‘That may be difficult. We were followed back from the Yard and I have no doubt we will both be watched. Likely our servants too. I know where to get a message to, but not how without giving her away.’
‘I think I know, ma’am,’ Little said. ‘I think I know just the person to deliver it.’
Aldgate.
Kate sat atop the roof of the London Metal Exchange watching the street below. Across the way, St Katherine Cree sat in all its grey splendour. Kate was not religious; she had not really had time in her life to get to grips with the concept of God and even Mrs Morton, who attended church every Sunday, had not pushed her into it. Antonia had thought that meeting at the church seemed appropriate, given the name, and it was an easily recognisable landmark with its square tower and somewhat unusual architecture. Antonia had said it was Jacobean, and not many of the churches from that time were still around.
There was no sign of Antonia on the street below, nor Charles. Staying in one place seemed unwise so Kate was just about to move on when she spotted red hair in the lamplight and peered closer at the figure standing nervously on the corner beside the church. Smiling, she headed for the side of the building where she could climb down the wall more easily and a few minutes later she was walking up to Chastity.
‘Not back at your old ways, I take it?’ she asked, giving the girl a smile.
‘No, mum. We’d best be getting off the street. Hunch your shoulders more and we’ll off down Sugarloaf Alley. People’ll think you’ve taken me for a bit.’
‘A bit of what?’ Kate asked as she bent her back and dropped her shoulders. She doubted she gave a good impression of a man leading a young girl astray, but perhaps her height would lend credence. Placing her hand on Chastity’s shoulder, she started for the alley.
‘I’m sure I wouldn’ know, Miss, bein’ a good girl an’ all.’ When they were in the alley and out of the light, she took an envelope from her bodice and handed it to Kate. ‘Mrs Wooster and your gentleman are bein’ watched by the Filth, Miss. No one pays heed t’ what a street girl does an’ Madge was sure I’d be able t’ get that t’ you.’
‘Thank you, Chastity. You’ve done me a service delivering this.’
‘An’ you done me one getting’ me free o’ them slavers, Miss. We ain’t even by a long chalk, an’ I’ll do whatever I can t’ help. I ’eard what they said y’d done and I’d believe the King was a fish before I’d believe that.’
‘Thank you again. Now, you’d best be on your way before someone thinks you have returned for work, and I’ll be away to somewhere less visible.’
‘Good luck, Miss.’ The girl pulled a scarf up over her red hair and hurried away onto Leadenhall Street.
Kate opened the envelope once she was safely back on the rooftops. There was little moon and almost no light from the streets below, and she had to focus to read, but she slowly deciphered the letter which seemed to be from Charles.
Dear Kate, I hope this letter finds you well. While a rather foolish start in the circumstances I feel that has never been so true a sentiment. I know not what you were told or have found out so here are the facts of the case. You are accused of murdering Alfred Cooper. The suggestion is that I aided you in his recovery from Pentonville, but they have no real evidence and I am of sufficient standing that they could not hold me. Further, they are saying that you killed the police officers sent to detain you to further your escape.
She was accused of killing her father? Well, it made sense in some respect. She could see how someone might think that she would desire him dead. The ‘policemen,’ though… The one calling himself Morris would probably not have survived and the one shot in the leg might have bled out, but the others… Then again, they were not policemen, but had had real uniforms which they must have obtained from somewhere. So the kidnappers had framed her for those deaths too.
Let me be clear that neither myself nor Mrs Wooster believe these fanciful allegations. Little told us what you told her. My belief is that the squad sent to apprehend you were intercepted and murdered, the intention being to make it appear that you had done the deed while escaping. We are fortunate that you actually did and I doubt the kidnappers were expecting it. Remain hidden. We will send word when it is safe to return. Charles.
Crouching beside a chimney breast, Kate pushed the letter into one of her pouches and considered. There really was little she could do in her position, but she hated having to rely on her friends. They had already done so much for her and now she was putting them in a most difficult situation to aid her.
The brickwork on her right exploded and she jerked to the left, off and running before her mind had caught up with what had happened. Someone had taken a shot at her? She had heard nothing. A rifle from some distance away. Was she somehow betrayed?
Another shot whined as it struck the tiles on her left and she turned again, leaping an alley and running on across the flat roof across the way. Just ahead of her a chimneypot exploded and she bolted off to the left again. The angles were wrong. There was no building tall enough and close enough to give a marksman such a comprehensive view. A shot struck the bricks on her left and she turned, but this time she had heard something before the bullet struck. On her right and high up. Too high up. She dropped, sliding over the rooftop and catching herself as she went over the edge. There was a window below her and she dropped again, turning and springing to the opposite side of the alley to catch a window there, and in like manner she made her way to the ground.
As she darted through the shadows, she heard voices above her. There were men up there, speaking German and sounding confused and irritated. They had been waiting for her? But how had they known… The shots. Someone out there was in an airship of some sort with a clear view of her. They had not been trying to hit her; they had been herding her, pushing her into a trap they had laid.
