Strike a Match (Book 1): Serious Crimes (13 page)

“I thought I saw you get shot,” she said.

“I was.” He pointed at a tear in his shirt. “Bulletproof vest,” he said. “Stopped the bullet, but I’ll have a nice bruise tomorrow. They’re not standard issue, and you want to know why not?”

“Why?”

“When I came back to Twynham and saw the uniform they told me to wear, I asked. Most of us wore them when I left, you see. They’re all different styles and designs depending on whether they came from the armoury in a ship, a provincial police station, or a military base. That means they’re not uniform, therefore they can’t be issued as such. Damn stupid bureaucracy.”

“Oh.” It was unimportant. The sergeant was alive. She was alive. “Wait. Riley is missing?” she asked.

“The man she was chasing got on a horse. The last I saw of Riley, she’d grabbed the other one, and was riding after him.”

“Riley can ride?” Ruth asked.

“When I met her she was with a group of horse traders from Ireland. That’s what they claimed to be. What they were… well, that’s a story for her to tell you. Yes, she can ride. But if this man, Emmitt, comes back, I’d rather have some cover to hide behind.”

“Do you think he will?”

“He might,” Mitchell said, “when he realises we’re alone. On the other hand… I don’t know. None of this quite fits.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

They’d reached the house.

“Didn’t you notice?” he asked. “See for yourself.”

She followed him inside, throwing one last look at the treeline. There was no sign of Emmitt. No sign of anyone. She couldn’t even see the body of the dead woman. Ruth went through the kitchen and back into the main room. There wasn’t much light until Mitchell pulled the boards down from the room’s bay window. Then she saw. The room was full of banknotes. Some were stacked neatly. Some stacks had been knocked over, spilling the currency down to the bare floorboards. Other notes were still stuck together on sheets of paper slightly smaller than an unfolded newspaper.

Mitchell picked up a stack of bills held together by a thin strand of off-white string. It was about four times the size of that which had been in one of the pouches of Anderson’s money belt.

“Buy yourself the best house in the country,” he said, placing the stack on a small table next to the hulking great machine, and picked up another. “Buy yourself a ship.” He placed them next to the first. “And a crew.” He placed a third next to the first two. “Provision it.” A fourth stack. He picked up two more. “And what do you do with the rest? Buy a factory? Buy
every
factory?”

Ruth turned slowly around as she tried to work out how much money was in the room. She gave up when she reached a hundred thousand.

“How much,” she asked, and was surprised by how weak her voice sounded.

“Here, sit down,” Mitchell said, righting a wooden chair and placing it next to the large machine. He went into the kitchen and came out again with a stone jug. “It’s water,” he said, passing it to her.

Her hands shook as she took a sip, and then a gulp.

“It’s millions,” Mitchell said. “Exactly how many, I don’t know. In many ways it doesn’t matter. In the old world it would have been a small fortune. In ours it’s a larger one than anyone could dream of earning.”

“Is that the computer?” Ruth asked, jerking her thumb towards the massive grey machine.

“That’s the printer. I’d say three copiers have been stripped down and rebuilt, combined with… I don’t know. Perhaps those rollers were built specially for this job. We’ll have to find out. But this,” he said, picking up a small silver folder, “is the computer.” He opened it. One half held a keyboard, and the other half was a screen that suddenly changed from mirror-black to a brightly lit image of a twenty-pound note.

“That’s a computer?” she asked.

“You haven’t seen one before?”

“In pictures,” she said, her mind still foggy. “Phones, and those boxy things that go under desks.”

“And that’s the problem, isn’t it. Everything was digital, so the pictures that have survived since before The Blackout are often a decade out of date. But this printer was built, not found, and exactly who constructed it is a question for our prisoner. Excuse me.”

The sergeant disappeared upstairs.

