The Red Ribbon

by H. B. Lyle

  Wiggins shot a glance backward. Flames licked the door. Smoke billowed in from every crevice. He grabbed a ribbon from the table and sprang up to the skylight.

  It was as black as the pit, in the smoke, but he heard Peter skittering along the slates.

  Wiggins went after him, bent low, using his hands to keep his balance. From behind him, he heard a great burst of gunfire. It reverberated and redoubled. The troops were giving it everything.

  Peter flashed into view, nearing the end of the terrace. Wiggins closed. He was surer on his feet than Peter on the snow-slicked tiles. As they reached a clear stretch of roof, Wiggins glanced left. Across the road, on a rooftop opposite, he saw through a break in the smoke a solider standing, gun raised, staring at them, shocked. Wiggins held up the ribbon, and ran on.

  The soldier did not shoot.

  Peter looked back quickly at Wiggins, then slithered down the roof. He caught the guttering at the last gasp, then swung out of view.

  Wiggins slid down after him, catching on to the gutter and then shinning down the drainpipe. Peter dropped into the alleyway at the back of Sidney Street. He rushed out into the side street. His hat tumbled aside as he did so.

  Wiggins crashed down the last few feet of the drainpipe and went after him.

  The street was rammed with people, streaming around the corner, all abuzz. Wiggins was momentarily taken aback. It was like a demonstration, or chucking-out time at the test match down the Oval. A seething mass of people chattering, laughing, as if on a day out. Nothing the East End liked more than the smell of blood. A sudden surge in the crowd allowed him to push through out into the crush, eyes fixed on the dark shock of Peter’s hair.

  Wiggins didn’t turn to look for a copper. He assumed he was still on the wanted list, and he knew if he let Peter out of his sight for a second, he’d be dust.

  He reached the other side of the road just as Peter ducked down another alley and ran. “It’s over,” Wiggins cried. Peter had run into a dead end, a high wooden fence cutting off the street between two warehouses.

  But Peter, spurred on by fear, vaulted onto the fence and over.

  Wiggins, neck and arms straining with the pain of being strapped up overnight, creaked over it too. He landed heavily and glanced up.

  They’d come into an industrial area crammed behind the small terraces that ran up to Whitechapel. A large brick factory tapered away from them.

  Peter dodged to the right of it, but he swerved again, put off by traffic farther down the building. He ran to a metal staircase on the side of the factory and began to climb.

  Wiggins followed. At each floor, he could see Peter try the door. All locked. He shot a glance at Wiggins, but went on, up the towering staircase.

  Wiggins could barely breathe. His throat was dry, his neck raged with pain, and his legs were about to give way. But still they rose.

  Peter tried the last door, failed to open it, then pulled himself up onto the roof of the factory, just as Wiggins reached him.

  Wiggins roared, but Peter ran out of view. With one final effort, Wiggins hauled himself up onto the roof.

  The factory was long and high. A thin spike of brick and iron ran along the center of the roof. Glass panels tapered away from either side. At the far end, a Union flag jumped and jagged in the wind. Halfway along the middle, limping now, was Peter.

  Wiggins gulped in a couple of deep breaths, braced himself against the gusting wind, and went after him.

  Peter reached the far end, and stopped. He put his hand to the flagpole, looked down, then turned back to Wiggins.

  “You’re Special Branch, ain’t ya?” Wiggins shouted. He walked slowly toward him along the thin walkway. “That’s what the ribbon was for, a signal. To let you go.”

  Peter shrugged. “Special Branch, Okhrana, it is all same to me.”

  “You put me on the wanted list, and all.” Wiggins edged forward and went on. “Yous take the money to stir the pot, that it? You and Bela both.”

  Peter looked surprised at that.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Wiggins went on. “She took it from the Germans, you take it from the British and the Russians.”

  “It is normal,” he said. “Secret police live to fight trouble. When there is no trouble, they pay, we make it.”

  “It’s all bollocks then, is it?” Wiggins cried. “All this power to the people, revolution shit? Are you all just in it for the money?”

  Peter glared at him. “We are little people. You, me, boys on street, everybody. We do what we can. We get used. We use. Maybe Yakov is pure. But the rest of them . . . it is not simple.”

