Assistant Commissioner Anderson used neither technique, preferring to let me stand before his desk while he scrutinised official papers. This was meant to convey how much more valuable his time was than mine, but it reminded me of a provincial bank manager carpeting a clerk for having an ill-tended moustache. I would have minded less if there had not been a room full of detectives downstairs waiting for a briefing. Eventually Anderson scratched his signature at the bottom of a letter, put it carefully aside, laced his fingers and peered at me over his half-moon glasses.
“Detective Chief Superintendent.” My full title? That was a bad start. “When I come into work on a Saturday, I don’t appreciate having to spend that time cleaning up after you. I presume you have a good excuse for ignoring my direct instructions regarding these anarchists.”
“I have no excuse, sir. His Majesty the King gave me an order and told me to act upon it immediately.”
“And how, pray, did His Majesty the King come to hear of it?”
The King has his own sources, I could have said, but it would have been evasive, and I had no intention of squirming or shifting the blame. “He asked me directly, and I told him. He felt that sending me and the Kaiser’s man Steinhauer to confront these anarchists would nip the problem in the bud, with the smallest risk of bad publicity.”
“That’s not exactly how it turned out, is it?”
“No, sir. But I took to heart your concern about newspaper reports. I’ve let it be known to my contacts in the press that the suspects were three notorious bank robbers. Which is true enough—that was Averbukh’s speciality.” Anderson seemed momentarily mollified, so I pressed my advantage. “And just as I’d feared, the suspects were armed and violent. If we’d sent in uniforms we might be looking at four dead constables this morning, and that would have been a sight harder to play down.” I didn’t have to mention that that had been Anderson’s idea of a plan; by the way his lip curled in distaste I could see he didn’t care to be reminded.
“According to your report, two of these three suspects escaped.”
“We killed one, and badly wounded another. There’s a chance we’ve scared them off altogether.”
Anderson snorted. “I would hardly depend on that, DCS Melville.”
“I don’t intend to, sir. Hence my request for eight extra officers from the CID to augment my team.”
Anderson dug around for the note that had accompanied my written report and scowled at it, pondering. As if he had any choice in the matter.
“I’ve taken the liberty of already calling them in,” I said.
“Yes. Yet another fait accompli.” He drummed his fingers on the desk, weighing up his next words. “This raid you led was an utter failure. And now you’re asking me to pour in more resources to prevent it becoming a catastrophe. I’m surprised you’re not considering your position.”
“My resignation is yours if you want it, sir.” I met his gaze and held it. His words stung—the truth often does—but by threatening me he’d overplayed his hand, and now I stood there waiting for him to realise that. Seven days before the Queen’s funeral with two violent anarchists on the loose was hardly a good time to fire me, and I was certainly not going to quit. If I succeeded in tracking them down, there’d be no glory—few people would ever hear of it—but such was the nature of my profession. If on the other hand I failed, the whole world would know. In the former case, Anderson could take the credit, with those who mattered, and in the latter, he would need a scapegoat—me.
I could see Anderson working this out, already composing the memorandum that would cover him in either eventuality. The man was as predictable as one of those vending machines you find in railway stations; I’d dropped the coin in the slot and turned the handle, and now at last the postcard popped out.
“That’s a matter we must consider at a later date,” said Anderson, setting my note down and picking up his pen. “But you would go a long way to redeeming yourself if you tracked down these two villains and arranged for them to meet their Final Judgement at the earliest opportunity.”
“Point taken, sir.”
Anderson scribbled his signature on the requisition request and held it up, slightly out of my reach, so I had to lean over to take it.
“Then best get on with it, Melville.”
