The Aquila Project (3 page)

The next hour passed swiftly, and the assembled audience amused themselves by watching notables as they arrived,
importantly
late, in order to create a stir. Here was Mr Asquith, the Home Secretary. There was the Bishop of London.

At last the Royal Procession arrived. (Had they seized Grunwalski yet? Was the bridge safe?) The carriages crossed the bridge, and passed out of sight. It seemed an age before they returned, the train of vehicles halting at the dais prepared for the Prince and his suite. At last, the formal opening of the new bridge was about to begin.

The Prince of Wales took up a position in front of the
mechanism
that would operate the bridge machinery. It had been fancifully disguised as a loving-cup standing on an ornate pedestal. The Recorder of London began to read an interminable and inaudible speech, its words carried away on the breeze, and drowned very effectively by the continual cheering of the crowds. The Prince of Wales read an equally inaudible reply, and then
slowly turned the valve that would operate the hydraulic
mechanism
.

Immediately the two massive leaves of the carriageway, each 115 feet in length, began to move upwards. There came a blast of trumpets, a wild crescendo of steam whistles from the boats thronging the river, and, behind all the popular clamour, the booming of guns from the Tower of London.

Mackharness, and the others occupying the seats in the pavilion fell silent as the divided roadway rose majestically and noiselessly into the air until each section blocked the archway of its
respective
tower. A thunder of cheering rose into the summer sky, and almost immediately a triumphant procession of flag-draped vessels began to pass under Tower Bridge.

There was an hour to spare before Box was due back at King James’s Rents for a prearranged meeting with Sergeant Knollys, ample time for him to take a cab and visit his old father at his premises in Oxford Street. Toby Box had joined the Metropolitan Police in 1840, at the age of twenty-one, and had risen to the rank of sergeant. He’d always been a uniformed man, a divisional man, not a detective, like his son.

In 1875, Toby Box had been shot in the leg by a villain called Joseph Edward Spargo, a man who was later hanged for murder. There had followed eighteen years of suffering and the threat of total immobility, and towards the end of ’92 the possibility of gangrene had been mooted. Toby Box’s leg had been amputated at the Royal Free Hospital in Grey’s Inn Road early in January 1893.

And now, after eighteen months’ convalescence, old Mr Box had come home to Oxford Street. He had learnt to walk with his new leg, and was determined to assume his normal life as
proprietor
of Box’s Cigar Divan and Hair-Cutting Rooms, a tall and narrow shop a few yards further on from the Eagle public house, just before you came to the turn into New Bond Street.

As Box came into Oxford Street, he saw the Viking’s landau,
with the beribboned black horse between the shafts, draw away from the pavement and join the stream of traffic moving slowly up the busy thoroughfare. He stopped underneath the awnings of Marshall and Snelgrove’s, which stretched low over the hot flags.

What had the Viking been doing in that particular stretch of Oxford Street? His behaviour at the bridge had been odd, to say the least. It would do no harm to make a few enquiries about him. He was obviously a gentleman of sorts; maybe Superintendent Mackharness would recognize his description. Had he stopped at that particular spot, just by the Eagle, in order to get his hair cut at Pa’s salon? He’d ask Sam, if he remembered.

The street was crowded with tall, rumbling omnibuses, lorries and vans, and a procession of hansom cabs crawling head to tail towards Oxford Circus. Box darted nimbly through the traffic, and made his way to Box’s Cigar Divan and Hair-Cutting Rooms.

It was pleasantly cool and shady in his father’s shop, which was perfumed with the many subtle aromas of exposed tobacco. A middle-aged, balding man wearing an alpaca jacket lifted the counter-flap and came forward to greet him.

‘Inspector Box, sir,’ said the man, ‘I’m glad you could come this afternoon. All the building work was finished by Thursday night, and Mr Box took up his new quarters yesterday morning.’

‘And how is he, Sam?’ asked Box. ‘Is he coping with the leg?’

‘He’s fine, Inspector. I think he’s more mobile than he’s been for years, and he’ll want to do his bit around the shop, I expect. But he’ll not be able to cope with stairs anymore.’

Arnold Box glanced at the narrow staircase that led up to the cigar divan. It had also given access to Toby Box’s snug quarters on the first floor, a tiny sitting-room with a bedroom beyond, looking out on to a tangle of yards. Pa wouldn’t ever go up those stairs again, unless he was carried up in a chair.

