by Y. S. Lee
Harkness looked mildly perplexed, as though he couldn’t quite remember how he’d come to be dangling three hundred feet over the cobblestoned streets of Westminster. And then his expression cleared. “Is that you, Easton, keeping this scoundrel from falling to his death?”
James emitted a half-gasp, equal parts exertion and amusement. “Yes, Harkness. I haven’t the weight to drag you both back up.”
“Well, I shouldn’t worry about that,” replied Harkness in an astoundingly conversational tone. “I’m quite prepared to meet my Lord and Saviour.”
“So soon? Surely not.”
Keenan’s darkening face reflected Mary’s astonishment. “This ain’t no tea party!” he yelped. “You, boy! Help drag me back inside before my arms drop off!”
Mary grasped one of Keenan’s legs and pulled, but her meagre body-weight was insufficient to make a real difference: Harkness and Keenan carried at least twenty-five stone between them, and she and James weighed significantly less. To pull them up, against gravity, was impossible without some sort of aid. And there wasn’t time to go for help.
She looked at James. “There’s all sorts of rope up here. We could use that.”
James nodded, sweat beginning to bead his forehead. “Good. I’ll show you the knots to use.”
“There’s a simpler solution, my boy,” came Harkness’s voice, much muffled by wind and stone. “I had hoped to take Keenan with me, but that clearly isn’t to be, if you’re holding him. But once he lets me go, you ought to be able to save him for the police.”
There was an instant, general outcry.
“He’s gone mad!”
“What the devil are you on about, Harkness?”
“What d’you mean, once he lets you go?”
“Just what I said,” said Harkness, maddeningly cool. “I assume, Easton, that you and the lad heard enough of our conversation to work out what’s happened.”
James assented with a grunt.
“I’m out of choices, my dear boy. Death is my only desire now.”
“You daft old fool!” snarled Keenan. “Go on, then, I’ll let go of you, and you’re welcome! I got witnesses as to say you wanted to die.”
“No!” snapped James. “If you let him fall, Keenan, I’ll push you over the edge myself. Harkness,” he continued, trying to sound reasonable now, “we’ll discuss this once you’re safely in the belfry, not now. Quinn, get those ropes.”
Mary scrambled towards the nearest coil of rope, a remainder from the installation of the great bell. She wrapped it about Keenan’s ankles, knotted it soundly and anchored the other end using rings embedded in the stone wall. And then the real labour began.
With their feet braced against the lip of the central air shaft, she and James began to pull. The rope was thick and strong, and there were no obstacles in their path. Keenan was nearly half inside to begin with, and Harkness a consistent, if dead, weight at the other end. Yet almost as they began to make progress, a furious tussle began on the precipice.
“Oi!” cried Keenan, “he’s a-going, he’s a-going.”
“Hold him!” barked James. “As you value your life, hold on to him.”
“He’s let go of me!”
“Then hold tighter!”
They retracted the rope in hard-fought increments, one inch, even half an inch at a time. Sometimes they made no progress for the stretch of a minute, so great was the effort of raising those two large, struggling men. It was James, Mary thought, a rivulet of sweat running down her forehead. Despite his heroic efforts, he was beginning to flag. The hectic glitter in his eyes was gone, his colour ashen beneath the rosy flush of exertion, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps.
He caught her assessing glance. “Pull harder!”
She nodded, although she was already pulling with all her might.
Somehow, somehow, Keenan’s torso inched towards them, dragged painfully over the open ledge. He was very still and completely silent, waiting, holding, concentrating. At long last, his armpits hooked the edge of the half-wall.
“Steady there!” gasped James, relief plain in his exhausted face. “We’re coming to help pull up Harkness.”
It took them only seconds to reach the ledge. In that interval, with a single, defiant movement, Keenan threw his hands up. “There! Ain’t that what you wanted?”