* * *
—
Usually when my men assembled for a morning briefing there was a certain amount of horseplay and banter. I didn’t encourage it, but I didn’t disapprove either: a cheerful crew is a willing one. This Saturday, however, was different, and the atmosphere was muted and expectant. A few officers had already been scheduled to come in, but the rest—including my hand-picked “volunteers” from the Criminal Investigation Department—I had summoned by runner, telegram and penny post. That had been enough for recipients to understand the urgency of the matter, and the office gossip had confirmed it. Over my years as head of Special Branch these men had come to see me as all-knowing and nigh-infallible, but I took care not to believe it myself, and there was nothing to be gained by whitewashing the previous night’s fiasco.
“Gentlemen”—I paused to let the murmured conversations subside—“as some of you already know, last Thursday I got a tip-off from a member of the public, to the effect that three anarchists from the Continent had set up shop in Whitechapel and were planning to attack the royal funeral, with the intention of assassinating Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany.”
The room was so silent now I could hear in the middle distance the mudlarks calling out on the banks of the Thames.
“Last night, with the help of the Kaiser’s personal bodyguard, I raided their hideout, in the hope of taking the terrorists by surprise. We shot and killed one, the Bulgarian anarchist Averbukh, and wounded his colleague Bozidar. But their ringleader, a man calling himself Akushku, escaped with Bozidar, and the two of them have gone back into hiding.
“The task ahead of us is to stop these two men. Arrest them if we can, kill them if we have to. Their descriptions are on the board—memorise them. Bozidar some of you know already, but the other—the one who calls himself Akushku—do not underestimate him. From first-hand experience I can tell you he’s damned smart and he’s damned dangerous. If we don’t catch him and Bozidar, they will attack the funeral, and if they succeed—I hardly need to tell you the consequences. Sacrilege would be least of it. Butchery and bloodshed and war.”
The room was utterly silent now. It was my habit to pepper my briefing with jokes, to project an air of swagger, of relaxed confidence; not this morning. There was nothing to laugh at.
“All leave for the next fortnight has already been cancelled, but now you’ll be working weekends too, and every hour God sent until these two men are caught. Forget about sick leave, I don’t care if you’re at death’s door. I don’t care if you’re dead. We have seven days, and I want an arrest in two.
“And it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: not a word of this to anyone. We will find these men, we will put an end to their scheme, and we’ll do it before the Great British public gets even a whiff of it.” I nodded to my deputy, Patrick Quinn, a dour, dogged, indispensable Ulsterman. “Inspector Quinn will take over the arrangements for security at the funeral. I will lead the hunt for the two anarchists. Ellis, Baxter—”
I allotted my two oldest hands to help Quinn. The rest I split into teams, each with its own assignment—some combing the streets around Minetti’s lodgings, asking questions door-to-door; others checking every infirmary, hospital, clinic and doctor in the East End, in case Akushku had tried to get Bozidar patched up. “Keep your eyes and ears open. Whatever contacts you have among the dissidents and refugees, use them. Bribe them, threaten them, I don’t care, but somebody knows these villains and where they’ve gone to ground.
“Johnson, Connolly—I have a job for you.” I produced from my pocket the fan I had taken from Ange
la Minetti’s apartment and held it up for all to see. The lanky, lugubrious Johnson—who always reminded me of Markey, my foul-tempered old schoolmaster in Sneem—elbowed his way to the front of the room, followed closely by Connolly, a stocky, balding Glaswegian. They were two of my best men, with a knack for asking the right questions.
“This was a gift to my informant,” I said. “From Akushku.” I spread the fan out. Someone at the back whistled. “My thoughts exactly,” I said. “Belgian lace, I believe, and these are pearls and topaz.”
“That will have cost a few guineas. Easy,” said Connolly.
“Genteel sort of gift, for an anarchist,” said Johnson.
“So where did he get it?” I asked. “Start with the department stores in the West End. And sharpish, before they close this afternoon.”
“Sir,” said Johnson, taking the fan from me with a delicate touch. If he was wondering why exactly this fan was so important, he didn’t ask, and I couldn’t have answered him if he had. Akushku had almost certainly stolen it, so even if we traced the owner it would do us no good. But the fan’s presence in Angela’s shabby apartment felt to me like an anomaly, a loose end, and I wanted it tied off.
