by BK Duncan
The first thing she needed to do was see if she could find out anything to back up that theory. If this was about a cocaine war then maybe Miles Elliott had been nothing more than in the wrong place at the wrong time but exactly the right sort of target to get the law up in arms against Brilliant Chang. The end of the week would be the best time to catch the Black Cat Café in Pennyfields full. It was Good Friday but that wouldn’t make any difference to the clientele - other than perhaps a Bank Holiday providing more opportunities for work. If anyone knew for certain whether Brilliant Chang dealt in drugs, the Limehouse prostitutes would. And they would talk to her. Not because she was the coroner’s officer but because she’d worked with a handful of them in the tobacco factory before they’d been forced by circumstances to find more lucrative employment: it wasn’t only the poor souls passing through the mortuary who had firsthand experience of what a tough place the East End could be.
Chapter Twenty-One
May emerged from the café, the smells of fried eggs and chicory-laced coffee clinging to her clothes. The women had been friendly and chatty - asking about Alice, and wanting to know the gossip from her side of the tracks. If it wasn’t for their low-cut dresses and cheap hats they could’ve been traders resting up and counting their takings after a long night in Dolphin Lane market. None of them believed that the Shanghai Palace restaurant was a front for an opium den. They all knew the place of course. Three Colt Street was one of their best Saturday night haunts, particularly when a new ship was in. Or Thomas Cook had one of their tours on; the men who came down for the thrill of slumming it often regarded a knee-trembler in a dark doorway as the highlight of the experience. When she asked if Brilliant Chang was a cocaine dealer, they explained that the drug was widely available on the streets but that it was impossible to tell the supplier behind the men who loitered on the corners and offered packets of powder from beneath their jackets. It was a cutthroat business and many was the time they had encountered a swift altercation that left one man in a pool of blood and a fresh face standing in his place. May remembered three inquests over the past year which fitted those circumstances; of course the police had drawn nothing but blank silences.
A fog was rolling in off the river. May shivered and did up the buttons on her coat. She retrieved her gloves from deep inside her pockets and pulled them onto her stiffening fingers. The buildings on either side of the tight street seemed to be oozing damp. The smell of rotting wood suited her sense of failure. She now had no choice but to accept there wasn’t any evidence connecting Brilliant Chang with cocaine and that she had judged him with a prejudiced harshness worthy of Colonel Tindal. To make matters worse she could no longer avoid drawing the conclusion that if she hadn’t taken it upon herself to set the police onto the Palm Court Nightclub then he wouldn’t have felt forced to retreat to Limehouse and perhaps Miles Elliott would still be alive.
It was now even more important than ever she find out exactly what had happened to the young man, and why. The truth wouldn’t make any difference to poor Miles but it would to Brilliant Chang who could find himself swinging at the end of a rope if she couldn’t come up with reasons why the jury should not choose him as their scapegoat. As for her, it wouldn’t be a question of waiting for Braxton Clarke’s dismissal: she’d have to resign if it turned out it had been her interference that had set the whole train in motion. She’d never be able to do her job with that on her conscience.
She began to walk for home but then turned and plunged into one of the unlit streets leading to the main road. The least she could do whilst she was here was to see if she could unearth any trace of the false witness. His arrest would go some way towards making amends. She’d start with the obvious places and see if she could get any leads. Even a man bumping along in the silt of Limehouse had to lay his head somewhere.
The Strangers’ Home for Asiatics, Africans and South-Sea Islanders was an imposing building with stone steps and a fat-columned portico. May had never been inside but knew it to be a clean, well-ordered place. She pushed open the door to find herself in a large room. A fire was burning at the far end, a group of Lascars sitting around it chatting. A Cingalee in a grubby turban was lying on a bench. In the centre was a table scattered with books and periodicals. The blackest African she’d ever seen was playing on the bagatelle board in the corner. The air smelled of mint tea and cigarette smoke. No one gave her a second glance.
She was in luck. The man sitting alone reading a newspaper was a Malay she recognised from the stevedore’s inquest. He had stood out because of his egg-smooth head; she was familiar enough with Asiatics to know such baldness was rare. Speaking slowly and pantomiming a long scar on her cheek, May described her quarry. He did her the politeness of pretending to think before shrugging his shoulders. She thanked him and turned to leave. At the door, she felt a tug on her sleeve. The Malay pressed something in her hand before slipping back inside. It was a playing card. The Queen of Hearts. One of the hearts had been coloured over in crayon to resemble a Chinese lantern. The sign of the Red Lamp. Opium. She suspected the queen was random and the entire suit had been adulterated - what better way for sailors with no common language to enquire as to the whereabouts of a little shore leave recreation? Did he know for certain this was where the man would be or was it an educated guess? But she didn’t know where they dispensed pipes of the drug. She would have to scour the streets and alleys looking for the dim lamps glowing in the windows. It was surely worth another hour of her time.
