by Evelyn James
They carried on down the road, turning into an even narrower street where young children danced in the dirt, the toddlers among them almost naked, and the older ones barefoot. They glanced up at Clara’s party with strangely old faces.
“This is the address,” Clara paused before a small, black building. A worn door bore no number, but Clara had been given a description of the place. A rat sat on the doorstep and glared at them boldly, before they got too close and it scurried away. Captain O’Harris gave a low sigh, somewhere between disgust and despair.
Clara knocked on the door. Bob positioned himself right behind her, looking big and mean to confront whoever came to the door. As it happened it was a child of about ten. Clara stared down into a skinny little face with a suspicious pair of dark eyes that seemed unnatural on one so young.
“I’ve come to see Frank Dickson,” Clara explained to the little girl.
“Can’t,” the girl answered, drawing a long sniff through her nose. “Ain’t here.”
“What a shame,” Clara said, feigning disappointment. “And just when I was prepared to pay him a bob or two for his services. We shall have to find someone else for the job. Where does that gentleman Knacker live that you mentioned Bob?”
The hint of money, and the possibility of it going to a rival thief, spurred on the girl. Her eyes widened with excitement, though for the most part she kept her emotions controlled. She turned her head and bellowed into the house;
“Ma! Someone to see Uncle Frank!”
A woman appeared in the small hallway of the property. She shoved the girl back from the door roughly and glowered at her visitors.
“What do you want?”
“To speak with Frank Dickson, Ugly Dickson as he is called. About a job in Brighton,” Clara explained quickly. “There is money in it for him.”
“Well you won’t find him here,” snapped the woman.
“Where might I find him?” Clara said, starting to lose her patient with the tight-lipped residents of the property.
“Manchester nick,” the woman snorted.
Clara was thrown for just a moment.
“He is inside?” she said, her hopes of finding her thief this early on diminishing.
“That’s right,” the woman answered. “Got himself caught trying to rob a house up there with his mates. He got five years, stupid fool.”
“How long has he been inside?” Bob asked in his gravelly voice.
The woman glanced up at him and her stance changed. Bob was rather like a big bear standing beside Clara, there was an air of menace about him. You had the impression that, if he wanted to, Bob could be very mean.
“Six months,” the woman told him, some of her surliness gone.
“Then he can’t be the one,” Clara crossed Frank Dickson’s name off her list.
She thanked the woman and passed her a shilling for her trouble. The woman almost spat at her, but Bob’s presence kept her at bay.
The next address on Clara’s list was only a few roads over. They walked along streets that all started to look the same. Captain O’Harris seemed to be finding it quite revelatory. He had lived a privileged life, even if his younger days had been overshadowed by the fear of poverty caused by his father marrying an actress and being disinherited. But the wealthy rarely reach the level of poverty that the truly poor do and the O’Harrises had always kept a smart house, even if their façade of respectability masked the crippling debt of their real circumstances. O’Harris looked about him with an expression of perpetual mild shock on his face. Clara wondered if it was perhaps helping to put his own issues into perspective. Sometimes it took seeing the strife others were in to realise that your own life was not so rotten.
They came to the property of John Knacker, aka Knacker’s Yard, aka Scrawny Jim, and Clara knocked on another well-worn door. This time an elderly gentleman answered. He walked with a stick, or perhaps it would be better to say that he shuffled. He gazed at them with an anxious expression, he was almost bent in two by a chronically bad back and the necessity of hobbling with a too short stick.
“Yes?”
“I was hoping to see John Knacker,” Clara said gently, feeling the man needed a kind hand to remove some of the fear in his eyes.
The old man jammed his lips together in a thin line.
“Will you be wanting me to take you to him?” he asked.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” Clara said.
The old man nodded, and asked them to wait while he fetched his hat and coat. He didn’t, however, change out of his carpet slippers. He eased himself out of his front door, every step painful and with the risk of him falling into a heap on the ground. O’Harris politely offer him his arm, but the man refused. Hunched up and with great difficulty he led the party down the road. Clara was beginning to feel bad for asking him to take them to the man.
“If you want to just give us directions…” she suggested.
“I’ll take you,” the old man insisted. “I haven’t seen John today anyway. I pay him a visit every day, usually.”
For every few shuffling steps the old man took, the others took one. Slowly but surely, watched by curious children and the odd cat, they made it to the bottom of the road and turned right, finally coming to a churchyard on the opposite side. The old man hobbled through the gate.
“Getting there,” he told his followers, his breath coming in short rasps. “What was it you wanted to see John about anyway?”
“I was hoping he could help me find something,” Clara said cryptically.
“I’m afraid, he probably won’t be able to help much,” the old man had walked up the path of the churchyard and then moved onto the verge, pausing before a gravestone that had been recently erected. There he stood and waited for the others.
Bob was bemused, he wondered why they had stopped, but Clara understood. She came beside the old man and looked at the headstone simply marked ‘John Knacker, beloved son, 1889 – 1921.’
“How did it happen, Mr Knacker?” Clara asked the old man quietly.
