He looked down, shuffled a bit.
‘Look, Annie… about earlier… this whole thing. I’m sorry for landing you in it.’
‘The police, if they come back – I won’t lie,’ she said. ‘I can stall them, that’s all…’
He nodded his understanding.
‘It’s not just that, Annie… It’s…’
‘What?’
‘Seeing you the other night… I still can’t… I don’t know…’
‘Finch?’
She stood up and came over. She faced him.
‘I didn’t tell you everything,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Remember… my brother?’
He said it jokingly.
‘What’s he done this time?’
She touched his arm.
‘It was worse than that, Finch… He was in serious trouble… gambling… debts… sucked up into the crime that goes with it. He was looking at prison, a long stretch… and then… Edward…’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t follow.’
She got cold feet.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
He looked into her eyes. She gazed up and saw someone deeply unhappy. She knew, in her heart, it was probably what he saw in her too.
‘Annie…?’
He took her hands.
‘I’m going to go… and I’m going to get to the bottom of this.’
She felt the warmth… the touch of his skin…
‘Oh… sorry… hate to ask…’
‘What?’
‘You know…’
He pulled a mock wince.
‘…Money.’
She rolled her eyes and fetched her purse. She stuffed into his hands every note and coin she had.
‘I owe you,’ he said.
‘Where will you go?’
‘The lavender man… Chilcot… There are still questions…’
She kissed him lightly on the cheek.
‘Be careful, Finch.’
And he was gone…
* * *
Annie sat in her penthouse living room, head in hands, stomach churning at her feelings for Finch, her fear for Finch… and for the awful sense that she had just kicked him out in his hour of need. His sad bundle of filthy clothes sat there like a memorial. She knew that he, too, would probably have redone their farewell if given a second chance.
There was a knock at the door and she sighed with relief. He was back.
Right compose yourself, girl.
They would sit down. They would rethink his strategy… how he… how they could alert the authorities… and then she would tell him everything… everything.
Carpe diem.
Her heart beat fast as she skipped to the door and threw it open.
Standing there was the strangest-looking man she had ever seen. He was tall… massive… powerful… with the broadest shoulders and thickest neck…
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mordecai watched the blue Rover pull away. He stood on the pavement outside the gate to Battersea Park, going over in his head the verbal instructions that Weathers the valet had just imparted. There were people going about their business: morning strollers entering and exiting; carts, wagons, buses and motorcars jostling in the queue to go over the narrow Chelsea Bridge.
The rich man, who’d stayed behind, had told Mordecai to forgo his suit today. Instead he was clad in the outfit of a tradesman, or rather what his benefactors supposed was the uniform of a tradesman: a tight-fitted woollen work suit and cap, boots and with a red neckerchief over a thick twill shirt. (Brown again, thought Mordecai. The rich man liked him in brown.) He wondered why, for complete authenticity, they hadn’t just made him wear his old rough work clothes.
In his hand was a trusty, deceptively voluminous Gladstone bag, tastefully worn and distressed. He checked it again. It contained various tools, though non-specific to a particular trade, more that of a handyman: a couple of hammers, a bag of nails, screwdrivers of differing types, a hacksaw, some chisels, a set of spanners, a sink plunger.
He crossed the suspension bridge, where frustrated motorists beeped horns at the congestion, their exhortations failing to make the blindest bit of difference. Ahead stood the ornate tower of the Bazalgette pumping station. The denizens of west London, Mordecai observed, preferred their sewage dealt with discreetly… beautifully, in contrast to the brazen shit factories of the east.
To the right of Chelsea Bridge, downriver, was the railway bridge taking the trains in and out of Victoria station. Through clouds of steam, the passenger services of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway hissed, creaked and trundled back and forth. Amid them a line of shiny blue and cream Pullman cars rolled south. With dark wood, festooned drapes and crystal lamps, their luxury was obvious. They were towed by a gleaming powerful engine, resplendent in full company livery. Mordecai had heard about this train – it went down to Dover then, the other side of the Channel, continued on through Paris, Munich, Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest, all the way to Constantinople.
There was something incongruous about this little parcel of gentility – the swells in their gowns and furs and fine suits – being dispatched against the backdrop of the Pimlico tenements, the swirling murk of the Thames below and the pervading aroma of the Battersea Dogs Home.
Once on the north side, Mordecai crossed over the swing bridge on the Grosvenor Canal and wound his way onto Buckingham Palace Road.
Everywhere, folks were lugging suitcases and carpet bags on and off buses, in and out of cabs – or with paid staff do it on their behalf. The locality exuded the excitement and tension that came with impending journeys and, in Victoria’s case, the added thrill of trips to the Continent. The air was rent with whistles and hoots and public announcements from the grand station behind the houses.
Mordecai cut north onto Elizabeth Street with its twee patisseries and cafes and jewellers. He was back in the rarefied air of Belgravia again, an area whose street patterns he now knew like the back of his hand.
Elizabeth Street cut across Eaton Square, and soon Mordecai was traversing the open space – past the grand townhouse terraces on the south side, then the gardens themselves and the busy main road that ran west to east along the square’s length.
