Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street isb-2

by Sally Spencer

  Meade had not finished yet. ‘Three: we don’t need permission from anybody to talk to anybody — and that includes the almighty Holts. And four: if you break any of the first three rules, I will smash your teeth and swear you did it falling over. Are we clear on that?’

  ‘We’re clear,’ the footman said sullenly.

  ‘Try again,’ Meade advised him.

  ‘We’re clear, sir,’ the footman said.

  Meade nodded. ‘Good. We’re going down to the basement now. Make sure nobody disturbs us.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the footman said.

  ‘So tell me, is there anyone else you’re planning to reduce to a quivering wreck today?’ Blackstone said, as he and Alex Meade descended the steep stairs to the basement.

  ‘Depends if anybody else crosses me,’ Meade growled.

  ‘You were already angry, even before that footman got snotty with you, weren’t you?’

  ‘Damn straight!’

  ‘With Flynn?’

  ‘Hell, yes. This is all a game to him, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, I don’t think it is,’ Blackstone said. ‘He might appear frivolous, but he’s as serious about the case as you or me — possibly even more so, since it happened on his patch.’

  They had reached the first of the steel doors.

  Meade tapped on it experimentally with his knuckles, then said, ‘I believe what Mrs Turner told us — and I don’t just mean I believe that she believes it, I mean I believe it’s true.’

  ‘You believe it’s true that her husband was an honest man who could never have been bribed to let the kidnappers into the guard room?’

  ‘Yes. And, by all accounts, the other murdered guard was almost as saintly as Turner.’

  ‘He would seem to have been,’ Blackstone agreed.

  ‘So how did the kidnappers get beyond this door?’ Meade asked, exasperatedly.

  ‘I don’t know. It might have been through trickery.’

  ‘But what kind of trickery would be likely to work?’ Meade asked, his frustration bubbling over. ‘What could have persuaded the guards to go against all their training and allow strangers to pass through the door in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Blackstone admitted. ‘Someone — a person they knew and trusted — must have told them it would be all right.’

  ‘And who could that person be?’ Meade demanded. ‘I can only think of three — Fanshawe, Mr George or Mr Harold.’

  ‘Or Big Bill himself,’ Blackstone pointed out.

  ‘You think he’d let his own kidnappers in?’

  ‘He won’t have known that’s what they were — he will have thought they were there for some completely different reason.’

  ‘So after seven years of refusing to see anybody but his sons, his butler and the parlour maid-’ Meade said sceptically

  ‘And one — or a number of — prostitutes,’ Blackstone amended.

  ‘. . after seven years of that, he suddenly changes his attitude to visitors completely?’

  ‘Circumstances may have changed. He may not have wanted to see them, but he could have thought it necessary.’

  Meade sighed dispiritedly. ‘This is getting us nowhere,’ he said. ‘We can speculate and deduce for forever and a day — and it all still ends with us disappearing in a cloud of smoke up our own assholes. It’s solid facts — not fancy theories — that we need.’

  ‘Then let’s see if there are any solid facts on the other side of that door,’ Blackstone suggested.

  They opened the second steel door, and William Holt’s study — the room in which he had spent every day for the previous seven years — lay before them.

  Blackstone ran his eyes over the whole area: the filing cabinets; the bearskin rug, soaked with the blood of the men who had been hired to protect Big Bill; the desk, with its towers of paper and its dinner tray.

  ‘There’s something missing,’ he told himself.

  But what?

  He wished he had Ellie Carr with him at that moment, he thought — but then, he wished he had her with him most of the time, both when he was investigating a crime and when he wasn’t.

  He had never experienced love for a woman until his thirties, and then — as if to make up for lost time — he fallen in love three times in as many years. Each time, it had been a disaster. His first two loves had betrayed him for a cause. His third, Dr Ellie Carr, had not so much betrayed him as deserted him for the work that she loved — the work that consumed her.

