India had found she could not answer him.
He had given her a kind smile and said, “It’s a very bitter thing, suicide. The ones left behind always look for another explanation. But I am convinced that Miss Selwyn Jones’s death was just that—a suicide.”
“I miss her, Sid,” India said now, in a small, choked voice. “I miss her so much.”
Sid stood up and pulled India up out of her seat. He put his arms around her and held her close and let her cry. Her cousin Aloysius had been killed several years ago and now her sister was gone. They were the only members of her family she had been close to. If only he could do something for her. She was not getting over Maud’s death. She was still sad, still grieving.
“I wish I could just believe what Barrett told me,” she said now, wiping her eyes. “If I could believe it, I could let it go. Let her go. But I can’t.”
Sid wished she could let it go, too. He wished he could, but like India, he couldn’t quite believe Maud had killed herself, either. And yet perhaps Barrett was right. Perhaps she’d become an addict, and the morphine, combined with the loss of her lover, had caused her to behave irrationally.
If Maud was an addict, though, someone had to have supplied her with the drugs, Sid thought. He wondered, for the briefest of seconds, if it could possibly have been his old colleague, the East End drug lord Teddy Ko. It was Ko’s establishment that Maud used to frequent. It was at Ko’s that Sid had first met India, as she was trying to convince Maud—and every other poor sod in the place—to leave it.
As he thought about those sad, smoke-filled rooms, Sid knew what he had to do; he knew how he could help his wife. He would go to see Teddy Ko and ask him if he’d sold drugs to Maud, or if anyone he knew had. He and Teddy went back a long way. If Teddy knew something, he might tell him. Then again, he might not. Either way, though, Sid had to try. He wanted to get answers for India, to give her some peace over her sister’s death.
He would go back. Not right away; Stephen and the other lads needed him too much right now, but before the summer was out. He’d been steering clear of London, and India knew it, so he would have to cook up a story about why he was suddenly going—maybe he’d say that he was after supplies for the hospital—so that she wouldn’t worry about him. It was the last place he wanted to go, but he would do it for her.
Back to the East End. Back to the past. Back to the scene of so many crimes.
Chapter Fifty-Four
“Make it quick, Wills, or Johnny Turkey’ll blow us both to hell!” Dan Harper shouted over the noise of his biplane’s propeller.
Willa gave him a thumbs-up to signal that she’d heard him. He gave her one back, then the biplane banked sharply right. Willa unfastened her safety belt, raised her camera, leaned as far out of her seat as she dared, and started to film.
Bedouin raiders had told Lawrence about the Turkish Army encampment in a valley to the west of the Jabal ad Duruz hills. Lawrence had no idea if they were telling the truth or if they’d been paid by the Turks to spread false information. He immediately sent a messenger to Amman, where the British had troops garrisoned and two biplanes, and asked the commander to undertake aerial reconnaissance for him. Willa had gone with the messenger. She’d never filmed from the air and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to start. For once, Lawrence had taken little convincing. The Bedouins’ reports troubled him, and he knew she would bring back good pictures. The rumored encampment was close to Damascus. Had the Turks got wind of Lawrence’s plan to march on the city? Were they building up troops to defend it? It was early August now, and Lawrence and his troops had taken Aqaba last month without too much difficulty, but Damascus, which was well defended, and which Lawrence wanted in British hands before autumn, would be a much harder nut to crack.
Willa saw now that the Bedouins had got the camp’s position right—it lay roughly a hundred and fifty miles southeast of Damascus, in a shallow valley, but they’d vastly underestimated its size. Canvas tents covered at least fifty acres of ground. Soldiers were drilling—at least a thousand of them. There was a huge livestock pen full of the goats and sheep needed to feed the men. Another pen held camels—which would undoubtedly be used by the Turks for reconnaissance missions of their own.
Luckily there were no airplanes on the ground. The Germans had far fewer aircraft in the desert than the British did. Consequently, their air reconnaissance wasn’t as good as Britain’s, and their air attacks were less frequent. There were guns on the ground though: two large antiaircraft guns. She and Dan had seen them immediately, and both had known that they had only minutes to get the film they needed and get gone. The Turks obviously did not want their position discovered, or if it was, they wanted to make sure the discoverers did not live to make their findings public.