He thought, with anger and humiliation, of the slap that had been delivered to his face, and then the near-choking administered by the Brute. His rising anger was tempered by the money and the envelope he still carried on his person, tucked in an inner, deep pocket of his jacket. But then there was his family in Riga. The fear of what might… He was in a daze of confusion again. He willed himself to snap out of it. Maybe, just maybe, there was a way to get revenge? Silently, anonymously. Later… the dish served cold. He would do his job, complete this task and bide his time.
As before in the square, traffic flowed fast and heavy round the western end till it began to slow – Elizabeth Street, which turned into Lyall Street on the north side, acting as a tidal barrier.
The flow of water, just as the rich man had said.
On the corner, the Daily Mail was still banging the drum for war, ridiculing the latest Russian excuses for its actions at sea, relishing the failure in diplomacy. Mordecai strolled on nonchalantly past a policeman walking his beat.
The British bobby with his strange, domed helmet.
Behind Eaton Square’s grand houses ran a ‘mews’, the stable yards, tucked away behind the servants’ quarters. Though when Mordecai turned left, through the arch into the narrow cobbled alley that backed the houses on the north side, it was clear that here, in the moneyed part of town, the householders were eschewing horse-drawn transport for the motorcar.
Save for a couple of outhouses, which still exuded equine snorts or the tang of straw and manure, the stables had largely been converted for automobiles. Some of the doors had been reconfigured.
The mews alleyway was otherwise quiet, except for one garage, where the double doors were wide open to reveal a mechanic’s feet s
tuck out from beneath a gleaming new silver luxury car – a Rolls-Royce – the man cursing as he banged at some nut or valve unwilling to budge.
The blue wooden garage door to number 95, halfway along the left-hand side, had a recessed door built within it. It had been left unlocked as he had been told. He looked back and forth and turned the knob. The garage was empty, dusty and carried the smell of disuse. He went through into the side passage and up the steps to the back entrance to the house. The aroma of roast beef wafted from somewhere along the way. He could hear the clink and clatter from nearby kitchens.
Mordecai knocked on the door in the prescribed fashion – a memorised pattern of long and short raps. It seemed to take forever, but he heard footsteps coming down the stairs, then echoing along the hallway. He heard bolts being released and the lock being turned.
The woman was dressed in the simple plain grey dress of a housekeeper – another ‘costume’ he wondered? It was done up to the throat, her hair tied back. She said nothing, just stared at him grimly.
He recited the words he had been told to say.
‘I am here…’ he raised his bag, ‘to “fix the problem”.’
‘And who sent you?’
Her voice had a trace of Russian.
‘Ursa,’ he replied.
She stared for moment, weighing him up, then opened the door fully for him to enter. It was clear that the house was empty. She locked the door behind him.
‘You must exit from this door only, the rear,’ she said. ‘You understand?’
‘Yes.’
She demonstrated how the door locks worked – two deadbolts, turned by lever, and a conventional latch operated by key.
‘Here…’
She pressed it into his hand and made him open and relock it three times. She asked him to repeat the exercise from the exterior. He was to be sure to take the key with him when he left, she said. This part was crucial. There was a clinical iciness about her insistence.
‘Yes. I understand.’
The house smelled fusty, not lived in for some time. They moved into the hallway, past the stairs that led down to the kitchen. The hall had a chandelier that had been covered with sheeting and a large mirror on the wall with a sculpted gold leaf surround. A grandfather clock ticked away, its big old pendulum swinging slowly back and forth.
The house had been furnished expensively – it was not dissimilar to the one that the rich man had put him up in. The open door to the dining room showed a long table and chairs covered with white sheets also. There were bare patches on the walls where paintings had been removed. Before the front door, the mat was covered in unopened post.
They ascended three more flights of stairs past a drawing room, a study, a music room with a shrouded grand piano, and bedrooms. The tall Georgian windows on the street side, though partially shuttered, still threw generous light. They afforded views straight across the square.
At the top, within the roof, above a tight, switchback staircase, they arrived at an attic room. It gave the impression of a games room of sorts – an unofficial one, like a hideaway, a den for children. It had a dartboard on the wall with a pitted cork surround and the odd dent in the plaster from where a dart had gone astray. There was a vacant doll’s house and various sealed cardboard boxes.
Pushed up against the interior wall was a half-size billiard table, two shortened cues leaning in the corner, balls nestling in the cotton mesh of the pockets. The shelves along the end were empty. A portion of the carpet had been rolled up to allow access to the unvarnished floorboards, some of which had been taken up and piled to the side. The planks of wood were spotted with white paint from when the room had been decorated.
Was this where it was kept?
The woman indicated the two small sash windows overlooking the square. He set down his bag, went to the right-hand one and tried it. It was impossible to open as it was. It had been warped solid into its frame, its runners stuck and since painted solid. He pushed and pulled at it several times, trying to ease it, but to no avail.
‘Here,’ she said, pointing at the other one. She opened it easily, the bottom half sliding up on its counterbalanced cord, just like it should.
Mordecai had already made his choice from street level.