The scream that sliced the air was dreadful, shrill enough even to stir a ghostly echo from the bells. It seemed to pierce Mary’s skull. Futile though it was to do so, she stumbled towards the ledge. Scanned the rows of neat shingles, the elaborate Gothic traceries, then craned below to the shadowy cobblestoned yard. At that moment, the sun dropped fully below the horizon and a new, almost tangible darkness fell over the city, cloaking from view the body she knew must be splayed below, broken and bloody.
An instant later, she cried out in surprise as a rough hand seized the back of her collar and she was whisked into the air to dangle, like Harkness, over the beautiful slanted roof of St Stephen’s Tower. The seam of her collar bit into her throat, constricting her airway; the tips of her toes grazed the stone of the belfry wall. It was Keenan, of course. What a fool she’d been to come anywhere near him, now that he was safe.
James rushed towards her, only to be stopped by a commanding gesture from Keenan. James stood perfectly still, his expression sick with horror. His lips worked, forming the first syllable of her name.
Alarmed though she was, Mary still had her wits. She shook her head in a very slight movement. He mustn’t reveal her gender now; doing so would only give Keenan more power, more delight in hurting her. She focused on James’s face, tried to project her message using only her eyes.
“Ta for the lift,” grinned Keenan. “Sorry about Harkness.”
“Bring the boy back inside,” said James, his voice vibrating with tension and exhaustion. “Keenan, you don’t know the trouble you’re making for yourself.”
“Don’t I, though? Seems to me you’re awful fond of this useless little whoreson. Seems as you’d do anything for him.”
“He’s a good lad.” James’s pulse hammered in his throat.
“Your special little lad, hey?” Keenan looked contemptuous. “You don’t look the back-door sort, but I suppose I don’t know about all that Greek stuff.”
She was so close. Every couple of seconds, the toe of one of her boots bumped against the half-wall. She focused on that, at this moment her one scrap of hope. Better to think about that than of the choking sensation in her throat, the blood roaring in her ears, the sheer terror turning her limbs to water. If she could just gain half a second’s purchase, a tiny bit of momentum … if only there were a handhold, a pillar, anything she could use to pull herself forward.
“What d’you want?”
Keenan grinned. “Now you’re talking. What I want, Mr Fancy Safety Engineer, is for you to forget this last couple hours ever happened. You ain’t come here. You ain’t seen Harky. And you most surely ain’t seen me.”
“Agreed,” said James promptly. “Now bring him in.”
“No,” croaked Mary. James was entirely a man of his word. Without his testimony, they’d never convict Keenan, and they all knew it.
“Ain’t nobody taught you not to contradict?” Keenan raised her yet higher and grinned as her breathing became laboured. “Less you fight, longer you’ll live.”
“I’ve already agreed to your terms,” said James. “Bring him in.”
“Oh, that ain’t all,” said Keenan easily. “You’re going to fix your report so whosoever asks, me and Wick got nothing to do with anything. We’s just two harmless brickies minding our own business, and Wick’s death’s a proper tragedy.”
“What else?”
As James and Keenan bargained, Mary’s sensitive ears caught a new sound outside the tower. Above the remote babble of urban life, a new sound intruded: a long, shrill whistle, and then the heavy thud of boots on cobblestones. At least two pairs. Running.
James and Keenan seemed o
blivious of this new development, near as it sounded. And, dangling in mid-air like a worm on a fishing hook, Mary couldn’t turn to see anything. But she closed her eyes and listened, and the noises began to sort themselves out in her mind, so clearly could she visualize them. A police whistle. A pair of bobbies giving chase. Even, perhaps, the clang of the site gate. The boots kept galloping, and now they changed in sound. They were no longer running flat out, but were instead taking smaller, faster paces. What could cause that? She reckoned she knew. And the thought of it made her open her eyes and smile broadly.
“What you grinning at?” snarled Keenan, jerking her close for better inspection.
It was all the chance she needed. “This,” she said, and kicked him in the groin.
A roar of pain. A blow to the chin that damn near knocked her unconscious.
Blindly, Mary hung on, and after a few seconds realized she was clinging to the lip of the belfry. The hard pressure against her chin was the stone ledge. A steady trickle of blood seemed to confirm this, although she felt no pain.
