by John Gardner
‘When is this screwing?’ asked Franz.
‘When I give the word and not before.’
‘You do not trust us?’
‘I don’t trust anyone, matey. I’ll trust you, Franz, when we’ve done and we’re away safe.’
Schleifstein came in and sniffed the stale air.
‘I would like to talk with you upstairs, friend Ember.’
Schleifstein was as neat as ever, controlled and self-contained, though Ember got the impression that the German thought he carried a smell in his clothes.
‘Did you give Evans a bad time?’ Schleifstein asked when they were alone.
‘Evans? A bad time?’
‘Come, come, Ember. I asked Evans to see you home. You laid about him off Dalston Lane.’
Ember knew he was clear, home and dry. He could afford to push it now.
‘It was Evans, was it? With respect, guv’nor, don’t ever do that to me again. Not without telling me, that is. I don’t take kindly to being lurked round the streets. Makes me nervous. I have been known to chiv someone proper when I’m nervous.’
‘I merely wanted to protect you.’ He was suave, plausible even. ‘But there is no harm done. Except to Evans’ face and he will soon get over that. His pride is hurt, mind. I do not think it wise to let him know it was you.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Nor do I think it was fair to take his wallet.’
‘I didn’t take no wallet.’
‘If you say not, then we will remain silent. Evans will be a week on the mend. Is that time enough, or do we need another man in?’
‘It’s time enough.’
‘Good. Then if Peter has come in, you had better acquaint them with your plan.’
‘One thing,’ Ember made as though to tug at Schleifstein’s sleeve. ‘I want it made plain that while we’re inside the crib, I’m in charge.’
‘It will be something like that.’
Ember thought that did not sound over-promising.
Peter was the cleaner of the two Germans. He had got back by the time they went downstairs again, though nobody volunteered intelligence about where he had been or what he had been doing. There was another person in the dining-room also: a lad of around seventeen, tall and gangly with thick hair that had enough grease in it to fry bread.
‘I’ll only talk to the crew,’ Ember said, pitching his gaze somewhere between Schleifstein and Franz.
Wellborn and the boy were sent out and Ember began to outline the plan. He let them know that it would take place over a weekend, and that there would be two visits, though he gave no clue as to the size or layout of the premises, adhering mainly to the essential facts: how they would get in, the exact amount of work which had to be done, and who would do what. Franz tried to ask questions afterwards, but Ember only answered those that would not give anything away.
They appeared friendlier towards him before he left, though Ember remained much on his guard. In the hall he spoke to Schleifstein.
‘Within the next three weeks, so keep them all at hand,’ he said, conscious that it was he who now gave the orders. ‘I will come here on the Monday or Tuesday before it is to take place. That will give you enough time to get your sailing orders out.’ At the door he said, ‘Don’t have anyone look after me tonight, guv’nor. Really I can manage on my own.’
Ben Tuffnell was still across the road, a permanent fixture, they would not notice him any more than the brickwork now. Two hundred yards down, on the same side as the house, Scarecrow Sim was begging in the gutter. Ember thought he had collected a lot more sores since he last saw him. They looked very real, and the good people of Edmonton appeared to be parting with a lot of chink to salve their consciences.
To set the Italian girl at her ease, Moriarty was showing her a complicated card trick involving the four aces. You put the two black aces in the middle of the pack and the red aces at top and bottom. Then you turned the pack over and there was a black ace at top and bottom and the two red aces were together in the middle. The Italian girl was impressed.
Her name was Carlotta and she had a waist which looked slim enough to encompass with two hands, jet hair and a dark, almost negroid complexion which intrigued the Professor. She also had neat ankles and her body moved beneath her gown in a manner which set raging torrents of blood bubbling through Moriarty’s veins.
Sal had brought her up, told her that the Professor had some nice things to say to her; that she had to be good to him and that she was to fear nothing.
Moriarty saw Sal Hodges to the drawing-room door and she gave him a narrow-eyed smirk and whispered, ‘Wasps, salamanders and lizards. We’ll talk, James. I hope she is the right one.’
