Printer's Devil (9780316167826) (32 page)

“Come down or I’ll shoot yer down!” The words were confused and jumbled by the echoing stone. But there was no mistaking the
second shot, when it came, crashing through the still air and pinging off the bells.

Kicking out at the nearest bell, Nick set it swinging
slowly towards its neighbor. There was no sound. But when it swung back he pushed it again with his foot, and reluctantly
it heaved out a deep, shuddering
clang
. He set another bell swinging. If only he could attract attention from outside! The ringing was getting louder as the bells
lurched back and forth, and Nick kicked out every time they swung towards him, sending them in a long arc, forcing out their
piercing chimes. Beneath them the long ropes snaked crazily, swishing through the hot air of the tower, rippling wildly. His
ears buzzed with the noise, but he kept kicking, propelling each bell away, rejoicing at each deafening peal, gasping with
effort. The bells were rolling backward and forward: everything else, all thought, was lost in the noise.

As a huge bell swung aside he saw Coben’s face almost immediately beneath. He was leaning out into the shaft, clinging to
a plank under the bell house, his face moist and his teeth clenched in a determined and murderous grimace. The bell swung
back and hid him, then came forward again and there he was, with the gun raised, its barrel aiming right between the bells
and up at Nick’s face.

Nick pressed himself into the cubbyhole and his fingers closed around something hard and unfamiliar.

The sword! The breath he took when he realized what it was seemed almost to drown out the noise of the bells. Coben kept trying
to take aim, waiting for a
moment when he could fire between the swinging bells. And he had the advantage. He was too far away for Nick to reach him
with the sword; and if he wasn’t careful, Nick would end up dropping the sword as well. They watched one another as the bells
swung apart again. For a split second the moonlight bouncing off the bells illuminated Coben’s face and picked out a dazzling
gold tooth, a vicious glint in a murderous grin.

And now Nick raised the sword.

In what seemed like the slowest second of his life, he stepped forward and, with a single clean motion, hacked apart the rope
which held the nearest bell. As the chimes echoed through the tower he watched the bell falling, and as it did so he caught
sight of Coben, terrified, putting up his arm to shield himself from the plummeting weight.

It was a very long way to fall. And in the dying noise of the bells, Nick couldn’t be sure whether he’d heard a long, receding
scream, or not.

Outside the inn I gave my soft, silly, uncombative Lash the biggest hug of his life when I untied him. Cricklebone, with his
huge strides, was off down the hill and I couldn’t possibly keep up. But the relief of breathing fresh air again after the
murk and smoke and doghair of the tavern propelled me after him, and in less than half a minute I found him crouching by an
unlit doorway.

Something was lying in the hay and dirt at the edge of the road, and it was wearing the man from Calcutta’s clothes.

“It’s not your —“ I began.

“No, it’s not McAuchinleck.” Cricklebone was subdued and breathless. He stood tall, looking down the road to the river, where
only a few low and shabby huts separated us from the creaking, rat-infested ships.

“Has the bosun escaped?” I asked.

“For the time being.” He seemed to be talking more to himself than to me, looking up and down, as if waiting for someone.

“Is he … dead?” I asked, nervously glancing at the inert shape lying by the wall, pulling Lash back to stop him sniffing at
it. There was no reply. Cricklebone was behaving very uneasily indeed, almost twitching. I stared at the lights on the dirty
river and took a deep breath.

I’d become aware of a ringing in my ears, and the deeper I breathed, the louder it seemed to get.

Cricklebone suddenly looked at me. “Bells,” he said, astonished.

And so it was. I realized that the church, the one up the hill from which we’d just come, was pealing out the most tuneless
racket London had ever heard. Like the anguished jangle of someone in awful distress. Its discordant urgency penetrated my
bones and I felt my skin crawl in the heavy night air.

“Come on.”

Cricklebone led us, at a gallop, back up the hill. People were looking out of the windows of the Three Friends, and figures
were milling in the street and across the graveyard. A man met us as we rushed up.

“I’ve sent a couple of men in, sir.”

“Good. Where’s McAuchinleck?”

“There, Mr. Cricklebone, sir, by the inn.” But McAuchinleck had seen us and he came over, meeting us in the middle of the
road. His face was grave, and very different without its oriental disguise. He had a small, gingery mustache.

“You’re too late,” Cricklebone said shortly. “The bosun’s got the camel and he’s off. And he’s just killed someone.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.” Cricklebone sounded disturbed. “What did you do with that disguise?”

“I burnt it, like you said.”

“Are you sure?”

McAuchinleck stared. “Of course I’m sure.”

Still the bells rang. Where was Nick? I watched the policemen running here and there, some of them talking to the crowd which
had gathered by the Three Friends, a couple of them going off in the direction of the river. What on earth was going on? As
I watched a couple of shadows moving by the church wall, the
bells seemed to die, their sound thinning out and eventually stopping altogether. The silence they left in the hot night was
heavy, dull, and dreadful. I gazed up at the ornate church spire, a dirty spike against the smoky sky: and for a second or
two the place looked so silent, so motionless, and so sinister I wondered with a shiver whether the bells had been ringing
on their own.

Against the sky, rising on a thermal current, a single crow swooped, fluttering around the black spire, circling it, before
disappearing into the darkness with a hoarse distant squawk.