As Willa looked through her viewfinder, she saw soldiers running out to man those guns. Only seconds later, the barrels had been aimed—at them.
“Go, Dan!” she shouted, still filming. “Get us out of here!”
Dan was way ahead of her. The plane, a Sopwith Strutter, was quick and maneuverable, and he now put it through its paces, swooping down suddenly, then banking left, climbing again, flying fast and erratically in a bid to evade the guns.
Willa heard them blasting and hoped—because she still had not put her camera down—that she’d caught it all on film.
Only a minute or so later, though it felt much longer, the plane shot over the first of the Jabal ad Duruz hills, out of range of the guns.
Dan whooped loudly, raising his thumb again, and Willa leaned back in her seat, eyes closed, relief flooding through her. They’d done it. She’d got her film, Dan had got them out alive, and Lawrence would get the recon information he so desperately needed.
Willa wondered, as Dan passed over the hills completely, what the Turkish troops were doing. If they were meant to defend Damascus, why weren’t they garrisoned there? She felt the plane bank sharply left and knew they were heading south now, to Lawrence’s camp. Dan would drop her there then continue back to Amman. She had just started to breathe a little easier, when—about seventy miles south of the hills—she heard Dan suddenly swear, panic in his voice.
“What is it?” she shouted.
“Sandstorm!” he shouted back. “Out of bloody nowhere! I’m going to try to set us down!”
Two minutes later, the storm hit them, buffeting the plane badly, driving sharp, stinging grains of sand everywhere. Willa felt them against her face. Her goggles protected her eyes from being scratched, but they afforded her no vision. The winds were so wild, and the sand was whirling so thickly, she could barely see a foot in front of her.
She felt the plane descending, felt it bucking and jumping as it did. She heard Dan swear again and again as he struggled to control it, and then she heard nothing—nothing but the fierce screaming of the wind—for the propeller had stopped.
“It’s jammed!” Dan shouted. “Sand’s got inside it. Hang on!”
“How high are we?” Willa shouted, refastening her safety belt. If they’d got down low enough, they might have a chance.
But Dan didn’t answer her. He couldn’t. He was struggling to keep the plane level, so he could bring it down like a glider. Willa felt the plane lurch and then dive, level itself, and then dive again.
The film, she thought. The camera. No matter what happened to her, the film had to survive. She put the camera on her lap, then curled her torso over it, head down, hoping to cushion it from the impact of the landing—or the crash—with her body.
She heard screaming—she didn’t know if it was coming from her, Dan, or the wind. And then there was a roaring noise as the plane went down. It hit the ground hard, knocking the landing gear off. It skidded along at speed, hit a large rock, and flipped over, tearing its wings and propeller off, tearing its pilot apart.
Willa felt the plane roll over and over. She felt sand and rock pelt against her, felt the plane’s body crush in against her. The belt that held her
in her seat felt as if it would cut her in two. The plane rolled over a few more times, then stopped and toppled onto its left side.
Willa spat sand from her mouth. “Dan!” she cried out hoarsely, but she got no answer.
Dazed and shaking, hardly daring to believe she was alive, Willa raised her head. There was no more wind, no more driving sand. The storm had stopped. There was sand in her eyes, though. Blood, too. Her goggles had been ripped off. She lowered her head again, horribly dizzy, and felt for her camera, but it was gone. She was taking a few deep breaths, trying to clear her head, to make the spinning stop, when she smelled something, something acrid—smoke. The plane was on fire.
“Dan … Dan, are you there?” she called again, more weakly. And again there was no answer. He must’ve been knocked out, she thought.
She sat up all the way, gasping from a horrible pain in her side, and tried to pull herself out but could not. She remembered her restraints and unbuckled them, then crawled out of her seat. It was difficult. The harness on her artificial leg had been damaged in the crash and the leg was hard to control. When she was finally out of the plane, she turned around—ready to pull Dan out—and screamed.
Dan Harper had been decapitated by the impact.
