The Red Hand of Fury

by R. N. Morris

  So, he thought. This is a socialist.

  ‘Are you the policeman?’

  ‘That’s right, ma’am. And you are …?’

  ‘That need not concern you.’

  ‘Oh, but I am very much afraid that it does concern me. I like to know to whom I am speaking, you see.’

  ‘How very extraordinary. Have you come to arrest my brother?’

  ‘Is your brother Mr Manley Adams?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Then that would make her Cordelia Manley Adams, Macadam knew from his research. ‘Is there some reason why I should?’

  ‘He is the most frightful pacifist.’

  ‘I see. It is on account of that that I have come to speak to him. But I know of no reason why I should arrest him.’

  ‘Is it not against the law to be a pacifist?’

  ‘There is no specific offence of pacifism. But if one’s pacifism causes one to break the law, for example to obstruct the course of justice, or vandalize the Houses of Parliament, then one may well find oneself on the wrong side of a cell door.’

  ‘I like you.’

  Macadam bowed.

  At that moment, a dark-haired man with an equally dark beard entered. Behind his silver wire-framed spectacles, his expression appeared preoccupied to the point of distraction. When he saw Cordelia already there, he rolled his eyes.

  ‘Don’t pay any attention to my sister. She’s mad.’ The man held out his hand to Macadam. ‘Adam Manley Adams, what’s this all about?’

  A much younger woman with fine fair hair tied up at the back and a wistful expression followed him into the room. She flashed a shy look at Cordelia and blushed.

  ‘Oh,’ said Manley Adams, becoming distracted again. ‘This is my wife, Bella.’

  ‘No, no, she’s my wife,’ corrected Cordelia. ‘We’re all adults here, there’s no need for all this pretending.’

  ‘She can’t be your wife!’ Manley Adams’ voice rose to a near scream. ‘You’re a woman! She’s a woman and you’re a woman! And besides, she’s married to me! You were at the ceremony, I believe.’ Turning to Macadam, he added: ‘I told you she was mad.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s mad!’ Now it was Cordelia’s turn to scream. ‘Mad is printing leaflets calling on this country to abandon its national defences and surrender abjectly to a foreign power!’

  Macadam thought that perhaps this was his moment. ‘Ah, yes. It’s about those leaflets that I wished to speak to you.’ He produced the piece of paper that was found in the clothes of the first suicide. ‘Is this one of yours?’

  ‘I knew it!’ cried Cordelia delightedly. ‘They’re going to take you away!’ She turned to the other woman. ‘We can be together at last, Bella.’

  ‘But I don’t want him to go to jail!’ cried Bella.

  ‘What do you want?’ demanded Manley Adams, ignoring the leaflet Macadam had given him. Perhaps sensing that he was upsetting his wife, he softened his tone. ‘That’s what you need to decide, Bella dearest. At the moment, it seems that you want …’ He threw up his hands in exasperation. ‘Well, I don’t know what you want!’

  ‘I want both of you,’ said Bella simply. And the way that she said it, even Macadam had to admit it sounded quite reasonable.

  ‘May I suggest,’ Macadam interjected, ‘that you settle this issue at some other time?’

  All three of them turned to him with a look of surprise, as if they had forgotten he was there.

  A pensive frown settled across Manley Adams’ brows, defining itself into a look of cunning. ‘Is it legal? What they do?’

  ‘I don’t know what they do. And I don’t want to know. It’s not about that that I have come.’

  ‘Despicable!’ cried Cordelia. ‘You would have your own sister and wife arrested!’

  ‘Not her. She’s innocent in this. You’ve corrupted her.’

  ‘Oh, you fool. No one has corrupted anyone. What we have done is express our love for each other. It’s a beautiful, natural, physical expression of love!’

  ‘There’s nothing natural about it at all. You’re my sister. She’s my wife. It makes my skin crawl.’

  ‘Then go, leave. Absent yourself, far from this ménage.’

  ‘This is my house!’

  ‘Daddy left it to both of us.’