Leaping up, she caught a ledge and made her way back to rooftop level, lifting her head slowly at the end and looking out in the direction she thought the shots had come from. It took her a minute or two to realise it, even when she had detected something not quite right, but it was there, hanging over the city perhaps six or seven hundred yards away. It was little more than a shape, blackness obscuring the stars, but it was there, a blimp of some sort, too bulging for a dirigible and with an odd shape to one end. There were no lights showing, but she caught a glint of reflected lamplight a couple of times; there were people aboard that thing looking for her through binoculars or telescopes.
Moving around at street level would make it easier for the police to find her and ensure that she was seen by someone. But it seemed the rooftops were less safe than she had expected and the police were easier to avoid than men with binoculars on an airship. She began back down to the alley she had climbed from. It was going to be a long night.
Richmond, 19th August.
‘You do yourself no service by harbouring this… woman, madam.’
Antonia watched Longford as he stalked about her front room like a tiger in a cage, but rather less fearsome. ‘Miss Felix is not here, Chief Inspector, as the men you have disrupting my household will soon tell you. I know not where she is.’ Which was true; she did not know where Kate was now.
‘She is a killer, madam. Two more officers were struck down last night. Shot in the street.’
‘Shot?’
‘Indeed!’
‘By what?’
‘By your–’
‘Not by whom, sir. It is quite clear that you would place at her door any death within a hundred miles so we must assume that you will say it was Miss Felix. What calibre of bullet was used?’
‘What does it matter?’
‘Because Miss Felix owns two firearms, a revolver and a rifle, and both are in their cases.’
To his credit, Longford pulled out a notebook and flipped through the pages. ‘A seven point nine-two millimetre bullet was recovered from one of the bodies.’
‘Likely the Mauser rifle round, Chief Inspector. You are looking for a G
erman rifle, perhaps a Gewehr ninety-eight which is commonly in use by the German Army and quite a well-constructed weapon. How Miss Felix could have obtained one while on the run in London I cannot fathom, but I leave such matters to the police.’
A constable chose that moment to appear at the door. He looked as though he had drawn the short straw. ‘No sign of her, sir. We’ve searched the place from attic to cellar.’ Antonia looked from the uniformed man to his superior.
‘Very well, Constable, back on the carriages.’ He waited for the man to leave before saying, ‘Make no mistake, Mrs Wooster, I will see this girl hang for what she has done.’
‘If Miss Felix is responsible for all that you accuse her of, Chief Inspector, I shall tighten the noose about her neck myself.’ She rose to her feet and held a hand out towards the door. ‘That, of course, will be after you have provided but a shred of evidence that she is responsible. I have yet to hear anything which is not insinuation and prejudice. Kindly take your leave. I must inspect the damage your heavy-handed officers have wrought in order to present a bill at a later date.’
Knightsbridge.
‘You are welcome to examine the laboratory, Constable,’ Charles said as he let himself into the room, ‘but I should caution you against touching anything. Some of my experiments are delicate. Some of the materials I have stored here are toxic or worse.’
The young officer swallowed hard and nodded. ‘I don’t doubt there’s nothing to see, Doctor Barstow-Hall, but the Chief Inspector would have my guts for sausage skins if there was a room left unchecked.’
‘And you drew the short straw?’
‘Youngest man on the squad, sir.’
‘Ah.’ They entered and the policeman stepped smartly to the very centre of the room, away from anything which might tip over or be brushed by a sleeve, or leap off the bench and strangle him of its own volition.
‘Well… there seems nowhere here for the young lady to hide.’ He peered under the benches with the air of a man expecting some form of eldritch horror to jump out at. ‘What of those cabinets, sir?’
There were two, five feet in height and moderately thin. One wooden one had vents cut into the door, while the other was solid and made of a heavy, dark metal. ‘Those are where I keep the really dangerous materials, Constable. Miss Felix is, as I’m sure you have been told, six feet tall and would have considerable difficulty squashing herself into those spaces.’ The constable appeared satisfied with that, but Charles had a sudden urge to be vindictive which he found himself unable to override. ‘However she is quite flexible. Perhaps you should look.’ Reaching out he opened the door of the wooden cabinet and, as expected, the policeman jumped back, relaxing when he saw only shelves and bottles.
‘No one there, sir. What of the other cabinet?’
‘Ah, that one. Do you have children, Constable?’
‘No, sir, I’ve not had the fortune of finding the right young woman yet.’
‘So you do wish to have them? I believe I have a square of lead which should suffice.’
‘Sir?’
‘That’s the radioactives store, Constable.’
‘Oh! Uh… Well, the young lady is hardly likely to be in there then, sir.’
‘Miss Felix has a quite remarkable resilience to such dangers. She must spend time in a reactor to keep her physiology stable.’
‘I know about the reactor, sir. The detail watching the one at Greenwich is not the most popular, but… But that cabinet looks airtight, and she has to breathe, sir.’
Relenting, Charles gave a nod. ‘Well reasoned, Constable. I can see you rising to Inspector without difficulty.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘And the best of luck in finding the future Mrs Constable.’
Soho.
