by Mark Morris
It was only when Clover and I had reached the cover of the clump of trees that I was able to see Willoughby’s face for the first time. I was shocked. Though I could only see him in profile, he looked avid; no, more than that, he looked lascivious. His expression was almost sexual, his cheeks flushed and quivering, his eyes wide, his mouth open to release a wet, fat tongue, which roamed restlessly across his engorged lips. He looked like a man on the verge of orgasm. He looked as if he was eagerly drinking in the desolate scene below, as if he was getting off on the grief and misery of it.
What was going on? I glanced again at Clover and saw that she’d scrunched up her face in distaste. I turned my attention back to Willoughby, and then again to the funeral below, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. I peered at the mourners more closely, scanning each of their faces, searching for clues. And then suddenly I felt a shock go through me so fierce it felt like a spear of ice slicing down through my brain and heart and guts and shattering outwards, in cold shards, into my limbs.
I thought I’d frozen into immobility, that the shock I’d experienced was purely internal, but then Clover grabbed my arm, her fingers digging in.
I turned to face her. My body didn’t feel quite like my own.
Her eyes, wide and fearful, darted across my face.
‘What’s wrong, Alex? You’re shaking all over. You’ve gone as white as a sheet.’
I managed to move my lips, to dredge a voice up from somewhere.
‘Look there,’ I rasped.
She glanced at Willoughby, then back at me. ‘Where?’
I swallowed, tried again. ‘At the grave. The mourners. The young couple to the right of the widow.’
Clover looked across at where I had described, confusion on her face. ‘What about them?’
‘I know them.’ Suddenly I felt a weird sort of laughter bubbling up inside me. I fought it down with an effort. ‘They’re the Sherwoods. Adam and Paula. My old next-door neighbours. They’re the people who kidnapped Kate!’
SIX
STRATEGY
Clover gaped at me. ‘They can’t be!’
I felt anger born of impatience rising in me. Even though my instinct was to confront the couple, demand to know where my daughter was, there was still a rational part of me urging me to stay hidden, think this through, work out the most effective plan of action. I wanted to get Kate back more than anything, but I couldn’t afford to let my heart rule my head. Even so, my reply to Clover’s comment was a rasping snap.
‘They are! I should know! I lived next door to them for a year! I spoke to them every day!’
Clover gritted her teeth and raised her hands in a placatory gesture. From the way she glanced anxiously at Willoughby it was clear my voice was too loud.
Luckily the actor was still engrossed in the funeral, his eyes now bulging as if about to pop from their sockets, his body heaving and writhing obscenely…
‘Okay, okay,’ she whispered, ‘I believe you.’ She bit her lip. ‘Let’s just think this through.’
I’d already thought it through – or at least my buzzing brain had done, independently of me.
‘It’s obvious what’s happened. Whoever’s got the heart has brought the Sherwoods back through time so no one can find them.’
‘Or sent them forward – or is going to,’ she countered.
I blinked at her, not understanding – and then suddenly realised what she meant. Despite all I’d been through it was still sometimes hard to think of time as anything but linear. But Clover was right. Just because I’d encountered the Sherwoods in my past didn’t mean that had been the past for them too. Maybe their journey into the twenty-first century was in their future. Maybe they had yet to be corrupted – in which case, what I did now might have an impact on their forthcoming actions.
Oddly it was this that made me indecisive – that incapacitated me, in fact.
‘What should I do?’
I felt as if I was about to cross a minefield with no idea where the mines were buried. However careful I was, there was no way of predicting whether my next step would seal my fate. What if it was only because of meeting me that the Sherwoods were targeted by the Wolves of London? It was horrible to think my own actions might somehow provide the catalyst for Kate’s abduction – or rather, have somehow provided it, as it had already happened, as far as I was concerned.
‘We,’ Clover said.
I’d already lost the thread of our conversation. ‘What?’
‘It’s what should we do, not what should I do. We’re in this together, Alex. We work as a team, remember.’
