Retribution Road

by Antonin Varenne

  Two guards, who had been standing outside the door, rushed into the room. Andrews signalled the guards not to move, then to leave them alone.

  “Bowman, this is your last chance to tell me why you keep saying so many things I don’t understand, why you are mentioning the Duke of Devonshire’s name in the same breath as that murder in the sewer!”

  Bowman trapped his hands between his knees and squeezed them together as tight as he could to stop the trembling.

  “I’m trying to. I can’t.”

  “You don’t have a choice. This is an order, Bowman.”

  Bowman took slow, deep breaths, trying to get enough air in his lungs. His head hung down to his knees.

  “I was on the Joy, Godwin’s flagship. We were waiting for the wind to pick up so we could attack Rangoon and the deck officer came to find me. He told me that Major Cavendish wanted to see me. For a mission on the river.”

  Andrews sent him home, escorted by a guard from the brigade. Bowman found himself back in his room on Cable Street. The chair was waiting for him, in front of the table, facing the window; his sergeant’s uniform hung from the line; there were empty bottles on the floor.

  Andrews’ man remained below on the street to keep watch over his building.

  Bowman lay on his bed and slept for twenty-four hours. When he woke up, he felt better rested than he had done for a long time, despite the stiffness in his muscles, worse even than it had been in hospital. It took him five minutes to leave his room, descend the three floors and put a coin in the hand of his landlady, so she would bring him some food. The old woman asked why there was a policeman outside the building. Bowman told her not to worry and to bring him a bottle of gin too.

  For two days, he tried to eat regularly and moderate his drinking. He cleaned and tidied his room. The rest had left him calmer: he no longer heard the screaming, but his memory had returned, down to the last detail.

  The word circled his head, and surprised him by emerging from his mouth as a whisper, as he sat at his table and looked out over the rooftops of Whitechapel. He saw the letters traced on the bricks of the sewer in the blood from the corpse, barely any darker than the wall.

  One word, awaiting him. The killer’s signature.

  Survive.

  When Bowman pronounced it, alone in his room, it was a question. Down there, in the sewer, it was an affirmation.

  Had O’Reilly and the other policemen seen it too?

  After a week, Andrews knocked on his door. The superintendent was nervous. He sat at the table and took off his hat. Bowman stood near the window, looking down at the policeman outside the front door of the building, and waited for the officer to speak.

  “I sent a report, along with your testimony, to the head of the division.”

  Bowman turned around. Andrews joined his hands on the table and lowered his head.

  “I went personally to East India House and checked the prisoner of war register. You and your men do not appear on any list.”

  Bowman moved towards him.

  “What?”

  “Yesterday, the head of the division came in person to see me in Wapping. He told me your testimony was a tissue of lies and fantasies. He made it clear that it was not in my interests to follow this lead. He told me to sniff around the gangs instead.”

  “You didn’t find anything?”

  Andrews gritted his teeth and lifted his head. His eyes seemed to shrink in their sockets.

  “That mission does not exist, Bowman. Nor do the men you mentioned, nor any trace of your captivity. The chief said he would have my head if I continued asking questions. You know what that means?”

  “We’re not on the lists?”

  Andrews contained himself. He stood up, smacking his hands down on the table.

  “This report is going to get me in serious trouble and I advise you not to talk about this story to anyone! The division head wants results quickly and he wants this sewer story to end here. He would be perfectly happy if I brought him some gang member . . . or anyone else, for that matter.”

  Arthur Bowman no longer heard the superintendent. He was looking straight ahead, suddenly absent, while his superior officer went on: “We found you next to the corpse. Your reputation for violence precedes you. You are telling stories that no-one wants to hear and everyone knows you are half mad. All my men are already sure that you’re guilty, Bowman. Do I have to say anything else, or do we understand each other?”