  ‘We could use a forensic criminologist right now,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t know there was such a thing as forensic criminologist,’ Meade replied.

  And maybe there wasn’t, Blackstone conceded — yet.

  Maybe most people — in both the police and the scientific community — still refused to accept that science and crime detection could work hand in glove. But Ellie would change all that — even if it killed her.

  He looked around the study again.

  What was missing?

  What should have been there — and wasn’t?

  ‘Where’s the tray?’ he asked.

  ‘The dinner tray?’ Meade said. ‘It’s right over there on the desk.’

  ‘Not the dinner tray — the breakfast tray!’

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ Meade admitted.

  ‘Put yourself in Fanshawe’s shoes,’ Blackstone said. ‘You’re taking your master his breakfast. You knock on the door to the guard room, and find that not only is it open, but there’s no sign of the guards. You open the door to the study, and see the guards — drenched in blood — lying on the rug.’

  ‘And you still have the breakfast tray in your hands!’ Meade said, getting the picture.

  ‘So what do you do with the tray?’

  ‘Chances are, you’re so shocked that you drop it on the floor.’

  ‘Or maybe, if you’ve got more nerve and self-control than most people, you put it down somewhere.’

  ‘But what you don’t do is run off to raise the alarm with the tray still in your hands.’

  ‘So what’s your conclusion from all that?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘That when Fanshawe came down here this morning, he didn’t bring a tray with him. Because he knew it wouldn’t be necessary! Because he knew what he was going to find!’

  ‘I think we’ve just discovered who told the guards to let the kidnappers in,’ Blackstone said grimly.

  Blackstone stood at the back of the house, looking at the black clouds over the ocean. Some of them, it might have seemed to any other observer, were intent on buffeting their rivals out of the way. Others adopted a more placatory approach and tried to meld into the bigger neighbours. And there were yet others which, having recently formed a union, soon found that union unsatisfactory, and began to drift away.

  None of this great natural drama registered with the inspector. Though he was looking, he was not seeing. All he actually saw — in whatever direction he looked — was his own stupidity.

  ‘You should never have allowed it to happen, Sam Blackstone,’ he told himself angrily.

  When he’d suspected that he’d caught Fanshawe out in a lie, he should have begun a deeper interrogation of the butler immediately. Instead, he’d made the decision to let the man stew in his own juice for a while.

  And that had been the wrong decision!

  Meade appeared round the corner of the house. ‘The servants have completed the search of the building,’ he said.

  ‘And they haven’t found him?’

  ‘No.’

  Of course they hadn’t found him! Fanshawe had realized what danger he was in — and had made a run for it.

  ‘We haven’t lost him yet,’ Alex Meade said, with forced cheerfulness. ‘I’ve just been on the phone to the police in Brooklyn, and they’re going to watch both the railroad station and the streetcar terminal. If he’s used either of those to make his escape, we’ll have him.’

  Unless he’s donned some sort of disguise, Blackstone th
ought.

  Unless the policemen assigned to watch out for him happen to be looking the other way when he walks past.

  Unless he hasn’t used the streetcar or the railroad at all, but instead has found some other way to get off Coney Island.

  Unless. . unless. . unless. .

  There were too many imponderables — far too bloody many!

  Inspector Flynn was still on the bench in the garden. He seemed not to have moved an inch since the last time Blackstone and Meade had seen him.

  ‘There’s a storm brewing,’ he called out. ‘I can feel it in the air. An hour from now, it’ll be raining cats and dogs.’

  ‘Thank you for the weather forecast, sir,’ Meade said, with barely concealed animosity.

  ‘Just what is it that bothers you about me, Sergeant?’ Flynn asked, as if he were genuinely curious.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ Meade replied.

  ‘Is it the fact I’ve been sitting here on my big fat Irish arse for the last hour?’ Flynn wondered.

  ‘Frankly, sir, yes,’ Meade admitted.