Sam opened a door in a dim recess beyond the counter, and
motioned Box to enter a long, newly decorated room, which had been furnished in the heavy, ornate style of earlier in the century. There was a narrow window at the far end, and a gas bracket on either side of a tall mirror above the fireplace.

‘Inspector Box to see you, Mr Box,’ said Sam. He closed the door after Arnold Box, and returned to the shop.

A stout, elderly man in his seventies was sitting in a chair near the fireplace. His bald head was framed by a halo of scanty white hair. As Box entered the room, the old man rose stiffly from his chair to greet him.

‘How are you, Pa?’ asked Box. ‘Have you settled in, yet?’

‘I have, boy,’ said Toby Box. ‘They’ve done a marvellous job down here, and it suits me fine. It’ll be like a new start for me after all those years marooned upstairs. They brought all my furniture down here, as you can see, and converted my upstairs place into a kind of guest apartment. Very handy, if someone wanted to stay.’

‘And is the extension finished? They said it would be done by last Monday.’

‘It’s all finished now, Arnold. Through that door beside the window there’s a snug bedroom and a little washing-place beyond that, built on part of the back yard.’

‘It’s very nice, Pa,’ said Box. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t get here to see it all earlier. It’s been hectic this last two weeks at the Rents.’

Arnold Box looked at his old father, who had resumed his seat. He was wearing a new black suit, with trousers reaching down to his ankles. For years he had worn old-fashioned knee breeches, because of the thick bandages that he’d had to wear on his infected leg. He may be old, thought Box, in fact, seventy-five this year, but his eyes are as keen and bright as they’d been in the days when he’d worked with some of the legendary detectives of Great Scotland Yard, people like Mr Thornton and Mr Aggs.

‘You’d best be on your way, Arnold,’ said Toby Box. ‘I’ll just smoke a pipe, and then I’ll take a nap.’

‘Are you sure you’re all right, Pa?’

‘What? Of course I’m all right. Off with you, now, boy. Duty calls!’

Box left his father to fill his long clay pipe with strong tobacco, and returned to the shop, where Sam had resumed his station behind the counter. The busy clashing of scissors came to Box’s ears from behind the beaded curtain separating the tobacco shop from the haircutting rooms. He parted the curtain with his hand, and saw that the two barbers were preoccupied with hirsute customers, draped anonymously in white sheets, like pieces of stored furniture. In one corner, hemmed in by a floor brush, Box saw a pile of blond hair, the relic of a previous customer. He suddenly remembered his Viking.

‘Sam,’ he asked, ‘did you have a big blond fellow in here just now, a sort of Viking, with a mane of fair hair and a big golden beard?’

‘Why, yes, Mr Box. How did you know that? He was a very striking gentleman, very tall and commanding. A well-dressed man with a rose in his buttonhole. He came in a very fancy carriage, with a man up on the box. A landau, it was. You must have just missed him.’

The beaded curtain parted, and a customer emerged into the hair-cutting saloon, dabbing his neck with a handkerchief. He nodded briefly to the two men, and left the shop, setting the little bell behind the door jingling. One of the two barbers came into the space behind the counter, drying his hands on a towel.

‘Frank,’ asked Sam, ‘was it you who cut that big blond gentleman’s hair? Inspector Box has been asking about him.’

‘Yes, I saw to him,’ said Frank. ‘“Give me a good trim, my man”, he said, “but don’t scalp me. And you can trim the beard to make it more spade-like”. So I did. He seemed very satisfied. Gave me a shilling, which was very handsome, considering it’s only fourpence for a trim.’

‘What kind of a man was he, Frank?’ asked Box. ‘I’m asking because I fancy I saw him near the new bridge this morning. He was watching the proceedings through a telescope.’

‘Well, Mr Box, he was a big, jolly kind of man, who spoke with what I’d call a laughing voice. He wore a monocle in his right eye, and had the sense to stow it away in a pocket before I threw the sheet over him. And he
had
been near the new bridge, because he told me about it. Quite chatty, he was. He described all the flags waving, and the people cheering. He was a foreigner.’

‘Was he, now? What kind of a foreigner?’

‘Well,
I
don’t know, Mr Box. He was just a foreigner. He spoke perfect English, though. And now I come to think of it, he did say something about being foreign. Leastways, he mentioned a foreign town. Now, what was it?’

‘Paris? Berlin? Come on, Frank – think!’