I raised my voice again to address the room.
“Next briefing eight o’clock tonight, gentlemen. If anything comes up before that, send a runner here, double quick.” This was going to cost the department a fortune in overtime, but I’d let Anderson worry about that. As the room cleared, I stepped down and headed back to my office, Quinn at my elbow with a long list of queries.
“Sir? Word from Dover. That Italian agitator Domenico arrived last night from Paris, and was followed to his sister’s house in Isleworth. Do you think there might be a connection?”
“No,” I said. “Domenico’s a windbag. We needn’t worry about him. Anything else?”
“The funeral arrangements—the pressmen are demanding ringside seats, as it were. And separate platforms for the photographers and kinematographers.”
“And what?”
“The men who take moving pictures. They say they’ll need extra space for their equipment.”
“Let me see the list when I get back,” I said, entering my office. I plucked my coat and hat from the rack.
* * *
—
Grey winter light seeped through the high windows of Whitechapel Union Infirmary, illuminating the neat rows of iron beds arranged on either side of this long room. Its whitewashed brick walls were bare except for a plain wooden cross high up at one end, big enough for a fresh crucifixion should the need arise. The place was clean, at least, if the eye-watering reek of carbolic was anything to go by. At the far end of the ward two nurses had just entered with a trolley and were moving from bed to bed ladling out bowls of soup. Beside me Angela Minetti sat up, tugging impatiently at the high frilled collar of the worn grey nightdress she had been given. She had regained much of her colour, and her fair hair tumbled loose around her shoulders in a manner so fetching I suspected the ward sister would disapprove. The bentwood chair I had pulled up by her bed groaned under my shifting weight.
“How’s the wound?”
Minetti glanced down at her shoulder and blew out her cheeks. “Is nothing,” she said. “I have had worse.” She glanced at the nurses. One of them was shaking awake a patient who looked too weak to even sit up, scolding her to eat her soup.
“I hate this place,” said Angela. “They treat me like a fallen woman.”
Well, strictly speaking, I thought. But I said, “Not so long ago it was a workhouse. I suppose old habits die hard. It was the nearest place that could patch you up.”
“I want to go home.” She looked at me, almost pleading. It was my turn to drop my eyes in embarrassment.
“That might be a tall order,” I said. “My officers are in your rooms now, going over the place for evidence.” Taking it to pieces, in fact. I forbore to mention that a man claiming to be her landlord had appeared that morning, a seedy character in a greasy frock coat, demanding compensation for the damage and swearing “that Italian trollop” would never be allowed back. I planned to pay him a visit after this interview, to suggest he reconsider his decision.
Angela had turned her face away, and when she spoke her tone lacked its usual assertion. “I do not want strangers searching my possessions.” And sniggering, she probably thought, at the sad trappings of her trade.
“Your possessions are safe,” I assured her. “I’ve had them properly packed up. But we’ll be a while yet. Is there a friend you can stay with in the meantime?” She said nothing, and that was answer enough. I cursed inwardly. “I’ll see what I can arrange. Just rest for now. But tell me—I found the fan. The one you said Iosif gave you?” False as it was, it seemed more tactful to call Akushku by the name he had used when they were lovers. “Do you have any idea where he obtained it?”
She shook her head, and winced at the pain from her shoulder. “What happened last night?” I persisted. “After Gustav and I left?”
“I try to help him,” she said. “The one called Jean. He was bleeding. I tie up his arm with belt, from my robe.”
“That was good of you.”
She snorted in reproach. “I was not being good. I thought, if he die, you cannot ask him questions. And then I heard him, on the stairs.”
“Iosif?”
“I know his step. And I have no time. If he find me, he kill me. So, I hide, under the divano. Jean, he—how you say—he pass out, he see nothing.”