Cricklebone had gone striding off towards the inn at McAuchinleck’s prompting; and, left alone with Lash in the middle of
the street, I suddenly felt exposed. Over by the church there was a lot of activity by the little door under the spire; and
I could hear a massive commotion. Someone was being brought out of the church, and it was taking a whole horde of policemen
to do it. Black shapes struggled in the grey churchyard, and Coben’s voice roared obscenely from the melee. They must have
arrested him, then! Was it Coben who’d been ringing the bells?

I was about to move toward the inn when I noticed another figure emerging by the cemetery gates, between two policemen. A
figure about half their height.

He’d seen me, and five seconds later he had me in
a tight hug, his silent tears of relief making my neck wet, as Lash jumped excitedly around us.

At first I thought something dreadful had happened to Nick; when I spoke to him he didn’t seem to hear me. He just stood there
looking dazed, wiping the remnants of tears from his cheeks with a dirty sleeve. But he managed to explain his ears were still
buzzing from being so close to the bells.

“I can’t hear,” he said in a loud voice. And then, “Have they found my Pa?”

Cricklebone had disappeared, someone said in the direction of the river; and we set off through the dark little streets in
pursuit. A Bow Street Runner had tried to stop us, but by the time he’d asked us who we were, we’d already fled halfway down
the hill towards the docks. Nick seemed to think we were going in the right direction. By the time we arrived, breathless,
at a dark corner close to the river, his hearing had partly returned. I was able to explain who Cricklebone was.

“My Pa,” he panted, “sent me up there to kill Coben. He’s desperate. He could do anything.”

“He already has,” I said, remembering the corpse in the man from Calcutta’s clothes.

“What?”

“He’s — we found — at least —“ I wasn’t quite
sure how to put it. Who
had
we found?

“He’ll hide in the docks,” Nick said. “He knows every corner of them. In the wet cellars, where even dogs won’t be able to
sniff him out. Onboard the ships. In the rigging. Anywhere. They’ll never find him. He’ll be out on the next tide.”

“Come on, then.” I pulled Lash towards the warehouses lining the riverbank, towards the greasy jetties and the groaning ships.
I’d never been here in the dark before and it felt very uncomfortable. Eyes seemed to watch from shadows; every now and again
a low whistle or a hollow footstep would make me jump. I stayed so close to Nick I was almost treading on his heels as he
walked: I was determined not to let him out of my sight now, and I was hoping that any minute we’d spot Cricklebone’s angular
figure coming out of the shadow. The water was high in the dock and the decks of the smaller boats alongside were just an
easy leap away. Nick was right. The bosun could have gotten lost in the maze of masts and rigging in seconds. A dim lamp was
raised on a small boat as we went by, and a boy no older than us, with a palsied face, regarded us unsmilingly from under
a black cap.

Suddenly Lash lurched off towards the water’s edge.

“Heel!” I hissed; but he was whimpering, and tugging me back. What had he found? A cat, no doubt, or
a water rat; or something rancid, but to him enticing, which someone had spilt on the dock. As I took a couple of steps toward
him my feet struck something solid, and there was a clatter as it skidded towards the water’s edge. After starting from the
sudden noise, I bent to pick it up.

It was the camel.

I couldn’t believe it. “Look!” I said, clutching at Nick. Holding it by its back legs, I unscrewed the head. It was completely
empty. The head lay severed and stupid in my palm.

“So where’s the man from Calcutta?” Nick asked.

“That might be hard to explain,” I muttered, shaking the camel to make sure there was nothing inside. As we stood, silent,
I became aware of a conversation going on in a low shed near the water. As we approached we could see a faint lamp glow from
the half-open door.

We edged up to the doorway, and I peeped in. It was a tiny, bare shack. Cricklebone was busy lifting up rags and tarpaulins,
searching for something. And McAuchinleck was there too, in a bizarre twisted position, with a burly man pinioned between
him and the wooden wall. The shadows loomed high and the place stank of rotten wood and urine.

“There’s nothing here,” Cricklebone was saying.

McAuchinleck seemed to tighten his armlock on the stocky man, and as he moved I noticed for the first
time that it was Fellman the papermaker, looking unshaven and very surly.

“Now listen,” said Cricklebone, addressing Fell-man, “we got a tip-off from Tenderloin. When did you last see him, and what
did he give you?”

Fellman suddenly spat with obvious pleasure. “You’ll get no tip-off from me,” he grunted. “I told you, there was no deal.”

“Who is it?” Nick asked in a very loud whisper.

“Ssh!” I returned; but it was too late. Cricklebone flung open the door and held up the lamp to see us standing there, ragged
and tired, me with my mouth open about to offer an explanation.

“What are you doing here?” he barked. “Get off back to the inn. It’s too dangerous here.”

“Mr. Cricklebone,” I said, and held up the camel. “I, er — found —“

He came out.

“Where’d you find it?” he asked with urgency, holding the lamp close to my face.

“On the ground, just — back there.” I pointed. “Lash found it first. I nearly kicked it into the river.”

Cricklebone grabbed it and started unscrewing the head.

“It’s empty,” I told him, helpfully.

“What?”

I nodded.

He took the head off and shook it. Nothing. He stared out over the black river. “Stay there,” he ordered suddenly, and went
back into the shed.

I sat down on the dark dockside, pulling Lash close, and dangled my legs over the black water. A warm stench was wafting up
between the boards of the jetty. Downriver, the horizon was grey with the first fetid light of another dawn. In a couple of
hours the sun would be up again, and hot, and the dockside would have exploded into noisy life. I yawned, hugely.