars. A horse-drawn omnibus, the number 11, came to a halt and Mordecai watched passengers get on and off. A man on a bicycle nearly fell off at the sight of the Brute.
A bored newspaper boy on the corner sat behind a box with its hand-drawn headline: Daily Mail – Russia’s ‘Mad Dog Squadron’: Exclusive. An elderly man in a top hat, with a finely dressed woman on his arm, tutted about how such a vulgar publication should have been allowed in these parts.
What would the newspapers be saying in St Petersburg?
The rich man put his hand up, the signal to stop.
‘Eaton Square, Mordecai… the most expensive real estate in London… which probably makes it, by default, the most expensive real estate in the world.’
Mordecai had no reason to doubt it.
The townhouses set back behind the gardens were serviced by their own perimeter access road. They were, without question, magnificent. A rare burst of afternoon sun was reflecting off the white and cream. The porticoes, the columns… ‘Doric.’
Was that how you said it?
Belgravia spelled money. But here? This square? This was an impossibly elevated level of affluence.
The square was lined with ornate gas lamps, black with gold trimmings; the gardens, too, were contained within black iron railings detailed with filigree. Behind the hedges, nannies wheeled perambulators and mothers held the hands of small, shining children.
‘Here,’ the man beckoned, bringing Mordecai to his side. ‘I want you to study the traffic, to see which way it moves, how it flows. Traffic is like a stream of water coursing down a riverbed, Mordecai. You have to see how it strikes the banks, how it seeks out the deepest channel; note where it moves quickly, where the shallows lie…’
Mordecai didn’t know why he said it, but the words flowed like the river the man had just been describing.
‘And if I don’t?’
The slap came hard, stinging, right across his face. It had been administered by the man himself. Mordecai was shocked less by the smarting in his cheek than the fact that it had been done so boldly and brazenly, right there in public.
‘Might I remind you, Mordecai ,’ said the man, in the manner of one admonishing a mischievous child. ‘That you have already borne witness to what can happen to our enemies…’
Mordecai straightened his tie – a reflex. He was already living the part.
‘…And, if one can be indelicate for a moment, might I also point out that you still have family in Latvia – a mother and a sister in Riga, a sister with children…?’
Mordecai felt his blood rise, the pounding in his chest, heard a rushing sound in his ears.
‘What you try to say!?’
The man put his hand up to stay him.
‘At the moment they are being looked out for, perfectly safe. “Protected”, if one might employ such crude terminology…’
Mordecai thought of the men in Stepney who would knock on his door.
‘But your cooperation is most essential to the pursuance of this arrangement. Fail us, Mordecai, and I’m afraid we will not be able to prevent their lives from becoming extremely uncomfortable.’
The rage rose further. There was a thumping in his head.
‘HOW DARE…!’
He was gripped so artfully and powerfully round his throat that he could make no sound. With a single, oversized hand, the Brute lifted him effortlessly and discreetly so that he was not only fighting for breath but also struggling to stay upright on his tiptoes. The Brute walked him a few steps to a recess in the railings, surrounded by bushes, and with a park bench in it.
I cannot breathe. My eyes, I cannot see.
There was a burning in his arteries. The more he sucked at air, willing it to fill his lungs, the less it came. As if for some comedic punctuation, his bowler hat fell off and rolled along the pavement.
After a minute of spluttering and gagging, the rich man gave the signal for the Brute to desist. Mordecai staggered, flopping against the bench, gulping in great lungfuls for all he was worth.
The man went back to petting his stupid dog, pulling out from a waxed bag some titbit, a sliver of meat. He raised his cane and pointed. It was as if what had just passed were all entirely reasonable.
‘As for the circumstances, Mordecai, it is a case of perfect timing. Look around you…’
Look around me?
Mordecai did so, panting all the while, rubbing his throat, though he didn’t know what he was supposed to see. The man beckoned for him to stand again.
‘…London plane trees. A marvellous case of biological engineering, a hybrid, you know – part Oriental, part American sycamore. A hardy species, most suitable for urban use – highly wind resistant and, while we’re at it, intriguingly asexual…’
He gave a little cough and dabbed his handkerchief to his mouth.
‘…Though problematic, I must confess, for asthmatics – the fine hairs of the young leaves can get into the air. But
the London plane tree, dear Mordecai, is, to our immense fortune, just the same as every other tree of its kind… It is deciduous…’
Deciduous?
‘…It sheds its leaves in winter. Not two months ago this square would have been basking under sunshine dappled by a lush green canopy. But now…?’
A gardener was raking dead, wet leaves into piles.
‘…As you can see, Mordecai, the upper windows of the building have a clear view right across the thoroughfare. And on this side, the north, there will be no sun in your eyes. The bare branches also provide enough of a screen to confuse those at ground level suddenly looking upwards. That and the glorious architectural triumph of Eaton Square – handiwork of Mr Thomas Cubitt – a sublime achievement in disorientation… Each house is identical.’
‘What you want from me?’
‘Aged twelve you enlisted in the Imperial Russian infantry,’ said the man. ‘You were a soldier for seven years.’
Mordecai spat the word out. ‘Enlisted… I not join, I kidnapped. A khapper… a “grabber” from the Kahal. The boys, they take us, send us away.’
‘After basic training near St Petersburg you served in the regional reserve where you distinguished yourself as a marksman… a sharpshooter,’ the man went on. ‘As such you were attached to the 12th Siberian Rifle Regiment, which in July 1900 docked at Port Arthur as part of the Eight-Nation Army, on its way to relieve Peking. You were credited with twenty-four kills. Clean kills.’
‘How you know?’
‘Six months later, you unilaterally… How shall I say…“left” the service…’
How did they know?
‘…Which also makes you, Mr Mordecai Plavinas, a deserter, liable to be executed should your whereabouts be notified to the authorities. Not that we should ever do such a thing. You are, after all, whether you know it or not, on our side.’
A khapper… He had been ‘grabbed’ again.
The rich man nodded to his valet. Weathers reached inside his jacket and handed Mordecai an envelope bound with a thick rubber band.
‘Your down payment,’ said Weathers.
Mordecai untucked the flap. It contained white sheets of paper, the size of a letter, promising ‘to pay the bearer on demand’.
The Cold North Sea Page 19