‘It was – yes, Warsaw. “We’ve some fine bridges in Warsaw, my man”. That’s what he said. Warsaw’s in Poland, isn’t it? So I suppose he must be a Pole.’

A Pole…. That man Grunwalski was a Pole. How did he know that? Because Grunwalski was a Polish name. And, if Frank was right, the Viking with the telescope was also a Pole. The general feeling back at the Rents was that Grunwalski was acting alone, perhaps at the urging of some festering grievance to do with his native land. If that was so, then the business of Grunwalski was a divisional affair, something that had come to light in Bethnal Green, which was Mr Keating’s patch, and would be terminated across the river with ‘M’ Division in Southwark.

But what if those two men were part of a conspiracy? Had the Viking been there to witness Grunwalski’s success or failure, and then to report to someone else? It was certainly possible. Meanwhile, it has surely been a quirk of fate that the Viking had stopped for a haircut at Box’s Cigar Divan and Hair-Cutting Rooms.

‘S
O WHAT DO
you think, Jack? About this Anders Grunwalski, I mean. Was he acting alone, or is he part of something bigger, and more sinister?'

It was just after four o'clock. Box and Knollys were sitting at the long cluttered table in Box's office at 2 King James's Rents.

‘I'm not sure, sir,' Jack Knollys replied. ‘He seemed quite desperate when we finally got the darbies on him. It may have been that he was frantic at letting down some confederates – so yes, he could well be part of a gang. He refused to speak at all, or to answer any of the charges made against him. He was in very good shape physically, as though he'd been in training for the escapade. Lithe and strong, he is, with a steady, cool eye.'

‘Hm…. Did they find anything in his pockets? Or needn't I ask?'

‘There was nothing at all in his pockets, sir, and no labels in his clothes. There was nothing there to interest us. The only item he was carrying in a pocket was that pistol.'

Arnold Box lit a thin cheroot, and threw the spent wax vesta into the fireplace. He sighed, and shook his head in dissatisfaction.

‘I don't like the smell of it, Sergeant,' he said. ‘That pistol…. I saw him produce it myself from my perch on the roof of Carmody's warehouse. What was he supposed to be? A bomber, or an assassin? And what about my Viking?'

‘Your Viking, sir? I didn't know you had a Viking.'

Box told his sergeant about the mysterious man in the landau.

‘I had a strong impression, Sergeant, that he was watching to see what was happening at the entrance to that boiler room. He was in the wrong location to see the ceremonies. In fact, from where he was positioned, I don't think he could see the carriageway of the bridge at all—'

Box broke off as a constable came through the swing doors.

‘A note for you, sir,' he said, ‘brought by messenger from the Home Office.'

‘It's from Mr Mack,' said Box, when he had torn open the small buff envelope. ‘He wants us to go and see him any time after five o'clock. He says he's puzzled. Come on, Jack, let's take a walk up Whitehall, and hear what Mr Mack's got to tell us.'

Box and Knollys had not visited Mr Mack's spacious domain in the Home Office since the affair of the Hansa Protocol. Nothing had changed. The premises still resembled a kind of roofed scrapyard. The twisted, fire-damaged remains of an iron spiral staircase had been bolted into the wall and part of the ceiling, awaiting expert examination. A number of burnt and shattered
strong-room
doors, their smart paint charred and peeling, were propped against the far wall.

Mr Mack, his pale eyes watering, shuffled out of an adjoining room which had been fitted up as a workshop.

‘Come in, Inspector,' he said, ‘and you, Sergeant Knollys. Sit down there, by the lathe, while I tell you what I've discovered.'

The old Home Office expert lit a short clay pipe, and sank into a chair behind his desk. In front of him lay the component parts of the fiendish device that he had seized and rendered harmless earlier that day. Mr Mack waved his pipe vaguely at it and then launched into speech.

‘This is a very interesting piece of mechanism, gents,' he said, ‘and a very curious one, as well. The detonator – that green iron box, there – consisted of a little charge of fulminate of mercury
packed into a copper cylinder. An ingenious mechanism, controlled by the time-clock that you, Sergeant Knollys, saw me smash with my hammer. It shoots a percussive bolt into the end of the cylinder, thus exploding the fulminate charge.'

‘And that would have blown up the boiler?' asked Box. The old expert sighed, and then laughed throatily.

