Gentleman like that don’t walk around the docks all on his lonesome, does he?
A gentleman like that most probably had a couple of lackeys tucked away beyond earshot and out of sight, but close enough to jump and chiv him at a sign: the lighting of a match, the deliberate stroking of a nose.
And it would be a proper foolish thing pulling that item out of his pocket as proof he’d found what he’d found. Far better to turn up at their meeting without it. To describe it in detail as best he could and assure the man it was being looked after elsewhere before moving the conversation on to how much the gentleman in question was going to have to pay to get the thing back.
Bill smiled. He could be so very, very shrewd when he tried. As cunning as a fox.
‘Well?’ said Annie. ‘You ain’t sayin’ so much about what I just said.’
He sat forward. ‘Polly? Why don’t you go an’ get yourselves a coupla cups of mecks, an’ a pint o’ gatter for me? I need to talk a moment with Annie in private.’
Polly’s eyes flashed irritation, but she got up. ‘S’pose.’
She slid out from the wooden booth and weaved through the pall of pipe smoke towards the bar.
‘Annie . . . ’ow long we known each other?’
Annie took a match, struck a light and touched it against the nest of tobacco in her clay pipe. ‘Years, Bill. Years.’
‘And you can vouch for Polly?’
‘She’s not tapped as many cot-rats as me. But she can do it. She’s—’
‘I’m asking if you can trust her?’
Annie cocked a head. ‘She’s a mate. I’d trust her more than I fuckin’ would you,’ she replied with a dry, wheezy laugh. She meant it, though.
‘All right, then.’ His fingers played with the locket, turning it over and over. ‘I’m seeing our pay man tomorrow night.’
‘I know that.’
‘I’m gonna be asking for a lot more swag than we settled on before.’
Her eyebrows arched. ‘Oh, and ’e’s goin’ to pay up, is ’e, Bill? Just ’cause you’ve decided to ask for more?’
Bill smiled. ‘Our pay man will cough up, love, because I found summin’ special on the girl.’
‘Special?’ She pulled the stem of her pipe from her lips. ‘What?’
‘Summin’ that I don’t think ’e even knows she ’ad on ’er.’
‘What?’
‘Summin’ nice an’ shiny . . . a keepsake.’ He was tempted to ease it out of his pocket, flash her a glimpse of it. But the public house was chock full of pocket dippers, cly fackers, petty crooks whose magpie eyes would more than likely pick out the faint glint of polished gold in the gas-lit gloom of their nook.
‘It’s a whatcha call it . . . a locket. There’s a portrait in there. Portrait of a chap with the dead woman. A penny to a farthing tells me that’s the gentleman who can’t keep his pecker behind his buttons.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Serious?’
‘Oh, yes. And I’m quite certain it wouldn’t take a person too much ’ard graft to find out the name what goes with the face.’ He was going to add that he actually recognised the face; just couldn’t work out where he’d seen it before. Yet.
She looked at him with hooded, sceptical eyes. ‘Now, see, I would’ve thought you’d keep summin’ like that all to yerself. It’s not like you to share out unless somebody’s got their fingers wrapped round yer curlies.’
‘You’re gonna look after it, Annie. Keep it safe for me while I go and have me chat with our man tomorrow night.’
‘Oh.’ She smiled. ‘So you do trust me, Bill?’
‘I trust you not to be a silly bitch and cross me. How about that?’
Annie looked over her shoulder at the bar. ‘And Polly?’
‘She follows yer lead, don’t she? If yer trust her, then that’s good for me. But,’ he said, sitting back on the bench, ‘either of yer mess me around, and you’ll both find yerselves bobbing in the Thames.’
‘So? Where’s this locket, then?’
Not here . . . not now.
‘I’ll give it you tomorrow before I go see the man. And you be sure to find a safe place for it. Very safe.’
CHAPTER 7
15th September 1888, Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital, London
His dreams seemed to know more about him than he did. They filled his restless sleep with stories that made no sense but promised him glimpses of things he might have seen. He saw a city of tall buildings, a wide street humming with life and activity. Instinctively he knew it wasn’t London. It was a city far off, across an ocean.