‘No.’ he said. ‘No good.’
She did not like being countermanded.
‘There will be no excuses. There will no failure,’ she snapped.
He continued with the stuck window frame, trying to unjam it. He was that sure, he didn’t need to double-check.
‘Do you hear me?!’
He carried on.
‘Do you hear me?!’
He had no time for such histrionics.
‘The money. When do I get the rest of the money?’
‘You will get the balance, the rest, upon completion as promised,’ she barked. ‘But your insolence will not serve you well.’
‘But I—’
‘Silence. You will be paid in full when you have fulfilled your duty.’
He shrugged.
She pointed to the billiards table.
Not under the floorboards after all.
‘You are to leave nothing behind. Not a trace.’
He nodded. She left the room.
He knelt by the table and examined its underside. He opened his bag and got out a flat-head screwdriver. The long package, wrapped in brown paper, had been secured in a brass cradle, screwed into place at eight points.
He released the holder and slid the heavy object out. He placed it on the green baize. He carefully untied the paper, done up with twine, and removed the waxed layer within.
He relished the smell of oil and the newly lacquered wood. It had been broken in, tested and sighted. The telescopic scope was attached along the top of the extra-long barrel – a customised Mauser rifle, model 1895.
The Russian version he had used in China seemed immediately an inferior copy. Even Mauser’s licensed Serbian and Turkish models, of which he had experience, though identical in many aspects, lacked the overall precision and detail in the workmanship.
He carefully packed away the parcel paper, the metal cradle and the screws, tucking them in his bag, leaving no evidence. He laid the rifle back down carefully and reached around under the table again. He slid out a clip of five 7-millimetre silver-tipped hunting cartridges.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Finch felt awkward – humiliated even – dressed in Edward’s suit. The worst part about it was that it fitted so well. Only the tight shoes gave him gyp. He wanted to get out of the damned outfit as soon as he possibly could. He suspected that might not be for some time.
As he strode out of the lift, he skirted the lobby, heading towards the rear exit, the one that led out to the Embankment Gardens. He sidestepped people without drawing attention, being sure to pull his Homburg – Edward’s Homburg – down over his forehead, doing his best to obscure the bandage.
He was almost there when a voice called out from behind.
‘Good morning, Mr Pointer.’
Finch carried on walking. The voice rang out again.
The bellboy… the one who had delivered the same suit earlier, suddenly caught sight of a man who clearly wasn’t Mr Pointer. He thought it odd that another man should be wearing the same item of clothing, a pretty unique garment – royal blue with a navy-blue pinstripe – and tapped the concierge on the arm. The concierge glanced at the copy of the photograph that the detective had had left him earlier.
He abandoned his business at the front desk.
‘Excuse me… sir?’
Without turning, Finch picked up the pace. He was immediately aware of his physical limitations. His ribs hurt with every footfall. The concierge lifted the telephone while nodding to the bellboy, who alerted a burly-looking man in a suit loitering behind a rubber plant.
Finch threw a look back and saw the man dart out. He performed an ungainly jig down the steps, causing considerable pain in his abdomen, and plunged into
the revolving door, which he immediately jammed by not taking into account the elderly woman with her mournful dachshund entering from the other direction. The woman was now stuck in the revolving door but with her dog marooned outside. It was the lead she was still clutching which had caused the obstruction.
The burly hotel man banged on the glass.
‘Sir, I need a word with you… sir!’
The woman with the dog was so wrapped up in the plight of her pet that she hadn’t taken in what was happening.
‘Madam,’ yelled Finch, tapping on the glass divider. ‘Your lead, it’s jamming the door. You need to let go…’
He pointed at the obstruction.
‘But my dog…’
‘I’ll pass him back in.’
‘She… It’s a she.’
‘Then I’ll pass her back in!’
The burly man was banging on the glass again.
‘Sir, wait there, please!’
Finch saw him signal to someone else. They had surely sent someone round to catch him on the pavement.
‘Please, madam…’
‘But what if she…?’
‘Just do it!’
With the woman panicked into letting go, Finch pushed the door, and, in one move, shoved the dog back in and spun the whole revolving apparatus so that the woman was thrust into the burly man, blocking his path.
Finch turned right. He would head for the crowds around Charing Cross station. But he saw a broad-shouldered man at the far corner coming towards him. He was similarly attired, in a dark suit. On turning in the other direction, a heavy in a suit appeared there too.
There was a knot of people. A man held an unfurled umbrella aloft in one hand and a sign saying ‘British Museum’ in the other. A collection of fur coats, expensive perfume, silk suits and cigars gathered around him for their morning tour. A private sightseeing omnibus stood at the kerb.
Around them, porters wheeled trolleys of luggage. Finch eased his way through, exacting a ‘Now look here!’ from a man with an upturned moustache and a monocle.
The hotel men were closing in.
‘Quick!’ came another voice.
A hand reached out and pulled him off the pavement into the tradesman’s entrance, then shoved him into a broom cupboard and shut the door. Finch waited in the dark for what seemed an eternity. Eventually the door cracked open. The light hurt his eyes.
The Cold North Sea Page 23