I wafted a hand irritably. ‘Whatever. I’m not quibbling over semantics.’
‘It’s not semantics. It’s strategy.’
From the way she said it I knew she had something in mind.
‘Go on,’ I grunted, still struggling to stay calm. ‘Tell me your plan.’
She glanced again at the mourners standing stoically in the cold, listening as the priest droned his way through the burial service.
‘If the Sherwoods have already abducted Kate, then they’ll know who you are. In which case, if you confront them and start throwing accusations about, they’ll clam up, deny everything – added to which, the other mourners will be outraged by your intrusion. This is a funeral, after all.’
I nodded. I could already envisage the scene. I’d come across like a madman. And my antics would be deemed doubly unacceptable because of the occasion. No doubt I’d be pounced on by some of the more able-bodied male mourners, dragged away, perhaps even roughed up a bit, given the way friable emotions like grief can so easily find an outlet in anger if the right buttons are pressed. And in the confusion the Sherwoods would slip away, and all that would have been achieved would be that they would now be alerted to my presence, which would make them ultra-cautious, ultra-discreet – or might well prompt them to go into hiding, even leave London altogether.
All this flashed through my mind in the second or two it took for Clover to draw breath.
‘So what I reckon,’ she continued, ‘is that I should handle the Sherwoods and you should stick with Willoughby, see what he does next. As far as I’m aware the Sherwoods have no idea who I am. I’ll mingle with the mourners once the service is over, get the Sherwoods talking.’
I must have looked dubious, because she poked me in the chest.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll work my magic on them. You don’t spend three years as the owner-manager of a pole-dancing club without learning a bit of charm and diplomacy. I’m good at wheedling information out of people. I can be very persuasive when I put my mind to it.’
I held up my hands in surrender. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’ I hesitated a moment longer, then said, ‘Okay. I suppose that makes sense. Where shall we meet?’
‘Is your mobile charged up?’ She gave a cheeky smile at the face I pulled. ‘Nah, mine either. So I guess we’ll just have to meet back at the house. See you later.’
I touched her arm as she began to move away and she glanced back at me.
‘Be careful.’
‘Always am,’ she replied, and cocked her head towards Willoughby, who was still crouched behind his clump of trees, shuddering in what appeared to be sexual ecstasy. ‘You be carefuller. He looks frisky.’
SEVEN
HEART OF DARKNESS
Charles Dickens once described Victorian London as the ‘magic lantern’ which fired his imagination. It was a phrase that had stuck in my mind since I’d read it, and one I often recalled when I was clattering through the streets in a hansom, or weaving in and out of the ripe-smelling crowds on the pavements.
I’d always thought of Dickens’ description as a positive, even joyous, one. Yet while it was true that the city was potent, colourful, clamorous, and driven by the twin engines of industry and prosperity, it was only after living here for a while that I began to truly appreciate the irony and darkness behind his words. Because under its brassy, gleaming surface, Victorian Lo
ndon was not just dirty and rundown; it was a stinking, black cesspool, an unbelievable Hell that you had to experience first-hand to truly believe in.
I realised that the real reason why Dickens had used the phrase was not because the city was full of wonders, but because to a writer as skilful and philanthropically minded as he was it was the perfect environment to foment ideas and hone opinions.
The Victorian London I knew was maybe ninety-five per cent poor. And when I say poor, I don’t mean living-on-the-breadline-and-scrimping-to-pay-the-rent poor – I mean dying-from-malnutrition-and-freezing-to-death-in-the-streets poor. From my watchers I’d heard horrific tales about the bodies of children lying in gutters for days on end, being gradually eaten by rats or scrawny, wolfish dogs. I’d heard too, from my police contacts, of the rotting corpses – many of them babies – which washed up in their dozens on the banks of the Thames, day after day. My search for the heart had led me to filthy, reeking hovels in dilapidated rookeries, where I’d seen as many as thirty or forty people living, eating and sleeping in a single room no bigger than the average modern kitchen. In such neighbourhoods privies were often nothing but pits at the ends of narrow alleyways shared by up to four hundred people, where the air was often black with flies and gave off a reek so foul it could stun you into unconsciousness as effectively as a billy club. Or alternatively you might find houses clustered around a yard six inches deep in shit (or ‘night soil’), into which bricks had been tossed as stepping stones.