  ‘And what would you have preferred me to do? Walk behind you like a conjuror’s assistant, hoping you’d find some menial — meaningless — task to keep me busy? Or walk ahead of you, with a swagger to my step, as if this case hadn’t been snatched out of my grasp and given to two fellers who know nothing about Coney Island or the people who live here?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I haven’t been fair with you,’ Meade said contritely. ‘I know that if I’d had a case taken away from me-’

  ‘Besides, you can learn a great deal by just sitting and looking,’ Flynn interrupted him. ‘I know, for example, that the two ladies of the house — Mr George’s wife and Mr Harold’s wife — are on their way here, because I’ve seen their personal maids arrive with their luggage. I know that one of the maids employed in the kitchen not only steals food, but is stupid enough to do it while I’m here. And I know that Mr Fanshawe isn’t attending to his duties at the moment, because I saw him slip into the woods half an hour ago.’

  ‘You saw what!’ Blackstone exploded.

  Their first instinct was to run towards the woods, and that — without even consulting each other — was exactly what they did. But even as they approached the closest trees, Blackstone was beginning to realize that instinct was not enough — that what they needed was a plan.

  ‘Wait a minute, Alex,’ he called out to the younger man, who had already pulled ahead of him by several yards.

  Meade came to skidding halt which tore up the immaculate lawn, and waited for his partner to catch up.

  ‘This may be just what Fanshawe wanted us to do,’ Blackstone said. ‘He may have planned all along for us to blunder around in the woods looking for him, when, in fact, he was already gone.’

  ‘True,’ Meade agreed. ‘But what do we lose by looking anyway?’

  He was right, Blackstone thought. It was possible that, instead of running, Fanshawe had retreated into the woods like a wounded bear, and that they’d find him huddled up pitifully at the base of a tree.

  The sudden rumbling sound overhead made Blackstone look up.

  Flynn had been wrong about the timing of the coming storm, he thought. The heavy clouds, picked up by a vigorous wind, had advanced from the sea with the speed of a crack cavalry division, and were now engaged in the work of darkening the sky above them.

  ‘We’ll split up,’ he decided. ‘You skirt around the left side of the wood, and I’ll do the same to the right. Then we’ll both head towards the middle.’

  There was more thunder above them, and a bolt of lightning seared its way across the sky.

  Meade grinned. ‘Don’t they say the worst place to be in a thunderstorm is in a wood?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I believe they do,’ Blackstone said.

  And then they both set off in their search for Fanshawe the butler.

  The rain, which the thunder and lightning had promised, came two or three minutes later. At first, only a few drops managed to find their way through the dense foliage overhead. Then, as the drenching con-tinued, the smaller branches bent under the weight of the downpour, and tiny waterfalls trickled their way down to the floor of the wood.

  Blackstone searched slowly and methodically. Charles the First of England had escaped the pursuing Roundheads by hiding in the branches of an oak tree, but Fanshawe the butler would not be allowed to pull the same trick, and his pursuer spent almost as much time looking up as he did looking ahead.

  The rain was even heavier now, and the dusty soil beneath Blackstone’s feet was acquiring a springy sponginess. His second-best suit was taking some punishment, too, and he could feel drops of water trickling down his neck. Soon, the approaching dusk would combine with the heavy grey clouds to make the tops of the trees almost invisible. Then, as night fell, even the bases of the trees would become nothing more than vague black shapes ahead of him.

  But he would not give up his search. He had been a hunter of men for a long time — first in India and then in London — and his instinct told him that while there was no reason for Fanshawe to still be in the woods, in the woods was exactly where he was.

  Yes, he was still there. Cold and shivering — perhaps afraid — but still there.

  Another flash of lightning cut its way through the sky — lighting up the woods in a ghostly yellow light, making the very trees themselves seem to tremble at its power.

  ‘I’m not going to give up, Mr Fanshawe, so you might as well come out!’ Blackstone shouted.

