“I’ve, well, I don’t know where he is. In fact,” I hurried to say, “he may turn up down there. If he does, make sure you don’t let him talk you into coming back to Town before I’ve spoken with you.”
When I had rung off from Tunbridge Wells, it was time to try Holland again. This time, I was at the phone for nearly two hours, achieving two actual if short-lived connexions. A man came onto the line, and we quickly located a common language in French. Our first conversation, which lasted approximately forty-five seconds, determined that “Daniel de Fontaine” and his nurse were still registered at the hotel, although he wasn’t entirely certain where the two were at this time. However, they had placed a series of telephone calls to England for which he very much hoped M de Fontaine’s friends would guarantee payment since—
And we were cut off. I fear I shouted at the exchange operator, which never helps one’s cause, but eventually I was again speaking with the Dutch hotelier. I began by hastily assuring him that all his costs would be reimbursed, and more, by the young gentleman’s generous friends, but that I had to know where he was.
And at that, we reached an impasse. The man wasted a couple of minutes with a delicate description of how unfortunately short of funds these two guests appeared to be running, and was only slowly reassured by my increasingly desperate assertions that money was no problem. Finally, he permitted himself to be steered back into the matter at hand, namely, that the young gentleman had gone out walking on the Sunday afternoon—the two of them often went out walking, M de Fontaine seemed a great lover of the open air, although on this occasion the lady appeared to have chosen—
“Please!” I shouted. “Where is he?”
Taken aback, the hotelier admitted he was not certain. The lady had come down in the afternoon and enquired as to her companion’s whereabouts, and became increasingly agitated when the hotel was unable to produce him. Although a handsome young man like that, perhaps he was not taken with a woman with hair that colour—and the temper! Ooh la la! Such a temper, it would be entirely understandable if he were to have chosen to go elsewhere for a day or two. And truth to tell, the hotel staff was keeping a close eye on the possessions in those two rooms, since it was not unheard-of for guests to lay a false trail and quietly slip away, leaving their bills unpaid. …
“I will pay the cost. Do not throw them out. Permit them whatever it takes to make them comfortable.”
Why a voice over the telephone should be considered a substantial guarantee I could not think, but the man seemed reassured. However, that was about all he had to tell me. The red-haired woman had stayed the previous night, but she had left the hotel early and not been seen in the hours since. Yes, he would make her welcome—and M de Fontaine, as well—whenever they returned. Yes, he would tell them that I would telephone again tomorrow, and that they were to stay at the hotel until they heard from me.
I put up the earpiece; dread lay heavy in my bones.
I made one last telephone call, to Billy’s home number. As I had hoped, he answered, sounding belligerent. I spoke five clear words and rang off.
Back in the Melas flat, Goodman was still missing. Holmes listened to my news with no expression on his face, but when I attempted to reassure him that perhaps Damian had merely needed some time to himself, he waved away the possibility with a sharp gesture.
“Mycroft’s telephone rang, from Saturday until Sunday and not since then. The local exchange would know where those calls were coming from.”
Neither Mycroft nor I argued with him. In any case, we would know before long just who the “object of affection” was.
Mycroft set about producing a supper of remarkably heavy scones (lacking butter, they more closely resembled the flat breads eaten by the Bedouin), saving the eggs for a last meal before we left.
The prime question was, how far could we trust Lestrade? I felt he would come down on our side in a pinch; Holmes suspected he might come down on our heads. Mycroft cast the deciding vote, for compromise: We would telephone to Lestrade at home, letting him know that we badly needed a police sharpshooter, but we would wait to tell when and where to appear. We could not risk an all-out police presence, with roadblocks and desperate shooting, so we would keep him in the dark until the last moment.
One had to feel sorry for Lestrade’s wife: He was not going to be sanguine about the arrangement.
