The Detective and the Spy

by Angela Misri

Nothing looked amiss from the outside — no consolidation of police cars indicating that the Yard had been called in, or at least if they had, they were still on the road from London. How would I get him out? How would I even ascertain that he had been brought here? I watched a skeevy-looking man exit the station on his own, holding a cigarette up to his nose as he came down the stairs, enjoying the smell. He turned left and disappeared into a pub a half a block away. That was my way in.

  Fifteen minutes later I was wearing his clothes, my new tweed outfit tucked into my now bulging satchel and tucked under my borrowed shirt to act as a belly. I rubbed dirt on my cheeks to simulate a shadow of a beard, pulled his hat low over my eyes, and, my heart thundering in my chest, made my way up the stairs and into the station.

  A constable stood just inside the front door replacing posters and information on a corkboard, and seeing myself in black and white, I fought the urge to turn around the way I had come; that would surely look more suspicious than continuing my entry. He wasn’t paying attention to me anyway. He kept stealing glances at the woman manning the front desk. The object of his attentions was a woman with rigorously dyed and styled blonde hair. No ring on her finger and a blouse that left little to the imagination, all of which gave me my next idea.

  “Evenin’ doll,” I said, in what I hoped was a reasonable impression of a male voice. “I’m here to get the dinner orders for the prisoners.”

  She barely glanced up at me, her gaze focused on a well-worn book. I took a chance and reached out, raising her chin so that she was looking at me. “Whaddyasay, gorgeous?”

  She blushed at my attentions, glancing around to see if we were alone, and I removed my hand, giving her one of Lancaster’s looks this time, that flirty non-dangerous half-smile. I had no idea it would work, but she giggled nervously and said, “Sure, we only got one, but you know where the cells are?”

  “I do,” I said with a tap of my hat. “Now, don’t you go anywhere.”

  She giggled again and I walked down the only hallway that led away from the upper offices, down some stairs to find the jail area. In the farthest corner of the room sat a man I recognized. He was on his tiptoes, both hands grasped on the iron bars covering the tiny window of his cell.

  “Lancaster,” I whispered, nearing his cell.

  He turned and did a double take, “What in God’s name are you doing here?”

  I carefully pulled a couple of hairpins out from under my borrowed hat, handing them to him through the bars. “Get ready to escape, I’m going to cause a disturbance.”

  He grasped my hand on the bar. “You shouldn’t have come back for me.”

  “My grandmother isn’t a bad person,” I said. “Well, she is a selfish person, but she’s got my best interests at heart. Honestly.”

  “I find that easy to believe,” he said, his hand warm on mine. “Jenkins seemed like a decent fellow who was truly sorry for being put in the position to trade me for your freedom.”

  “I half expected to find one of you bruised into unconsciousness,” I admitted, looking at his face and fists for any sign of a fight. Jenkins was, after all, a former boxer of some renown, and could hold his own against a man half his age.

  “I would never strike a legend like Bruiser Jenkins. My dad used to take me to his fights!” Lancaster said, managing to look slightly shocked at the suggestion. “But the truth is, I think your grandmother might have the right of it. If I am taken into custody with the Yard, the pressure will let up on you, allowing you the freedom to actually find this bomber.”

  “If it were the Yard who were coming for you, you’d be under guard, even here in your cell,” I replied, letting go of his hands. “But Kell, as you said, keeps his cards close to the chest and has told them nothing about your alleged crimes except to lock you up. Be ready to make a quick exit.”

  I ran back up the stairs and slowed down as I walked down the hallway, winking at the woman behind the desk. “Meet me outside for a minute, won’t you?”

  Her mouth dropped open, but I turned away, trying to be mysterious, and sauntered out the door in my best imitation of my ex-boyfriend’s cursed confidence. Gavin had a way of making every female in a space pay attention to him when he wanted the attention. I believe (after months of study) that it was all in his aura of confidence.