  Bowman crossed the room and lay down on his bed. Andrews stood in front of him. The superintendent spoke more quietly, articulating slowly, separating the words so that Bowman, even in a daze, could hear them clearly: “You remain under surveillance and you will not leave here until this case has been solved. I won’t let you fuck up my career, Bowman, you hear me? If you make any waves at all, I will have you for the murder of the foreman and for the body in the sewer. You know I wouldn’t hesitate to do it, and you also know there wouldn’t exactly be a crowd of people rushing to defend you in front of a judge.”

  Andrews put his hand on the door handle and turned around, his gaze sweeping the room.

  “You belong in an asylum, Bowman, but if you prefer the rope, all you have to do is go downstairs and utter the name Major Cavendish one more time . . . I’ll take care of the rest.”

  He left the room, leaving the door open behind him.

  Bowman walked over to the little mirror above the sink. He unbuttoned his shirt, let his trousers fall to the floor, took the mirror from the wall and put it in front of his body, inspecting the palest lines on his skin. Straight, parallel scars, from his shoulders to his abdomen, passing over his collarbone and his ribs, identical to the ones that ran down his back and his legs. He leaned his head to the side and looked at his eyes in the mirror, examining them for a long time, searching his blue eyes as if they were someone else’s, trying to guess what was hidden behind them. He grimaced, pulling a series of exaggerated faces like so many masks. Anger, a smile, sadness, surprise. He opened his mouth to look at his tongue and his teeth.

  He pronounced a few words, first in a murmur, then more loudly, observing that face in the mirror, that face that wanted to tell him something he could not yet hear: “No mission?”

  He repeated the question a little more loudly, lifting his mutilated hand and touching it to his lips, feeling the breath of his words when he pronounced them.

  He got dressed again, making the scars vanish under the police uniform, and sat at the table while he waited for night to fall, staring out of the window. Then he went out onto the landing, opened the door to a storeroom, grabbed on to the top of the door, lifted up the chimney-sweep’s skylight, and hoisted himself onto the roof. At the next chimney, he opened another skylight, let himself down into the stairwell of the adjoining building and came out on Cable Street, heading east to avoid the policeman who was guarding the door to his own building. He turned right on Butcher Row and reached the docks, which he continued to follow eastward, along the Thames.

  He walked among a few passers-by, silent figures that he barely even noticed, and lifted his nose as if to sniff the sea, sixty miles from there. He passed Victoria Docks and Duke Shore until he reached Dunbar Wharf, where he slipped between the huts and warehouses, crossing through the darkness over an expanse of dry grass littered with stinking nets, old chains and rusty anchors. He would have liked to pass the Isle of Dogs and go all the way to North Woolwich, where the Thames widened and he might be able to catch the first scents of the sea. But he felt too tired and sat on the docks at the water’s edge. The lights of London were dancing on the black surface of the port. He stood up and retraced his footsteps, picking through the litter until he found a piece of rusted boat chain, which he put over his shoulders and wrapped around his neck like a scarf. After that, he walked back to the port, headed straight for the docks and, without slowing down, fell into the water.

  When he hit the surface, he opened his mouth. Air bubbles floated up past his body, ro
lling against his ears. He wished it could be more silent. Keeping his eyes open, he began to sink. He looked down at the blackness below his feet, feeling the weight of the chain on his shoulder, dragging him down deeper and deeper.

  There were noises, muffled impacts of wood or metal, that spread through the water. He looked up. A dark shape was swimming towards him.

  A shark.

  He sucked in all the water he could and repeated the word one last time. A question. Survive?

  *

  Arthur Bowman opened his eyes. He was lying on the bottom of a small boat. His head was lifted up, the chain unwound from around his neck. A man was yelling as he pushed with both hands on his chest. He shouted but Bowman didn’t hear him. There was a dock above the boat, where curious onlookers held lanterns; their light shone between his wet eyelashes. He heard the first words, confirming his disappointment: “He’s alive!”

  Bowman coughed, felt the water rise up his throat and come out of his mouth, trickling over his beard. Brackish water, with a muddy taste.