“Fell from a roof. He was trying to break in a window, only someone spotted him and pushed him,” Mr Knacker stared at his son’s headstone and grimaced. “Sorry I deceived you, but I don’t like coming up here alone. I’m alone a lot these days.”
Clara laid a hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him.
“I’m very sorry, Mr Knacker.”
“Why couldn’t he get a respectable job, huh?” the old man let a tear slip down his cheek. “He had an education, after all.”
Clara could not offer him an explanation. She just stood with him while he mourned.
“Two down, one to go,” Tommy remarked after they had returned Mr Knacker to his house. “Lucky last?”
“Let’s hope,” Clara replied. She had taken out her map and was referring to it as they made their way to the last of their potential candidates for dragon theft.
Stumpy Pete, real name Petroski Lenikof, lived on the top floor of a tenement building. When Clara asked for him at the door, his landlady pointed up the stairs without saying a word. It seemed she did not speak much English. The little group wandered upstairs and found Petroski’s door open. He spotted them on the landing from where he was lounging on an old sofa.
“What you want?” he demanded nervously.
“Nothing sinister, just information,” Clara assured him, stepping inside the room which smelt of onions and body sweat. “I am trying to find the man responsible for the burglary of a property in Brighton last week. I don’t mean him any trouble, I just want to ask who employed him.”
“Well, you look in wrong place,” Petroski declared, then he rolled up his trouser leg to reveal a heavily bandaged ankle.
“I fall down stairs,” he added in way of explanation. “I fracture it. Is just out of plaster.”
Clara now noticed the crutch by the sofa. Mr Lenikof had not been climbing through any windows recently. Clara thanked him for his time and began to leave.
&nbs
p; “I give you information!” Petroski said swiftly.
Clara turned back to him.
“For money,” he added.
“All right,” Clara agreed, guessing the man was down on his luck and perilously close to being thrown out of his room by the landlady for not paying his rent. He would do anything for a little bit of money. “As long as it is honest information.”
Bob lumbered through the doorway to back up her caveat with the mild threat of his presence. Petroski’s eyes wandered to the man automatically.
“I give you good information,” he promised.
“Have you heard about someone from London going to Brighton to commit a burglary?” Clara asked.
Petroski nodded.
“Is small world,” he said. “Thief steals jade dragon to order.”
Clara felt a pang of hope. If Petroski knew that much, then perhaps he knew who was behind the burglary.
“Go on,” she said.
“Thief working for important man,” Petroski nodded solemnly. “Man ask for me first, but…”
Petroski glowered at his damaged ankle.
“Would have been good money,” he muttered. “I am best thief in London. I climb through narrow, narrow spaces.”
Petroski raised his hands and used them to indicate the small spaces he could squeeze through.
“I am best,” Petroski insisted. “I train in Polish circus. I am acrobat. But I can’t help man, so he goes for second best.”
Petroski was clearly bitter about this and felt he had been unfairly bypassed.
“Who is the second best?” Clara asked diplomatically. The man’s pride was clearly ruffled.
“Second best is Englishman,” Petroski sneered. “Not circus trained. Just amateur. Simon Clark.”
Petroski expelled the name from his mouth as if it tasted bad.
“Where can I find him?” Clara asked, ignoring his expression.
“In Chinese district. He poppy lover,” Petroski mimed the act of someone smoking a pipe.
“Opium?” Clara said.
“When not working, he smoke,” Petroski agreed. “All his money go on poppy. My money I send back to family in Poland.”
Petroski looked proud of this statement, overlooking the fact that his money was earned through criminal activities.
“I am professional,” he reiterated. “Simon Clark just a fool!”
Professional pride and a desire for money had made Petroski talk freely and for that Clara was grateful. She politely asked how far he was behind in his rent and how much it was. Then she gave him three bob, enough to cover his debts and tide him over for another month or so. Petroski beamed at her and called her a very kind lady, and insisted that, should she ever have call for a nimble, slender thief, she must come to him at once. Clara agreed she would, actually taking a shine to the Polish criminal with his deep-set professional pride.
The group headed back downstairs and outside. Clara glanced at her watch. It was only just noon.
“I suggest we eat some lunch and then head for the Chinese district of London. I didn’t even know London had such a thing,” she said.
“Lots of Chinese immigrants in London,” Bob explained. “They like to live together, so eventually you get areas where all the residents are Chinese.”
“And the Chinese run the best opium dens,” Captain O’Harris said darkly. When everyone looked at him he clarified his statement. “Before I went off to war, I went with several other of my fellow pilots to ease our nerves at an opium den. Never again. I felt out of my head for days after.”
“Well, that is where we are headed next. But lunch first, agreed?”
Everyone agreed to that, so they carried on with Clara’s map guiding their path, keeping their eyes open for a suitable venue to pause for some dinner.
