The Hangman's Child (33 page)

'I ain't got a warrant

Saward turned away.

'Then I suggest, mister, that you return when you have one.' 'See?' said Bragg sympathetically. 'Life ain't all
Vingt-et-Un
at sixpence a dozen, is it, Mr Verity?' Verity glared at him.

‘I
got reason to suspect that James Patrick Rann, otherwise known as Jack Rann, fugitive from Newgate, is in this house.' Bragg shook his head, as if to clear it.

'Jack Rann? I don't believe I ever met a Jack Rann. Poxy little name, though, ain't it? Sort of name that needs putting to sleep for its own good. You can't search this house and create a disturbance, of course, Mr Saward just told you that, but wait here a minute.'

The graceful wrought-iron staircase curved up in a series of diminishing ovals. Bragg walked to the first floor and presently reappeared. Verity understood the extent of the disaster. Behind Bragg, in a lavender-grey suit and green stock, walked Inspector Fowler. Verity waited until they were face to face.

'Permission to proceed with search of premises. With respect, sir.'

Fowler looked at him, as if suspecting a trick.

'It has just been done, Sergeant. Two men upstairs are taking the last witness-statement from a young gentleman of Magdalen College, who appears to have lost a diamond cravat-pin.'

'Information as to the person Jack Rann being on these premises, sir. With respect.'

Fowler sighed.

'Two officers of this division, with my assistance as a passer-by, have just searched the premises at the request of Madame Martileau. Madame fears that there may be a thief among her guests. We have searched the attics, the bedrooms, the reception rooms, the basement, the kitchens, the cellars. There is no Jack Rann in the building.'

Verity felt his face growing warm and his heart pounding. Flash Charley Fowler stared back at him. Fowler was a liar and a scoundrel but his rank decided the matter.

'Nossir,' Verity said humbly. 'Very good, sir.'

Fowler sighed again, as if with relief. He was about to turn to Bragg with an apology but first he dealt with Verity.

'Have the goodness to go with Samson. Take this young person and wait outside until I come to you. Understand?'

'Yessir!' A few weeks ago, on the police boat, it was almost impossible to call the newly promoted Fowler 'sir'. Now the compliment came easily from his tongue. With Samson and Miss Jolly, he stood in the lamplight of the paved courtyard.

'Chinese Shades!' said Samson bitterly. 'Company of a young person! We was supposed to be having a bit of roly-poly! Look at this mess! You any idea what Mr Croaker might have to say ...?'

He stiffened to attention as Fowler walked leisurely from the lighted doorway.

'Well,' Fowler said, suddenly amiable, 'I'd say there's no harm done. Madame Martileau's a reasonable woman. Mr Bragg insists he took no offence. An' I hope I'm reasonable. Eh?'

'Yessir,' said Verity meekly.

'What I will do, however, is have this young person in custody as suspect and accomplice in the robbing of visitors to Madame Martileau. Others in the house taking the valuables, the same being slipped to this little piece when she puts her nose inside. Right? She been seen keeping watch on the place. Slip the cuffs on her Verity, there's a good fellow.'

Miss Jolly's face was a parody of terror at being delivered by Fowler to Bragg and the knife, her dark eyes wide and her mouth stretched in a silent scream.

'Nossir,' said Verity quietly, 'with respect, sir.'

Fowler's face creased with grotesque incomprehension.

'No, sir? Meaning what, sir?'

'Ain't possible for you to arrest this young person, sir.' 'Not possible?' Fowler was almost laughing at the absurdity. 'Why not?'

'She been arrested already, sir. By me and Mr Samson. Matter of Handsome Rann and perverting the course of justice.'

Samson stared glassily ahead of him, as if seeing deeply into some nameless horror. But he said nothing. Fowler relaxed.

'In that case, Verity, you got not the least worry. According to the police manual, you now surrender your prisoner to your superior officer.'

'Oh, I will, sir. But it ain't you, sir.'

