Ring of Terror (11 page)

‘Sounds fishy to me,’ said Joe, predictably.

‘Is that all you can tell us?’

‘I know nothing more. He came, he paid his rent, he hobbled away.’

‘He had some difficulty in walking?’

‘Yes. He was lame.’

Looking through the printed papers whilst he was talking, Luke had spotted one that was handwritten. It seemed to be a receipt of some sort and the important thing was that it had an address on it. 22, Cundy Street. Careful not to seem too interested in it he pushed it into his pocket with the two messages, rolled up the anarchist literature and gave it to Joe. The widow watched him, blinking fearfully.

‘If he—if anyone asks,’ she said, ‘you will tell him that you took the papers by force. That I tried to burn them, but you prevented me.’

‘Very well. That shall be our story. Only changed a little. You didn’t try to burn the papers. You succeeded. That puts you in an even better light, yes?’

The old lady nodded. Now that Luke had started to speak in Russian she was following what he said closely, her button eyes gleaming.

‘Second point, if Mr Trout reappears, you get the news to us at the police station in Leman Street. You know it?’

‘The police house, yes.’

‘Good. Then, for the moment, goodbye.’

‘What next?’ said Joe, as they slammed the widow’s door behind them.

‘Breakfast,’ said Luke. ‘Then we might have a look at this Anarchist Press.’

Later that morning their route to Jubilee Street took them along Stepney Way and down Sidney Street. Small clumps of sightseers were still poking around, pocketing slivers of charred wood as mementoes and staring about them, although there was nothing to stare at except the forlorn carcass of number 100, half-burned timbers poking up through the rubble of brickwork and fallen tiles. A group, halfway down the street, was being addressed by a small, stout person with an aggressive moustache and a red nose.

‘So what do they come ‘ere for?’ he was saying. ‘And where do they come from? I can tell you that. I’ve bin watching ‘em. They come from up there.’ He jerked one thumb over his left shoulder to indicate the upper class end of London. ‘They come to see what poor people like us is forced to live in.’

Luke though that the chain of gold links looped across his waistcoat was not one of the more obvious signs of poverty.

‘Forced, we are, to live among furren muck, men who think as little of using guns and bombs as we think of blowin’ our noses. So let me ask you a question. ‘Oo let ‘em in?’

He waited for his audience to oblige with an answer. One of them offered. ‘Parliament let ‘em in.’

‘And oo’s responsible to Parliament?’

This defeated his listeners, so he supplied the answer himself.

‘It’s the bloody ‘Ome Seggeratry oo’s responsible. Mr Winston bloody Churchill. If I’d my way, ‘e’d ‘ave bin tossed into the fire along with ‘em.’

A policeman on the outskirts of the crowd, who had been listening absentmindedly with his thoughts on his relief and his next meal, now sharpened up. It seemed that the orater was stepping outside permissible limits.

‘And what did our blessed ‘Ome Seggeratry do? ‘E came down ‘ere to enjoy the fun. I seen ‘im with my own eyes, standing on this very spot, gloatin’ over the destruction.’

At this point the policeman drew out his book and made a note and it occurred to Luke that they would be better away. As they moved off down the side street they saw another policeman at the corner of Lindley Street, and a third one at the point where Jubilee Street ran out into the Mile End Road; strategic points where they could keep an eye open for trouble.

Joe said, ‘The Anarchist Press is number 37. That’ll be right up the far end.’ When they reached it and could see round the corner, they were in time to witness a more serious piece of trouble.

A group of four toffs, on a spree, had grabbed a passing youngster. When they found he was Russian they had evidently decided, for no very good reason, that he must be a terrorist and two of them were devoting their attention to teaching him a lesson. They had forced him to his knees and the shorter of his assailants had grabbed his hair and was hitting him in the face. The taller one was kicking him, choosing his targets carefully.

‘Bullying,’ said Luke. ‘And enjoying it. We’ve got to stop this before they damage him badly.’

‘The odds aren’t too steep,’ said Joe. ‘Help is at hand.’

He had noted the policeman at the Lindley Street corner and before charging in, he blew a blast on his useful whistle. As they arrived, the tall attacker aimed a last kick at the boy and transferred his attention to Luke. The taller they come the harder they fall, he thought. Pivoting on one foot, he hooked his opponent’s ankle from under him and put him on his back with a satisfying thump.

