Barker 05 - Black Hand

by Thomas, Will

A man stood up in the room beyond, but I could not see him. Barker is over six feet, and Vandeleur approaches it. As unobtrusively as possible, I tried to peer over their shoulders. I was expecting a stranger, but in fact I knew the man. Coupled with what I had seen so far that day, I rather wished I didn’t.

  Demo version limitation

  4

  FOR ONCE I HAD SOME IDEA WHERE WE WERE going as we clattered along Aldgate High Street, heading toward the West End. Our destination was the Neapolitan, a restaurant in Westminster run by Serafini’s former employer, Victor Gigliotti, leader of the English branch of the Camorra. Gigliotti’s bodyguard and his wife were now dead, leaving me to assume Gigliotti must have done something to warrant the attack on his people.

  In Marsham Street, we pulled up to the curb and alighted. Passing beneath the metal red, white, and green flags of unified Italy that adorned the exterior of the restaurant, we stepped inside. A large portrait of Giuseppi Garibaldi, the Italian patriot, hung on one wall. Not as welcoming perhaps were the steely stares of several hard-looking men in the room, including the owner, who sat at a table near the back. The bodyguards moved their hands nearer to where their guns were secreted as we entered, but Gigliotti held up a hand to them.

  “Victor,” my employer said, coming to a stop in front of his table and offering a slight bow of respect as he removed his bowler.

  “Cyrus,” the man replied with a smile, revealing a wide mouth with sharp canines. He was about thirty, thin but well built, with pomaded black hair. His jawline was so dark it looked as if gunpowder had been discharged into it. He spoke with only a slight accent. “How have I offended you that you have not honored my establishment with your presence in over a year? Rafael! A bottle of Gallo Nero and some antipasto.”

  Barker pulled out a chair and sat close to him, speaking in a low voice. Gigliotti looked around, as if he did not even trust his own employees, and waved Barker even closer. The Guv spoke for almost a minute in his ear. As he listened, the Camorran smoothed a hand across his hair, though it was as flawless as if it had been shellacked. Eventually he nodded and sighed.

  “Forgive my manners in not coming sooner, Victor,” Barker said, sitting back. “My only excuse is that I go where my work takes me, and there is no crime in Westminster to speak of, largely due to your presence.”

  The table was suddenly surrounded by a gaggle of mustached waiters in long white aprons, setting down bottles and glasses and plates. A basket of fragrant, hot bread wrapped in linen appeared and then a cold platter of rolled meats and cheeses with olives. We helped ourselves. Perhaps it seems strange dining after the morning’s tragedy, but it is the Italian habit to punctuate everything, especially death, with food.

  Gigliotti unstopped the basket-covered bottle of Chianti and poured three glasses with polished ease. He gave us each one and then raised his own.

  “To Giorgio and Isabella, may they rest in such peace as God will allow them. They were cold-blooded killers and mad as hatters, but they celebrated life better than any Englishman.”

  We drank. The Chianti was strong and sour, but it went well with the food. Gigliotti allowed us to eat for another minute or two, though I knew he must have questions about the fate of the Serafinis. An unwritten protocol demanded that everything occur in precise order, a play in which I alone seemed to be without a script.

  “Barreled,” the Camorran finally said. “You know what that means.”

  Barker nodded. “Sicilians, unless you have internal troubles of your own.”

  “We don’t,” Gigliotti insisted, “and if we did, we would not be so ignorant as to float them in barrels. One might as well paint an Italian flag upon the lid for all London to see. Our community will be blamed for this. Giorgio, Giorgio! Who would have thought you’d be caught out in this manner?”

  “It appeared to be the work of two men,” the Guv went on. “Serafini and his wife were gunned down together.”

  “No one ever thought Isabella would die in bed.”

  “There was another murder yesterday.”

  Gigliotti gave him a sharp stare. “Who was killed?”

  “Sir Alan Bledsoe, director of the East and West India Docks.”

  “Bledsoe, is it?” Gigliotti asked. “My supplies for this restaurant, the ice warehouse, and my other businesses all arrive at those docks.”