She didn’t have long to mourn him, for smoke from the burning engine, thick and choking, enveloped her. She stood up, panting with pain, and staggered away from the plane.
It was then that she saw them—four Bedouin men, their faces wrapped protectively against the storm. They were about ten yards away. Staring at her. They must have seen the plane go down, she thought.
They spoke among themselves in a dialect she couldn’t understand. Then they shouted at her. In Turkish.
Oh, God, she thought. Oh, no. They were in the employ of the Turks. No matter what, they must not get her camera, for they would take it to their masters, and the Turks would see what was on it and know that the English had seen the Jabal ad Duruz camp. But where was it? She looked around frantically, then spotted it on the ground, about halfway between herself and the Bedouins.
Willa knew she only had seconds. She started hobbling toward the camera, as fast as she could go, but one of the men, seeing her intent, got to it first. The others started moving toward her.
Willa was trapped. She knew she must not let them take her, for they would bring her to their masters, along with the camera, and she well knew what the Turks were capable of. They had captured Lawrence once, when he was spying in Amman. They had thrown him in prison, beaten him, and raped him.
She pulled up her right trouser leg. She was reaching for the knife she always wore strapped to her calf when the first man got to her. He backhanded her hard and sent her reeling. She hit the ground; the knife went flying from her hand. She tried to get up, to go after it, but the man who’d hit her grabbed the back of her shirt and flipped her over. She felt his rough hands on her, tearing her shirt open. Felt him rip Fatima’s necklace from her.
Again she lunged for the knife, but a second man kicked it away. Two other men grabbed her arms and hoisted her to her feet. She struggled and fought ferociously, hoping to make them angry enough to kill her. She screamed insults at them, shouted curses at them. Begged for death.
Until a fist, aimed to the side of her head, finally silenced her.
Chapter Fifty-Five
“Fucking hell! it is you!” Teddy Ko bellowed.
Teddy was standing in the doorway of his Limehouse office, wearing a gold ring, diamond cuff links, and a striped flannel suit—one that all but shouted wide boy.
“Couldn’t believe me ears when Mai here said Sid Malone wants to see me. Fucking Sid Malone! I thought you was dead, Sid. Last I heard, you was floating facedown in the Thames.”
Sid forced a smile. “Can’t believe everything you hear, Teddy.”
“Come in! Come in!” Teddy said, waving Sid into his office. “Mai!” he shouted at his secretary. “Bring us some whiskey. Cigars, too. Hurry up!”
That’s our Teddy, Sid thought. Always a charmer.
Teddy sat down at a huge desk, fashioned from ebony and embellished with paintings of dragons, and motioned for Sid to take one of the chairs across from him.
As he did, Sid looked around the large and opulently appointed room. On the walls hung richly embroidered ceremonial robes from China, crossed swords with jeweled hilts, and hand-colored photographs of Peking. Tall blue and white urns stood in the corners of the room. Thick rugs with more dragons on them covered the floor.
Sid remembered when Teddy worked out of a room in one of his laundries. Back when he paid Sid protection money. Back when Sid was the governor—the biggest, most feared crime lord in all of London.
“You’ve come up in the world, Teddy,” he said.
Teddy chuckled, pleased by the compliment. “Got fifty-eight laundries now, me. All over London. A big importing business, too—porcelain, furniture, artworks, silk, parasols, you name it—direct from Shanghai to London.” His voice dropped. “That’s the legit side. I’m still going gangbusters with the drugs. Branched off into prostitution, too. Got whorehouses in the East End and the West. Twenty-three and counting.”
“That’s wonderful, Teddy,” Sid said. He couldn’t quite muster a warm Congratulations.
“What about you? Where have you been? What have you been doing with yourself all these years?”
“It’s a long story,” Sid said. “I’ve been out of the country.”
Teddy nodded knowingly. “Busies made it too hot for you here, did they?” he said. “Had to go farther afield? Well, I imagine the villainy’s just as good in Dublin or Glasgow or wherever it is you are now.”