'By God!' said Fowler, all his assumed amiability gone. 'You shall pay a reckoning for this. That girl is my prisoner.'

Verity stood solidly between Miss Jolly and the inspector.

'Nossir, with respect, sir. This young person is Mr Croaker's prisoner, having been arrested by me and Mr Samson on Mr Croaker's orders. And just as you happen to be superior to us, Mr Fowler, so Mr Croaker happens to be superior to you. And to us, of course. We got to obey his orders, all of us.'

Samson gave a slight gasp, as if of pain, but he still said nothing. Fowler looked as though he might make an annihilating riposte. Nothing came. The heavens would fall on the two sergeants next day but for the moment he was beaten. He turned without a word and was about to stride back into Madame Martileau's brightly lit hallway.

Verity never knew why he asked his parting question. In all the mysteries that had followed the death of Pandy Quinn there was a pattern, after all. Deep in his mind, where he was not aware of it, two fragments of the puzzle joined in certainty. Ten seconds before he spoke, he could not have matched them.

'Mr Fowler, sir!' Fowler stopped and looked back at him. 'When Pandy Quinn was killed in the tap-room of the Golden Anchor and you was upstairs questioning a young person in connection with a petty crime, that young person was never called to the inquest, not having seen nor heard anything. Never named in the police reports.'

He stared at Fowler in fascination, seeing such shock in the blue eyes that he could almost not go on with the question.

'It ain't much, Mr Fowler, but me and Mr Samson was right, wasn't we? The one that never give evidence and wasn't named. She was the one they called Sly Joanne or Pretty-Jo Mischief, wasn't she, sir? The one that was found-drowned off Wapping? It was her, Mr Fowler, wasn't it, sir?'

Fowler stopped and Verity felt like a man who had hit the bull's-eye of a target without taking aim or knowing it was there. But the shock had gone from the blue eyes. It was not dismay, or anger, or fear that he saw in the inspector's face: there was just the flat despair of a man who had run down the ways and turnings of a labyrinth to find, at last, only a blank and pitiless wall.

32

The scream was like a needle of fright through his heart. Worse than by dark, it was horror in full daylight, ringing through the dusty attic sunlight of a warm afternoon. Those who caused it knew their victim would not be heard beyond these rooms. It carried unbridled terror, not pain, the dread of what was to come. They had shown her something as they asked their questions. Some common domestic implement, perhaps, now obscenely menacing. Then came silence, more terrible than the transfixing cry. Rann crossed to the door and beat his fist on it. He rattled the handle in vain, conscious of the mounting toll of seconds that ticked by.

At last came a choking howl and he knew what they were doing. There was retching, another shrill appeal that failed for want of breath. Someone came to him now. The door opened and Bragg stood flanked by Hardwicke and Atwell. Moonbeam was not there. Rann guessed that the unmarked bruiser had been selected as executioner of Maggie Fashion.

Bragg stared at Rann, dispensing a bitter smile under the absurdly piled hair.

'You got something to say, Handsome Jack? Something on your mind, was there?'

'Ask me, not them,' Rann said quietly. 'I know where the dibs is. They don't.'

Bragg lifted one corner of his lip above his teeth, the smile of contempt.

'They ain't been asked yet. Maggie Turnbull with the hard face and big bum had to have a good wash first. Only way to get the truth. Give them a taste of what's coming. Then ask the questions, not before. Saves no end of time.'

‘I
want an agreement,' Rann said in the same quiet voice, 'that's all.'

Bragg turned to Hardwicke, then Atwell, then back to Rann, his mouth a tunnel of silent amusement.

'Look at 'im! He wants an agreement! Agreement? He wants a good smack round the head! Agreement? Such as?'

'I'm the putter-up,' Rann said softly,
‘I
know where everything is. You can have it. I'll take you there, show you where. But they don't get hurt. That's the agreement. Once you got the dibs, you let 'em go. And there's no point asking 'em. You know Samuel and you know the girl. They ain't hard as brass, are they? They'd make up any story to stop what's being done to 'em. But since they don't know, it'd just be a story. And it'd be too late for you then.'

