The Winter Rose (11 page)

Little by little he'd recovered his mind, eventually remembering who
he was and where he lived, but when he went to look for his family, they
were gone. Alone, terrifled he would be found out for Malone's murder,
he went to the only person he could trust--Denny Quinn, a minor
underworld fig-ure. Denny had advised him to lay low and to take Sid
Malone's name. Malone had been a loner, and with his red hair he'd
looked like Charlie. If the police ever grew suspicious and started
asking questions, Quinn rea-soned, Malone was alive and well and could
answer them.

Fiona had been undone by meeting the brother she'd thought was dead.
She'd hugged him and wept, overjoyed to see him, but she'd been upset to
discover who and what he'd become, and pleaded with him to leave the
villain's life behind. Hurt and angered, he'd told her he'd done what
he'd needed to do to survive, and had refused to see her again. Her
uncle Roddy, a police officer, had looked for him, combing the river's
north and south banks, but hadn't been able to find him. "Let him go,
Fee," Joe had urged, and she'd reluctantly agreed, deciding never to
tell Seamie what had really become of the older brother he'd loved and
admired. That he'd become a criminal, vicious and brutal.

"Mrs. Bristow! What are you doing, ma'am? You should be sitting down."

It was Mel. He'd returned with the tea. Fiona hadn't even heard him come up the stairs.

"You still don't look well," he said, placing a steaming mug on top
of a tea chest. "I think you should go home. I'm going to fetch your
driver now, and I don't want any arguments. Sit there and drink your tea
while I get him."

Fiona nodded gratefully. He was right. She should go home. As she
sipped her tea, she saw something glinting at her from the floor. It was
the sixpence she'd won from Mel. She'd had it in her hand when she came
up here, and she must have dropped it when she'd collapsed. She picked
it up. Sixpence was nothing to her now, but once it would have meant the
difference between eating and starving.

She looked at it, but saw other coins. Pennies, tanners, shillings.
Char-lie was pulling them from his pocket and putting them on the
rickety table in the damp, dingy room where they lived. There was a
pound note, too-- crumpled and bloodstained--his winnings from a
dreadful bare-knuckle brawl he'd fought. "Take it," he'd said. "All of
it." She hadn't wanted to, but she did. It had bought milk for the baby.
Meat for their supper. Coal for the grate. Boots for Seamie. It had
paid their rent.

"Charlie," she whispered brokenly, curling her fingers closed over the coin.

She had needed him then, desperately. They all had. And he had been
there for them, giving up his own dreams--dreams of going to America--
to take care of them.

Now he needed her.

"And I will be there," she said.

She would search for him herself. He wouldn't listen to
strangers--he'd made that clear--but he'd listen to her, she would make
him. If only she could get to him.

But how? She had no idea where to even begin searching. She knew he
moved about in the East End, but didn't know where he lived. Bennett
told her he'd met him at a riverside pub, but he hadn't told her which
pub, and Joe had shown him the door before he could. Joe. Fiona felt
guilt prick her at the thought of her husband. He would be furious if he
knew what she was planning to do. She heard his voice in her head,
cautioning her. He was only trying to protect her. To keep her safe. He
wanted her to let go of the thing she couldn't have, and concentrate on
all the things she did have. She was so fortunate, so blessed. She had
everything money could buy and everything it couldn't. She was happy,
truly happy. And yet, alongside her happiness lived a deep and aching
sadness for the one who was missing. The one who never came to Sunday
dinners. The uncle whose name the children never shouted. The brother
absent from every family photograph.

She would do it. She would find him. It was a risk, a gamble, but one
she was prepared to take. She would tell no one of her plans, not even
Joe. She felt terrible about the deception, but she saw no other choice.
Joe was intractable on this issue. He saw her brother as a hard man, a
lost cause. But he wasn't, and when she'd found Charlie, when she'd
brought him back to them, Joe would see he'd been wrong. He would
forgive her for going against his wishes. Charlie didn't belong to the
dark underworld of wide boys and villains. He never had. He belonged to
her, and she would get him back. Somehow, some way, she would get him
back.

"Mrs. Bristow!" Mel bellowed, hurrying back up the stairs. "Carriage is out front! Driver's waiting!"

She got to her feet, still weak, but resolved.

"Are you ready, ma'am?" he asked, huffing and puffing up the stairs to help her.