  “Christ,” Wiggins cursed. “The fucking bomb-maker believes.”

  A gust of wind rocked them both, and Peter stepped back toward the edge. He glanced down. “You work for police too, I think. I see you at Grove Street. We almost get you in market. Police come. Here again, police come. You are lapdog, like rest.”

  Wiggins steadied himself and stepped forward again.

  Peter went on. “You want kill me, for them? This is not you. Give it up. We could go together. Come to Paris. Meet girls. Make money. Drink. I have good plan.” Peter crept forward as he said these words. Then he sprang toward Wiggins.

  He went to dodge past, but Wiggins caught him by the waist. They fell to the walkway. Peter fumbled in his pocket for a knife, and Wiggins leapt back.

  They stood again, both glaring at the knife. “Out of my way,” Peter said.

  Wiggins charged. He batted the knife away with his heavy cuff. The two men barreled toward the edge. The knife skittled down the glass roof.

  They grappled and strained, wrestling for supremacy, face to face. “You push me, we both die,” Peter grunted.

  Wiggins suddenly pulled back. “Not for them, for Bill,” he said.

  Peter looked at him, breathing hard, puzzled.

  “I wouldn’t kill you for them. For Bill. But you ain’t even worth that. You ain’t even worth his spit,” Wiggins said. He turned back to the fire escape. He’d come all this way, over a year, looking for Peter, seeking revenge. Bill had died in the gutter, Peter’s gang behind that bullet, for no good reason. But Bill weren’t coming back and Bill hadn’t saved his life, out there in the dust and heat of Ladysmith, to see him throw it away on scum.

  Revenge was a dead man’s game, and he didn’t want to die.

  Peter roared. He leapt on Wiggins’s back and drew the flag line around his neck. He throttled him, dragging him back to the edge. “You think you know all,” Peter hissed in his ear. “But you won’t take me. You will die.”

  Wiggins struggled for air. His hand scrabbled at the line, trying to get his fingers under the rope before he choked. His eyes swam, his muscles raged.

  Then he relaxed his body. Peter’s grip slipped, and Wiggins got his hand on the rope. He forced Peter backward.

  They tottered and tipped toward the edge, Peter still with a hand on Wiggins’s coat. His feet slipped, and with a horrible scream, he toppled over the side.

  He took Wiggins with him.

  23

  “Wiggins is dead.”

  “Oh no,” Constance cried.

  Kell held the receiver to his chest for a moment. He looked at his empty office chair, then put the horn to his mouth once more. He explained what had happened earlier that day at Sidney Street, the persistent hail of gunfire, the inferno that eventually engulfed the house, all seen from amid the reporters on top of the pub.

  “But are you sure about Wiggins?” Constance asked again.

  “I had a brief look afterward with Mulvaney. Some of it’s probably still burning now. They’ve found the remains of two men already. No one could have survived such a scene.”

  “And you are sure he was there?”

  “The last time I spoke to him, he was going back to the house. He can only have been there.”

  “Come home,” Constance said, finally.

  “I must go to the empty house in Ranleigh Terrace first, to reliev
e Simpkins, at least for an hour or so.”

  Kell dismissed the cab driver and let himself in by the back entrance at Ranleigh Terrace. He ascended the staircase wearily. The adrenaline and thrill of the siege were wearing off, and he realized he’d been up all night—most of it outside in the cold and wet. He pulled one heavy leg after the other. Without Wiggins, could he even go on? Did he want to?

  “Afternoon, Simpkins.”

  “Sir?” Simpkins stepped back from his post at the window. “No Wiggins?”

  Kell shook his head, and glanced down at the logbook. “Something’s up?”

  “Trunks delivered, sir. As if someone is packing.”

  Kell peered out the window. It wasn’t yet five in the afternoon, but it was as dark as midnight now. The street lamps fizzed and jumped. Stray snowflakes drifted in the air. The pavement glistened. And the Embassy lights blazed on, open for business as usual. Kell flicked his eyes to the high window on the right. No red ribbon.

  He would never know its significance, not now his agent was dead. He dropped his head for a moment. Wiggins was the best man he’d ever known, and probably the wisest too.

  “What now?” Simpkins said.