  Macadam cleared his throat. ‘If I may. The leaflet, sir. Do you recognize it as one of yours, that is to say, is it one you have caused to have printed and distributed?’

  ‘Yes, of course. What of it?’

  ‘It was found in the pockets of a gentleman who died at London Zoo. You may have read about it in the newspapers. He was mauled by a bear. A polar bear,’ added Macadam to clarify, as if men were getting mauled by all sorts of bears all the time.

  ‘The naked one?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But I don’t see what that has to do with us. Anyone might get hold of one of these leaflets. We give them out all the time, all over the place.’

  ‘So far, we have not been able to identify the gentleman. We are looking into any lead whatsoever. We thought he might be a member of your organization. The Fellowship of the Gracchi, I believe it’s called.’

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose. Our membership runs to several thousands and includes people from all walks of life.’

  ‘It would help us greatly if you could provide me with a list of members.’

  ‘Out of the question. I cannot aid the forces of oppression in the persecution of our members.’

  ‘It is simply that we wish to inform his next of kin. No one has come forward. It is a terrible tragedy.’

  ‘I see what’s going on here. This is a fig leaf for oppression. There’s nothing to link this naked man to us at all. How do I even know you found this leaflet on him? Where did he put it? Up his anus?’

  Macadam thought there was no need for that. ‘His clothes were found near the scene of his demise.’

  ‘Demise!’ cried Cordelia appreciatively. ‘Did you hear that? So like a policeman.’

  ‘Well, I don’t care. You’re not having our members. That would be a betrayal of the first order. Good day.’

  Macadam produced a monochrome photograph of one the cards printed with the red hand. ‘Have you ever seen a card like this before? The hand on the original card is printed in red.’

  ‘No.’

  The two women also shook their heads.

  ‘Does the symbol of the red hand mean anything to you?’

  ‘No. It’s not our kind of thing. A bloody hand? Hardly appropriate for a pacifist organization.’

  Macadam showed them a second photograph, of the reverse of the card. ‘And what of these letters? F.J.S.U?’

  ‘Haven’t got a clue, old bean.’ It seemed to satisfy Manley Adams that he was unable to help.

  ‘One last thing,’ said Macadam, pocketing the photographs. ‘And then I’ll be on my way. Do you have among your members a gentleman by the name of Malcolm Grant-Sissons?’

  ‘What do you take me for, some kind of fool? I wouldn’t tell you if we did!’

  ‘But if you didn’t … perhaps you could see your way to telling me that?’

  Manley Adams thought about it for a moment and sighed. ‘Well, if it will get rid of you. No, I’ve never heard that name before. What was it you said? Malcolm?’

  ‘Grant-Sissons.’

  ‘No. He’s not one of our members. Now, will that be all?’

  Macadam placed one of his cards on a table. ‘If anything should come to mind, I’ll just leave this here.’

  He gave Cordelia Manley Adams a sympathetic smile on the way out.

  Macadam drove the Model T over to Bedford Square, where Oscar Villiers lived, in an even grander house than the Manley Adams’.

  An ageing butler informed him that his Lordship was not at home. Either he had never been informed of his master’s abdication of his title, or simply refused to accept it.

  Macadam wondered if Adam Manley Adams had telephoned ahead t
o warn Villiers. He wouldn’t put it past these socialists to use telephones. After this morning’s shenanigans, he wouldn’t put anything past them.

  FIFTEEN

  As the motor taxi approached Bankside, the air grew progressively murkier, thick with the filthy smog that the power station’s eighteen massive chimneys spewed out. Quinn could taste the grit in each breath.

  The taxi pulled up in the vast shadow of a long shed-like building, black with its own grime. Every brick and detail of the structure was swallowed up in a layer of obscurity. It seemed that if a man stood still for long enough in this neighbourhood, he would turn into a pillar of soot. It was a factory for generating darkness as well as electricity.

  As Quinn stepped out, he felt the ground vibrate. He was aware of an increase in pressure between his ears, and he sensed rather than heard a low humming all around him. It seemed to be borne in the smog that filled the air. He looked up, in the hope of seeing at least a patch of the clear blue sky that he knew was up there. A flat grey cloud filled the space between the power station roof and the adjacent buildings.