“My God, Mary! Hold on!” James was there, his face white and frantic, wrapping his long hands about her forearms.
“Keenan! Where’s Keenan!”
James didn’t even glance back. “Sod Keenan; he’s run off. Can you hold my wrists?”
She could. A minute later – surely less, although it felt like more – she tumbled over the ledge into his arms. He fell back onto the floor, squeezing her tightly, pressing her against his chest so hard it hurt. His heart was thumping at a furious pace, his chin digging into the top of her head.
“My God, Mary. Oh my God. I thought – oh, Mary.” He covered her hair and face with fierce kisses, and when she hugged him back, he groaned and laughed at the same time. “You careless, daring, vicious, damned little fool. You nearly died, purely for the satisfaction of kicking him in the—”
“I didn’t,” she protested, laughing now, too. “I miscalculated. I thought I was further inside than I was.”
“Oh, well, that’s all right, then.” He rolled her onto her back. “Idiot.”
“Who’s an idiot? You were about to agree to all of his outrageous conditions, just to—”
“To save your life,” he agreed, kissing her again, so hard she could scarcely breathe. “Damned foolish of me.”
“He’d never have kept his word. You’d have sworn all that, and he’d still have knocked me off the ledge, just for the fun of it.”
“I suppose you’re going to scold me now for letting him escape.”
She examined his face carefully. His eyes were bloodshot, his pulse going far too quickly and his skin hot and dry. Clearly, that dubious “stimulant” he had taken earlier was wearing off and in a moment he would be desperately ill – and grumpy to boot. But despite all this, she could think of no one else she wanted as much as this; no other place she’d rather be. “No,” she said thoughtfully. “I’m not.”
He feigned shock.
“I think he’s been caught. Listen.” They paused then, and through the wide air shaft they heard the echoes of heavy-booted steps, grunts of exertion, a roar of defiance. “The police are on their way up.”
“Hmph.”
“‘Hmph’? That’s all you can say?”
“Well, normally I’d be very pleased…”
“But not now?”
He kissed her again, deeply and sweetly. “How long have we? Five minutes?”
“Less, I think.” Still, she clung to him and kissed him again.
“Bloody England – a bobby on every street corner.”
“Mmm. And if we don’t sort ourselves out, they’ll arrest us, too.”
“Only me, I think. I’m willing to risk it.”
She laughed at that, struggling to slide out from beneath him. “And what of me and my spotless reputation?”
A new voice, sardonic despite its breathlessness, sounded in the room. “I’d say it’s rather too late to worry about that, miss.”
Mary closed her eyes and groaned. Damn, damn, damn.
James’s head snapped up at the first syllable. Then a broad grin spread across his face and he collapsed back to the floor. “Thank God,” he said, sounding suddenly exhausted. “Take us home, Barker.”
Thirty
He didn’t. Instead, after helping Barker to load James’s shivering, barely conscious form into the carriage, Mary jumped down again. At Barker’s questioning look, she shook her head. “I’ll write.” She didn’t wait to hear his response, or bid James a proper goodbye.
Neither did she return to the bloody scene at the foot of the tower. She’d seen bodies enough in her time, and she had no place there, besides. Already, even from a distance, she could see a good-size throng gathered about it: uniformed policemen, a police surgeon, detectives from the Yard, probably someone representing the Agency. Even Peter Jenkins. And, unless she was much mistaken, there was a scruffy, fair-haired chap nosing about in a discreet fashion: Octavius Jones. The liar – so much for resting on Sundays.
She didn’t linger. Her task, now, was to return to the Agency and report fully. Physical exhaustion was now overlaid by so much nervous tension that less than half an hour later, she stood once more before Anne Treleaven and Felicity Frame in the austere attic. Anne managed to appear dignified even in a nightgown and robe, with her pale reddish hair swinging down her back in a tidy braid. The effect was startlingly girlish and, for the first time, Mary wondered whether Miss Treleaven wasn’t a good deal younger than she’d always assumed. Felicity was dressed as for a particularly elegant party, in peacock-blue silk and with ornately curled hair. In sharp contrast to her employers, Mary was dusty, bruised and, only now, beginning to shake with suppressed shock.