Bragg glared at him.

'Too late?' He took the open flap of Rann's coat. 'What the fuck you mean, too late?'

'Tonight,' Rann said, 'it's being fetched. Low water. Tunnels under Shadwell. After the level drops from the flood. Leave it till tomorrow and you can kiss it all goodbye. Suit yourself. Only there ain't no point asking those two.'

'The girl and Samuel been down the drains, Mr Bragg,' Hardwicke said quickly, 'living like Hanover rats.'

'And now we got to take 'im down there?'

'He'd be no trouble in handcuffs, Mr Bragg. With two or three of us. He knows what he'd get!'

'Mr Hardwicke's right,' Rann said simply. 'Bank notes and bonds don't make a big bundle, not even twenty thousand quid. Go easily behind a couple of bricks. The place itself ain't far. Just below where they built the tanneries. Still, you'd never find it on your own. And I can't tell you the exact bricks without being there. No man could describe that without seeing them. That's the truth. But suit yerself. I got no more I can say.' Bragg turned to Atwell.

'Go and ask Mr Fowler. And see about the handcuffs.' He turned back to Rann. 'What you suggesting, exactly?'

'I'll come with you,' Rann said in the same quiet, indifferent voice. 'You know I won't play up, Mag and Samuel being left here to answer for me. Any case, there's a few of you and only one of me. When you got what you want, you come back and let 'em go. No danger, are they? Hardly run and tell the law, them being the thieves.'

"And you?' Bragg asked contemptuously.

Rann shrugged, as if conceding to Bragg the right to kill him.

'Right, then,' Bragg said, 'so long as that's understood.'

Atwell came back with the silver-metal cuffs in his hand. Rann knew, at least, that Fowler was still in the building.

'Quarter ebb, go down the main shaft from the kiosk near Shadwell Basin,' Atwell said. 'Flood never reaches that far. You can have an hour down there and be out again before the sluices.'

Bragg repeated his half-sneer, half-smile. He jerked his head at Rann.

‘I
don't like taking His Majesty. What if he was seen?'

'Mr Fowler got a policeman's hat and coat for him. They got no reason to follow anyone dressed like that. He won't be noticed. Specially if the street's patrolled first and hangers-about remarked. And Handsome Jack wantin' to be so helpful ain't going to try hanky-panky. Him being so sensitive to that trollop Maggie and her noise!'

Bragg lifted the corner of his lip again and smiled at Rann, speaking to Atwell.

'Moonbeam,' he said humorously, 'tell Moonbeam to give young Maggie another wash! Just for luck. And smack some sense into that old fool Samuel's head!'

'There's no need for that!' Rann said desperately.

Bragg's lip drew back from his teeth in another grotesque smile.

'I'd say there was need, wouldn't you, Mr Hardwicke? See, Handsome Rann? Mr Hardwicke thinks there's need.'

They stood in the room, Rann held by Hardwicke and Atwell, hearing again the sounds of terror.

Half an hour later, in evening sunlight, the black cab stood where the stable yard of the Hanoverian gentleman's house had been. There was no one to see them as Rann, Bragg, Fowler, and Moonbeam got into it. Hardwicke and Atwell had been left to guard Samuel and Maggie, perhaps to act as executioners when the time came. But that would surely not happen until Bragg returned with the booty. Wild last-hope schemes unravelled in Rann's mind, as they passed through The Strand into Fleet Street. There was no scheme, in the end, only a brief moment of sudden opportunity when he might take Bragg or Fowler with him. He must die at last, but he promised himself he would not die alone. Furtively he tried his wrists in the metal cuffs that held his hands before him. The steel grip was unyielding.

The ornamental kiosk in the docks, by Shadwell Basin, disguised the baser structure of an entrance to the sewers. An iron ladder riveted to the brickwork led down a dozen feet. Moonbeam went first. Rann climbed down awkwardly with his manacled hands. Fowler and Bragg followed.