  Quinn had put the Portman novel inside the cashier’s box with his father’s letters to Louisa Grant-Sissons. He felt the weight of this burden in his hand as he mounted the steps to the entrance. The vibrations that he had noticed a moment before intensified with each step he took.

  A man in a company uniform sat behind a counter inside the bland, marble-tiled foyer. Quinn showed his warrant card, which the man took his time examining.

  ‘How may I help you?’

  ‘It’s concerning the accident that took place last night. I’d like to see where it happened.’

  ‘We’ve had the police here already.’

  ‘I’m sure you have. But I am different police.’

  ‘I’ll have to check with my guv’nor.’

  ‘You do that.’

  The counter was equipped with a telephone. The man kept his eyes fixed on Quinn as he made the necessary call.

  ‘Mr Kibblewhite will be along presently.’

  ‘I really don’t want to trouble anyone. If you just point me in the right direction.’

  ‘We can’t allow that. Especially not after what happened to that … person.’

  ‘I’m hardly likely to throw myself at a dynamo.’

  The man’s expression seemed to suggest that he wouldn’t be so sure about that.

  ‘At any rate,’ began Quinn innocuously, ‘it’s good to see that you’re being more careful now.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Though it does strike me a little as closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.’

  The Company man was affronted by Quinn’s insinuation. ‘He snuck in!’

  ‘Or to look at it another way, someone negligently allowed a potentially dangerous intruder on to Company premises. It’s perhaps fortunate that the poor wretch was only, as it seems, bent on his own destruction, and was not a saboteur intending to wreak more wide-scale havoc. I dare say what happened was inconvenient enough, but a bomb blast would have been catastrophic.’

  ‘No one could foresee …’

  ‘Of course, should he die, there may be criminal charges brought. Culpable negligence. Manslaughter.’ Quinn’s needling of the man was to a large degree instinctive. It was a basic interrogation technique, to hang the threat of prosecution over a witness so that you could withdraw it in return for cooperation. But Quinn had to admit that there was very little pertinent to the investigation that he could hope to get from this man.

  ‘I wasn’t here last night!’

  The truth was, it made him feel better. It helped him focus all the obscure emotions that had troubled him ever since he saw that it was Malcolm Grant-Sissons in the hospital bed. They came together into a simple anger. It surprised him now to learn how deeply felt and genuine it was. And it reached a climax when he expressed the possibility of Malcolm dying.

  Quinn suddenly knew that he was a hair’s breadth away from screaming at the man.

  Fortunately, at that point, another man appeared through a door behind the reception counter. This one was wearing a swallow-tailed suit and tortoiseshell glasses, with precision-parted hair but an unruly black beard. He looked like a curious combination of a maître d’ and a theoretical physicist.

  He approached Quinn with hand held out and fluttering eyelids, as if he was trying to bat away any suggestion of scandal. Quinn had the impression that he had been standing behind that door for some time, trying to soothe his features into this expression of rehearsed insouciance.

  ‘I am Kibblewhite. General Manager of the City of London Electric Lighting Company Limited Bankside Alternate and Direct Current Generating Station.’ It was as if he was bolstering himself up with terminology, stoking his importance with every word he could add to the description of his realm. It was a warning, as well as a buttress. ‘I hear you wish to see the site where the unfortunate gentleman met with his accident?’

  Kibblewhite stopped blinking but he did not meet Quinn’s gaze. Quinn couldn’t blame him. He must be feeling the heat. There could be no worse customers to let down than the printing presses of Fleet Street.

  Quinn nodded and allowed Kibblewhite to lead the way, back through the door from which he had emerged.

  The room he entered was a vast hall, which appeared to extend to the full height, and almost the full length, of the building. Particles of coal dust swirled in the air, shrouding the scene in a shifting black veil. Open carts tipped coal into massive bunkers, from which men with shovels fed the banks of furnaces that lined the hall. Such was the heat that some of the workmen had removed their jackets and worked in shirt sleeves and waistcoats, though they kept their bowler hats on, together with their collars and ties.