  “Bledsoe was stabbed in the ear with a sharp instrument, perhaps an ice pick. His death was made to look like heart failure, but something was driven into his brain.”

  “Ice pick? I own the largest ice warehouse in London. It looks as if the Sicilians are trying to implicate me in Bled-soe’s murder. It is an old Sicilian murder method, used to get rid of judges and witnesses.” He snorted in anger. “I liked Sir Alan. We had a good working relationship. Now the position shall probably fall to Dalton Green, who is a martinet and far less willing to listen to reason.”

  “Has there been any friction on the docks between the Italians and Sicilians?” Barker asked.

  “Several of my people have approached me about the Sicilian riffraff. There have been fights, robberies, and men demanding money from merchants for protection. The English don’t know the difference between an Italian and a Sicilian, and we all get blamed. I have never interfered in Sir Alan’s work, though the docks are a necessary part of my business, because I felt he ran a tight ship; but recently, I spoke to him myself and expressed my concerns. He told me he would consider excluding the Sicilians from the docks permanently.”

  “Who is the leader of the Sicilians?” my employer asked. “You are head of the Italian community. Surely you must have heard.”

  “There isn’t one that I know of,” Gigliotti replied with a shrug. “Until now it has been individuals, doing in London as they did in Palermo. Such small crimes are not worth my attention.”

  “Until now, as you say. Someone hired professionals to kill the Serafinis and Sir Alan. What was Serafini doing when he disappeared?” the Guv asked.

  Gigliotti shook his head. “I have had few assignments for him. He and Isabella discussed going to Naples, despite a warrant there for their arrest. Looking back, I would say Giorgio had grown out of touch with the dangers he faced. I fear we have all become Anglicized.”

  “Might it be possible to insinuate someone among the Sicilians and pick up information?” my employer asked.

  “No,” Gigliotti said, dismissing the idea out of hand. “They trust no one but Sicilians. Even then, they are always feuding with one another. It is said that a Sicilian hates everyone but his own brothers, and those he merely distrusts. Sicily is a crucible of poison. What it knows, how it acts, will infect your own native criminal classes in London. They will find this new group has something to teach them about ruthlessness and will admire the way these men do business with heavy arms and cold eyes. Even if they are deported, London may never return to the way it was.”

  Gigliotti drained the rest of his wine in one gulp. “So,” he said, pouring another glass, “would you consider helping me put the Mafia in its place? It is the Mafia we are speaking of, you know. No one else would dare come against me.”

  “I did not intend to get involved,” Barker replied.

  “The Sicilians are a plague, Cyrus, and not even you will be immune to it.”

  “Going up against the Sicilian Mafia is not something one undertakes lightly, Victor,” Barker said.

  “You need not get involved. Your honor was not besmirched. It is a matter for my people.”

  Barker stood. I wondered if he was going to tell Gigliotti that he had already been recruited by the Home Office. “One need not be a member of the Honored Society to have honor. However, going up against the Sicilians would take a great deal of planning. This must be thought out thoroughly.”

  “You have lived among the English too long, Cyrus. You have become phlegmatic. Don’t expect me to sit on my hands and wait for you. Good day.”

  We had been dismissed. Barker stood and nodded, then we left th
e restaurant. Outside, he strode off in the direction of Whitehall, deep in thought, but I wasn’t about to let him walk in silence.

  “Would you really consider working with Gigliotti? He’s a criminal.”

  “There aren’t many choices. We should at least keep the Camorrans in reserve.”

  “Wouldn’t it be best if Scotland Yard had all the Sicilians arrested and deported?”

  “Not every Sicilian is a mafiusu, any more than every Irishman is a terrorist. Some have come here to escape the violence.”

  There was no doubt in my mind that the Guv had agreed to a task of Herculean proportions and volunteered my services without so much as a by-your-leave. How could he possibly assemble a group that could stop someone of Serafini’s caliber? I badgered him with questions all the way to Craig’s Court, where I suddenly slipped on the pavement and almost fell. Barker put a steady hand on my shoulder and pointed to the paving stones with his stick.