Kate opened her eyes and looked up at the clear, blue sky. It was, by her estimation, not long after midday and she was lying beside a chimney breast on the rooftop of one of Soho’s tenements. It was not the most comfortable of beds, but the bricks of the chimney were warm and she could, if required, sleep on nails thanks to her time in the cell.
As dawn broke, she had found herself in the region of Covent Garden. The market was coming to life and the streets were starting to fill, and she had been moving all night in an effort to avoid police and others. But with the light, the black airship would have to depart or be seen, so Kate had taken to the rooftops once more and continued west until she had found a convenient place to settle down for a few hours.
Sitting atop the roof she drank water from the canteen Mrs Bridger had provided and ate some bread and cheese. The night had been hard and had proven to her that she needed a better strategy for remaining unobserved. She had heard at least one more shot in the night, a muffled sound which indicated that the rifle was fitted with some sort of suppressor, though no bullet had come near her. These people were well equipped and tenacious, and they ruled the skies at night. On the streets she had the police to deal with. She had need of somewhere to hole up, but she also had a need to be at Aldgate at nightfall in case there was news from Charles or Antonia. Well, there was one place which she knew was likely to be unoccupied…
Smiling, Kate took another mouthful of water and then packed away her goods. She had some travelling to do.
Aldgate.
There was no sign of Chastity, or any of her other friends, around the church. Kate watched the skies as much as the ground and tried to stay in the shadows. Her dark clothes and the thin moon were likely to help, as was the light cloud, but she had to assume that the airship was up there and looking for her.
As far as she knew, no one had seen her crossing back towards Aldgate so there was every chance the Germans were concentrating their search on the East End which would be the last place they might think she had been heading. But then again, she was not sure that they had known she was heading there…
Trying to out-think the people chasing her was going to be almost impossible without information. She needed a plan and to come up with one she needed time to think, and somewhere secure to do it. Well, there was obviously no one coming to meet her tonight, so she checked the sky once more and then started off towards St Katherine’s Dock.
The railway lines that went through Shadwell forced her down to ground level, and it was as she was crossing the track near Dock Street that she spotted the three figures walking at the side of the rails. They had already passed the point she was crossing at and were all facing away from her, so she made a dash for the far side and hid behind a bush which had grown there, pausing because something seemed odd about the three men in thick great coats.
Each carried a storm lantern and they seemed to be searching, which made her suspect that they were looking for her, but they did so in a manner… She was not quite sure what was catching her attention. They seemed slow, overly deliberate, and none of them spoke, conducting their search in silence. As she watched, one of them turned, lifting his lantern and looking back in her direction. Kate covered her mouth to stop any sound escaping: the man was Morris, the fake detective. She could see a black mark at his throat where her boot heel had struck. There was no way he could have survived, but there he was… Except that even in the yellowish light of the lantern, his skin looked grey and his eyes were cast over, almost white.
He turned again, starting off after his compatriots, and Kate started into the buildings on the south side of the tracks. The implications of what she had seen were still with her when she had to drop down again to cross The Highway. These people could raise the dead? Or at least return to them a semblance of life. Her own existence defied God and Nature, but this was something else.
She made it to Wapping as quickly as was possible commensurate with remaining unseen and found the warehouse the slavers had used as empty as she had expected. Two of the three rooms on the upper floor had contained beds which the men had employed when not out stealing girls or guarding them. It would make a most acceptable place to hide for a while and was not too f
ar from Aldgate that she could not return there each evening.
The rooms had no windows, but they did have lanterns, a state which Kate found very acceptable. She busied herself tidying one bed, setting a table with a lantern beside it, and then sitting down to a cold meal of ham, bread, cheese, and water, which managed to taste like a feast. She had her pills to take and a bed to sleep on, and it was unlikely anyone would look for her there, but she had placed crates at the top of the stairs to make it difficult to get onto the floor without making noise. A book would have been nice, but she had not thought to pack one. Instead, she turned off the lantern to save oil, lay back on the bed and considered her situation.
Her persecutors were well resourced and they seemed to have some numbers. She doubted they had people inside the police, but they had to have an informant, at least someone who had told them the route the Maria would take to pick her up and when it was leaving. They had effective weapons and, apparently, undead soldiers, and an airship which could travel quietly, unseen in the darkness of the night. All of this she knew.
What she needed was a motive and the name of their employer, for she was sure that there was one. A group of men like this would have a leader. It would be someone powerful, wealthy, and with influence. A man, she had no doubt, and she needed to know who he was. What she needed was a plan to get that information.
Westminster, 20th August.
Longford reviewed the reports of the previous night, his face red with anger. Another dead officer, this one with a broken neck. It rankled all the more because Mrs Wooster’s words kept echoing in his head. He knew that the abomination they called a girl was responsible in the same way that he knew that there was a God on high. It was a matter of faith. Faith would not do for a policeman and Longford was a policeman as well as a Christian.
The fact that no one could find the girl was not helping, and now there were reports of the dead walking the streets in Whitechapel and Shadwell. The place was going to Hell, and if there were dead men actually walking out there, then perhaps that was a more literal expression than usual.
Unobtainium 1: Kate on a Hot Tin Roof Page 15