I was surprised to find myself trailing Willoughby into just such a neighbourhood. Once Clover had slipped away to find a vantage point where she could ‘casually’ and ‘accidentally’ intercept the mourners as they filed from the graveside, I watched the actor writhing in orgasmic glee for a while longer, until eventually his body relaxed, the intensity left his face, and he began to look around sleepily, as if he’d just woken from an afternoon nap and was re-acquainting himself with his surroundings.
Leaving the mourners standing by the graveside, he turned and retraced his steps. Hidden behind my own clump of trees, I waited until he’d passed by and then followed him.
I tailed him all the way to the cemetery gates, then watched from the shelter of a stone angel as he climbed back into his brougham. As soon as he’d closed the door and the carriage had pulled ponderously away, I slipped out of the gates, using the other cab drivers as cover, and sprinted round the corner to where my hansom was waiting. I told the driver to follow Willoughby’s carriage, and then for the next half hour or so we meandered back towards the city, our carriages rattling through the mean streets of Shacklewell, Hackney, and round the western edge of Bethnal Green, before eventually arriving in Spitalfields.
Like much of East London, Spitalfields was a labyrinth of rat-infested alleyways, narrow passages and cobbled yards, its sagging slums crammed with immigrants, sailors and destitute families. Because of its association with the tailoring industry, there were over a hundred thousand Jews here and in Whitechapel, many of whom lived in abject poverty and were shunned, often abused, by the native population. Some of my watchers had told me that during the time of the Ripper murders the Jews had been targeted as scapegoats, as a result of which dozens had been kicked or beaten or hacked to death in the streets. If that was true, then the information had never been officially recorded.
Travelling through Spitalfields now, where the snow piled in the gutters and against the sides of the buildings was so black it looked like mounds of soil, I felt nervous, open to attack. Hansom cabs were an unusual sight here, and as we rattled deeper into the heart of darkness, I became increasingly aware of eyes glinting from the shadows of windows and doorways – though some who watched me pass were more blatant, more visible. A pack of skinny, ragged kids perched on a flight of crumbling stone steps turned their sharp, fox-like features in my direction; a fat woman with a red, bloated face, who was squatting on an upturned tub, shouted something incomprehensible around the short pipe clamped between her remaining teeth; at one point a spindly human scarecrow with long, uncombed hair stepped in front of the hansom and made a series of complex, esoteric gestures with his long, skinny fingers before scuttling back into the darkness from which he’d come.
I wondered whether Willoughby’s brougham was getting the same level of scrutiny, the same kind of treatment. The streets soon became so short and narrow we found ourselves following the sound rather than the sight of it. When its clattering progress up ahead slowed and stopped, I told the driver of my cab to halt too. He did so reluctantly, his eyes darting back and forth, obviously scared of being ambushed. Taking a deep breath to steady my nerves – a bad idea, the air stank of sewage and decay – I disembarked from the hansom and stepped out on to filthy cobbles. I paid the driver, who snatched the money out of my hand and pocketed it in a flash, as if he was afraid the mere smell of it would bring the predators flocking.
‘I ’ope yer not wanting me to await yer return, sir?’ he muttered, his flickering eyes so wide I could see the whites around his pupils.
I shook my head. ‘No, you get along. Thank you – and good luck.’
‘It’s you what’ll need the luck I reckon, sir,’ he said.
Before I could reply, he was hauling on the reins, forcing the horse to drag the cab around in a tight U-turn. I watched him go, but it wasn’t until he’d turned the corner that I felt suddenly profoundly alone.