Chapter Sixteen
The Chinese district of London was certainly an eye-opener. It didn’t look like London for a start. All the shops had Chinese characters over their doors and were painted in shades of red, green and gold. Strange oriental arches seemed to come out of nowhere and shadow the street, and everyone was wearing robes of exotic colours. There was the odd Englishman or woman wandering about, buying unusual goods from the open market or popping into the shops, but mostly this area had the feel of another land. Clara was flummoxed, especially as neither she nor any of her companions spoke Chinese.
“How do we find Simon Clark?” she said to them, looking around the market where chickens squawked from cages and peculiar fruits and vegetables sat in crates waiting to be bought.
“Someone will soon point us in the direction of an opium den,” Captain O’Harris said knowledgeably. “Finding the right opium den is another matter.”
“There is more than one?” Clara said, not sure whether to be appalled or dismayed.
“And finding an Englishman in them is rather like finding tea leaves in a teapot,” O’Harris admitted. “The Chinese cater as much for the English as they do their own people. We might need a guide.”
That was all well and good to say, but finding a guide in the packed streets was not so simple. Most of the residents seemed to want to avoid the lost little group of English folk, who gave the impression of souls on a Sunday outing. Clara had the feeling they were being laughed at for their hopeless ignorance behind their backs. They exited the market and drifted down a side street that offered some respite from the hustle and bustle and noise of the main roads. There was something unsettling about being bombarded by loud voices speaking a language you could not understand.
The side street was virtually empty except for an old woman sitting on a doorstep. She was smoking a clay pipe while peeling potatoes, depositing the skinned vegetables into a large wicker basket. Clara went over to her, ever hopeful.
“Excuse me, could you direct me to the nearest opium den?” she asked, cringing at how silly her words sounded. No wonder people were laughing at her when she sounded so very much like a lost tourist.
The old woman made no response, did not even look up at Clara.
“Opium den?” Clara said, a bit louder thinking the woman might be deaf. With the level of noise she lived in, it would not surprise Clara if her hearing had been battered badly by it all. “You know, poppies?”
The woman smoked and peeled potatoes. She had a faint smile on her face.
“She won’t answer you.”
Clara glanced to her left at the new voice. A girl, late teens, leaned against a wall. She had just appeared from the doorway of a house. She was Chinese and very pretty, wearing a blue robe with wide sleeves, and her dark hair plaited down her back.
“She has lost her marbles,” the girl tapped the side of her head. “But as long as she has potatoes to peel she is no bother.”
“You speak good English,” Clara complimented her.
“I am English,” the girl shrugged. “So far as this country is concerned. My parents and I were born here. I went to an ordinary school and spoke English for my lessons. I speak Chinese as well, naturally.”
The girl was confident, bordering on arrogance. She had a poise to her that was both becoming and disturbing, for it spoke of a mind much older than its years.
“Why do you want an opium den?” the girl asked. “Don’t you know those places are the Devil’s work.”
Now that sounded very English, straight out of some Bible class. Clara smiled at the girl.
“I don’t want to visit an opium den, as such. I am looking for someone and I was told the best place to find him was in an opium den.”
“Ah,” the girl seemed to understand. “Do you know which one?”
Clara shook her head.
“There are a dozen in this area,” the girl clucked her tongue. “You are going to have a long search. Who are you looking for?”
“An Englishman called Simon Clark,” Clara explained, seeing no reason to hide the name.
The girl pricked up her ears.
“I know who that is. Simon Clark spends a lot o
f time in the Chinese district,” the girl nodded. “Every Chinese person knows Clark. He is a common sight going about. I also know which dens are his favourite. Shall I show you?”
“If you wouldn’t mind,” Clara said, relieved to have a guide who seemed to know what she was doing.
The Chinese girl led them along the road and through several tight passageways, talking all the time.
“Is Clark in trouble?”
“Not exactly,” Clara answered. “I just need information from him.”
“I don’t much care if he is in trouble, anyway,” the girl assured her. “Clark owes my father a lot of money and won’t pay it. He threatened my father when he asked for the money. I don’t like Clark.”
Clara was sensing she may have just made an unexpected ally.
“My name is Jasmine,” the girl continued. “It’s a compromise. Sounds English, but with an oriental slant.”
“I am Clara, this is Bob, my brother Tommy and Captain O’Harris,” Clara responded.
“Captain of a ship?” Jasmine asked curiously.
“No, I was in the air service during the war,” O’Harris explained. “What they now are calling the RAF.”
Jasmine took on board this information but did not make further comment.
“This is a den,” she announced as they came to a door down a side alley.
Jasmine didn’t bother to knock, she just opened the door and escorted them in. Clara was struck at first by the fragrant smoke that hung about the entire room almost like a fog. She found herself anxious not to breath it in, lest she find herself out of her head as Captain O’Harris had described. There were couches and piles of cushions strewn all about the room. Reclining on them were a range of gentlemen, some Chinese, others English. Most seemed lost in a daze, their jaws slack, their eyes gazing into the opium mist as if they were seeing some magnificent vision. Perhaps they were. Clara wondered how people could just abandon themselves to such lethargy. For the perpetually busy Clara, such inactivity was anathema and made her twitch just looking at it.