Is that a place I have been? He asked himself. Is that it? Is that where I come from?
Perhaps he’d only visited there and his dreams were teasing him with a fleeting memory of that. But he was also wary of ideas creeping in to fill his empty memory. The ward room was busy all day long with visitors coming and going, the high-ceilinged room echoing with broken pieces of conversation, sometimes whispered considerately, other times loud and thoughtless. The young man in the bed next to his had lost several fingers in an accident. A bone saw in an abattoir and a moment’s distraction was all it took. His colourful, boasting description of the incident to one of the ward sisters had become material for his empty mind to make mischief with. This afternoon’s sleep had been full of splashes of blood and rib cages and metal pails full of offal, and the high-pitched screams of the young man next door, parted from his fingers. A memory or a dream? He shook his head. He had no way of knowing.
‘Ahh! You’re awake at last.’
He turned to see the ward matron: a tiny woman, no bigger than a child, but with the commanding air of a general. Her lean face was pulled taut by her brown hair tied back into a conker-sized bun; a hard face with a permanent scowl that seemed to intimidate even the duty surgeons.
‘How are you feeling this afternoon, Mr Argyll?’
Yes. Argyll. Mr Argyll. John Argyll. He tried the name silently again. It still seemed so odd to have that: a name. But pleasing. So much better than nothing at all.
‘Mr Argyll?’
He nodded. ‘A little better, thank you, ma’am.’
‘Splendid,’ she said perfunctorily. Then her scowl momentarily softened with the slightest hint of humanity. ‘Because . . . I have some news for you.’
‘Yes?’
‘You have a visitor.’
‘A visitor?’ He felt something lurch inside him. A spasm of nervousness, of excitement. ‘For me? Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’ The scowl was back as if it had never been away. ‘Now, do you feel well enough to see her?’
Her?
‘Who . . . who is she?’
‘She says she’s a friend.’ He sensed a note of reproach in the matron’s voice. ‘She’s been waiting in the main hall since breakfast.’
A friend. He begged his mind to try and produce something . . . someone. A face. A name. He got nothing back but the foolish young man next door and his flying fingers. ‘I . . . I don’t know . . . I really . . .’
‘I could send her away if you’re not ready?’
‘No . . . no, please don’t do that! I think I’d like to see her. Perhaps she’ll help me get my memory back?’
‘If you’re absolutely sure?’
‘Yes. Please.’
The matron turned with a squeak of shoes on the polished linoleum and headed down towards the end of the ward and disappeared through double doors of frosted glass.
Her? Argyll realised he was trembling as he watched indistinct outlines move beyond the frosted glass of the doors, dark shapes passing to and fro, lingering, conjoining, receding. Anyone of them could be his visitor slowly approaching. Whoever she was, she knew him!
A friend. That’s what the matron said, wasn’t it? Not family; a friend.
He hefted himself up on his bed, plumped his pillows up. His head pounded from the exertion of doing it.
A friend? Or – good grief – a lover, perhaps?
&nb
sp; He adjusted the collar of his pyjama shirt. Rubbed his eyes in case they were gummed with sleep. It occurred to him that in a few short moments, he was going to have something valuable. He was going to be talking with someone who knew who he was; knew the person that existed beyond the bubble of this hospital cot existence. The frosted glass clouded with two dark blobs growing quickly more distinct. One shorter than the other: Matron and his lady visitor.
Good god, get a grip, man, he told himself. He wasn’t just trembling, he was actually shaking.
With a creak of hinges that echoed through the quiet ward, the double doors swung inwards and he caught his first glimpse of her. She was slight, trim, and her clothes looked fashionable to him, as best he could tell. Auburn hair piled up and topped with a bonnet, and a pale oval face dusted with hayseed freckles. Her green eyes were hopping from one bed to another until, finally, they settled on him.
She clasped gloved hands and let out a small yelp before she quickened her pace and hurried towards him.
‘Oh my, I’ve been so worried!’