***
In fact it was close to midnight before May stumbled across Sing Quong. Or thought she had. But she needed to see his face to be certain. She’d been outside the third of the dingy places sporting a lantern. A man had emerged moments before and was walking - with all the non-urgency of a Sunday stroll - away from her. He had the blue serge baggy suit, cap, thin frame, and stoop of a dockland Chinaman. It was the pigtail swaying across his shoulders like a rope in a breeze that made him different from all the others she’d seen. He paused at the corner under the gas lamp and fumbled in his pockets. In the flare of a match struck against the brickwork she saw a long puckered scar. He lit his cigarette and turned down to his left.
May felt a flicker of triumph. But she wasn’t stupid enough simply to go up and ask him why he’d lied in court. He was heading in the direction of West India Dock Road. She’d follow him up to the intersection; there should be a constable checking in at the police box about now and she could ask him to accompany her. Something scurried in the doorway beside her. A rat probably. Limehouse at night was no different from Limehouse in the daylight hours except for the boldness of concealment.
Keeping at least half a street-length between them, May tracked the Chinaman to the Causeway and right into Mission Road. There were more people here - men mainly, on their own or in small tired groups trudging back from the docks. It was easy to tell the sailors as they still had the gait of expecting to feel the ground move under their feet. But no bobbies on the beat. She remembered that Poplar Police Station was decimated by influenza and wondered if it was the same for Limehouse. The river fog was coalescing into something more dense. It scraped at the back of her throat and made her want to cough. She wasn’t sure what to do next, only that the decision to continue would be taken away from her if she kept dithering. In the absence of any arrest tonight she could at least give PC Collier something with which to narrow down his search. It would be even better if she had an address to type on the warrant of course; Braxton Clarke need never know she hadn’t had it all along.
The clocks over the gateways of both the West, and East, India Docks chimed the beginning of a new day. The unison of sound from near and far seemed to penetrate the Chinaman’s opium daze and he picked up his pace. May set off after him. Two streets on she had to scurry a short way to maintain the same distance between them. Wherever he was going, he looked as though he had a deadline to meet or an assignation that couldn’t -
or mustn’t - be missed. Into Pennyfields and the thunderous shadows of the docks. He led her down a series of dark streets, deserted by everything but the smell of smoke lingering from the last night-train on the London and Blackwall Railway. They now seemed to be going back on themselves; May would have believed the Chinaman was deliberately misleading her if she wasn’t certain he had no idea he was being followed - he hadn’t once turned around or cut short a stride, and she was hugging the brickwork. Another corner. Another high wall.
May wasn’t exactly lost but she was no longer sure they were heading east. It wasn’t south because the smell from the Thames mud at low tide wasn’t getting any stronger. Lozenges of light were turning the fog up ahead a sickly yellow. As she got closer she heard the sounds of men with time on their hands, a day’s wages in their pockets, and too much beer in their bellies. A clot of brawlers fell out of the pub doorway to span the street. May didn’t want to push through them (a fist or a blade unleashed wouldn’t be fussy about where it landed) but she couldn’t afford to wait for the quarrel to fizzle into drunken incoherence; Sing Quong was on the other side and wouldn’t be stopping to watch the melee.
She pulled her arms and neck in like the giant turtle shell on the wall of the Resolute Tavern and walked ahead, one shoulder brushing the wall and the other a brawny back. She felt both contacts as if on her naked skin. She half-expected to feel a swift blow and then the stone sets she was staring at rushing up to meet her. Four more strides, and she was clear. A quick scan of the empty street up ahead confirmed she’d hesitated too long. There were breaks in the buildings on either side. The first one she came to appeared to be a passage threading back towards the warehouses. May continued on then stopped by the alleyway on the left. The tops of the walls leaned as if they longed to touch each other. There were few gas lamps this far off the main thoroughfare and she couldn’t see well enough to tell where the passage might be leading. She held her breath and listened. The men in the street were still arguing; a baby was squalling; a cat on heat was screaming her lust into the night. No footfalls echoing along the length of the tunnel-like alley.
May’s eyes adjusted to another degree of darkness as she breached the mouth. She reached out her arms and traced the progress of the walls with her fingertips as she took slow steps forward. Damp soaked into her gloves, patches of slime causing her to lose contact every now and then. But there were no doorways so far. No windows at any height to break the blankness either. She counted her paces. Ten... twenty... thirty. At fifty, she could smell wet brickwork dead ahead. She was wasting her time. A blind alley with no discernable exit. The Chinaman couldn’t have come down here.
May tucked her cold hands into her coat pockets and retraced her steps, allowing herself to imagine the luxury of a cup of cocoa. The evening hadn’t been a complete waste of time but it had hardly been an endorsement of her detective powers either. Perhaps she should see if that other passageway had led somewhere more promising. She exhaled a little laugh; it couldn’t possibly have less to offer in terms of destinations than this one. But she was too tired to check now. The hoot of a steamer made her jump. Her nerves had needed the release. She peered ahead. The sides of the alley, where they met the street, seemed to be leaning together at the bottom now as well as the top. A trick of perspective as her eyes focused on the river-breeze blown fog sliding by in the background.
