Once the costermonger at the outdoor market had recognized him, there had been no choice but to put some distance between himself and the New Cut, Blackstone thought – but it had been foolish to come so far, because after a week of living on the streets and eating practically nothing, he had no reserves to draw on.
He looked up and down Tooley Street, which was still shrouded in swirling fog. It was not the street that he had known only three years earlier. Back then, the pubs would have been doing a roaring trade at that time of night. There would have been all manner of customers in them, too – cabbies and costermongers, shopkeepers and prostitutes, off-duty policemen and off-duty criminals – each of them knocking back as much drink as they could afford before the landlord called time. But time was called much earlier these days – the Emergency Powers Act had seen to that – and all the pubs sat silent and lonely, their engraved windows in darkness, their doors firmly shut.
‘You can’t afford to walk much further, Sam,’ he muttered to himself. ‘You’ve got to save your strength.’
For what? asked the voice in his head, which had once issued warnings but now seemed content merely to unceasingly mock him. What are you saving your strength for?
‘To fight back,’ Blackstone said. ‘To save Archie Patterson and prove my own innocence.’
And of the two, he thought, saving his fat sergeant was by far the most important.
‘You’re storing up trouble for both of us,’ Patterson had said to him that day in the Goldsmiths’ Arms – and Patterson had been right.
Of course, it was possible that Archie wasn’t in trouble at all – that nobody had made the connection between the bulky man in the grey overcoat who had sprung Blackstone – at gunpoint – from the Black Maria, and the bulky man in the grey overcoat who had been Blackstone’s sergeant for nearly two decades.
It was possible – but it wasn’t at all likely.
So how will you save Archie? asked the malevolent voice. Do you have a plan?
No, Blackstone admitted, he didn’t have a plan. And, indeed, what plan could an exhausted, half-starved man come up with which would save the sergeant from the grip of the powerful Metropolitan Police?
It was the carriage, standing majestically just beyond the corner of Battle Bridge Lane, that brought him to a halt. Carriages were no longer a common sight in London – the rich had shifted their allegiance to chauffeur-driven automobiles years earlier – and even when they were spotted, it was rare to find one driven by a coachman in full livery, as this one was.
Why have you stopped? asked the voice in Blackstone’s head.
‘I’m looking at the carriage,’ Blackstone replied.
No, you’re not – you’re looking at the coachman.
‘And why would I do that?’
Because you know that coachmen are at the whim of their masters. They can never be sure when their day’s work will finally end, or even when they’ll be allowed to eat.
‘That’s true, but …’
So they always carry food with them, don’t they? And perhaps this particular coachman can be persuaded to give a little of that food to a poor wretch who’s eaten almost nothing all week.
‘I won’t beg,’ Blackstone said, firmly and angrily. ‘However bad things get, I won’t beg.’
And then – perhaps because he was afraid the coachman might have magically read his thoughts and would look down on him with contempt as he passed by – he turned off Tooley Street and on to Battle Bridge Lane.
He was halfway between the main street and the river when he saw the shape lying in the road. He thought at first that it was just a load of old discarded sacking, but as he got closer to it, he could see that it was a man.
And not just any man, but a gentleman.
A toff!
The supine man was wearing an expensive-looking frock coat, and though he was bareheaded, there was a top hat – which must also belong to him – on the ground a few feet away.
For a moment, Blackstone thought of stepping around him – the man was probably drunk and so had no one to blame but himself – but then he relented and knelt down beside him.
The man groaned. ‘Where am I?’
He certainly did not smell of alcohol, Blackstone noted.
‘You’re just near the river,’ he said. ‘Do you remember how you got here?’
‘I was in my carriage, going along Tooley Street,’ the man replied, his voice steadier now, but still confused. ‘I started to feel a little peculiar and thought a walk down to the river might clear my head. I told my coachman to wait for me, and set off down Battle Bridge Lane …’
‘That’s where you are now.’
‘… and then, I suppose, I must have fainted.’
‘Do you think you can stand up?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Perhaps – if you help me.’
‘Of course,’ Blackstone agreed.
There’d been a time – only days earlier – when hauling the man to his feet would have been no trouble at all, but Blackstone was so weak now that even offering a little assistance took a great deal of effort.
Even when he was standing, the man held on to his rescuer for at least half a minute before finally relinquishing his grip.
‘Still feel peculiar,’ he admitted, ‘but I think I’ll be all right now.’
‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’ Blackstone asked.
‘You might retrieve my top hat for me, if you don’t mind,’ the man said, smiling. ‘And then I would appreciate it if you could give me your support until I reach my carriage.’
‘It will be my pleasure,’ Blackstone said, picking up the hat and offering the man his arm.
The walk back up Battle Bridge Lane put a strain on both of them, but eventually they reached Tooley Street and the carriage.
As the coachman climbed down from his box to assist his master, the gentleman turned to Blackstone.
‘Look here, my good man, I’d like to give you a little something for your trouble,’ he said.
Blackstone shook his head. ‘That won’t be necessary. What I’ve done for you, I’d have done for any man.’