She was beside his bed and her arms snaked around his shoulders tightly, squeezing him. ‘My darling!’ she whispered in his ear. ‘John, I thought you were dead! I . . . I thought I’d lost you!’
The ward matron caught up with them and the young woman released him, straightened up and dabbed away the tears from her cheeks.
‘So . . . Mr Argyll, this young lady has been very, very anxious to talk to you,’ said Matron gruffly.
His female visitor gasped. ‘Good lord, yes! When you didn’t come home, John, I got so worried about you! I . . . I must have called into half the hospitals in London!’
The doctor – Dr Hart – had told him his name was John Argyll last night. John. It hadn’t triggered a flood of memories as the doctor had hoped it might. And it had sounded so odd, so alien at first. But John . . . yes, he could sort of imagine himself as John. A dependable name. A reliable name. A neutral name. Now, hearing it on the lips of this beautiful young woman, he was absolutely certain it was his name.
He stared at her. ‘My name is John.’
‘Yes . . . of course it is, my love.’ The young woman looked concerned. She turned to the matron. ‘Is it really that bad? His memory?’
Matron nodded. ‘He remembers absolutely nothing. Not a single thing.’
She bit her lip. ‘Not even . . . me?’
‘Might I enquire as to your . . . relationship with Mr Argyll?’ There was a tone of suspicion in the matron’s voice.
The young woman looked at the matron, then back at John. She lowered her voice to little more than a muted whisper. ‘We are . . . we’re . . . this is a bit awkward . . .’ She bit her lip. ‘You really don’t remember me?’
Argyll frowned, pushing his mind to reach in and pull something out of the fog. He studied her face intently: the pointed chin, the look of concern and anguish. Something in all of that did feel vaguely familiar. But then again, he’d woken from sleep not half an hour before believing he might once have worked in an abattoir. He wasn’t sure he could trust any instinctive feelings. It might just be that he wanted to remember such a beautiful face. And that intoxicating voice of hers . . . a hint of some accent in there, some sing-song lilt that he found utterly charming.
He would love to genuinely lay claim to her; love to say he remembered whatever relationship it is they had.
‘Anything, Mr Argyll? Any recollection at all of this young lady?’ The matron spoke his name with the same cynical tone.
‘The face . . . the face is, yes, I think it is familiar to me.’
‘It’s me, my dear. It’s me, Mary!’
He struggled to unite the name and her face. The name. Mary. Mary. He imagined saying ‘I love you, Mary’. ‘Mary, my darling.’ Hoping they might stir some dormant images. Nothing came to him. But her face . . . Mary’s face. It was most certainly familiar.
Then again, maybe he just wanted it to be. Perhaps he just wanted to know he wasn’t entirely alone in this awful, listless limbo.
‘Do I assume you are Mrs Argyll?’ asked the matron.
Mary’s cheeks coloured pink and she shook her head. ‘No . . . we . . . we are . . .’
The matron waved her hand, preferring not to hear what the young woman was struggling to say. ‘Fair enough. Say no more.’ The suspicious edge in her voice seemed to have wavered and been replaced with her usual stern authority. ‘Perhaps then, Miss, you can assist me with some paperwork now that we have someone who can vouch for his identity.’
The matron turned to him and that passing expression of professional warmth returned to her face. ‘There you are, my dear – didn’t I say someone would come calling for you soon enough?’
Argyll nodded, looking pitifully relieved to have someone. ‘You’ll come back, Mary?’
‘Yes . . . yes, my love, of course.’
‘I won’t keep her from you for long, Mr Argyll.’
CHAPTER 8
16th July 1888, Victoria Docks, London
Bill heard the hour chimes coming from Saint George’s. The last stain of the day coloured the tumbling clouds overhead, painting them a soft and vulnerable fleshy colour – the belly of a salmon, the powdered blush on a whore’s cheek.
He was watching the dock workers unloading a coal barge across the Thames; little mole men, coated black with the dust. The horizon across the placid, wide river was black, paper cut-out silhouettes of chimney pots and the vaulted roofs of warehouses lined up side by side along the busy quay. He could hear the distant bark of voices, the clatter of unloading, the irritable bray of a mule. The docks were always busy.