‘Well, hardly that, Mr Box. If you'd let me finish what I was saying, all will be revealed. The point about sensitive explosives like fulminate of mercury, or lead azide, is that they can
communicate
detonation to any high explosive in the vicinity. In this case, the high explosive was dynamite, which you can see there, on the table. There were eight sticks, all enclosed in the usual parchment cases, but I've opened them all, and extracted the contents.'

‘It's nitroglycerine, isn't it? Dynamite, I mean.'

‘Yes, it is, but it's absorbed in a stuff called kieselguhr, for safety reasons. That bomb would have blown the boiler to smithereens, and would have killed anyone within five yards of the explosion. But it would have had no visible effect on Tower Bridge itself.'

‘So even if we had known nothing about the affair, our terrorist – this man Grunwalski – would have failed in his mission?'

‘It's not as simple as that, Mr Box.'

Mr Mack felt in the pockets of his rusty old jacket and produced a hand lens.

‘Look at the smashed time-clock,' he said, ‘and tell me what you see.'

Box peered through the lens at the shattered clock face still visible beyond the splintered glass of the dial. He gave an
exclamation
of surprise.

‘It was set to go off at one o'clock!' he cried. ‘Long after the Royal party had returned to Marlborough House. I don't
understand
—'

‘And here's something else that will interest you,' Mr Mack continued. ‘All that dynamite was damp. I don't mean damp through bad storage: it had been deliberately soaked with water.
My view, for what it's worth, was that your man Grunwalski never intended his bomb to work. And that makes me ask, why not? Somebody told me he drew a pistol, and began to run up the slope towards the bridge. Maybe the bomb was a diversion, and he was in reality an assassin. I don't know, but I'm sure you'll give the matter some thought.'

Box was silent for a moment. There was something here that he didn't understand, something of monumental importance that he was simply unable to grasp.

‘Sergeant,' he said, ‘as soon as we leave here, go back to Weavers' Lane Police Station, and ask Inspector Hare to show you that pistol – the one that Grunwalski produced as he ran up to the bridge. Then come straight back to the Rents.'

He turned to look at the old explosives expert, who was still puffing away at his pipe. The air of the little workshop was thick with smoke.

‘You've given us both food for thought, Mr Mack,' said Box. ‘You're a shining ornament, if I may say so. Is there anything else?'

‘Well, not really, Mr Box. The clock mechanism in the
detonator
was manufactured by Larousse & Cie of Toulouse, and the detonator itself, by which I mean the copper cylinder and its contents, come from the Minnesota Mining Company. You can buy them readily in England, and I can give you a list of all the suppliers in the United Kingdom, if you want it. The dynamite was produced by the Dunfermline Powder Works. It's the ordinary kind of stuff, used for blasting in mines and quarries.'

Arnold Box looked at old Mr Mack in awe. ‘A shining
ornament
,' he repeated, half to himself. The old expert smiled beneath his straggly moustache.

When Box returned to King James's Rents, the duty sergeant in the front reception room stepped out into the vestibule. Sergeant Driscoll was an elderly, heavily bearded man who walked with a limp. He regarded Box through little round wire-framed spectacles.

‘Sir,' he said, ‘Inspector Fitzgerald from Bethnal Green's waiting to see you. He wanted to stay with me at the door, but I settled him in your office.'

‘Thanks, Pat. Is Mr Mackharness back yet?'

‘No, sir. I think he's out junketing somewhere with Lord Maurice Vale Rose, celebrating the opening of the new bridge. I don't think we'll see him till Monday morning.'

Sergeant Driscoll returned to his cramped room leading off the vestibule, and Box pushed open the swing doors of his office.

Inspector Fitzgerald of ‘J' Division was standing near the
fireplace
, reading an early evening copy of the
Globe
. He held the newspaper wide open, using its rustling pages as a kind of shield for his body. A tall man in his fifties, with sharp blue eyes peering out from beneath riotous eyebrows, he held a cigarette steady in the dead centre of his mouth, occasionally sending strong streams of smoke down his nostrils. The front of his dark-brown suit was covered in fallen ash.

‘Hello, Mr Fitz,' said Box, sitting down in his favourite chair at the long table. ‘We don't often see you here at the Rents. What can I do for you?'

‘It's more a case of what I can do for
you
, isn't it?' said Mr Fitz. He spoke with a pleasant London voice, with a hint of mockery behind the simplest words.

‘You were down there at Tower Bridge today, and saw what happened to Anders Grunwalski. Well, I've come out all this way to Whitehall to tell you all about him. I think you should know.'