Ruth realised that she was staring at a twenty-pound note lying by her foot. It was the answer to her and Maggie’s problems, a way of getting Mr Foster off their backs at least until she was paid in three months’ time. Surely there was no way to know exactly how many notes had been printed? Even if there were, it was reasonable to expect Emmitt or the other man had taken some with them. No one would notice one more was missing. She grabbed the note and stuffed it into her pocket.

Walking into the kitchen, she realised her heart was racing once more. No one would miss it, she told herself. But what if the bank started checking all the twenty-pound notes that were deposited? It wouldn’t matter. Foster would spend the money. But what if he didn’t? What if he took it to the bank and remembered exactly who’d given it to him? And even if he did buy something with it, sooner or later that note would end up at a bank. Ruth pulled out the banknote, intending to drop it to the floor.

“Anything in there?” Mitchell asked. He was handcuffing a man to the chair she’d been sitting in.

“Um…” She looked around the kitchen. “Some canned food,” she said. “Something electrical. A stove, I think. A small one.”

“Makes sense. If they’re stealing the electricity for the printer, there’s no reason they wouldn’t take a bit extra to make their lives comfortable. Let’s start with that,” he said, turning to the prisoner. “Where’s the power coming from? What are the names of the people working with you inside the factory?”

The man shook his head.

“Is that your way of saying you’re not going to talk? Look at my colleague. Look at her. You see that blood on her face? It isn’t hers. It belongs to that woman who was working with you.”

Ruth found her hand moving to the side of her face. Then she remembered it still had the banknote in it. She turned away, thrusting the note back into her pocket.

“We didn’t kill her,” Mitchell said. “It was the man with the scarred face who did that. He shot her just after my colleague got the cuffs on her. Think about that for a moment. He killed her so we couldn’t arrest her. Now, what do you think will happen to you when you get to prison? Do you think he’ll be able to get to you on the inside? Or will he shoot you from a distance when you’re out on a work gang?”

“I’ve got rights,” the man mumbled.

“Yes, and I’m supposed to read them to you, but it seems a waste since you’re going to be dead within a month. You see, your problem isn’t that we’ve caught you, it’s that you fired at us. Forgery carries a five-year sentence. Counterfeiting is an automatic fifteen. I don’t know exactly which of those two you’re guilty of, but you know what? It doesn’t matter. Attempted murder of a police officer is an automatic sentence of life without parole. You’re young. The years are going to be heavy. Sooner or later you’ll talk. That scarred man knows that, and he won’t risk it, so he’ll kill you.”

“And what? You’re going to let me go?” the man asked.

Mitchell laughed. “I’m going to give you a chance. Forgery is five years hard labour, but you don’t have to serve that sentence in a prison or on a work gang. You can opt for a life at sea. Believe me, it will be a lot harder than breaking asphalt, but you’ll live, and at the end of it, maybe you’ll have found a new career. This is a onetime offer. You tell me everything you know, right now, or take your chances. Start by telling us your name.”

There was silence, broken by the soft clink of the handcuffs on wood as the man stretched and squirmed and looked around for some other way out.

“I was hired to guard the house,” the man finally said. “And shoot anyone who comes near. I was… I wasn’t thinking.”

“Ah, there, you see?” Mitchell said, turning to Ruth. “He wasn’t thinking. It was an accident. Now what’s your name?”

There was another long pause. “How can I trust you?”

“Take my word or don’t, you’ve no other choice. Your name?” Mitchell said.

The man breathed out. “Turnbull,” he said, exhaling as much as speaking. “Josh Turnbull.”

“See, that wasn’t hard. What’s the name of the man with the scarred face?”

Another pause, this one longer. “Emmitt. I don’t know if that’s a first name or a surname, but it’s the only one he ever used.”

“And the woman,” Ruth asked, “the one that Emmitt murdered, what was her name?”

“Hailey Lyons.”

“And the other man?” Mitchell asked.

“That’s Marcus. Marcus Clipton. He was in charge. This was all his idea.”

“It was? Then what was Emmitt’s role?”