This side of the river, however, the south side, was quiet. Quiet enough to hear the soft sound of grit beneath approaching boot heels.
‘Good evening, Mr Tolly.’
Bill turned around to see his gentleman client a dozen feet away. Just like last time, their face to face meeting was at twilight: dark enough that beneath the felt brim of his topper there was only shadowed detail, but not so dark that business was going to be conducted blindly.
The gentleman had given him a name, quite obviously a pseudonym. ‘Good evenin’, Mr Jones.’ Instinctively he deferentially knuckled his forehead and then kicked himself inside for doing so.
For the moment, a pause. The soft lapping sound of the Thames at low tide, riding the silt and pebbles, and the clanking of halyards and block and tackles against the masts of barges moored nearby filled the silence.
‘So, is the . . . uh . . . matter . . . dealt with?’
‘The tart and the baby are in pieces,’ Tolly replied matter-of-factly.
The gentleman looked away for a moment. A gesture of discomfort. A man used to talking in delicately veiled euphemisms, not so bluntly as that.
‘Fine,’ he replied eventually. ‘I have the balance of your fee here, Mr Tolly. The second one hundred pounds as agreed, which we believe satisfactorily settles the matter.’
We?
Bill cocked his head slightly at that. We? The only other time he had met Mr Jones – here at the same time three weeks ago – he had talked as if ‘the matter’ was his and his alone. Up until five seconds ago, Bill had been entertaining the possibility that the man in the locket’s portrait might actually be Mr Jones himself, hence his vague familiarity – the gentleman with a penchant for young, French domestic staff.
Bill had a little speech organised. Something he’d been rehearsing all day, knowing full well he didn’t have the clever talk and the long, smart-sounding words that Mr Jones did. And what he was about to say needed to sound very clever. It needed to sound very businesslike.
But the word ‘we’ changed matters somewhat.
Bugger that. Just say your piece, he urged himself.
‘Mr Jones,’ he began. ‘I reckon the transac-shun ain’t quite done yet.’
He could see the gentleman’s head turn from looking out across the Thames. A glint of twilight in one of his eyes told Bill that he was looking d
irectly at him. ‘Pardon me?’
‘Your tart wasn’t exactly that, was she? She ’ad a bit of class about ’er. Foreign, too. French, right?’
Mr Jones remained silent and perfectly still.
‘Was she your bit of stuff?’
Bill decided to bring the word ‘we’ into the discussion.
‘Or wozzit the tart of a friend of yours? Huh?’
The gentleman looked back out across the Thames again, at the dim shapes of mole men hefting sacks of coal onto the quayside.
‘You’d be best advised not to continue with questions like these, Mr Tolly. The matter is settled and I have a sizeable amount of money to give you right now. Shall we just conclude our business and bid goodnight?’
‘I want more, Mr Jones. I want two thousand.’
Bill could see the man’s outline recoil ever so slightly.
‘See, I found a few things on the girl. Things she ’ad on ’er that I think she weren’t meant to ’ave.’
‘Mr Tolly, I really have no interest in whether you’ve decided to rummage through her things and pawn them for—’
‘Jewlerry, Mr Jones. Special jewlerry, which I don’t s’pose she bought for ’erself.’
‘I beg your pardon? Jewellery?’
Bill grinned in the dark. He had this man’s full attention. He felt a buzz of nervous excitement and satisfaction at seeing this smug stuck-up bastard lose his cool inbred demeanour, if only for a fleeting moment.
‘A gift. A keepsake – gold by the look of it – with an interestin’ pattern on it and a proper maker’s mark on the bottom of it. Best bit, though, Mr Jones, the best bit is a real nice portrait photograph on the inside of it. Luverly picture of a gentleman, a woman an’ a nipper. Very much in love, by the looks of it. How’s it go? Very much the ’appy family.’
Bill hushed now, satisfied that his speech had come out pretty close to the way he’d practised it.