“I’m no match for you, and you know it,” Templeton replied. “I merely have parlour tricks compared to your powers.”
“Then you know how much there is too fear,” Davidson said, stepping forward menacingly with Billy still struggling, almost forgotten in his hand.
“Put the boy down,” Tanner said. “Just put him down, and we can work the rest out.”
Davidson looked down at Billy, as if he had only just remembered the boy was there. At the same time Templeton made a gesture toward him with his hand. It was an almost casual flicking movement that was over before it had really begun. Davidson snapped his head back, staring at Templeton, then lifted his free hand to the side of his neck.
A puzzled look crossed his face, as he scratched at himself. Tanner looked to Templeton, but he was concentrating on the man in front of him. His casual manner had been replaced by one of acute awareness.
Davidson looked at something hidden in his hand, then one of his eyes drooped, giving his face a momentary lopsided look. He began to fall forward, and Tanner stepped in quickly to catch Billy before he was trapped underneath him. The boy began to gasp as soon as he was released from his captivity, he clung to Tanner who held him in his arms.
As Davidson fell, face down onto the carpet, Templeton stepped forward and began checking the man’s breathing, then he held two fingers to his throat and felt for a pulse.
“We have him,” was all Templeton said, as he straightened up.
“What happened?” Tanner asked.
“For all his power, he fell for a simple piece of prestidigitation,” Templeton replied.
Tanner didn’t even ask what that meant, he simply cocked his head to one side and waited for his partner to explain himself.
“Slight of hand, dear fellow,” Templeton said, a smile spreading on his face as he opened him hand, revealing a small dart sitting in his palm.
“The cane?” Tanner asked, knowing the answer before he voiced the question.
“Quite so. In my experience a powerful opponent will often expect a grand gesture, a bold move. When our friend saw me leave myself defenceless, I’m sure he was waiting to see what powers I would use against him. As it was, I had already made my move, I simply waited until his attention was elsewhere in case I missed.”
“My guess is that you rarely do,” Tanner said and received a slight smile in return.
Outside the cabin the sounds of fighting were almost gone, Tanner went to the curtained window and was greeted with the sight of the navy men standing over a number of kneeling captives.
Chapter Thirty Three
Heavy raindrops fell on the lid of the coffin as it was lowered into the ground. It was only a Spring shower, but it was seemed fitting that the heaven’s would open, as if accepting not just Evans, but all the dead. Tanner watched the water gather on the polished surface of the wood, catching the sun, glinting off the metal furniture. He stood for a moment after the casket was gone from view, then turned away.
Evan’s family were walking ahead of the crowd, and it had been a crowd, away from the grave. All of the police funerals had been well attended. Every man not on duty had turned out, uniforms as clean as they ever were.
The days after the...after the what? Disaster? Riots? How was it possible to use one word to encompass so much violence and death, without trivialising it? The days after the events in Liverpool had been almost as bad as the events themselves. People had started to realise how much damage had been done, barely a family had escaped without suffering some kind of loss. Those families had turned to each other and found solace. The town had begun to rebuild itself almost as soon as it had begun to understand how much damage there was to repair.
Bodies were still turning up now, burned in fires, hidden and found bloody and beaten. Then the rats had started to appear, each one dead. Seemingly, they had just lain down and died, much like the first one Tanner had found on the banks of the river. All the evidence pointed to the fact that they had simply given up living.
People had started to bring them to the police stations, but after the first few it seemed that there really was no point. There was no way of knowing who they had once been. Each one a ruined life, as much a victim of Davidson as the people they had killed.
There had been a debate, and eventually it was decided that the bodies would be burned. It was, the church argued, sacrilege to bury them alongside their victims, and so the faceless dead, the nameless victims, were denied even the last dignity of a Christian burial. Tanner had kept his feelings on that matter to himself.
“It is difficult to know what to say as one walks away from a grave,” Templeton said, stepping up behind him.
“Everything sounds so hollow,” Tanner agreed, and the two men walked on in silence. Across the graveyard a pair of magpies fought over a scrap of food, and on the edge of hearing a dog barked. In short, life went on.
Life always goes on. It is the hardest part of death to understand. We live, we die, and if we are lucky we leave a faint mark that can be seen for a generation or two. None but a miniscule few leave a lasting impression, or even a scar that can be seen forever. People Like Davidson left scars. It would take time but they would heal, eventually.
They reached the street where a cab waited, but the rain was letting up and they decided to walk the few short streets to where Evan’s wake was being held in the Turner’s Vaults public house.
“I hear Davidson was led away from the cells, and not by our people,” Tanner said, not even looking at his friend, simply letting the words hang in the air.