“Did Iosif say anything to him before they left?”
“He say, Prikhodite, prikhodite na klub.”
“…klub?”
“It means, ‘Come, we go to club.’ ”
“What sort of club? Where?”
“Is all I hear. I am sorry. The pain was bad. I want to cry, but…”
Good Lord, I thought, this girl is made of stern stuff.
“Away out of that, Miss Minetti. I’m the one who should be apologising.”
And now the two nurses with their trolley arrived at the foot of the bed and thrust at her a battered pewter spoon and a blue enamel bowl filled with greasy water. If it smelled of anything, it was hard to tell—the stink of disinfectant drowned out every other scent in that place. The young Italian turned her head away in revulsion.
“What is that stuff?” I said.
“Skilly,” said the pale, pinch-faced nurse, moving on. My gorge rose at the very word. Indian corn mixed with hot water, the same slop that had been doled out to my starving countrymen during the Famine. Minetti handed the bowl to me and with her good hand started tugging at the bedsheets, struggling to get up.
“Miss Minetti—Angela—sit still,” I said. “You’ve been hurt—”
“I will not stay here. I cannot.”
“Sure where will you go?”
“I do not care.” She glared at me defiantly. “I make my way. Is not first time.”
Damn it, I thought. This girl had tried to help us, risked her life and lost the little she had—and this is her repayment?
“Hold on,” I said.
* * *
—
“Brigid, our housekeeper, is in Ireland, looking after her mother,” said Amelia as we ascended the stairs. “And Dorothy, the girl covering for her, doesn’t live in, so…”
She pushed open the door of Brigid’s room and entered. Amelia was usually the most warm and welcoming of hosts, but she preferred a little notice, and my turning up on our doorstep and decreeing we find room for an attractive young woman, without warning or explanation, was testing her patience. For now she hid it well, but I feared I’d get a grilling later.
Miss Minetti paused on the threshold. “Come in,” said Amelia, beckoning. Entering the little box room, our guest looked around at the flowery wallpaper and the ruched pink curtains and the single
bed and the religious statues Brigid liked to collect lined up upon the dresser. I hovered outside the door—Brigid’s room was barely big enough for three people—as my wife gathered up the rosary and missal from Brigid’s nightstand and tucked them away in a drawer. Our houseguest shook her head.
“I am very grateful, Mrs. Melville, but I cannot—”
“You can and you will, Miss Minetti,” I insisted. “And there’s an end to it.”
The girl turned to look out the window, and though there was little to see except our overgrown pear tree and the neighbours’ washing lines, the place must have seemed like a Tuscan palazzo after the stew she’d been living in.
“Perhaps for a day or two, until I am well again.” She met Amelia’s eye at last. “Thank you, Mrs. Melville.”
“Not at all,” said Amelia, but with little conviction. But when Miss Minetti sat on the bed and closed her eyes, clearly exhausted and in pain, I could see Amelia thaw a little.
“Are you hungry? We have some cold mutton.”
“That would be most kind of you.”
“And we need to see to that dress of yours.”
Minetti glanced down at the bloody stain on her shoulder that showed almost black on the ripped green silk of her dress.
“Is nothing. A needle and thread, and some cold water, I mend.”
“It’s a bit far gone for that,” said Amelia. “You may wear something of mine for the time being.” She glanced down at Angela’s figure, before adding with the hint of a sigh, “Though we might have to take it in at the waist.”
“I’d better head back to the office,” I said. “Make yourself at home, Miss Minetti.” I clumped down the stairs and plucked my hat from the rack. Amelia came down after me.
“You don’t often bring your work home, William.” Her soft voice had an edge to it. Surely she didn’t think I was the sort of scoundrel who’d take his floozy home to meet his wife?
“I’m sorry,” I said. “The girl had nowhere else to go, and I owe her a great debt. I couldn’t just stick her in a lodging house when she needs looking after.”
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