The Bethnal Green detective screwed his newspaper into a ball, threw it into the hearth, and sat down opposite Box. The cigarette still stayed where it had been put in the centre of his lips. He had long ago mastered the skill of talking round it.

‘This Grunwalski first appeared on our patch just over a month ago. He's a sober-looking kind of a man with dangerous eyes, the type of man who looks mad, but in fact is coldly sane. For the most part he kept himself to himself, but he liked the drink, and
when he had had a few whiskies his flaming temper welled up from somewhere, and he'd be looking for fights. That unlovely quality got him into trouble with the law more than once. Are you getting the picture?'

‘I am. A surly cur of a man with a grudge against everyone and everything. Quite a nice addition to your rogues' gallery up in Bethnal Green Road.'

Inspector Fitzgerald threw the stub of his cigarette into the fire. He permitted himself a rather amused smile.

‘You know what it's like on our patch, Arnold. We've got street vendors, vagrants, dog fanciers and dog stealers; there are
pick-pockets
, card sharpers, shoplifters – and now, for our sins, a full-blown anarchist with a bomb in his pocket. He's been up for street brawling and smashing windows in pubs, so, as you say, he fits in well on our patch.'

‘Where did he come from?'

‘Well, that's the question, isn't it? Usually, whenever a new villain moves into our parish, he's got a kind of crooked
pedigree
. He's someone's friend or relative, or he's worked on cracking a crib with one of our resident beauties. But this Grunwalski just appeared from nowhere a month ago, primed with a set of stories. It makes you think. It certainly made
me
think. He's not a Fenian, that's for sure. I don't know what he's supposed to be.'

‘Where does this Anders Grunwalski live?'

‘He holes up in one of the blind courts off Half Nichol Street. When he's not there, he's in the Woodville Arms in Navarre Passage. I chose a few occasions when Grunwalski was in the Woodville Arms to send one or two of my light fantastic boys into his den to turn the place over. It was they who found his written arrangements for doing today's bridge job – notes, maps, diagrams. There was even a pencil drawing of his bomb!'

‘And that's how Mr Mackharness, and everybody in that posse from Bermondsey, knew what was going to happen?'

‘It was, Arnold. I was able to hand your guvnor the whole
operation
on a plate – if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor.'

The two men eyed each other in silence for a moment. It was growing dark, and the light from the hissing gas mantle was beginning to exert itself in the dim office. A coal settled in the grate. It was time for Box to make his thoughts known.

‘Those “light fantastic boys” of yours will get you into serious trouble one of these days, Mr Fitz. Everybody knows about them. They're sneak-thieves and so-called reformed characters out to make a few shillings by breaking the law for you. Those searches of private premises that you tell them to make are incidents of breaking and entering.'

Much to Box's relief, Inspector Fitzgerald seemed to take no offence at his frank remarks.

‘I take your point, Arnold, and, of course, you're right from the law's point of view. But I've always hated villains, ever since my father was beaten senseless and his barrow stolen in Crooked Billet Yard in '52. I was only twelve then, but I never forgot it. He lost his barrow, his stock, and seven shillings and fourpence, his takings for a whole day – oh, why am I telling you all this? Let's get back to the matter in hand.'

Inspector Fitzgerald stooped down, and retrieved a Gladstone bag from under the table. He opened it, and pulled out a bundle of papers and a sealed brown envelope, which he laid before Box.

‘As soon as I heard that Grunwalski had been arrested this morning,' he said, ‘I went to his lodgings off Half Nichol Street, and brought these things away for you to see. And yes, I went armed with a search warrant this time. I've seen all those things before – my light fantastic boys brought them out to me one night, and I read them by the light of a dark lantern in a hansom cab. Then they put them all back where they'd found them. Very nifty fellows, my boys. I'd hoped that Grunwalski had received some letters that might have told us more about him, but we were
disappointed. Any letters he might have received he burned, and to my knowledge he never posted any.'

‘You don't much care about the rule book when it comes to catching villains, do you, Mr Fitz?'

‘I don't. I've only two years to go before retirement, and I'm getting too old to bother about the book. I hate villains, Arnold, and I hate all enemies of our Queen and Country. It's because of me, and my peculiar way of looking at things, that Tower Bridge is still standing this evening.'

Inspector Fitzgerald stretched himself, and got up from his chair.