  “Blood,” he uttered.

  There was a puddle of it just inside the narrow entrance to Craig’s Court.

  “There’s another,” I said, pointing a few yards closer to our office door.

  We hurried up the steps and went inside, where we found our clerk, Jenkins, kneeling in the middle of the waiting room. He was unhurt, but a man lay prone in front of him in a pool of dark blood, a man I knew quite well.

  “Etienne!” I cried.

  Then, as Barker dropped to his knees to check the pulse of his old friend, my eyes focused on a sheet of paper that lay beside the Guv’s cook, a sheet with a black hand inked in the very center of it. This has struck too close to home, I thought. There would be no talking Barker out of it now.

  5

  IS HE ALIVE?” I ASKED. SURELY DUMMOLARD COULD not be dead, my mind told me. I’d spoken to him but a few hours before.

  “Yes,” Barker said, “but his pulse is weak.”

  “He tumbled in not a minute ago, sir, all covered in blood!” Jenkins blurted.

  “Turn him over gently,” Barker ordered. “Very, very gently.”

  We did so, laying him supine on our entranceway carpet, my mind registering the fact that the bloodstains might never come out. Dummolard’s shirt was slick with crimson from chest to waist, but whether he’d been shot or stabbed we could not tell. He groaned suddenly. He was alive, at least for the present.

  “The ewer, lad,” Barker said. “Bring it quickly.”

  I ran through our chambers to the table behind his desk where Barker kept a full pitcher of water and brought it back to him. My employer had reached into the sleeve of his coat where he kept his dagger and cut open Etienne’s shirt, revealing our cook’s thick pelt of chest hair matted with blood. The Guv is a believer in expediency. I would have wiped gingerly until the wound was exposed, but he emptied the pitcher onto the man’s chest.

  “Blade wound to the stomach,” he pronounced. “Looks deep.”

  As we watched, blood seeped from the wound, and Etienne gave another groan. His pale lips were moving, but no sound came out. I bent forward and listened closely.

  “Front and back,” I said, after finally making sense of what he had murmured. “He’s been stabbed twice, sir.”

  “You had better run over to Charing Cross Hospital for a barrow, lad. I don’t believe he’d survive a cab journey.”

  There was no horse ambulance system in London at that time. Everyone, be it His Lordship with an acute case of gout or Old Sal, knocked down the tenement stairs by her fella, had to go to hospital on one of the public hand barrows, the only manner of conveyance. The lack of ambulances was a public disgrace, and there was much discussion of it in the newspapers. The Metropolitan Police had wheeled over fifteen hundred people to hospital the year before, and it was a strain on their resources, not to mention an embarrassment to the patient, who suffered public display and exposure to comment. Paris, Vienna, and even New York were already experimenting with ambulance systems and they had been successful; but something in the English character instinctively cringes at new ideas. It wasn’t likely that we would be getting such a modern convenience any time before the next century.

  When I arrived at the hospital in Agar Street, I explained in words and gestures that one would reserve for a simpleton that a man was bleeding to death a few streets away, but they made me feel as if I were imposing on their time, as if I myself had stabbed someone merely in order to upset their schedules. As I waited, pulling my hair, an orderly attempted to convince various doctors to step down the road and see to the dying man, but they could not be bothered. I finally hit upon the realization that if I spoke as loudly and forcibly as possible, I would either attract someone to help or get myself chucked out. I surrendered my dignity in hope of saving Etienne’s life, not that he would appreciate it. Finally, the orderly came out with a hand cart, followed by a physician just putting on his topper. I’d have felt better if the barrow was not in every way the twin of the one I’d seen bearing Giorgio Serafini’s corpse off to the Poplar Morgue.

  There was a logistical problem as soon as we arrived. The cart would not fit through the door. I went inside while the orderly stood at the curb watchfully, as if the whole of Whitehall had come there that day with the express purpose of stealing his cart.

  Etienne was awake, or nearly. His eyes opened and closed now and then. He gestured, ever so slightly, and the physician bent down to listen, then shook his head dismissively.