Sid smiled. It was fine with him if Teddy thought he was up to no good elsewhere. He was not about to tell Teddy Ko, or anyone else from his old life, about his new life or his new last name. His wife, his children, America—it was all off-limits.
Teddy’s secretary entered his office. She placed a silver tray on the table. On it was a bottle of scotch, a bucket of ice, two crystal glasses, and a small wooden humidor. She poured the men their whiskey, trimmed and lit their cigars, then quietly disappeared again. Sid didn’t want either the drink or the smoke, but he felt it would be rude to refuse them.
“So, Sid,” Teddy said, glancing at his watch, “what can I do for you? What brings you here? Business or pleasure?”
“Neither,” Sid said. “I’m here as a favor to a friend.”
Teddy, puffing away on his cigar, raised an eyebrow. “Go on,” he said.
“A few years ago, right before the war started, a former customer of yours, Maud Selwyn Jones, overdosed on morphine.”
“I remember. It was a shame, that.”
“Did she get it from you?”
Teddy leaned forward in his chair. His smile was gone. “Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. Either way, why the fuck would I tell you?” he said. “You’ve been gone a long time, Sid. Things have changed. You’re not the guv anymore. You want something from me now, you can pay for it. Just like everyone else.”
Sid had anticipated this. He reached inside his jacket. He pulled out an envelope and pushed it across the desk to Teddy.
Teddy opened the envelope, counted its contents—which came to a hundred pounds—then said, “I didn’t sell the morphine to Maud. I barely sold her anything anymore. She’d quit coming to the dens years ago. After that bloody doctor, her sister or whatever the hell she was, tried to drag her out. Meddling bitch, she was. Bent on wrecking my business.”
Sid’s jaw tightened at that, but he said nothing. A bust-up with Teddy wouldn’t serve his purposes. “Did she look like an addict to you?” he asked. “The last time you saw her?”
Teddy shook his head. “No, she didn’t. She was thin, but she was always thin. She didn’t have the hop-fiend look. You know, all pale skin and dark circles under the eyes and desperate. I know a lot of addicts. Maud didn’t look like one.”
“Did you hear anything about it at the time? From any
one else in the business? Did anyone else you know sell Maud any morphine?” he asked.
Teddy shook his head. “Not that I know of. But I hardly went round asking, did I?”
“Can you ask now?”
Teddy shrugged. “For a hundred quid I can do a lot of things,” he said. “But it was over four years ago, wasn’t it? I’m not sure how much I can find out. Why is it so important to you?”
“I’d appreciate anything you can do, Teddy,” Sid said, stubbing out the rest of his cigar.
“Where can I get hold of you? If I find out anything?” Teddy asked.
“I’ll get hold of you.”
“When? I’m a busy man.”
“How about we meet right here again? In a month’s time. Same day. In September.”
“I’ll try me best,” Teddy said.
Sid rose to take his leave.
“You’re not leaving already, are you?” Teddy said. “You only just got here. Let me show you round the place.”
Sid noted that Teddy looked at his watch again as he spoke. He’d said he was a busy man. Undoubtedly he had places to go and things to do, but oddly, it seemed to Sid that Teddy wanted to keep talking, to hold him here. Sid didn’t want to stay. He couldn’t wait to get out of the East End, to get away from all the memories and all the ghosts.
Teddy wouldn’t hear of his leaving, though. He had to at least see the warehouse first. Sid agreed, reluctantly. He wanted Teddy to do him a favor, and if admiring the warehouse was what it took to get Teddy’s goodwill, he would do it.
They walked out of Teddy’s two-story office building, to the four-story warehouse that abutted it. As he stepped inside, Sid felt as if he’d stepped into a giant, sprawling Chinese bazaar. There were huge brightly painted beds. Tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ebony, and ivory. Giant blue-glazed statues of lions and dogs. Urns large enough to plant trees in. There were vases and teapots and gongs. Rolled up rugs were propped against the walls. Bolts of silks and satins were stacked on shelves. There were open crates containing beaded necklaces, bracelets carved of cinnabar, and tiny jade figurines. Teddy reached into one crate, pulled out a small carved Buddha, no taller than two inches, and gave it to Sid.
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