Black Sun Rising

by Mathew Carr

  He arrived at the Clarence to find Maitland sitting in the deserted saloon bar, nursing a pint of ale. He was dressed impeccably as always, in a well-cut suit and starched pointed collar, and looked much the same as he had last seen him, except for a few streaks of gray in his handlebar moustache. Even as he got to his feet Lawton saw him once again in his khaki uniform, standing over the five kneeling Boers with a Browning in his hand. He remembered his face shining like marble in the moonlight, and the hard victor’s smile on his face as he looked down on the prisoners and said “So gentlemen. What do we do with you?” Even in the darkness, his voice had sounded thick and charged with menace, but there was no trace of that man now, as Maitland smiled graciously and shook his hand. “Harry! Good to see you again! Let me get you some neck-oil my friend.”

  “I don’t drink,” Lawton replied. “Not anymore. I’ll have a ginger ale.”

  “Pedro Lawton doesn’t drink?” Maitland shook his head in disbelief. “Wonders never cease.”

  Maitland went over to the counter and returned with a Belfast ginger ale. Lawton had not been inside a pub in more than two years, and the smell of hops and whiskey aroused an old thirst that was best left unrequited.

  “Congratulations on the promotion,” he said. “When did it happen?”

  Maitland smiled modestly. “Last year. It came as a surprise, to be honest. I’ve been lucky. But the West End is not like Limehouse. Even the thieves dress well.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” Lawton sipped at his glass.

  “So how’ve you been?” Maitland gave him a sympathetic look. “Keeping alright?”

  “Well enough.”

  “You know I was at the dentist last week, and I saw your advertisement in the Mirror. Not a newspaper I normally read, but I saw your name! ‘Private enquiries. All business undertaken. Discretion assured.’ Good old Harry, I thought. I presume there’s plenty of work around?”

  Maitland looked genuinely interested, but Lawton knew what real detectives thought of private investigators, and he doubted whether he would have been impressed to know how he had spent the morning. “It pays the rent. You mentioned some work, sir?”

  “I did indeed. Does the name Randolph Foulkes mean anything to you? Dr. Randolph Foulkes?”

  “Isn’t he some kind of explorer?”

  “He is. Among other things. Well it seems he was blown up by a terrorist bomb in Barcelona last week.”

  “Seems?”

  “It’s not been confirmed. The British consul says a foreigner was killed, and Dr. Foulkes is missing from his hotel room. The body’s a mess, as you can imagine. Poor bugger was sitting right next to the bomb. And now his wife has come to us and said that Foulkes paid out £500 through a Barcelona account before he died—to a woman. She wants us to send someone to find out who it is. We don’t have resources to send someone to Spain on suspicion of adultery. But I thought it might interest you. Given that you speak the lingo.”

  “I haven’t spoken Spanish for a while now. And I’ve never been to Spain. Wouldn’t it be easier to get someone over there?”

  Maitland shook his head. “She doesn’t want a foreigner. Very adamant about that. And she’s not poor. You don’t have to see me as a gift horse. I’m not doing you a favor here, Harry. I owe you.”

  Maitland gave him a meaningful look, and Lawton shifted uncomfortably. “I’m happy to meet her and discuss it,” he said.

  “Good. I’ve arranged a meeting with her tomorrow morning. She lives near Hastings. St Pancras at 9:20 all right with you? We can go together.”

  Lawton felt a flash of irritation at Maitland’s presumption. Even after two years, he still seemed to behave as if the world was at his beck and call, and Lawton was still his subordinate. And yet Maitland also seemed pleased to see him, whereas the captain’s presence only reminded him of many things that he wanted to forget.

  “That’s fine,” he said. “I’ll be there.” There did not seem much to talk about now, and he drank the last of his ginger ale and got up to leave.

  “Till tomorrow then.” Maitland reached out his hand. “This is a good decision Harry.”

  Lawton was tempted to point out that he had not decided anything, but even as he left the pub, he knew that there was really only one decision a man in his position could make.