  “Stabbed twice, and the man wants a cigarette,” the doctor said, disapprovingly. He probed the wound, producing a faint curse from the Frenchman.

  “There is no way to know immediately how deep the wounds are or how much damage has been done to the organs. If the smallest scrap of cloth has gone into the wound, it shall quickly fester. We must get him to the hospital immediately. May we use the rug to transport him to the cart?”

  “Of course,” Barker said, though I knew he must have spent a good deal for it. Together the five of us lifted Etienne by the ends of the carpet and carried him down to the cart, while our cook cursed in his native tongue.

  I walk the streets of London every day, arguably the most civilized spot on earth, especially in Whitehall where all is marble, but just put an injured friend in a hand litter and try wheeling him a few blocks and one shall see that the streets are not as smooth as one might think. They rise and fall like waves, and there are cracks and broken paving stones even in the seat of government. We left Jenkins to mind the office and mop the floor, and led the grim procession all the way to Agar Street.

  Private enquiry agents or no, there was a point beyond which we could not pass. Dummolard was wheeled through a set of doors, and when we tried to enter, the orderly at the desk cleared his throat, as if issuing a warning. At loose ends, we found a couple of chairs in the hall and fell into them.

  “Do you think this is related to Sir Alan and the Serafinis?” I asked the Guv.

  Barker nodded grimly. “Etienne has complained about the Sicilian coffee shops opening up in Soho near his restaurant,” he stated, turning his bowler in his hands. “The Sicilians hate the French, of course.”

  “The French? Why?”

  “Sicily was ruled by the Bourbons for decades. The Mafia was formed to combat them. The word Mafia is an acronym for ‘Kill the French is Italy’s cry.’ Something was brewing, and I should have realized it before now.”

  Barker spends his evenings in his garret aerie, poring over newspapers and pasting articles into oversized notebooks. Then he broods and prays over them, sometimes late into the night. He tracked civilization’s progress, or, rather, its descent, through the chronicling of its events. Many times I’d seen him solve a case based upon a seemingly unrelated event in The Times—an exhibition, perhaps, or the arrival of a foreign dignitary. But no man is omniscient. It is impossible to stuff one’s brain with thousands of facts, adding a hundred or more daily, and expect it to automatically produce all possible connections. My employer’s reliance upon such a method, as far as I’m
concerned, is a recipe for an attack of brain fever. A brain is a human organ, not a machine.

  Barker pulled the paper with the black hand from his pocket and glanced at it again while I looked over his shoulder. The writing was in English: You are a swine gorging at the trough, it read. Now you must give way so that others may get to the husks. If not, it shall go ill with you. This is your only warning.

  “I imagine this came from Clerkenwell,” he noted, tapping the letter.

  “The Italian quarter,” I replied. We were suddenly interrupted when Inspector Poole came in the front entrance and spotted us.

  “How is he?” the C.I.D. man asked, putting a foot up on one of the empty chairs.

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “Your clerk said he was stabbed in the street somewhere and must have staggered to your door. I find it hard to believe a man can be stabbed in broad daylight a street away from Scotland Yard.”

  “I slipped in the blood going into Craig’s Court,” I said, bristling. “That was real enough.”

  “Stabbed twice, your clerk told me,” he went on, ignoring me as Anderson had. “I suppose someone crept up and stabbed him from behind, then when he turned, they got him a second time in the stomach.”

  Poole acted out the motions, and being cursed with a vivid imagination, I clothed them with accompanying images.

  Barker shook his head. “No, we have a pattern here. Serafini was murdered with two shots, one to the front and one to the back. His wife was probably killed in the same manner. Etienne is a savateur, a seasoned fighter. Being stabbed in the back would not stop him from defending himself. I think it more likely he was stabbed simultaneously in a surprise attack. It was why he said ‘front and back’ to us. He was defending his reputation as well as warning us to expect such an attack ourselves.”

  “Hold on. You’re going too fast,” said Poole, who was scribbling in his notebook.

  “You need lessons in Pitman’s shorthand,” I recommended, but all I received for my solicitous advice was a rude stare.