  The door crashed open. A figure stood there staring at them: hatless, bedraggled, wild-eyed, and very much alive.

  Wiggins.

  “Beer,” he croaked, and fell to the floor in front of them.

  They sat Wiggins up against the wall, and Simpkins rummaged around for a bottle of beer. He shrugged at Kell’s look—how on earth did they have a store of beer?—and put the bottle to Wiggins’s lips.

  Wiggins gasped. His eyes popped open. “Here.” He took the bottle from Simpkins and downed it in one. “Again,” he said, holding out his hand.

  Simpkins thrust another bottle at him. Wiggins took a more measured sip, then sighed. “Christ alive, I needed that. Even if it is Bass.”

  Kell noticed Wiggins’s torn clothes, and the burn marks on the sleeves and legs. “How did you get out?” he said.

  “That ain’t the half of it.”

  “Where were you?” Simpkins said, ripping open a packet of biscuits and handing one to Wiggins.

  Kell noticed the easy rapport between the two men. Simpkins’s reservations about working with a lower-class man had clearly evaporated. “Wiggins,” Simpkins said as Wiggins munched on the biscuits. “The red ribbon is gone.”

  He looked up at Kell sharply. “We gotta go in,” he said. “Now.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “It’s all set up, right?”

  “Yes,” Kell said slowly. “But the police are not ready. More than half the force were drafted out east until a couple of hours ago. In any case, do you really think they’d be prepared to mount another siege? The last one didn’t go particularly well.”

  “They’s all dead, ain’t they?”

  “We are not in the business of killing people for the sake of it.”

  Wiggins cursed. He took another gulp of beer and handed the empty bottle to Simpkins with a nod. Then he looked up at his boss once more. “It’s down to us.”

  “Well, I must say, Mr. Wiggins, for a dead man you look the absolute cat’s whiskers.”

  He regarded himself in the mirror. Constance Kell picked a piece of lint from his shoulders. “Ta,” he said.

  “Vernon struggles to get in this one nowadays.”

  Wiggins had on the finest suit of clothes he’d ever touched, let alone worn. Reassuringly heavy dinner jacket, tails, silk shirt, Savile Row style. He even had on a pair of patent leather shoes that felt as if they’d never been worn.

  He and Kell had raced back to Hampstead from Ranleigh Terrace. They’d rehearsed their plan in the cab, and now Wiggins was completing his disguise. Constance had ransacked Kell’s wardrobe, and Wiggins looked like any well-heeled toff out on the tiles—specifically, out at a place like the Embassy.

  “Vernon has a further disguise for you downstairs,” she said.

  “And a drink?”

  She nodded. “I need your advice,” she said. “No, don’t worry, I’m not deceiving anyone. I want to find someone.”

  Wiggins took the hat and cane, and they turned to the door. “Know their haunts?”

  “I suspect one place,” she said as she led him back down the stairs.

  “Time. You just got to wait it out. And money, if you’ve got it. Someone there you can pay?”

  They entered the drawing room. “At last,” Kell cried, before Constance could answer. “We must get going.”

  “You’ve made the arrangements with the Foreign Office?”

  “Yes, they’re briefed. I have two cabs waiting. Are you ready, my dear?”

  “I am,” Constance said. She tied her hat under her chin. “I have Wiggins’s note. If Jax is not at the cab hut, I am to leave word with Sally and head straight to Whitefields without her.”

  “Bang on,” Wiggins said. “Tell ’em I’d trust you with me next drink. They’ll know I sent you.”

  Kell handed Wiggins a false beard and the tinted spectacles he’d so unsuccessfully used when trying to follow Constance. He also gave him a canary-yellow silk scarf. “Will you take a firearm?” Kell asked. “I have a spare revolver.”

  “I don’t like guns. They kill people.”

  People just like Peter.

  Wiggins got into the cab with Kell. He said nothing as they turned south toward the Embassy. He didn’t tell Kell what had happened on that factory roof, probably never would. He would tell him about Peter, but not how he died.

  “I’m glad you’re alive,” Kell said into the darkness of the compartment as they hurtled through the night.

  “Me and all.”

  Peter had fallen back off the roof, screaming horribly as he did so. But he’d managed to pull Wiggins with him.