  2

  The train had just pulled out of Mataró when Esperanza Claramunt saw the balloon coming toward them from the direction of Barcelona. From a distance it looked like a large yellow ball floating above the sea, but as it came closer she could see the basket beneath it and the tiny heads protruding above the rim. Some of the other passengers had also noticed the balloon. Most of them were peasants, bringing herbs, saffron, oranges to sell, and some of them had even brought live hens and chickens that clucked in the luggage racks above them. Many of them had clearly never seen nor even heard that human beings were now able to fly, and one old woman crossed herself as a man and a woman waved at them from the flying basket.

  Some of the passengers waved back, and Esperanza heard cheering from the men and women on the roof of the train. She would have liked to wave herself, but she did not want to appear frivolous in the presence of the Ferrers. It still seemed incredible to her that she was sitting directly opposite Francesc Ferrer I Guardia and his wife Soledad. It was little more than a year since Ferrer had been acquitted of complicity in the attempted assassination of the king during the royal wedding procession in Madrid. Esperanza wondered what the newspapers would say if they could see the nation’s most famous anarchist sitting in a third-class carriage, while his radiant wife sat fanning herself next to him. Apart from the folded copy of Solidaridad Obrera on his lap, Ferrer looked more like a shopkeeper or a farmer than a terrorist with his downturned moustache, linen suit, and straw boater.

  “Look Francesc!” Soledad nudged him and pointed her fan at the balloon.

  Ferrer looked up and grunted, and returned to his paper.

  “Incredible!” Soledad exclaimed. “Wasn’t it last year that those Americans actually flew in a flying machine—with wings?”

  “The Wright Brothers,” said Esperanza.

  “That’s it!” Soledad exclaimed. “And they say it won’t be long before people can fly to every city in the world.”

  “It won’t be long before those machines will be capable of dropping bombs on every city in the world,” Ferrer said.

  “Ay, Francesc!” Soledad fluttered her fan. “Not everything has to be serious all the time.”

  “It’s an entirely logical development,” Ferrer persisted. “The marriage of technology and militarism. Every new invention sooner or later finds a military purpose. Think what Napoleon would have done if he’d had a flying machine at Zaragoza. It wouldn’t matter how thick the walls were. And I’m going to make a prediction—one day these flying machines will be dropping bombs on Barcelona, unless we win.”

  Soledad rolled her eyes and looked at Esperanza, who responded with a faint smile. Once again she was impressed by Ferrer’s knowledge, insight, and erudition. There was really nothing he could not talk about, and if he showed no interest in balloons then she would not show any either, at least in public. But even as the balloon flew by, she could not help feeling excited by it. She imagined herself and Pau floating above the world with the blue sky all around them, in perfect silence, with the fields and ocean stretched out below. She felt thrilled to be young in such a century, when even gravity was no longer an obstacle to human progress, when the future seemed filled with possibilities that previous generations had only imagined. The end of poverty, disease, and superstition; bridges and roads connecting the most far-flung places; flying machines and motorcars; rational education for all; immaculate cities built of towers and glass with parks and sanitation where the workers divided their hours between study and labor—all these things were likely to occur in her lifetime. She and her comrades had spent much of the day discussing the glorious possibilities that awaited Spain and the world, when
capitalism was overthrown and the workers took control, and the social revolution brought an end to a society ruled only in the interests of the few. In the mountains that future seemed closer, and the city of slums and policemen seemed to lose its hold on them as they walked through an ancient and more peaceful world inhabited only by shepherds, charcoal burners, and woodcutters.

  Even the older members of her affinity group, who had known prison and torture, seemed to walk more lightly as they talked of Tolstoy, Nietzsche, and Malatesta, of rational education, strikes, and the revolution that would soon change everything. Some comrades, like Arnau Busquets, were so poor that they had nowhere to wash in their own homes, and after lunch the men stripped down to their underwear and bathed in a stream. Esperanza had heard of anarchist groups in other countries where men and women took all their clothes off during expeditions to the countryside, and she was relieved when Flor and Soledad contented themselves with dangling their bare ankles in the cool water. Now she felt the warm pressure of Pau’s thigh beside her and she pictured his dripping hair and shoulders and his slim tapered waist, when she saw Ferrer looking at her thoughtfully.