“Are you certain you’re uninjured?” asked Anne. “Our physician is ready to see you at any time. Perhaps before you report…”
“No, thank you.” Mary dropped into a chair and said, “Harkness claimed responsibility for Wick’s death, Reid’s disappeared, I don’t know what’s to happen to Jenkins, and Jones knows I’m female.”
Felicity frowned.
Anne blinked. “You may be unhurt, but you’d better have a drink, my dear.”
Her stomach churned at the idea, but Anne was insistent. And indeed, after a stiff measure of brandy, Mary felt warmth returning to her hands and feet, and a degree of organization to her thoughts. “I beg your pardon,” she said, blushing at her own incoherence. “I’ll begin again.
“According to my source, a labourer’s assistant called Peter Jenkins, Keenan, Reid and Wick were stealing materials from site stores and selling them on. Harkness discovered their thefts, but was somehow persuaded to overlook them; indeed, in exchange for a share of the income, Harkness began to falsify the site accounts to allow Keenan and Wick to continue their scheme. I’ve seen Harkness’s bank book, and he was seriously overdrawn; I expect he had other debts, too, which he had no means of repaying on his salary alone.”
“Indeed,” nodded Anne. “We’ve confirmed a number of loans, all on extortionate terms, with one of the more notorious moneylenders in London.”
Mary nodded. “This arrangement might have worked. However, Wick – possibly prompted by Keenan – realized he could profit at both ends of this arrangement: he began to blackmail Harkness, threatening to expose his involvement with the scheme. It was a foolish idea: had Harkness called his bluff, Wick would only have put an end to his own illegal earnings. But for some reason, Harkness agreed to pay – possibly because the initial sum Wick demanded was manageable, and because his own debts seemed increasingly urgent. But as Wick’s demands got larger – by the end, Harkness was paying him ten pounds a week – Harkness became increasingly desperate. Keenan’s black-market income was no longer enough to justify paying off Wick, yet he couldn’t extricate himself without getting caught.
“Wick demanded a meeting with Harkness, after dark, in the belfry. It’s a sign of how deeply enmeshed Harkness felt that he agreed to meet Wick at all
. But he did. That night, Wick proposed going to Mrs Harkness and forcing her to find the money. He also threatened to force her to have sexual relations with him, as a form of payment.”
“This is Harkness’s own account?” asked Felicity.
“Yes. Wick may have wanted only to frighten Harkness, but he went too far: Harkness was incensed, they fought, and, as everyone knows, Wick went over the edge. It’s still unclear whether he fell or was pushed.
“The week following Wick’s death, Harkness paid Keenan one final blackmail instalment. Their arrangement seems to have been for Keenan to take the money himself from Harkness’s desk; at least, I saw Keenan enter the site after hours last Monday night. But that week, the First Commissioner declared his intention to conduct a safety review of the building site. Harkness must have known, at that point, that he was caught. Any competent safety review would reveal the short cuts he’d taken, the low building standards he’d accepted, in order to set aside more raw materials for Keenan to steal. James Easton’s review also uncovered his highly dubious accounting practices.”
“James Easton again,” murmured Felicity. “What an interesting young man.”
Mary had no idea how to respond to this, except by ignoring it. “With his professional integrity and personal reputation destroyed, Harkness believed his only choice was suicide. He decided if possible to take Keenan with him. So he lured Keenan to the belfry for an after-hours meeting.
“Keenan seems to have been close to Wick, and Harkness taunted him with the details of Wick’s death. He successfully goaded Keenan into attacking him. And he might also have succeeded in dragging Keenan over the ledge with him, except that Mr Easton caught them – caught Keenan, at any rate, and dragged him back to safety.” Mary swallowed. She could still hear that scream echoing in her ears. “Keenan deliberately let go of Harkness.”