She nodded. "Yes, Mel," she said. "I am."

Fiona realized she was still clutching the sixpence. She squeezed the
coin tightly, then put it in her pocket. She was a gambler, and this
time she would bet on Charlie.

"Guv!" Frankie Betts yelled. "Guv, we're through!"

Sid Malone motioned for the lantern and shone it on the bricks. There

was a hole all right--he could see the pillars that held up the
Stronghold's roof through it--but it was only about a foot wide. Nowhere
near big enough.

"Ronnie, Oz, take over!" he barked. "Move!"

The sledgehammers changed hands. Ronnie and Oz smashed away while the
others, winded and sweating, picked up the shattered brick and loaded
it into empty crates. Sid looked at his pocketwatch. Half past twelve.
Only one more hour until O'Neill's boat docked. Only two until the tide
turned. If they weren't gone by then, they were done for.

"Des, where's the guard?" he asked, his voice on edge.

"Still outside having a gander at the wagons."

"The fat bastard," Sid swore. Earlier that night, he'd had two of his
men set fire to an abandoned warehouse a street away. As planned, the
blaze had drawn every watchman within a mile to battle it--every one but
this one. The man weighed twenty stone if he weighed a pound. It was
too much work for him to walk up a street to watch the fire, so he'd
settled for watching the fire brigade. He could come back inside any
minute, and that would complicate things. At least he couldn't hear the
noise they were making. The fire brigades were using the street that ran
in front of the wharf for access to the burning warehouse--as Sid had
known they would. Their bells and wagons made an unbelievable din.

"Oi! The rozzers!" Desi suddenly shouted.

Sid grabbed Ronnie's shirt and Oz's arm, nearly getting whacked with a sledgehammer.

"What is it?" Oz said, panting.

"Quiet!" Sid hissed. "Desi, what are they doing?"

"Testing the lock."

Sid felt every muscle in his body tighten.

"They've left it. They're talking to our fat little friend. That's it, be good lads now...."

"Des!"

"It's all right, guv. They're moving off."

Sid exhaled. With his next breath he grabbed Ozzie's hammer and
attacked the wall. Fear drove him. The muscles in his broad, bare chest
rippled and fiexed with every swing. Sweat ran off his body. The impact
of iron against brick sent painful shock waves up his arms, but he
barely felt them. It was taking too long. They'd never get out in time.
He saw Tom waving wildly at him and stopped swinging.

"Stop, guv, stop! It's enough. We're in."

Sid dropped the hammer. He was through the hole before Tom stopped
speaking. Five men followed, with Ozzie dragging the lantern. Desi
stayed behind in the London Wharf as sentry. Sid motioned for the
lantern now and shone it around the cavernous room. There was nothing
but roll upon roll of fabric. Heavy silks and brocades, all wrapped in
brown paper. No boxes, no crates.

"Frankie, we didn't come here to make dresses," he said.

"They're in here," Frankie insisted. "I know they are. Me mate said on six. Maybe he got the floor wrong. Let's try five."

The men were as quiet as death on the stairs. When they reached the
fifth floor they fanned out, lifting tarpaulins and moving boxes. After a
few minutes, Ozzie doubled back. "Nothing, guv," he said.

"Then we'll try four!" Frankie snapped, stalking off to the stairwell.

Sid checked his watch in the lantern's light. Fifteen more minutes
gone, and all they'd done was arse about. This was no good. They were
cut off from Desi now, too far away to hear if he called for them. He
had no idea where the watchman was, or if the police were still near. He
would give Frankie another five minutes to find what they were after
and then they were out, goods or no.

When he reached the fourth floor Frankie was in the middle of the
room, working the lid off a crate with a prybar. The nails screeched as
they pulled free, making Sid flinch. Then there was a low laugh and
Frankie's voice, "Here, guv! Over here!"

Sid saw the markings, stamped in big block letters, as he approached
the boxes: Winchester Repeating Arms Co., Manufactured by Bonehill Gun
Works, Birmingham. Frankie took a rifle out of the crate and hefted it
admiringly.

"Let's go," Sid said. "Time's running out. We've got to shift the
whole lot up two flights of stairs now before we can even begin shifting
it down six more. Where are the rest of them?"

Frankie put the gun back and the rest of his men quickly counted
fifty-four more crates of rifles and another twenty of revolvers.