When the policeman cantered up, Joe had the shorter one with his head in chancery under his arm. The other two had bolted, pausing at the corner to look back and signal violently. The message was clear. Luke’s opponent scrambled to his feet and ran to join them. Luke watched him go, but made no attempt to follow. Joe loosened his victim, who was purple in the face, grabbed one of his wrists and twisted his arms up behind his back. After which brief flurry of action Luke and Joe introduced themselves.

‘Certainly we’re charging him,’ said Luke. ‘Assault and battery. Maybe attempted murder.’

‘Not just attempted,’ said Joe. In fact the boy on the ground looked unpleasantly corpse-like.

‘I don’t think he’s dead,’ said Luke. He bent down to feel his heart and stood up abruptly. ‘If you go with the constable—Perry, isn’t it?—and see to the formalities, I’ll get this one home. Mostly shock and bruises, I think. But the sooner he’s in bed the better.’

By this time a small crowd had collected and when Luke asked if anyone knew where the boy lived, several voices volunteered. ‘Deickman Street’, ‘Just round the corner’ and ‘The shop with the photographs.’

Luke hoisted the boy on to his back. Joe, his prisoner and PC Perry marched off and the crowd started to disperse. Two or three of them followed Luke to point out the shop, easily identifiable from the photographs of marriage groups in the window. One of them ran ahead to knock on the door, which was open by the time Luke arrived.

An elderly couple were standing in the hall. The woman uttered an exclamation of alarm. Luke said, ‘Nothing too serious, Mamma.’ He lowered the boy to his feet and he seemed able to stand. The woman put her arms round him and hustled him off.

The man said, ‘We must thank you. And introduce ourselves. Jacob and Elzelina Katz. You are – Pagan – yes. Please be seated, Mr Pagan. My wife has medical training. She should shortly be able to reassure you that our son Ivan will be all right. Thanks to your most timely assistance. Whilst we are waiting, might I offer you a glass of schnapps or of brandy?’

Luke voted for brandy. This seemed to him to be exactly the sort of contact he had been told to look for. He said, ‘Would you regard it as an impertinence if I asked you to tell me something about yourself?’

‘An impertinence, no. I only fear that I might bore you. I have poured out my troubles so often that they come out like water when you turn the tap.’

Luke said, ‘Turn it on for me.’

‘If you wish me to. It is a sad story, though a common enough one in these parts. Maybe we have been luckier than some. It was – let me see – almost exactly ten years ago that we arrived. Myself, my wife Elzelina and the two children, Dmitry and Ivan. They were six and seven years old. It was only because they were young, you understand, that we were allowed to bring them with us. If they had been a few years older we should have been compelled to leave them behind.’

Outside it had started to rain. A heavy January shower blown in from the east.

‘It was raining when we arrived,’ said Jacob. He looked back, in silence, to that unforgettable moment: he and his family squatting in the rain on the quay, with their few belongings around them and no idea of what to do next.

‘To leave your old life behind,’ said Luke, ‘and start anew. It must have been a hard decision. What drove you to do it?’

‘We came because we had to come. Life for us Jews had been made intolerable. I mean that literally. Impossible to bear. Our language was forbidden. Our books were burnt. Our sons were dragooned into the Army. A Russian recruit faced fifteen years of service. A Jewish boy thirty years. Very few survived it. It was customary to recite the prayers for the dead over our young conscripts. Then, when they were in the Army, they were forced into the Orthodox religion. They underwent a rechristening.’

‘Could they have refused?’

‘Oh, certainly. What followed such refusal would be a diet of salted food, water being withheld until they agreed to co-operate. Most did. A few resisted until death mercifully carried them away. When our village was uprooted and transferred, with many others, to where they called the Pale of Settlement, conditions became even worse. But I had one advantage over my fellows. My printing and photographic business had prospered. I was even able – you must not laugh – to publish a newspaper. It was a poor little sheet and always cringingly discreet. In the end, even that was frowned on and I was forced to suspend it, but by that time I had money. Not a lot, but enough. I could buy my way out. It would cost me all, or almost all that I had, in payments to the authorities, at all levels, for a permit. Bribes at the frontier would extract what I had left. In fact, I was able to bring out a very small residue of cash. I will not describe to you the method of hiding it, which might shock you. I only know that if it had been discovered, further fees and formalities would have been invented. With that money and the necessary resolution to starve rather than spend all of it on food, I was able to start again. My first work was handwritten. Fortunately I am a good pen-man. Then I was able to buy an old camera. Then a better one. Then set up my printing press again. Now, as you see, we live in a measure of comfort. I can even save money. That enables me to send remittances to my son, Peter. The Ghetto Bank handles such matters.’