Westminster Bridge crosses the Thames on its northward turn, with the Victoria Embankment meeting the Houses of Parliament on the west and the County Hall, St Thomas’ Hospital, and Lambeth Palace gathering on the east bank. It was a sixty-two-year-old iron bridge some 1200 feet long and 85 wide, with generous footways and a pair of decorative street-lamps atop each of its seven piers. There was seldom a time when the entire length of it was deserted, but half past two in the morning would find it as empty as it got.
Across the street from the Houses of Parliament was the St Stephen’s Club, and behind it the ornate building that housed the London Metropolitan Police department, known as New Scotland Yard. Five years earlier, deep in mid-winter and in a case as frightening as any we had known, Holmes and I had been shot at in the office of one Inspector John Lestrade. It was a small office, several long stairways from the ground, but despite the plane trees, it had a marvellous view of Westminster Bridge.
Mycroft would be at the west end of that bridge, sheltering on the precincts of Parliament itself, where he was known to the guards. A telephone call to Lestrade at two a.m. would give the chief inspector enough time to bring his marksman to the Yard, but insufficient preparation to rally numbers of troops that might get in our way.
I, in the meantime, would wait on the bridge’s eastern side, taking shelter on the steps leading down to the Albert Embankment. Behind me would be the assistance I had conjured up with five words to Billy: “Eleven at your wife’s sister.” His wife’s sister was a seamstress: The reference was a code he and Holmes had used before, and this time it brought him to Cleopatra’s Needle on the Embankment at eleven o’clock. Between us, Billy and I summoned a pair of motorcycles (motorcycling was an exhilarating new skill I had picked up in Los Angeles, a few months earlier). Our opponent would almost certainly be in a motorcar: On two wheels, Billy and I could stick to him like tacks. Even if the plan went as we intended and our foe drove away alone and unharmed, we could not take a chance that he might escape us entirely.
At half past ten, when I was getting ready to leave and meet Billy, Goodman was still missing. Standing in Mycroft’s kitchen, I reluctantly admitted to Holmes that I was worried.
“What, you think he walked into a trap? Does anyone know who he is?”
“It would be difficult to unearth his identity, but not impossible.”
“And you say he would not readily give us away.”
I grimaced at the thought of what an unscrupulous man might do to Robert Goodman. “Perhaps he’s gone to Tunbridge Wells. Or home to Cumberland.”
“Is that likely?”
“Without taking his leave of Estelle? I’m afraid not.”
At one o’clock, with Billy set and the motorcycles in place, I made my way back to the flat to see that all was as had been planned, and to report that Billy and the motorcycles would be in place. Holmes had already left, but Mycroft would wait for an hour before setting off.
I wished him luck, and moved towards the kitchen.
“Mary?”
I don’t know what I expected. An apology, perhaps, or thanks. Instead, Mycroft said, “Remember, it’s essential that the man not be harmed. I have to know what he knows.”
I nodded, and turned away, wondering if I would ever again feel comfortable with him, knowing about him what I did.
Of course, I reminded myself as I climbed down the ladder, that assumed we all survived the night.
Chapter 67
A family can be a burden, at half past two in the morning. Peter James West was counting on that.
He could have chosen a different time and plac
e. It would have been simple enough to draw Sherlock Holmes into the countryside at noontime, to do the deed—he would have come. But laying this final element of his long-worked plan at the feet of Parliament set a seal on the transfer: No one but he might ever know, but that was enough.
He only wished Gunderson were there. He knew Gunderson as a carpenter knows his hammer, and would have no hesitation to order the man to shoot. Or, to shoot Gunderson himself, for that matter. Had he known for certain that his assistant would not be back from Orkney today, West would have re-scheduled this meeting—he’d considered moving it, but in the end, he’d gone ahead, putting Buckner behind the wheel instead. The man was a dunce, but he could handle a motorcar. And how complicated could it be, trading one man for another at gunpoint?
He’d be glad when this entire operation was over; working with criminals threatened to infect even Peter James West with stupidity.