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you, Miss Claramunt. I intend to reopen the Modern School, hopefully next year.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it.” Esperanza replied. “The city needs it.”

  “If I succeed I shall need new staff. And I would like to send some of them to Paris for training—funding permitting. Is that something that might interest you?”

  Esperanza was so pleased and so taken aback by this unexpected offer that she could not think what to say. “It would be an honor,” she replied finally.

  “Very good.” The train was coming into Badalona now and Ferrer got to his feet and lifted his knapsack from the shelf. “Why don’t you and Pau come and visit us in Montgat? We can discuss it then.”

  Pau said they would try to come next week. Once again Esperanza wished Ferrer’s ailing niece a quick recovery, and Ferrer thanked her as he and his wife got down from the train. No sooner had they departed than Ruben Montero and his wife Flor took their vacant seats. Ruben took a swing from a hip flask, and stared at Esperanza with the faintly mocking smile that always irritated her.

  “You do know that Ferrer invests in the Stock Exchange?” he said.

  “Yes.” Esperanza suppressed her irritation. “And he uses the money to pay for the people’s education. He plays the capitalists at their own game.”

  “They say he’s a mason,” Ruben said.

  “A progressive mason!”

  “If you say so.” Ruben’s hooded eyes gleamed, and once again Esperanza sensed that he was playing some kind of game with her. She turned away and stared out the window as Barcelona appeared up ahead and the familiar stations flashed past. The train stopped at the little station halfway down the Passeig de Gràcia, and she expected Pau to continue down to the Plaza Catalunya with the others. To her surprise and pleasure he said he would walk her home. Once again Ruben looked at her with a smirk, and she was relieved to see the back of him as the others continued onward to the Plaza Catalunya. It was not yet dark, but the new electric lights were already beginning to glow as they walked past the scaffolding that surrounded the new building at the corner of the Calle Provenza, which her father’s old friend Antoni Gaudí had designed.

  Even draped in scaffolding, it looked more like a mountain than a building and there was something faintly ominous about it. Further up on their left she saw the Batlló House, another Gaudí building, which had been completed only a few years ago, and which she definitely preferred. In the dusk it looked even more like a fairy palace with its coral-like mosaics, its curved dragon roof, and seashell balconies.

  “I don’t like Ruben,” she said suddenly. “I don’t know why he drinks like that.”

  “You might drink if you’d spent three years in a penal colony,” Pau replied. “Ruben’s better than you think. When the time comes, he’ll come out alright. Anyway he’s married to my sister so I have to put up with him.”

  Esperanza said nothing, as they crossed the Diagonal and turned into the village. Even though Gràcia was now connected to Barcelona by the Passeig de Gràcia, she still thought of it as a village, despite the new workshops and the electric street lights that had been introduced in some of its principal streets. Most of Gràcia was still lit by the old gas lights, and some streets still had no lights at all.

  “Did you enjoy today?” Pau asked.

  “I did.” She smiled to let him know that he was one of the reasons why she had enjoyed it.

  “And now you’re going to go to Paris?”

  Esperanza laughed. “Would you miss me if I did?”

  Pau did not reply. They had nearly reached her street now, when he stopped to light a cigarette. Esperanza noticed a small carriage coming up the street behind them, and she wondered what her mother would say if she could see her standing in a darkened street with a young man.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.” Pau shuffled and looked down at his feet. Esperanza looked at him expectantly, and wondered why he suddenly seemed so awkward and uncomfortable. “I—oh never mind, it can wait. Are you coming to the Athenaeum on Wednesday? A professor from the university is coming to give a talk—‘Religion or Science: Which will define our age?’ ”

  “That does sound interesting.”

  “Good. I’ll see you there then.”