She was almost at the exit when she realised that it had been a trick of altogether different proportions. Figures had emanated from the brick walls. Three? Four? She couldn’t tell where one ended and another began. For a second she wondered if the brawlers had fought their way up the street. But these were breathing lightly, and in unison. She could feel a shiver of movement in the damp air as they took a collective pace towards her. There was nowhere she could go.
‘What do you want?’ Her voice sounded like that of a victim. She tried again. ‘Let me pass.’
‘The question is what a person of the authorities is doing here.’
He sounded foreign. And he knew who she was. Had the follower been followed?
‘This is no place for such a pretty young woman.’
A second voice, higher pitched and more Oriental. May’s stomach clenched as she remembered Miles Elliott’s friend at the inquest with her wild tales of white slave trading. Everything was getting too close to fitting together: Miles had been found dead in an alley; she’d been tracking the witness who’d tried to frame Brilliant Chang; she was in the streets where the drug barons reigned. She could feel a sort of desperate shiver begin to rattle her bones. It was the penetrating dampness of the alley. If she kept telling herself that then she wouldn’t let out the scream that was forming in her throat.
‘Do you know of the many, many bad things that can happen to someone so cut adrift on the sea of chance as you are?’
The first voice again but from behind her now. Close.
‘We have not spent our lives like rats in basement laundries and holds of ships not to be able to move with the soundless swiftness of the wind. Our methods of ensuring co-operation are like that, too. No one knows from which direction they will come, or when they will strike.’
A ripple of laughter passed between them. The fizzing in May’s legs wouldn’t let her stand still any longer. She screwed her eyes shut and lunged for the safety of the street. Something touched her cheek. She did scream now. A cry that came out like that of a chicken being hung upside down by its feet. She ran into a mass of muscle and bounced to the ground. A hand grabbed her arm and pulled her up.
‘What you doing here?’
The same enquiry wrapped in a different voice. May opened her eyes. Two hulking men were standing on either side, a third peering down into her face. Charlie. A lighterman who’d been a drinking pal of her father’s and worked the riverside wharves. She gulped down tears.
‘There were these Chinese...’
She whirled around. The entrance to the alleyway was empty.
‘You all right, love? Look like you’ve gone and given yourself a bit of a scare. Come on, me and the boys’ll walk you back. Can’t have you going getting lost in the fog again.’
May breathed deeply to still the tremors that threatened to unhinge her joints. She shoved her hands deep into her pockets, clenching them into finger-numbing fists. Terror was something she’d learned to suppress in the mud and blood of France but she knew no way to stop it from making its presence felt after the danger had passed. It was a tiger that could be caged but never tamed. Back then she’d take herself off somewhere to vomit in private. That was the other thing she’d learned: what men respected as natural instincts in other men, they regarded as an unstable weakness in women. And that held as true for a coroner’s officer on the streets of Poplar as it did for a wartime ambulance driver. Film reels had begun flickering behind her eyes, each with an ending where she was butchered more bloodily than the last. She had to think of something else. Focus on why she was here. Use the power of her mind to chase the shadows away rather than bringing them to life.
‘Do you know who they were, the Chinamen?’
‘We didn’t see none, did we, boys? Reckon they’d scarpered by the time we got there. Either that or they were just the bogeys used to scare you as a nipper.’
May forced the required laugh. The pictures grew dimmer. They had almost vanished by the time she could see an ooze of light from the street up ahead.
Charlie was rolling a cigarette in one hand as he walked. ‘Who’s this turf belong to, Smudger? You got a load of Chinks on your ships.’
‘Heard them jabbering about the Bow Kum when they’ve been setting off of a night.’
The voice behind her held a trace of something like awe. Charlie stopped and clutched her arm again. She felt his fingers squeeze her flesh into bruises.
‘If that’s kosher then you’d best learn to watch where you’re going a bit
better; your old man-’
‘What’s so special about them?’ She wasn’t interested in hearing whatever else he’d been about to say.
Charlie stopped walking long enough to light his cigarette, and then strode on. She almost had to run to keep up with him.
‘The Bow Kum Tong is the worst in Limehouse. You don’t want to go mixing none with them, fog or no fog. They’re a gang of Chinks in the pay of the more bastard of the wharfingers.’ He hawked and spat. ‘They do his dirty business - roughing up any docker seen as a troublemaker’s the least of it - and in return they get to use a storeroom as a yen-shi den. I’ve heard said there’s an arrangement so as the wharfinger sends sailors aching to chase the dragon soon as the ship ties up. It all helps keep the wages out of an honest man’s pocket, and the holds emptied for less than you’d pay a monkey in bananas.’
They were outside Poplar Institution now and May waved off her escorts with assurances that she would go straight home. But there was no point in doing that because it would be hours before her tiger stopped pacing and let her sleep. She waited until she saw Charlie’s broad shoulders disappear around the corner of King Street and then doubled back a few yards to walk up Lower North Road in the direction of Brabazon Street.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The place was in darkness. May skirted around the back, picked up some stones and threw them at the window of the room she knew Jack would be in - the one overlooking the privy that every landlady gave to her more cash-strapped lodgers.