  “Hey! Are you alright? Can you hear us?”

  The man in the pea jacket, dripping water, leaned over him. When Bowman spoke, water continued pouring from his mouth. There was a silence and someone asked: “What did he say?”

  “I couldn’t hear. What did you say?”

  The fisherman put his ear close to Bowman’s mouth, listened to his croaky voice, and then sat up.

  “Shit, I reckon he must have water on his brain!”

  “What did he say?”

  “He’s talking about sharks. He asked where the sharks are.”

  Three men lifted him up. On the dock, arms reached out and he was laid out on the ground. He shivered. Hands removed his cape.

  “Bloody hell! He’s a copper!”

  “My God, have you seen that?”

  “What is it?”

  “Scars.”

  “Shit, did he get caught in a propeller?”

  “That was no propeller that did that. They’re not new anyway.”

  They threw a blanket over his body and he felt himself being lifted up again, heard the wheels of a cart on cobblestones. His head rolled from side to side and he lost consciousness.

  *

  The flames danced in front of his eyes. Someone chucked a bucket of coals into the stove. Cinders rose into the air and Bowman followed them with his eyes.

  “Oh, you’ve woken up, have you?”

  Bowman looked around him. He was lying on some crates in a little wooden outhouse.

  “You’ve been snoring all night. Must be tiring, almost drowning.”

  On top of the stove, the man put a saucepan of water, then threw in a handful of coffee, which he stirred with the blade of his knife. When he wiped the knife on his hand, Bowman sat up and tried to move away.

  “Whoa! What’s up with you? Something wrong?”

  The man moved closer to him, without letting go of the knife. Bowman rolled to the side, lay face down on the earth floor and tried to crawl towards the door, which opened. Another man came in, dressed in a pea jacket.

  “Shit, he’s mad as a hatter.”

  The man who had just entered crouched down next to Bowman, who rolled up into a ball.

  “Hey, lad. What’s up with you? Don’t be scared. We’re the ones who hooked you out of the water last night. We’re not going to hurt you. Do you want some coffee? You were shivering all night. Drink something hot, and afterwards we’ll take you home. Where do you live?”

  Bowman moved away from him.

  “Cable Street.”

  “Cable? Is that what you said?”

  The man near the stove brought him a steaming mug and said goodbye to the man in the pea jacket, explaining that he was going back to work and would drop in later. Bowman gripped the metal mug between his cold fingers and lifted it to his lips. He took a sip.

  The fisherman sat on a crate, coffee in hand, and looked at this man sitting on the ground.

  “So you’re a policeman, are you?”

  Bowman hesitated, then shook his head.

  “What was that uniform you were wearing, then?”

  Bowman drank some hot coffee and did not respond. The fisherman took off his hat and rubbed his hands.

  “I’m the one who fished you out of the water. You fell just in front of my boat. Don’t you remember? Anyway, I’m glad you’re not a bluebottle. They’d really have taken the piss out of me if I’d saved a copper. What’s your name?”

  “Bowman. Sergeant Bowman.”

  “Sergeant? Shit, don’t tell me I saved a soldier! . . . What? What did you say?”

  “East India Company.”

  The fisherman looked at him darkly and spat on the floor.

  “I’ve got a brother who spent three years in Bombay. What a fucking country. Those bastards in the Company . . .”

  Bowman swallowed some more coffee and cleared his throat.

  “Madras.”

  “Yeah? How long were you there?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Fifteen years? Shit.”

  In addition to the stove, the sun was now shining through the little window and on the tar-covered planks of the roof. It was hot in the fisherman’s hut, filled with canvas bags, nets, lines and lockers. At last, the man took off his jacket and poured himself some more coffee.

  “Well, it’s none of my business really. I just fished you out of the water. But I do wonder why you wanted to swim with the fishes in that shitty river.”

  The fisherman waited a few seconds but the sergeant did not reply.