  The constable who had been at the corkboard was now outside, smoking with a sergeant. Definitely not the actions of a station at high alert. Right on schedule, smoke started to rise out of the pub where I had changed into my disguise and I slapped a look of horror on my face and pointed at it.

  “I will call the fire department,” I assured the two police officers. “I was in that pub for lunch and two teenage boys tried to accost me as I left.”

  Knowing of the previous night’s criminality gave me the advantage and I described the boys so well that the sergeant actually clapped me on the back as they sprinted off towards the pub to capture the teenagers who had been reported last night. The woman I was waiting for came out the door at exactly that time and I grasped her hand, pulling her into the alleyway behind the station. She immediately pressed me against the wall, whispering something breathy and urgent in my ear. She pressed kisses against my neck and I had to step back to tell her that I was delivering a message on behalf of the officer who had been standing at the corkboard.

  “Larry?” she said, her colour high, her confusion apparent.

  “Yes, Larry,” I agreed, holding her at bay. “He couldn’t stop talking about you. How beautiful you are, how irresistible, how he’s been too shy to make the first move.”

  She stopped trying to pull me close, her eyes wide. “I’ve known Larry since grade school. He’s never said a word.”

  “I think you should talk to Larry, maybe invite him for a drink, but don’t tell him I told you any of this. He’s a gentleman after all,” I said, starting to run out of ideas as to how far I could extend this façade when I finally saw Lancaster steal out of the building.

  “Fire!” I yelled, as if suddenly realizing the pub was alight, turning my would-be lover towards the danger. She covered her mouth with her hands in surprise, but I bustled her towards her home, assuring her that I would tell Larry that I had sent her to safety. I ran after Lancaster, catching up with him two blocks away, and leading him to the motorcycle. I had negotiated a tenner for the distraction and the disguise from the skeevy man, but I hoped that he didn’t actually burn the place down.

  Lancaster got on the back of the motorcycle without an argument and we were London-bound once more.

  CHAPTER 23

  “I THINK WE NEED to focus on the bombs,” I said, taking a bite of the sandwich we were sharing before handing it back to Lancaster.

  We were taking a circuitous route back to London, stopping in small villages along the way for breaks and for food. I had dashed into the village on foot and still in disguise to secure lunch and as many newspapers as I could carry. Now we were eating in an obliging field, the motorcycle hidden behind bales of hay. It would take us a full day to get back to the city, but we were less likely to be identified and recaptured this way.

  Lancaster took a bite as well before answering, he not having had the benefit of a delicious but delay-filled meal with my grandmother and therefore ravenous. I pushed the sandwich back his way upon remembering that, eating the chips beside it instead.

  “We don’t have it anymore,” he said. “But Kell identified it as Russian-made and I see no reason why he would lie to us about that. How does that help us?”

  “Whoever is deploying the bombs is not an expert in bomb-craft, they simply have access to these old bombs,” I said, getting up to pace as I often did when my mind was whirring. “Who would have access to Russian-made bombs from the Great War? Other than Box 850, of course.”

  “Of course,” he said with a pained grin. “Former gunnery sergeants, possibly. Anyone in the milita
ry who had access to British and European military arsenals. A long list in other words.”

  “But the lack of expertise,” I repeated. “Those mines that were strung up in the basement of The Trifle were very inexpertly done. The fact that we could disarm them by unhooking wires is laughable. There should have been trick wires and back-up systems that would be triggered by our interference.”

  He shrugged. “They did manage to kill someone, Portia, so they weren’t entirely amateur.”

  “Unless they never meant to kill anyone,” I said, still pacing as he finished the sandwich and reached for his beer. “If Ilsa was involved, how would she have gotten her hands on military-grade bombs?”

  “A military man?” Lancaster answered after a moment’s thought.

  “A man she was sleeping with perhaps,” I agreed. “Someone who would let down their guard enough to allow her to gain access to an arsenal.”