  Above the furnaces, the boiler cylinders bulged, like monstrous bellies that could never be sated.

  Gargantuan pipes, some as wide as three feet in diameter, veined the walls, with lesser pipes threaded in between. A maze of ladders and platforms giving access to the red-painted wheel valves gave the impression of a giant game of snakes and ladders.

  The hum that Quinn had sensed earlier was now distinctly audible. It was overlaid with the general clatter and thrum of industry. He had to shout to make his voice carry to Kibblewhite. ‘Do you have many accidents here?’

  Kibblewhite smiled blandly and shook his head. If he resented the question, he was determined not to show it. ‘Our safety record is second to none!’

  ‘No accidents then, until last night?’

  ‘Very few. The men are well trained.’

  ‘But he was not one of your men. He was an outsider.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘I am surprised he was able to gain access to the plant.’

  ‘We are looking into what happened.’

  ‘So nothing like this has ever happened before?’

  ‘No. Nothing like this. Once …’ But the resounding clang of an emptied coal cart gave Kibblewhite pause. He thought better of whatever he was about to say.

  Quinn could feel the ever-present vibration of the floor in his calves and in the muscles of his face. ‘Doesn’t it get on your nerves?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The vibrating.’

  ‘You get used to it. In fact, it is more that you miss it when you leave the station. It’s like a sailor’s sea legs.’

  Quinn nodded. ‘You were going to say? Once? Another accident?’

  ‘It was nothing like this. But once a boy fell into the river and was drawn into one of our suction pipes. He ended up in a sealed vacuum chamber, not before being pulled a hundred and fifty feet through a double bend.’

  ‘Good God.’

  ‘The miracle is, he survived.’

  ‘Do you think the man who did this will survive?’

  ‘He is not dead yet?’

  ‘No.’

  Kibblewhite raised his eyebrows. ‘I am surprised. But glad.’

  Kibblewhite led Quinn through ano
ther door, into a smaller room, which was filled with rows of engine-like machines spinning and shaking at tremendous speed. Here, the hum was an intense, almost unbearable throbbing din. The vibrations spread throughout his whole body, which felt as if it was about to be shaken apart.

  Kibblewhite indicated a metal gantry against one wall. ‘He climbed up there,’ he shouted.

  Quinn pointed upwards questioningly, and Kibblewhite nodded consent. ‘Don’t take the chain off,’ he warned.

  ‘Chain?’

  ‘Across the top.’

  ‘Was it on last night?’

  Kibblewhite nodded. ‘Always. Unless one of the engineers is working up there.’

  Quinn gripped the handrail and stepped on to the ladder of the gantry. He had found the source of the hum. He felt it transmitted through the bones of his arms and legs, taking him over entirely, like a possessing demon.

  As he reached the platform of the gantry, his legs turned to jelly. Perhaps Malcolm hadn’t intended to jump. He had simply lost his balance and fallen. But as Quinn looked down at the wrought-iron lattice beneath his feet, he remembered that Malcolm had taken off his clothes. Quinn saw the protective chain stretched across the yawning gap at the front of the platform. If what Kibblewhite had said was true, Malcolm must have unhitched the chain, which indicated intent.

  Quinn peered down over the edge of the gantry platform. Directly below he could see sparks fly from the moving parts of the spinning dynamo.

  It was a strangely enticing vision. There was something so enviably perfect about the smooth, relentless motion of the dynamo. The evanescent beauty of the sparks both teased and comforted. It was like a dance of fairies.

  A shout of ‘No! Stop!’ broke the enchantment. He looked down in annoyance at Kibblewhite. Then saw his own hand on the chain and snatched it away, as if the links had grown suddenly white hot.

  SIXTEEN

  Sunlight filled the Special Crimes Department. The weather had been changeable these last few days. One day, cold and wet; the next, like an oven in the attic room. Today was an oven day. As well as the sun beating down on them through the roof, they were warmed from below by the heat rising from the rest of the building.