‘Peter, then, was your elder son?’

‘He was fourteen years old, nearly fifteen, when we left. Now he will be twenty-four. He has, mercifully, managed to avoid conscription and tells me that he is doing well as an engineer.’

‘That sounds like a happy end to an unhappy story.’

‘May it continue happy. I hope it will. But sometimes I fear—’

‘Fear what?’

Picking his words with evident care Jacob said, ‘Most refugees, ourselves and our friends, view England as a haven. A blessed place, on no account to be disturbed by resort to criminal activities. But, alas, our activists reject such a view.’

When he paused, as though not anxious to proceed, Luke said, ‘It seems such a sensible view that one wonders why anyone should reject it.’

‘One reason is that they want money. More money than they can possibly get by honest work. But they persuade themselves that there are more lofty reasons. They despise all existing administrations as corrupt capitalistic facades, erected in order to mask the exploitation of the lower orders. Nonsense, of course, but that is the way they have been conditioned to think.’

At this point they were interrupted by the return of Elzelina Katz. She said, ‘Ivan is much recovered. It is nothing worse than bruises and scratches, thanks to this kind gentleman. I do not know your name, sir.’

‘Luke Pagan. My friend and I have an apartment in Osborne Street. A short way down the High Street. You know it, perhaps?’

‘Indeed,’ said Jacob. ‘I know all the streets round here, having tramped them for custom. I hope you will pardon me for asking what may seem an impertinent question. But are you of the police?’

‘Correct. But I wasn’t aware that it was so obvious.’

‘My unhappy experiences have enabled me to identify a policeman almost at first sight. Ah, here is Ivan. He does indeed appear to have recovered somewhat.’

Luke said, ‘Now I, in turn, must ask you an equally impertinent question. What is this child’s real name?’

‘His real name,’ said Jacob. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

‘Not Ivan, surely. Would it perhaps be Rebecca? Catherine? Leah?’

In the silence that followed, the members of the Katz family looked at each other. They did not seem greatly alarmed. It was Elzelina who broke the silence. She said, ‘Her name is Anna.’

Luke was dreaming.

From time to time he grunted, twisting about in bed, unwilling to return to reality. Feeling a hand on his shoulder he opened his eyes.

Joe said, ‘You’ve bin imitating a pig for nigh on half an hour. Must have been a lovely dream. Something happening in a farm yard, was it?’

Luke said, ‘If it was, I’ve forgotten. I never remember dreams for more than five seconds.’ This was not true. He could remember it clearly. He had been dreaming about a girl’s body in boys’ clothes.

Joe, who was already dressed, said, ‘Arise and shine and tell me what’s on the menu for today.’ The rain, which had belted down all night, had stopped and the sun was shining. ‘It’s a lovely morning. Let’s go out and kill someone.’

‘We’ve got a job to do.’

‘Don’t tell me. I know we’re going to watch a house somewhere for someone who isn’t there.’

‘No. It’s what you might call a cleaning job. I told you last night that the boy I picked up turned out to be a girl. I didn’t tell you why she was forced to dress like that and how I found out.’

‘Let me guess,’ said Joe. ‘You found out when you laid your hand gently upon his heart to see whether it was beating and felt—’

‘Right,’ said Luke hastily. ‘That’s when I found out. Later on I discovered why she was going round dressed as a boy. It seems she and her brother needed jobs and the only ones they could get were at a sweat-shop in a place called Brownsong Court, wherever that may be. It’s run by a prime bastard called Solomon. If a girl entered his employment, one of the understood terms was that she would co-operate with him in every way. In
every
way. A session in his private apartment after the day’s work was done, is the usual arrangement.’