  They fell, locked together in a gruesome, final embrace.

  But only one of them was holding on to the flag line.

  Wiggins twisted his arm around the cord. It whiplashed him against the factory wall. Peter screamed out as he dropped.

  Wiggins heard the crunch.

  Way below, a parked-up fleet of dustcarts, ready to take away the factory waste. In one of them, staring up dead-eyed, Peter, spread-eagled in a rising halo of ash.

  Wiggins pulled himself up the flag rope, which frayed with every heave. Finally, as the rope almost came down, he clambered onto the roof.

  He lay on his back, gasping for air, as the Union Jack fluttered down the pole and caught on his legs, flapping uselessly in the wind.

  “We go in nine sheets, yeah?” Wiggins took a gulp from Kell’s flask.

  “Just so,” Kell replied.

  “And you’re sure she’ll remember you?” Wiggins asked for the third time.

  “How many of her customers walk out without, er, executing the deed?”

  Wiggins nodded grimly. Dark thoughts crowded his mind. Martha didn’t start at shadows. If she’d failed to put the ribbon up in the window, then something bad had either already happened or was about to happen. Poppy’s face rose before him again. Tommy’s victim. He’d never forgive himself if Martha was next.

  The cab turned into Ranleigh Terrace. Kell checked the action on his revolver for the umpteenth time. “Here’s fine,” he said to the driver.

  They got out a few doors from the Embassy and looked each other up and down in the uneven light. “Ah.” Kell raised his hand just as they were about to go in. “What should I call you?”

  “What a perfectly spiffing question,” Wiggins said in his best twerp accent. “Why don’t you call me Jonny, old bean?”

  Wiggins slung his arm around Kell’s shoulder as they waited at the door. Kell tried not to shrink back. He glanced left and right, saw the fixed muzzle gun poking out of the brickwork, covering the entrance. Wiggins leaned hard against the door with his other hand.

  The door opened and Wiggins tumbled into the hall. He lost his grip on Kell and fell to the floor.

  “Wot the b
leeding . . . ?” A young woman stared down at Wiggins, then looked at Kell.

  “Good evening, dear. I do very much apologize for my friend here. He has very slippery shoes,” Kell slurred.

  The young woman stared at him with saucer eyes. Then she smiled. “You cut?”

  Kell smiled back.

  “You’re over the odds, gents,” a voice boomed. Kell looked up to see an enormous man tapping down the stairs. The man Wiggins said was Tommy. “Come again another day.”

  Wiggins wobbled to his feet, straightened his dark spectacles, and stretched his arms out wide. With the long false beard and bright scarf, he looked like one of the fast young men who frequented the gambling dens of Haymarket.

  “Do excuse Jonny boy,” Kell said, looking up at Tommy. “Just a dash of New Year cheer.”

  Tommy reached the hallway and scowled. “No drunks,” he said.

  “Let me introduce him to . . . Delphy, is it? So we may come back another day?”

  “There’s no harm in it.” Delphy stood across the hallway at the door to her room. “I remember this one.” She nodded at Kell. “He’s harmless,” she said, with the smallest of smirks.

  Tommy shrugged, but he took up a position on the stairs and waited. “Top-hole!” Kell exclaimed. Wiggins tipped the rim of his silk top hat, and they tottered across the hallway toward Delphy.

  As they did so, a small boy appeared from under the stairs. He watched them walk past. Suddenly the boy gasped at the sight of Wiggins and held his mouth open wide. Kell saw Wiggins tense. “What-ho, young shaver,” Wiggins said, and twirled his cane in the lad’s direction.

  The boy said nothing, and they entered Delphy’s sitting room. Wiggins slapped Kell on the back as they did so. He grinned drunkenly. They’d sketched out a plan in the cab, but Kell could barely suppress his anxiety. It was one thing to discuss theoretical strategies, but now they were in the lion’s den.

  He was to introduce Wiggins—Jonny—as a new customer, then ask for Martha again. Once in the hallway or on the staircase, Kell was to create a disturbance such that Delphy would leave the sitting room long enough for Wiggins to filch the ledger from the safe. The hope was that they’d also find the incendiary false letter Kell had planted in the heart of the FO.