My hand slipped beneath my coat and closed around the handle of my howdah in its concealed pocket. Even in the daylight, places like Spitalfields, with their narrow streets and high, cramped, leaning buildings, seemed oppressive with shadows. I squared my shoulders and straightened my back to make myself look less of a victim. I thought of Benny Magee, the gangland boss who’d sold me out to the Wolves of London, and tried to channel some of his aggressive self-confidence.
Keeping a watchful eye on every side alley and gaping doorway, I hurried in the direction taken by Willoughby’s brougham. The fact that I hadn’t heard it move off suggested it was still parked no more than a street or two away. I imagined Willoughby engaged in the laborious process – for him – of clambering out and paying the driver. There was always the possibility the carriage might have been waylaid, that Willoughby might have come to harm, but I didn’t think so. If that had happened I’d have heard some sort of commotion – shouts or screams, the sounds of a struggle.
Aware I was within spitting distance of what had once been Dorset Street (now demolished), where only a few years ago Jack the Ripper had murdered and mutilated Mary Kelly in her lodgings, I reached the intersection at the end of the street and peered around the corner. Beyond a soot-blackened, drab-fronted building that had the look of a workhouse or an abandoned factory, Willoughby’s brougham was standing motionless. I could see Willoughby – or at least the dark, uncompromising bulk of him – speaking to the driver. I heard the faint chink of coins and then the brougham moved off, leaving Willoughby standing alone.
Feeling exposed, I drew back behind the corner of the wall, but Willoughby was already turning away. I watched him step on to the kerb and shuffle towards the doorway of a grime-coated tenement with cracked walls and windows so caked with soot (those few that had glass in them) they couldn’t possibly admit more than a glimmer of light. A couple of skinny men in ragged clothes, one wearing a tall, crooked stovepipe hat that made me think of Dr Seuss’s Cat in the Hat, were standing sentinel, one each side of the doorway. I watched with interest as Willoughby waddled towards them.
Even from thirty metres away I could hear Willoughby’s wheezing breath, his cane tapping the ground. What was he doing in this neighbourhood? I wondered. Surely he didn’t live here? The man with the stovepipe hat touched a finger to its brim and stepped back as Willoughby took a key from his overcoat pocket. Clearly then they knew him, were even showing him deference. I watched as the actor unlocked the door of the tenement and went inside.
Maybe he was the landlord, here to collect rent? But if so, why dismiss the b
rougham? And why come alone – or even at all? Surely men of means employed others to do their dirty work?
Perhaps he was visiting someone then? A friend or relative? Could the two men standing by the door be related to him in some way? It seemed inconceivable. Perhaps they worked for him then? Could they be his enforcers, his bodyguards?
I had plenty of questions, but no answers. And no way of getting answers either without approaching the two men and asking them directly.
I considered doing just that. After all, I had a gun, and it was unlikely that they’d be similarly armed. But what at this point would it achieve? I’d spoken to Willoughby already today. Turning up again here now would only make him more wary of me; it might even scare him off. If he was our killer, and if he was associated with the Wolves of London, then the priority had to be to get him to lead me to the heart and take it from there. Which meant playing it cool, not going in with all guns blazing. With a sigh, I made a mental note of the address and slipped away.
Moving quickly, head down, hand still clutching the howdah in my coat, I followed a meandering course along various side streets and back alleys. In my decent clobber I attracted plenty of scrutiny along the way, some of it clearly hostile, but I wasn’t attacked or even challenged.
Eventually I reached Commercial Street, which was wider and more crowded than those around it, and headed north towards Shoreditch, ignoring the shouts of the doxies, who sounded both plaintive and aggressive as they touted for business. Prostitution was the most common profession among the women in this area, with many girls being put to work by their families as young as eleven or twelve – as a result of which they were more often than not riddled with syphilis by their teenage years.
It wasn’t the prostitutes I was worried about, though, even if a lot of them did carry shivs on the off chance of sticking a rich client and stealing his purse. The real threat came from the gangs, which spilled like rats from the slums of ‘Old Nichol’, not far from here; or even the swarms of feral children known as ‘little Arabs’, who would slash a man to death if they thought there was something useful to be had from him.