The Professor assured her that he thought Carlotta would be admirable for what he had in mind. He then talked to the girl, played a little Chopin to her and did the card trick which involved the four aces.
She seemed very young, perhaps nineteen or twenty summers, and had a calm manner with no sign of the violent temper which Moriarty associated with Latin women. Bridget Spear had laid out a cold collation – ham, tongue and one of Mr Bellamy’s pork pies. There were also two bottles of Moet & Chandon, Dry Imperial, the ’84, and they drank one bottle between them before going to bed, where Carlotta proved to be more than a tigress.
‘I understand from Mrs Hodges,’ Moriarty said during a recuperative rest, ‘that you have never been to your native Italy.’
She pouted, ‘No. My parents do not wish to return and I have never had the time or money. Why do you ask?’
She ogled him blatantly. With a little grooming and the right clothes – she was somewhat flashily dressed – the dark Carlotta might just pass for a countess.
‘I am thinking of taking a little trip to Italy in the spring. Rome is very pleasant at that time of year.’
‘You are fortunate.’ She leaned across and fondled him after the blatant manner of her profession. Then, coquettishly, ‘Fortunate in more ways than one.’
‘I think it could be arranged for you to accompany me to Rome. If you would like that.’
Carlotta launched into a quiet stream of Italian which sounded like a mixture of adoration and pleasure.
‘You would want for nothing. New clothes. Everything.’ He smiled at her across the pillow, deep and secretive. ‘And a ruby necklace to wear at your pretty throat.’
‘Real rubies?’
‘Naturally.’
Her hand performed some exquisite tricks, things of which a girl of her tender years should have neither knowledge nor experience.
‘Could I have my own lady’s maid also?’ she cooed in his ear.
Angus Crow always made a point of calling on his tame retired cracksman after dark. They never spoke of this arrangement, but it was a regular thing between them, as was the signal which the old man supplied. The curtains in his front parlour were drawn tight after sunset if he was alone (in summer the window was left closed). If someone else was present, there would always be a strip of light showing between them.
Crow suspected that this was a signal used for others also, for Tom Bolton would invariably hobble through to the parlour whenever he arrived. They always sat and talked in the tiny back kitchen.
It was a relief for Crow to have an excuse to be away from King Street for the evening. Sylvia appeared to be losing her senses. The wretched servant, Lottie, was still in the house, constantly under his feet when he was there. To cap it all, Sylvia was planning all kinds of new diversions, dinner parties being her current obsession. Crow reflected, with a small happiness, that once friends had dined with them there was little likelihood of them doing so again. Not if Lottie continued to rule the kitchen.
It was with some sense of relief, then, that he now sat in old Bolton’s back kitchen, a hot toddie in front of him on the red tasselled tablecloth, a warm fire burning in the stove, kettle spouting steam on the hob, and the lamp turned up. He reflected, as he had done on other occasions, that the china, display
ed neatly on the small dresser, was of good quality; who, he wondered, had been its original owner?
Bolton, drawing quietly on his pipe, told the story of Ember’s visits and their purposes with little adornment, and Crow allowed him to speak without interruption until the whole thing was out.
‘So you let him take them?’ he asked when it was over, his voice reflecting the constant disappointment he felt over the weaknesses of the criminal classes.
‘I didn’t have much option. You know what that lot can be like, Mr Crow. I know that I am old, and useless, and crippled, but we all cling to life. That lot work in the shadows. They crawl out of the sewers. You turn over stones and there they are.’
Crow grunted loudly. There was no way of telling whether this implied sympathy, understanding, or rebuke.
‘I’ve done some bad things in me time, but I was never willingly involved in murder. I want nothing to do with being a victim now.’
‘A German, you say?’
‘He told me a German. A fellow who was wanted in his own country and had found this one crib to crack here. One screwing to set him up for a while.’
‘Not for life?’ Crow detected the cynicism in his own tone. ‘That’s the usual tale, isn’t it, Tom? A good one to set you up? Then you’ll have done with it. Retire and lead a blameless life.’
‘That’s what a lot of them say, guv’nor. True enough, and I’ve said it meself before now.’