  “But why would she … Portia, we’re round back to the same problem,” Lancaster said. “She has no motive. Blowing up her father in his train is an extreme way to get rid of someone who you think left you at an orphanage. Surely there were easier ways to be rid of Digby. A gun for example. Like the one that killed Ilsa.”

  I nodded. “We keep getting caught up in the motive and I think the problem is that there might be two motives, which is confusing our suspect pool.”

  “What?”

  “What if someone is using the bombs to kill and someone else is using them to terrify the population — taking advantage of the bombs that have gone off to create more of a panic about them?” I said.

  “Without coordinating with each other?” Lancaster asked, his mouth scrunching up a bit and betraying his doubt.

  “I don’t know,” I said with a frustrated sigh. “It’s just a theory. When a single motive doesn’t solidify, sometimes it’s because different crimes are coalescing and making it seem like one crime rather than two. And I keep trying to link this back to the stockpiling of weapons, but I find it hard to believe that the British government is buying old Russian bombs and then losing them to a bomber who is planting them all over London. It’s ridiculous.”

  Lancaster shook his head. “That is ridiculous. If our government is actually stockpiling weapons, which I’m not saying they are, they would be new and kept under guard day and night or there would be no point to the whole endeavour. My gut is telling me this bomber is an outside entity trying to destabilize our country. The only connection might be that they are trying to dissuade other governments from supplying us with weapons by making us look unstable and out of control. Look at the targets — Downing Street? Our transportation system? The War Office?”

  “And my college?” I replied.

  “That one pointed to you,” Lancaster said. “Which could be part of the same motive. Upon realizing that you were a suspect because of your presence at the first crime scene, the bomber did some research, realized you were a student at King’s College, and planted a bomb on campus so that more suspicion would fall upon you, allowing them to continue their work.”

  “If that were true, they would surely have halted once I was reported to have left London,” I said, turning a page in The Daily Mail to where my disappearance was reported in a short column. Mrs. Dawes was described in the column as “rather hysterical at all the attention” and too busy to speculate as to my involvement. I grit my teeth against the damage this case was doing to my friends and my hard-won reputation as a consulting detective.

  “Another bomb placed outside Buckingham Palace,” Lancaster quoted from another newspaper. “At least this one was proved to be a hoax.”

  “I wonder how long it took them to check the whole palace and comfortably declare it a hoax?” I said, closing The Daily Mail and opening The Lady to scan for a message from Annie. I found my message to her right away, and a few ads down, I found hers.

  I decoded it quickly, “Beans safe. No sign of Whitt. Flat watched. No one home.”

  I hadn’t been looking at Lancaster’s face, so I missed what he said, but he stood up, hearing something I did not, obviously. I shook the crumbs off my lap and we got on the road again, this time with Lancaster driving and my arms around his waist. Of course, this reminded me of my rides with Brian and I allowed myself a moment to dwell on the man I love. The clues reported by Annie, Michaels, and my grandmother added to my own brief observations since the accident laid out a few possible scenarios. Up until now I had been able to excuse his lack of engagement in my situation as one I had caused by pushing him away when I was getting used to the loss of my abilities. But the fact that he had not been in contact with Annie or Adler, that Baker Street was all but abandoned … and that he was not quoted in that article defending me, told me that either he was also on the run, he had washed his hands of me, or he had developed an addiction to the drugs that took away his pain. If he were under arrest or on the run, Annie would have found a way to communicate that, and my grandmother would not be so angry at him. If he were at his wits’ end and leaving me to fix my own problems, then why abandon Baker Street? And why, as Beans had reported, abandon Scotland Yard and the only job he had ever wanted? Mrs. Dawes was retired and had never in my memory risen to the level of panic described in that column, even when her son was endangered by his job or the townhouse was under siege by the press. The only thing that could push her to hysteria (if the reporter was not exaggerating) was worry for her son.