“He kept the machines working,” Turnbull said.

“And how did you come to be in Mr Clipton’s employ?” Mitchell asked.

“He hired me and Hailey. Just to guard the place. To make sure that no one came near it during the daytime. That’s all.”

“And did anyone come near?”

“No. Not until you lot showed up. Honest,” Turnbull added. Ruth thought he was lying.

“I’ll ask again, tell me how he hired you,” Mitchell said. Turnbull hesitated. “Come now, this isn’t the time to be coy,” Mitchell said. “You’ve told us enough for Mr Clipton and Emmitt to want you dead, you might us tell us the rest.”

“All right, fine,” Turnbull said. “It was at the Marquis, the pub by the docks. This was in June. I can’t work the fields during the summer because of my skin. I need something indoors. Marcus approached me. He’d heard I was a good worker. Reliable. Asked if I’d like to do a bit of guard duty.”

“How much were you paid?”

“Twenty pounds a day,” Turnbull said.

“In counterfeit notes?” Mitchell asked.

Now Turnbull laughed. “N’ah. In tenners. A hundred pounds up front, the rest when it was over.”

“And when was that going to be?” Mitchell asked.

“I… I don’t know. Soon. But I don’t know when.”

“And Ms Lyons was hired at the same time?”

“That’s right,” Turnbull said.

“And that was in June?” Mitchell asked.

“Yeah, and we’ve been here ever since. Hailey went out for supplies. Only her. Marcus and Emmitt would come and go. I don’t know where to. I had to stay here. Sleep at night and keep watch during the day. Listen, this is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this. I’ve never broken the law before—”

“And what can you tell me about counterfeiting?” Mitchell cut in.

“I dunno. Paper goes in, banknotes come out,” Turnbull said with a shrug.

“What about the electricity?” Mitchell asked.

“They brought a guy in to do that.”

“Describe him,” Mitchell said.

“I can’t. I didn’t see him,” Turnbull said. “There was this other guy, Charles; he was doing odd jobs for Clipton.”

“Like what?”

“I dunno. I think he might have helped them find the parts for the machine.”

“Describe him,” Mitchell said.

“He was short. Twenty-five, maybe. Cropped hair. Sort of squinted a lot. Marcus shot him. This was a couple of nights ago. He thought Charles was stealing, so he killed him.”

“You saw this with your own eyes?” Mitchell asked.

“Yeah. It was out in front of the house.”

“That’s interesting,” Mitchell said, “because—” He stopped and spun around. The pistol appeared in his hand almost as if from nowhere, but it was Riley in the doorway. She had a shallow gash across her forehead. The constable lowered her revolver as Mitchell holstered his own.

“What happened?” he asked.

“He got away,” Riley said. “That’s a lot of money,” she added. “Are these the counterfeiters?”

“They are. This is Josh Turnbull. The man you were pursuing was Marcus Clipton. The woman was Hailey Lyons. She was shot by a man called Emmitt, who has also escaped.”

“Huh,” she grunted.

“Do you think you can make it to the factory?” Mitchell asked.

“Of course,” Riley said.

“We need to send word for a search party, and for people to secure the building,” Mitchell said.

“Weaver?” Riley asked.

“No. Send the message to the commissioner. You go with her,” Mitchell added, speaking to Ruth. Then he turned to Turnbull. “You lied to me. I’m going to give you until my colleagues return to tell me the truth.”

“I didn’t lie,” Turnbull said.

“You did. You said this was the first crime you’d been involved with, yet you were hired because Clipton had heard you were reliable. Then you said you saw Marcus kill Charles, except we know he escaped. How do you think we found you? Now, start at the beginning, but don’t lie to me again.”

“You chased after him on a horse?” Ruth asked as she and Riley headed back towards the track and where they’d dropped their bicycles.

“What? Yes,” Riley said.

“And your forehead?” Ruth asked.

“What about it?”

“It’s bleeding,” Ruth said.