He and Buckner went down the cellar steps. In front of the padlocked door, he pulled down the long silken cap with the holes in it, which was uncomfortable and made him feel ridiculous, but which could be a last line of defence if things went wrong.
Buckner looked at him. “D’you want me to wear one a’ them?”
“It won’t be necessary.”
“Why not?”
Because I’m going to dispose of you, anyway, you idiot. “You won’t be getting out of the motor, but I may have to. The streak in my hair is a little too recognisable.” And if we are forced by some mishap actually to go through with the trade, rather than take both men, I should prefer that Adler not know who took him. That way, the only stray out there was the young wife. And Sosa, although he hardly counted.
“Gotcher.”
“Open the door.”
Buckner found the key, worked the lock, and stood back. Nothing moved from within. Adler had not been very comfortable the previous evening, when he was dragged from the back of the lorry that had brought him from Holland (telephone calls, again—when would people learn that a string of trunk calls to a number under surveillance could lead back to the source?) but he’d been well. Food, drink, and a night’s rest should have restored him somewhat.
“Mr Adler, I have come to take you to your family,” West called.
No motion. West sighed. “Buckner, kindly bring our guest out—alive and conscious, if you please. Wait: Give me your gun first.”
Buckner dug out the weapon and handed it to West, then hunched his shoulders and barrelled into the dim space. Damian Adler was waiting for him, but with no weapons and a bad arm, he was no match. Buckner bounced him against the wall and shoved him out of the door to sprawl at West’s feet.
West held out a set of police-issue handcuffs, which Buckner slapped on with a relish that could only come from a man who was more accustomed to being the recipient of the treatment.
By the time they got Adler cuffed and on his feet, the younger man was sweating—with pain, not fear. He glared furiously at his masked captor. “Who the hell are you, and what have you done with Dr Henning?”
“I have done nothing with your companion, Mr Adler. And you do not need to know who I am. Up the stairs, if you please.”
The prisoner backed away and Buckner grabbed his arms, which brought a grunt of pain. “Mr Adler, please cooperate. I am giving you back to your family.” Most of it. Albeit temporarily. “Now, up the stairs.”
They got him up the stairs, into the yard, and seated in the front of the motor. West had Buckner loop a rope around Adler to keep him from making some kind of heroic attempt at the controls, then drop a sack over the man’s head—the selfsame one Adler’s late uncle had worn, twelve days before.
Symmetry.
West tugged at his mask, wishing it weren’t quite so suffocating, and climbed into the back behind the driver. He stretched his hand forward with Buckner’s gun. “I’d suggest you put this in the door pocket instead of about your person. You don’t want it to go off by accident.”
“Righto,” Buckner said, and pushed the starter.
It was ten minutes past two in the morning. He had given Buckner the first stages of directions earlier: Wind through the streets of Southwark and cross the river on the Vauxhall Bridge before circling back east. At twenty minutes after the hour, he began to give the next set of directions that would take them onto Westminster Bridge.
The fourteen-foot minute hand of the great clock stood just before the half hour when the motorcar went under the tower.
“Stop here for a moment,” West said. He opened the door and stepped onto the roadway to study the bridge.
At this hour of the night, little stirred on London’s pavements. Mist hung over the Thames, and the smell of decay neared its turn. The Houses of Parliament stood beside him, toes in the water; at his back lay all the machinery of empire. Somewhere, a horse-cart clopped, sounding tired.
The roadway was deserted, the pools of light along its noble length pushing back the darkness. West started to get back into the motor, then stopped. What was that at the far end, half-hidden by the almost imperceptible curve in the roadway? Rubbish? Or—a child, at this time of night? No, it had to be a man, but even from a distance he could see the figure was too small to be the Holmes brother, or even the American wife.
“Is that someone sitting on the footway?” Buckner asked.
“It is.”
“What’s he doing?”