‘A screwing or a cracking?’
‘Lord love you, Mr Crow, there ain’t much difference. You listen to too many tales. The lads who call themselves cracksmen and reckon they’re better than those who are dubbed screwsmen. Haven’t I taught you that? You get to a place thinking you can screw the door with a spider and find you can’t, so you crack it with a jemmy. Any burglar worth his salt has done the lot: screwing, cracking, area diving, cutting out, star glazing, bending the bars. I remember when I was younger …’ and he was off on one of his long reminiscences of which there were many, for Tom Bolton had started life as a chimney boy at the age of eight.
Crow heard him out before throwing the next question at him. ‘Ember used to work for the Professor, didn’t he? For Moriarty?’
It was incredible, Crow thought, how the name still produced a visible reaction from hardened criminals. The old thief’s swollen hands clenched – an action which must have caused extreme pain – and his eyes twitched. The skin on his face went grey, like dry paper.
‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ the aged voice had acquired a croak, as though the throat had become suddenly parched.
‘He’s been gone a long time, Tom. There’s nothing to fear anymore.’
There was no sound but the crackle of the fire and ticking of the clock.
‘Look, Mr Crow,’ as though he found breathing a labour. ‘I’ve taught you things, but this is the first time I’ve blown on anyone. It’s not in me nature. I only did this ‘cos of me tools. I don’t like to think of some foreigner using them.’
‘It must be big though, Tom. For them to want your tools, I mean. You can’t get quality like yours any more.’
‘It’s how he uses them as’ll count.’
‘A German,’ murmured Crow, as though returning to the one sore point, trying hard to piece tangled ends together in his brain. ‘Was our Ember ever a cracksman?’
‘I’ve known him since he was a lad. Small and wiry. He’s done most things. He’d know how. But I wouldn’t cross him. He held a certain position – you know. What you said.’
‘The Professor.’
‘I can’t hear you.’
‘Did you believe him? About the German?’
‘He believed it.’
‘So you lent him your tools. Simple as that.’
Bolton had omitted to mention the payment. It was a very large amount for the loan of a set of tools – even good ones like his. For a second, no more, it weighed on the old man’s conscience.
‘I didn’t want me head bashed in, nor me gizzard slit. I don’t fancy going at all, but when I do I’d rather it was in me own bed.’
It had to be something very big. Crow could not get Moriarty out of his head, for Ember was wholly the Professor’s man. There was a German in London with Moriarty when all the foreigners met together in ’94. Crow wondered about that. There would be something written down at the Yard. Still, there were a lot of Germans in England.
‘I’ll see if we can have a few words with Ember,’ he said aloud.
‘You won’t say nothing?’
‘About you, Tom? Rest easy, old lad, you’ll not be mentioned. We want Ember for more than borrowing a set of implements. Thank you for your help, anyhow. Now, do you lack for anything?’
‘I manage. I always get through, even though it’s a struggle some weeks.’
Crow laid four gold sovereigns on the red cloth.
‘Have a wee treat, Tom. And look after yourself.’
‘Lord bless you, Mr Crow. Take care of that Ember, he’s a foxy one. Oh, and Mr Crow?’
At the door the detective turned. ‘Yes?’
‘Keep up wind of him. He reeks does Ember.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
There were few people about at Scotland Yard, and nobody at all in his part of the building. Crow turned the gas up and went through to Sergeant Tanner’s room, opening the cabinet and looking through the folders. The one he wanted was not very thick. He carried it back to his desk and sat there in the silence turning the pages and trying to find inspiration in the neat entries. FOREIGN ELEMENTS AMONG KNOWN ASSOCIATES OF JAMES MORIARTY, the heading said.
It contained some twenty or thirty dossiers and among those of Germanic origin there was a fence by name of Muller who ran a pawnshop over Ludgate way; another called Israel Krebitz, a big fish named Solly Abrahams and a man known as Rutter. There were also Tanner’s few notes on the Jacobs brothers.