  I pressed my face against Lancaster’s back. I knew my next ad in The Lady would have to ask for Sherlock Holmes’ help. After all, who better to help an addict but a recovering one?

  CHAPTER 24

  WE STOLE BACK INTO London sometime after midnight. I hated to give up the motorcycle, but it was a rarity and could therefore cause people to notice us — the opposite of what we needed to do. We pulled up in an alleyway off Skeffington Street and dismounted, stretching our tired bodies. I pulled an envelope out of my satchel and popped in the motorcycle key. I wrote the address to the bakery on the envelope and this cross-street as well. Hopefully, by the time they got the key, the motorcycle would still be here.

  “I still don’t like the idea of splitting up,” Lancaster said, leading the way down to the waterfront. “But you’re right that it will be hard enough for me to get into the Royal Arsenal.”

  “I have other avenues to pursue,” I assured him. “But the most important element is our meeting place so that we can regroup with our data.”

  “The Wool and Weaver is exactly the pub you’re looking for,” he assured me, reaching for my cold hand. “Remember to tell the bartender that you’re visiting your pregnant sister. He knows where to take you. And he can be trusted. We worked together in the war.”

  “Like Major Collins?” I asked.

  “Yes and no,” Lancaster replied, leaning in close. “Are you sureyou won’t just head straight to the pub?”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me about Heddy Collins?”

  “I promise I will tell you everything about the Collinses as soon as you can explain their connection to this and not before,” he replied.

  I felt his breath on my face and nodded. “I will see you tomorrow night. Be safe.”

  I kissed him once, on the edge of his mouth, and then again. And then we were kissing like we hadn’t seen each other in months. He tasted like that odd combination of bubble gum and Morlands — not unpleasant, but distracting. We broke it off at the same time and I turned away immediately, heart hammering, walking in the opposite direction of the Royal Arsenal, putting as much distance between me and that temptation as I could.

  It took me nearly two hours to navigate my way to my destination, switching between short hops in cabs and walking through alleys I recognized only by name from Holmes’ map. I dropped off the envelope with the key and my ads — one for The Lady and one for The Sunday Times where I hoped my grandfather would find it —
at a post box along the way, glancing over my shoulder with a paranoia I had never felt before. Finally, I made it to Stepney Green and knocked discreetly on the door to the shop where I had been welcomed a week ago.

  Once, twice, thrice I knocked, but no one answered, so I took a chance, turning the handle and finding it unlocked.

  “You!” said the young boy named Lin, who had pulled me from the street to meet his aunt. He lowered his cricket bat and called out something to his aunt, who came out from behind her counter carrying a flat-bottomed pan.

  “I am so sorry to bother you so late,” I said, my hands raised in case they still thought I was a threat. “But I need your help.”

  The aunt stepped forward and clapped me on the back, speaking far too fast for me to understand even if she had been speaking in English, but pointing at me with a triumphant look in her eyes. I shushed her as best as I could, letting her lead me further into her shop.

  “You can talk,” Lin said, wiping the sleep from his eyes,

  “I can,” I said, as Lin’s aunt examined me again. “But I still need you to translate for your aunt.”

  “You could have waited to tell us in the morning,” Lin said, his grumpiness evident as he took a seat at the counter.

  “I couldn’t, actually,” I said, gently grasping the aunt’s hands and removing them from my face. “My friend is in trouble and I have a feeling you can help me find him.”

  Lin’s aunt said something that Lin translated. “She wants to know if you stopped taking those pills.”

  “Why … Yes, I did, though not on purpose,” I replied.

  She nodded as soon she heard my “yes,” speaking quickly to Lin.

  “She says she knew the pills were causing the problem,” Lin said.

  I frowned because that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? Except it wasn’t. It was a possible explanation for a problem doctors hadn’t been able to explain. This was a clue I hadn’t been searching for in a case I thought I’d solved. I glanced at the counter where I had last seen the scrapbook Gavin had left behind.