The figure was hunched over, looking at something on the ground. No, not just looking: He was doing something, his hunched shoulders moving. He was in his shirt-sleeves and wore a summer hat that should have been retired a week ago.
“Should I turn around?” Buckner asked.
West stepped up onto the running-board. With the added height, he could see that the figure’s back was turned.
“Hey,” Buckner said, “maybe he’s doing a drawing? There was this kid down the Embankment a couple months past, did a chalk drawing of the Mona Lisa before the police moved him away. The wife and I watched him for a while—he was pretty good.”
Buckner was married? West studied the figure, and gave another close survey of the surrounding buildings. No motion at all.
The minute hand three hundred feet overhead moved to the half hour; so quiet was the night, West heard the shift of machinery before the strike of bells.
Eight notes rang over the bridge, and faded.
West folded back inside the motor. “Go halfway out and stop in the centre of the bridge. Leave the motor running. Be prepared to leave rapidly.”
“Gotcher.”
Repressing a strong impulse to slap his driver on the skull with his gun, West closed the door. The motor purred forward and stopped, precisely in the centre of the bridge.
West pulled out the knife that he had taken from Thomas Brothers. With it in his hand and the gun in his overcoat pocket, he slid across the leather seat and opened the passenger-side door. He stepped out, letting the door swing back but not latch, then pulled open the front door and used the knife to slice through the rope holding his prisoner in place. The knife that had killed the prisoner’s wife, three and a half weeks before.
“Get out,” he said.
The blind and handcuffed artist blundered his way around and upright. West pulled him away from the motor, then moved up behind him and pressed the knife against the loose portion of the flour sack. Adler went still.
* * *
“Too close,” Lestrade said. Three hundred fifty yards away, the marksman was glued to his sights, his finger ready. He did not move, but Lestrade could feel disapproval radiating off the man’s shoulders at the interruption. “Sorry,” he said, and took a step away from the open window.
The man kneeling in the window had his sights not on the standing figures, but on the roof of the motor, on a line drawn with the driver. Holmes had been adamant: The man in charge must be taken alive. It was a matter of the empire’s security, that this villain give up his secrets.
And as if Holmes had heard Lestrade v
oice his doubts, had known that Lestrade intended to tell the marksman to fire wherever needed, a quarter of an hour later the telephone had rung again. This time, it was the Palace.
The standing figure was free to murder everyone in sight, and unless Lestrade’s shooter could absolutely, positively guarantee a shot that merely wounded the man, the villain would be free to run.
All Lestrade could do was curse and pray, with equal vehemence. But in silence.
I could not see either Holmes, standing near Boadicea, or Mycroft, inside the Parliamentary garden across the roadway from him. Nor could I see Billy, tucked into the street behind me, ready to pounce. But I saw the motorcar, creeping slowly onto the bridge. And a minute later I saw the two figures, pressed in close embrace on the passenger side.
And I could see Robert Goodman all too well, thirty yards away and playing, of all things, jackstones beneath one of the lamp standards on Westminster Bridge. What the hell was he up to?
Holmes tore his eyes away from the tableau in the centre of the span—Damian, it had to be—and looked across Bridge Street to where Mycroft stood, hidden by shadows. There was no signal—no need for one, in truth—but when the clock hand touched the next minute mark, the darkness shifted like the workings of the mighty clock, and Mycroft walked out into the light.
He stood facing the motorcar.
The two figures moved—for an instant Holmes could not breathe, thinking they were struggling—but they were merely moving, away from the pools of light and into the dimmest reaches between them. When they were but a doubled outline, a voice came down the roadway. “Mr Holmes?”
“One of them,” Mycroft answered, and removed his hat.
That would do for a signal, Holmes decided, and walked out from his own darkness, to stand, also hatless, in the pool of light opposite Mycroft.
The shocked silence was broken by Mycroft’s voice.
“I’m afraid your Mr Gunderson won’t be returning to your service. He is lying in a mis-marked grave, not far from here.”