  “Is it ’cos of the scars? Something that happened to you over there? My brother, he’s had nightmares since he came back. ’Cos of what he saw. ’Cos of what was done to him, or maybe even ’cos of what he did. I don’t know, ’cos he never talks about it.”

  The fisherman smiled.

  “My name’s Frank. Frankie’

  He held out his hand. Bowman shook it. Frank took a small bottle of hooch from his pocket.

  “One good thing about this stink is that there wasn’t enough water for people to throw themselves into the Thames. Lucky, that, ’cos it sent quite a few of ’em completely mad. We all came close to losing it, I reckon. Like that story in the sewers, that poor bloke who was killed. A real bloodbath, apparently. If you want my opinion, the bloke who did that must have been sent mad by the smell and the heat. You’ve been through that, haven’t you, Sergeant, living in those countries where the sun sends everyone crazy?”

  Bowman’s chin started to quiver when he tried to speak. His face felt cold when the blood left it, massing in his chest as his heartbeat accelerated.

  The fisherman came close to him and offered him a drink.

  “Alright. We won’t talk about that anymore. Calm down, Sarge. What’s your first name?”

  Bowman swallowed some hooch.

  “Arthur.”

  “Do you want me to take you home, Arthur?”

  Bowman looked at him, incapable of responding.

  “Well, let’s wait till you’re back on your feet, and then we’ll see. I’m going to try to find you some clothes. You can’t keep walking round in that uniform. Stay here, I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Frank stopped at the door and turned around.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Sergeant Arthur. Alright? It’s easy enough to snuff it without wanting to. There’s no need to do it yourself.”

  Bowman moved closer to the stove, leaned on a crate and closed his eyes. He fell asleep without realising and when the cabin door opened, he jumped. Frank was back, with a bag over his shoulder.

  “You survived then, Sergeant?”

  This man smiled a lot.

  “I don’t have a lord’s wardrobe, but I did manage to find a few things that should fit you. My missus gave me an earful, and she’s probably right. It’s pretty stupid of me, helping someone I don’t know. How do you feel?”

  Bowman tried to smile.

  “Better.”

&
nbsp; “Well, it’s not that I’m a skinflint, but if you could at least give me your trousers, that’d be good.”

  Bowman put on the clothes – a bit small – then devoured the bread and lard that Frank had brought, along with a bottle of wine. His throat relaxed as he swallowed the food, taking away the taste of salt and mud that he still had on his tongue. He felt embarrassed now he was able to speak again, because he didn’t know what to say.

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “I’m going to go home.”

  He picked up his old clothes, rolled them in a ball and handed them to the fisherman.

  “You can use the cape as a blanket.”

  The fisherman smiled and took the policeman’s clothes.

  “Yeah, I just won’t go out with it.”

  They shook hands again.

  “Come back whenever you want if there’s a problem. I’m not going to get all sentimental on you – I mean, I don’t even know who you are – but if ever you’re in trouble, you can always find me here.”

  Bowman left the hut. The fisherman stood in the doorway and watched him walk away.

  “Hey! Sergeant! Maybe I’m being stupid, but it just occurred to me: you didn’t jump in the river ’cos of the Company, did you?”

  Bowman turned around.

  “What?”

  “Shit! Are you the only bloke in London who doesn’t know about it?”

  Bowman shook his head.

  “It was made official yesterday. Lad, you threw yourself under my boat the very day they closed up shop.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Oh! Sergeant, you’re pulling my leg, aren’t you? The sepoys – haven’t you followed any of this? First it was the Hindu soldiers who revolted. Apparently they didn’t want to tear the cartridges open with their teeth ’cos there was cow fat on them and they didn’t want to eat it! Half of India went to war and the Company got caught with its pants down. The Queen kicked them out on their arses. So, no more East India Company – the Crown has taken over everything. Your old employer’s been sent to the cleaners, Sergeant.”