‘Perhaps you would, but there are many people who would not,’ the gentleman countered. ‘You might have robbed me as I lay there, and – God knows – you look as if you could use the money. But instead, you behaved like a Christian, and that is surely worthy of some small reward.’
‘I don’t …’ Blackstone began.
The man reached into his waistcoat pocket and produced a coin. It was a golden guinea.
‘Take this,’ he said, holding out the coin. ‘Come on, man, you can tell from the way I’m dressed that I won’t miss it, and it could do a great deal for you.’
It could indeed, Blackstone agreed silently.
‘Thank you,’ he said, taking the guinea and pocketing it.
‘No, thank you,’ the gentleman said.
An hour earlier, he had been hoping desperately for a turnip, and now he had a guinea in his pocket, Blackstone thought, as he watched the coach drive away.
And yet, though he had wanted the turnip, he had not wanted the guinea, and he wondered why that was.
You know why it was, said the malevolent voice.
‘Do I?’ Blackstone asked.
Of course. What have you spent most of last week thinking about?
‘Surviving.’
Just so. And now you have a guinea which will buy you decent food and a roof over your head at night. Now you have the luxury to think about the future – and you don’t want to think about the future.
The voice was right, he thought. Just before he had found the toff, he had been thinking about the future – and it had been agony. The guinea would buy him weeks in which he would have nothing to do but contemplate what lay ahead – and that was just unbearable.
End it now, Sam, said the voice. Accept that you’ll never be able to save Archie. Spare yourself the humiliation of the trial. You’re already as good as dead
– why not go all the way?
Yes, why not go all the way, Blackstone agreed.
He had always suspected that he might eventually kill himself – on two occasions he had come very close to making that suspicion a certainty – and whenever he had pictured it happening, it had always involved the river.
And how could it not have involved the river? The Thames was the beating heart of the city he loved, and what better way to make himself at one with that city than by drowning himself in the soothing waters?
He turned off Tooley Street and began what he had accepted would be his last walk down Battle Bridge Lane.
Blackstone had almost reached Battle Bridge Steps when he realized he was being followed.
‘You’re slipping,’ he told himself. ‘The old Sam would have noticed them long ago.’
But that was just the point! He wasn’t the old Sam any longer.
He turned to face his enemies – and even before he’d turned, he was sure that was exactly what they were.
There were two of them – young thugs with bad teeth and twisted expressions. They had not volunteered for the army like all the decent lads from the area had. They had stayed behind, like jackals – free, now that the lions had gone, to feed on whatever looked weak and helpless.
‘We saw that toff give you some money,’ one of them snarled. ‘Why would he go and do that?’
‘He’d fainted,’ Blackstone said wearily, knowing that this was nothing more than a ritual leading to a demand, but going along with it anyway. ‘I helped him back to his carriage.’
‘Dropped your trousers and let him have his way with you, more like,’ the young thug said. ‘Anyway, we saw him hand you money – and now we’re going to take it off you.’
What good was a guinea to a man who was planning to drown himself? Blackstone wondered.
Why not simply hand it over to them?
And yet, he was surprised to discover, he did not want to hand it over – in fact, he was willing to fight to the last drop of his blood to keep it.
‘Come on, you old bastard,’ one of the thugs said impatiently. ‘Give us the money.’
He was the leader, Blackstone decided. He was the one who would make the first move.
‘Make us work for it, and we’ll have to hurt you,’ the second thug said. He turned to the other boy. ‘Ain’t that right, Sid?’
‘That’s right,’ Sid agreed.
Sid was definitely the leader – the plan was only the plan when he’d confirmed it.
‘Well?’ Sid demanded.
Blackstone shrugged. ‘I’m not giving you the money. Do what you have to do.’
‘Oh, I will,’ Sid said. ‘Believe me, I will.’
One moment, his open hand was empty, the next it was closed and gripping a knife.
‘Get him, Bill!’ the young thug shouted.
But Blackstone knew it wouldn’t be like that, and that though he was supposed to turn to defend himself against Bill, it was Sid who would want to draw the first blood.
He turned for a split second – as Sid had been expecting him to – then swung round again.
Sid was rushing at him, the knife held high in his hand, ready for a downward stab.
‘Amateur!’ Blackstone thought in disgust.
Didn’t the thug know that, in a knife attack, the blade should go in upwards? Whatever were they teaching young criminals these days?
Sid feinted to the right and then switched quickly to the left.
It was his genitals that first learned the plan had gone wrong, though the message quickly spread to the rest of his body, and he screamed and then sank to his knees.
Blackstone’s right foot, which had only just returned to the ground, lashed out again and caught him in the chest.
That would hurt – but not as much as if the boot had struck its intended target, which was Sid’s face.
He had less than a second in which to deal with Bill, Blackstone told himself, but even before he felt the blackjack strike his skull, he knew that he was not going to make it.
His legs buckled beneath him, and he fell to the ground. He would have to move quickly if he was to survive, but he was already accepting that that would be almost impossible.
Bill was on him, straddling him and pinning him down. Sid was struggling to his feet and looking around for his knife. Blackstone tried to break free, and realized just how hopeless it was.