  Now that was a pointless exercise, he told himself. Even if Fanshawe had been likely to be swayed by the words, it was improbable, given the wind which had started to howl and the rain which continued to crash down, that he would even have heard them.

  Small dips in the floor of the wood, hardly visible to the naked eye, had now become tiny bubbling rivers. Trees sighed and creaked. The wind, gaining confidence, searched for holes in Blackstone’s defences at which to hurl its chill and the rain it carried with it.

  ‘You might as well give yourself up, Mr Fanshawe!’ he called out.

  And then, in a new flash of lightning, he saw a pair of legs suspended in mid-air.

  NINE

  If a body had been discovered hanging from a tree in Central Park, the New York City Police Department would already have flooded the whole area around the ‘incident’ in the garish glow of hastily erected arc lights. But this wasn’t New York — it was Coney Island (part of the city, in theory, since 1st of January 1898 — yet still going very much its own way), and the officers at the scene had to make do with hand-held kerosene lanterns.

  Inspector Flynn stood watching, as one of his men climbed the tree and then shimmied along to the branch around which the rope had been looped.

  ‘Well, looking on the bright side, at least it’s stopped raining,’ he said to Blackstone.

  It had indeed. The storm had departed with the same sudden speed with which it had arrived, and now there was only the dank smell in the air, and the squelching of soil underfoot, to indicate that it had even occurred.

  Blackstone looked up at the dangling corpse.

  Fanshawe had probably hoped for a quick, painless death, he thought. That was what most people who hanged themselves anticipated — but it didn’t usually work out like that.

  Hanging was both an art and a science. A good hangman would take into account the weight of the condemned man, and calculate the length of the rope — and hence the length of the drop — accordingly. He would place the noose in just the right position for the sudden impact to snap the man’s spine and send his brain into a state of unconsciousness. The amateur attempting suicide, on the other hand, knew none of this, and would invariably get it wrong.

  And so it would have been with Fanshawe. When he jumped from the tree, he had probably been expecting instant oblivion.

  And what had he found instead?

  That he was dangling a few feet from the ground, fighting for breath!

&nbs
p; Perhaps he had clawed up at the rope, in a desperate attempt to save himself, while, all the time, he was growing weaker and weaker through lack of oxygen.

  Or perhaps he had decided simply — as many had done before him — that though he’d got it wrong, his death would still be just as inevitable, and merely take longer than he had anticipated.

  ‘Shall I cut him down, sir?’ the policeman in the tree called.

  ‘I suppose you might as well, now you’ve gone to all the trouble of climbing up there,’ Flynn replied. He turned to Blackstone. ‘They’re good boys that I’ve got working for me, Inspector. Very good boys! But they wouldn’t even think of taking a crap without asking my permission first.’

  The policeman on the branch produced a knife and began to saw through the rope.

  ‘Hold on a second,’ Flynn said. ‘You two — Johnson and Taylor!’ he called out to a couple of young officers who were standing a few feet away from him. ‘Have you signed off duty for the night?’

  The two men looked perplexed.

  ‘No, sir,’ one of them said.

  ‘Ah, so you are still on duty, but you thought you’d leave the donkey work to me and Inspector Blackstone here, did you?’

  ‘Is there something that you’d like us to do, sir?’ the young policeman asked.

  ‘Could be,’ Flynn mused. ‘You see the body hanging from that tree, Officer Johnson?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And you see your man up there — Officer Polk — cutting through the rope with his knife?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So tell me, Officer Johnson, what do you think is going to happen to it when he’s finished the job?’

  ‘The body will fall to the ground, sir,’ Johnson said.

  ‘Yes, it will,’ Flynn agreed. ‘It will fall like a sack of flour. But it isn’t a sack of flour, is it?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘No, sir! It’s a man! And the way I see it, even if the poor bastard’s already lost most of his dignity, we should at least do all we can to try to preserve what little is left.’