"Ronnie, half a dozen Bristols in a sack for us," Sid said, motioning to the revolvers. "The rest go on the boat. Let's move."

Pairing off as planned, each man and his partner hoisted one of the
long crates between them and headed for the stairs. Sid heard grunts and
curses. The crates contained twenty-five rifles apiece. They were heavy
and awkward. He was worried. The weight. The extra stairs. The added
time. And where was that fucking watch?

Desi was nearly dancing with agitation when they pushed the first
crate through the hole. "Where the hell have you been? I thought you was
nicked!" he said. Sid explained. "I don't like it," Desi said. "Too
many crates, too many stairs. We'll never make the boat in time."

"We will. Just keep an eye on your man down there."

One by one, the crates were pushed through the hole and into the
Lon-don Wharf. Sid heard every rattle and bump. The Stronghold's wooden
stairs were old and dry, and they creaked with every footfall. The
sounds plucked at his nerves like fingers on a harp. Again and again he
and his men went back into the Stronghold, Sid glancing at Desi first,
Desi giving him a tense thumbs-up. They were on their second-to-last
trip, almost done, when Sid heard the voices. Two of them. On the first
floor. At the mouth of the staircase. "Freeze!" he hissed. His men
stopped dead, the heavy crates suspended between them. Sid was at the
bottom of the fifth-floor staircase, completely exposed. If only he had
the pistols he'd told Ronnie to put in the sack. They weren't loaded,
but the watch wouldn't know that. The sack was now up on the London's
sixth floor with Desi. Along with the hammers and prybars. And his shirt
and jacket, with his knife in its pocket. He had nothing, not one
bloody thing. It was a beginner's mistake. How could he have been so
stupid? If the watch came all the way up, if he saw them, he and Frankie
would have to drop the crate and run after him. He didn't want that.
Didn't want the noise. Or the blood. He hadn't planned it that way.

He'd planned it so that the watch would be distracted. So that no one
would find out the guns were missing for days. Maybe weeks. That would
give O'Neill time to get to Dublin without interference. He'd be docked
on the Liffey, cargo unloaded, drinking Guinness in his favorite pub
before the rozzers even twigged.

Involve the watch and things got tricky. You had to knock him out and
tie him up. Make sure he didn't see your face. His men would find him
the next morning, or his wife would tell the police he hadn't come home.
When he was finally untied, he would tell the police what had happened
and a hue and cry would go up immediately.

Sid waited and listened, his muscles straining with the effort of
keeping the crate aloft. It was all on him, this. It had all been his
idea. Desi had tried to talk him out of it.

"Forget it, guv. It's a one-way ticket to the nick," he'd said.
"Wharf's got no roof access. Got doors like a fortress. Walls are five
feet thick. Why do you think it's called the Stronghold?"

"Same reason the piss-water you serve's called beer--wishful
thinking," Sid replied. "The walls are five feet, but only at the base.
They narrow as you go up. By the time you're on the sixth floor, they're
only a foot thick."

"How'd you know that?" Desi asked sulkily, put out by the beer remark.

"Looked at the blueprints," Sid said.

"You never. Where?"

"The Guildhall. Me and Frankie. Wore our Sunday best and told them we
was architects. This is how we'll do it. In through the London's
riverside doors, up to the sixth floor, then smash through the wall into
the Stronghold. Get the goods, cover our tracks, and get out."

"Jesus, guv, you're a bloody genius, you," Oz had said excitedly, as
Sid spread out the drawings they'd made. "The Guildhall, architects...
who'd have thought of it? We pull this off, we'll make ourselves a
pile."

And if they didn't, they'd go to prison.

An image flashed into Sid's mind now. A swirl of gray with fiecks of
black and white. The stone floor at Wormwood Scrubs prison. Granite,
he'd thought, in the instant before his head smashed into it. Then
nothing, just a blinding white pain as Wiggs kicked his ribs in. Years
later, the man's shrill laughter still echoed in Sid's head.

Below him, in the Stronghold, the footsteps kept coming. Up the first
flight, across the floor and up the second. He could hear the voices
clearly now. One belonged to a woman. They were talking about the fire.
The woman wanted to see it from the wharf's windows. Sid could hear her
clearly for she was halfway up the stairs to the fourth floor. They
would be face-to-face in seconds.