By far the largest dossier was that of Wilhelm Schleifstein. Place of origin: Berlin. He was very well known there: robberies, banks, brothels, a finger in pies of every taste. He had certainly been identified as one of those with Moriarty in 1894. There was also a giant of a man who usually accompanied him – Franz Bucholtz, also well known and dangerous.
Tomorrow, he thought, I shall request permission of the Commissioner to telegraph Berlin and see if they know the whereabouts of Herr Schleifstein and his friend Bucholtz.
Sylvia was awake, sitting up in bed with a copy of Charlotte M. Yonge’s Lady Hester, and the Danvers Papers, and a pound box of Cadbury’s Special Vanilla Creams.
‘Angus,’ she began, putting down the book. ‘Angus, I have a wonderful idea.’
‘Good, hen. Good.’
His thoughts were still on Ember and the possibility of a skilled German cracksman in their midst. He allowed Sylvia’s prattling to go over his head, like water gurgling across rocks. He would like a word with Ember, so tomorrow he would have the little rat’s face circulated to all divisions. Then he caught the Commissioner’s name coming from his wife pudgy lips.
‘I’m sorry, hen. I did not catch that.’
‘Angus, you should listen when I’m speaking to you. I said that I hoped you would not have any plans for the evening of the 21st.
‘The 21st? What day is that, my dear?’
‘A Saturday.’
‘Not unless I’m on a case.’ Not unless Ember turns over this German and I am on a hue and cry. Or the German uses Bolton’s tool-kit to crack open the Bank of England and the City Police want my help. Not unless …‘Why the 21st, dearest?’
‘I have sent a note from us asking the Commissioner and his wife to dine here upon that night.’
Even Lottie, tucked away in her attic, heard the bellow of rage. ‘You’ve what? You’ve asked … the Commissioner? My Commissioner …?’ Crow sank into a chair, his face a mask of stupefaction. ‘Sylvia, you foolish woman. My God. You hazy lazy Daisy. An inspector does not presume to invite the Commissioner to dine. Particularly if he is go
ing to serve up Lottie’s skilly. Great merciful heavens, woman, he’ll imagine that I am on the crawl.’
Angus Crow buried his face in his hands and thought that he might well be otherwise occupied on the night of the 21st. In a police cell awaiting trial for the murder of his wife, Sylvia.
‘You’ll stay here until it’s time for you to go to the Edmonton house again. There’s room for you in the attic – in Harry Allen’s room. He’ll not be needing it until the middle of December,’ the Professor told Ember.
The lurkers were becoming more precise in their arrangements. Blind Fred had got a whisper, from an eye called Patchy Dean, that the coppers were putting about queries concerning Ember. He had sent a runner to find Ember and bring him the word: a young lad who sometimes did a spot of starving along Regent Street, up by the Quadrant. The lad, Saxby, caught up with the foxy lieutenant over in Bermondsey where he was looking at properties with the Jacobs brothers. Ember had queasy guts all the way back to Albert Square. Spear later confirmed that there were questions being asked and the esclops had orders to detain him.
‘You haven’t been chaunting where you shouldn’t?’ Moriarty asked of him.
‘You know me, Professor. Not a word. Only to the Prooshan and his team, and then only what’s good for ‘em. Mind you, if they’ve let Wellborn out, there’s no telling.’
‘Wilhelm will keep Wellborn close. If he’s properly hooked, he’ll not cut off his nose to spite his face. What of Bolton where you borrowed the gear?’
‘He knew nothing.’
‘Except that you’d come on the touch for his instruments. He knew it was you.’
‘Bolton wouldn’t …’
‘I trust not. Best have lamps on his drum all the same. By heaven, Lee Chow’ll rip his wind if he’s blown on you.’ Moriarty paused, but Ember shook his head, refusing to believe that old Tom Bolton would whisper to the coppers. ‘All is arranged, isn’t it? Nothing forgotten?’
‘I’ll have to use one of the runners to tip the buck cabbie if I’m not allowed to go up there myself. I told the Prooshan that the cab’ll be ready from three in the morning onwards.’
‘That can be done. You’ve got a lurker listening to the workmen in the place?’