Sid had found his knife on the ground, and was now kneeling next to Blackstone and Bill.
‘I’m not goin’ to kill yer,’ he said, in a cracked voice. ‘That’d be too quick. What I’m goin’ to do instead is cut yer eyes out.’
He could find his way to the river with no eyes, Blackstone told himself – and a blind man can drown just as easily as a seeing man.
‘If you’re going to do it, then get on with it,’ he said.
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t yer?’ Sid taunted. ‘You’d like it to be over as quick as possible? But I’m goin’ to make yer wait. I’m goin’ to give yer time to think about it.’
‘If this is an example of the much-vaunted British sense of fair play, then it is a rather bad one,’ said a voice behind them.
They all turned. The speaker was a stocky man of about Blackstone’s age. He was wearing an opera cloak which had not been in fashion for at least a decade, and was leaning heavily on a walking stick with a silver handle.
‘Are you a foreigner or somefink?’ asked Sid.
Oh yes, he was a foreigner all right, thought Blackstone.
Only a few days earlier, he had assumed that Vladimir was dead, but now, hearing the man’s voice for the first time in nearly twenty years, he recognized it immediately.
‘Yes, I am a foreigner – I would have thought that was obvious when I spoke of your British attitude to fair play,’ the newcomer said calmly. ‘And now that I have made my point, I will leave you to your unpleasant – and, if I may say so, somewhat cowardly – business, and be on my way.’
‘Hang on a minute,’ Sid said, ‘before you go, I want that walking stick and whatever yer’ve got in yer pocket.’
‘I am afraid that will not be possible,’ Vladimir told him.
‘Give me your stuff, or we’ll cut out your eyes, as well,’ Sid said.
The man in the cloak frowned. ‘You should not have threatened me,’ he said, with a new, harder edge to his voice. ‘I do not like being threatened.’
Sid stood up, waving his knife in front of him. The new arrival lifted his walking stick up, as if he hoped to defend himself with it.
‘That won’t save you, grandad,’ Sid sneered.
‘No, that won’t save yer,’ echoed Bill, still astride Blackstone.
Sid should have been paying more attention, Blackstone thought. He should have noted that Vladimir was standing perfectly comfortably without the support of his stick – and he should have drawn a very worrying conclusion from that.
But he didn’t.
‘I’ll slice you up, you dirty foreign bugger,’ Sid boasted. ‘First, I’ll cut your heart out, and then I’ll …’
He stopped speaking as the casing of the stick clattered to the ground and the thin naked sword it had held glittered in the moonlight.
‘OK, take it easy, mister, none of us wants any trouble,’ Sid said.
But he did not sound half as frightened as he should have, because he still thought he could control the situation.
Vladimir took one step forward, the sword flashed, and Sid sank to the ground.
Blackstone felt Bill go rigid on top of him.
‘Listen,’ the young thug said, in a panic, ‘this wasn’t never part—’
The sword whistled through the air, slashing across Bill’s throat. The young man gurgled, and his blood began to gush from the wound like a fountain.
Blackstone pushed the dying thug off him.
‘His lungs will fill in seconds, and he will drown in his own blood,’ Vladimir said easily. ‘Why do I do these things?�
� he continued, and now – though he was still speaking in English – he was addressing himself. ‘In Russia, I’m a serious man – perhaps even a grave one – but the moment I set foot on these shores, I feel an almost irrepressible urge to behave exactly like a cheap music-hall comedian. And what does that result in? It results in me having to kill two young hooligans who didn’t even get the joke!’
There was no regret in his voice, Blackstone noted – merely a hint of annoyance at the inconvenience he had caused himself.
Bill was thrashing around on the ground, trying to scream and finding it impossible.
Blackstone raised himself on one elbow but did not feel strong enough yet to struggle back to his feet.
‘I have a little business to conduct at the end of this lane, and then I intend to leave the area as quickly as possible,’ Vladimir said, leaning forward and wiping the blood off his sword on the dead Sid’s jacket, ‘and if you are in any state to do so, I would advise you to follow the same course of action yourself.’
Blackstone made no reply. He was ashamed of his present condition – deeply ashamed – and of all the people in the world from whom he might wish to hide his fall, the Russian was at the top of the list.
How could he let this man, above all others – the man who had worked with him to prevent the assassination of Queen Victoria; who, in Russia, had partnered him in solving the case of the missing Fabergé egg – see what he had become?
Bill had stopped writhing, and – with a final desperate gurgle – he died.
‘I have probably just saved some young woman from a life of domestic drudgery and violence,’ Vladimir said, picking up the sheath of his sword and sliding the sword back into it. ‘But, then again, this hypothetical young woman will probably end up married to someone just as bad as this brute.’
Then he turned and began to walk towards the river.
He had to get away before the police arrived, Blackstone told himself. If he didn’t, they would probably add these two murders to the list of crimes they were pinning on him. He put both hands on the ground, palms down, and attempted to lever himself up.
And then his brain decided it was all too much of an effort and shut itself down.
Blackstone had no idea how long he had been unconscious, but when he came to again, he was aware of the sound of someone approaching him from the river.
Blackstone and the Endgame Page 5