“My employers rarely desire something and don’t acquire it,” Templeton replied, not trying to make an excuse.
“What will happen to him?”
“I simply do not know,” Templeton shrugged. “I am a finder, what happens to the things I find? I have no idea.”
“Things? Is that what he was to you? A thing?”
“It was not the man that interested my employers. I know it’s hard to understand, the man himself is of little consequence. It is his ability, his power...his potential that interests them.”
“So, I suppose he will escape punishment for everything he’s done?” Tanner asked, and to his amazement he found he wasn’t angry at the idea. He had seen what had started this whole affair, the treatment of the slaves and the abhorrence on St. Helena. Who could say where the punishment began and ended, who decided the right and wrong of the matter? The people would need to see retribution and there were enough men in custody to let them have their day. What did it matter that one man escaped among all those who committed crimes on the people?
“I can’t say, and I won’t guess.” Templeton walked on, looking up at the sky, breathing deeply. “I will say this, he will never be a free man again. I imagine that, for a man such as him, that will be punishment enough.”
The thought hung between them, the idea of a life spent in captivity. They left the graveyard and stepped out on to the street.
“Tell me, how is your new tea-boy working out?” Templeton asked, a slight smile crossing his lips.
Tanner let out a short laugh, “Billy? He steals more biscuits than he serves, but he’s a good enough lad. He doesn’t know you’re paying his wages, and he doesn’t know it was you who paid for his sister’s stay in hospital, I wish you’d let us tell him.
“If he grows up with a respect for the law, and the men who uphold it, then it’s worth a few pennies,” Templeton said, shaking his head.
They walked on, silence surrounded them once more. About them the town rebuilt itself, as it always had and always would. This place, this community, was still the beating heart of so much that happened in the British Empire. So much life passed through these docks and lived on these streets. Tomorrow would bring something new, it always did.
Afterword
I tend to find that the characters who populate my stories come to me fully formed. They knock on the window of my imagination and demand to be let in, who am I to
stop them? Then, if I’m lucky, the process of writing is a simple matter of letting those characters make their own choices and tell me where they would like to go.
I have, on occasion, tried to force them to do things they weren’t comfortable with, or were not ready to do, yet. Those are the times when I find my books meander off down dark passageways and struggle to find their way out. I have learned over the course of the last five books that I am wisest to think of myself as the means by which my characters speak, not the one who puts words in their mouths.
So, I hear you ask, where is the challenge in a book like Mersey Dark? A good question. The simple answer is, research. The mid-to-late 19th century was one of great people, and great change. Things, and even ideas, that nobody had dreamed of in the 1850’s were common place by the 1860’s, and so on through the decades.
I was born on Merseyside in the 1970’s another time of change in the city. However, we moved to Nottingham when I was still small. I have enjoyed the chance to get to know a little of the history of my birthplace, something I have harboured a little guilt about not doing before now.
Liverpool itself was a place of huge change in the second half of the 19th century. The landscape modern Scousers are familiar with today existed mainly in the imagination of architects, but was soon to become a reality. I found myself having to make sure each building, street, and area through which Tanner and Templeton moved, actually existed in 1856.
In some cases the timing of my story was fortuitous in the extreme. The Baltic Fleet, public house where Tanner accosts the Flynn Brothers, was exactly as described in the book. It was no more than an extension to the already established, Turners Vaults. In later years the two pubs would become one under the sign of the Baltic Fleet, but the building site gave me a great place to introduce our hero.
Likewise, the play at which our first unfortunate victims had been patrons was real. An Act in the Life of Garrick, was a comedy, translated from German, that played at the Theatre Royal. The theatre itself no longer exists but the records of its performances were at hand, sometimes the internet is a wonderful place.
In other cases, places that would have added a simple and effective landmark to my story simply did not exist in 1856. The Albert Dock was a recent addition to the waterline of the Mersey, but the Liver building, replete with its famous inhabitants, was fifty years away from having its foundations laid.
The sewers, in which a lot of this story takes part was the biggest location where I just let my imagination run wild. I am sure the sewer workers in the 19th century would recognise little of what I have described in the pages of this book. I just hope they would forgive me.
As for the people in my story, most of them are figments of my imagination. A few are names which may be familiar to historians of Liverpool. I have used their names, and in a couple of cases I have eluded to their deeds, but I make no claims as to their personality and hope that I have treated them well.
What I am trying to say is this – if I have made mistakes, it wasn’t through lack of trying. If I have taken liberties with the town of Liverpool, (and she was a town for another 24 years) it is not through a lack of love.
I have welcomed this chance to explore a little of the history of my home, something I should have done a long time ago. In a way, it has felt like coming home.
Thanks for reading,
Michael.
Mersey Dark Page 28