  Esperanza was still wondering what he had been about to say to her, when he leaned forward and pecked her lightly on the cheeks. She would have liked him to kiss her on the lips, but that was not the way even anarchist girls behaved, at least not in her neighborhood. She waved at him playfully and walked away. She was just about to turn the corner when she heard a scuffle behind her, and she looked back down the darkened street. The carriage was stationary now, and two men whose faces she could not see appeared to be dragging Pau toward it. Pau’s head was lolling forward and he was not putting up any resistance as they dragged him into the carriage.

  Esperanza watched all this with stunned amazement, as if she could not believe it was really happening. “What are you doing?” she called, in a thin, frightened voice that did not sound like her own. “Stop!”

  There was no answer. The driver flicked the reins now and the two black horses came trotting toward her. As she backed against the wall she caught a glimpse of angry, hate-filled eyes beneath the floppy hat and the scarf that covered most of the driver’s face, and it was only then that she ran toward it and screamed for help.

  * * *

  Through the open doorway Lawton looked down at the body of Elizabeth Hutten, lying face upward in a pool of blood. Everything was how he remembered it: the red sheets and the bloodstained poker, the blood splashes on the wall just behind the bed. But now the blood was flowing out of the doorway and lapping all around his feet. Even when he backed away it followed him down the stairs and out into the street. It flowed all around the feet of pedestrians and the wheels of carriages and motor cars, though offices and department stores, theaters, and foreign embassies, and down the Strand and the Mall and onward toward Buckingham Palace, Whitehall, Downing Street, and the Ministry of War. Yet no one else but him appeared to see it or react to it. Even when he slipped and fell floundering and sliding in the current, the people in the street continued to walk past, ignoring his cries for help.

  He woke up with a start to find the widow Friedman shaking him, and her two youngest children standing at the foot of the bed, their pale faces staring anxiously out of the gloom.

  “Harry, vake up. You having a nightmare.”

  Lawton sat upright as the widow shooed her children away.

  “You alright?” she asked.

  “I’m fine.” He lifted back the sheets. “Go back to sleep.”

  “It’s early. You don’t vant breakfast?”

  Lawton shook his head. He had not even intended to stay the night, and breakfast would only arouse expectations that he could no
t fulfil, both in his landlady and her children. The widow sighed and laid her head back down on the pillow as he got dressed and walked downstairs through the café and out into the street. Already a thick curtain of smog covered the city and men, women, and even children were slipping out of their mean terraced houses, their clogs and boots clattering on the greasy cobblestones. Lawton passed a cluster of Jews huddled together in conversation outside the makeshift synagogue, speaking in Yiddish, Russian, and Polish. Some of them were wearing prayer shawls, others wore dark jackets and black Homburg hats, and a few had long locks hanging down their pale cheeks. The Aliens Act was four years old now, and all that was left of the British Brothers League was the occasional tattered poster, yet still more Jews continued to make their way to the East End from the edges of Europe, like the relics of some ancient wandering tribe.

  John Divine had asked him more than once how he could stand to live in Jewtown, and Lawton usually replied that his room only cost two shillings a week. It was easier than trying to explain that he preferred to live in a place where he was a stranger, surrounded by foreigners who knew no more about his life than he knew of theirs. The boarding house was just around the corner from the café, and he shut the door of his room behind him and looked around at the narrow iron bed, the worn armchair, the little chair and table by the sink, his father’s barbells, and the wardrobe with the broken mirror.

  Next to the window stood the table bearing his Victor phonograph machine—his only prized possession—and a handful of twelve-inch records. Some old penny dreadfuls and copies of Illustrated Police News and Reynolds’s Weekly were piled on the floor with a handful of books: Gross’s Criminal Investigation, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Riddle of the Sands, and a few detective memoirs that he still kept. He took off his shoes and jacket and lay on the bed smoking and listening to the warbling pigeons from the roof while he summoned up the energy to perform his morning routine. Once, when he was still on the force, he had gone almost every morning to the gym to lift some weights or do some light sparring, now he preferred to exercise at home. He felt so tired that he was tempted to forego it, but as always the stern voice in his head warned him that any slackening of the will could only lead to further disintegration. Finally he got off the bed and performed his usual set of press-ups, sit-ups, and side bends, finishing off with the barbells for the biceps and some shadowboxing.