The Darkest Walk of Crime (21 page)

“Go now!” Monaghan was back on
his feet. “Return to your volunteers and prepare for war! Prepare for
government!”

There was a last cheer, a final
triumphant roar, and Armstrong began to sing. Although he knew the tune of
Rule
Britannia
well, it was the first time that Mendick had heard those
particular words:

“Spread, spread the
Charter

Spread the Charter
through the Land

Let Britons bold and
brave join heart and hand.”

Others joined in, and then the
tune and words altered to Armstrong’s favourite Chartist song. Others joined in
until the entire room was roaring out the words, and Mendick saw the tall
figure of Trafford standing behind Monaghan, a glass in hand as he joined in,

“Truth is growing –
hearts are glowing

With the flame of Liberty:

Light is breaking –
Thrones are quaking-

Hark! The trumpet of
the Free

Long in lowly whispers
breathing

Freedom wandered
drearily

Still, in faith, her
laurel wreathing,

For the day when there
should be Freemen shouting

Victory!”

The Chartists were still singing
as they began to dissipate, in small knots or individually. Mendick edged
toward the door, now knowing exactly what intelligence he had to carry with him
to London. All he had to do was get to the railway station in Manchester and
within hours he could put a stop to all the impending trouble.

“James,” the voice was low and
feminine, “James, it’s me.”

He looked up. Scott stood in the
shadow of a recessed doorway, smiling to him.

“This way, James.”

“Rachel?”

“You fell asleep on me last
time, James.” She shook her head, eyes mocking, “You really must avoid the
drink in future.” Her smile broadened. “But there’s no drink here, James, only
you and me and a host of excited delegates who cannot think of anything but
power for themselves.” She moved slightly, stirring her hips suggestively.

“I must go . . .” Mendick tried
to slip away, but she held him with a small hand. He stared at her, confused
but not tempted, until she laughed.

“You look like a small boy in a
sweetshop, James. You have seen all the treasures, but you’re undecided which
one to pick first. Which is it, James, the Charter or the woman?”

“I must attend my duty.”

“Of course you must,” Rachel
agreed, “but you must also admit that I attract you.” She nodded to the rapidly
emptying hall. “Look at them all, James, eager to run back and start a war that
may kill most of them. The Chartist symbol is the beehive, and they are just
the drones, destined to work and die for others, whoever is in government.” Her
contempt startled him, but he could not fault her logic. He shivered as she
echoed his own thoughts from earlier.

“What does it matter to them who
is in power, which voice makes the decisions, Finality Jack Russell or
Vociferous William Monaghan? Whoever it is, they are destined to remain at the
bottom of the heap, with or without the vote or the six points of the Charter,
they just don’t matter.”

“They?” He lifted an eyebrow.
“Don’t you mean
we?
”

Scott shook her head. “We are
different, you and I, James. We don’t belong with the drones.’ She looked at
him with a cynical twist to the side of her mouth. ‘The problem is, I am not
sure where you belong at all.”

“I must do my duty,” Mendick
repeated, and she mocked him with a laugh.

“Your duty? Duty is the old
standby of the lazy and the confused. People who
do their duty
don’t
have to think, do they? They allow other people to do their thinking for them,
and thereby allow others to rule their lives.” Very deliberately, she shifted
her position, thrusting that provocative hip further towards him. “Well, James?
Are you going to do your
duty,
or are you going to do
me
?”

He looked at her. She had
supported him when he tried to help Ogden, and had spoken up for him in front
of Monaghan, and despite, or possibly because of, her mysteries, she was an
alluring woman. Nevertheless, her attempt at seduction was as attractive as the
hiss of a serpent. Even as a siren, she was so inferior to Emma that he would
not have considered even talking to her except as part of his job.

“I’m sorry, Rachel, but I must
do my duty.”

The sound of a slow handclap
made him turn around, and he saw Armstrong a few steps behind him and Peter
towering in the background.

“Well said, Mr Mendick, a man
has to do his duty.” Armstrong stepped closer. “The only question is your duty
to whom, and what exactly does that duty entail?”

“What?” Mendick looked at him,
shaking his head. “I do not understand, Mr Armstrong. My duty to the Charter,
of course.”

“Of course.” Monaghan slipped
from a side door. “Of course.” He nodded to Scott. “Well done, Miss Scott. You
played your part to perfection.”

Scott gave a graceful little
curtsey as Monaghan glowered at Mendick.

“You were about to scurry to
your masters in London, were you not?”

“Which masters in London?”
Mendick tried to bluff, but he felt sudden sick dread. His memory of Ogden
writhing on the floor was vivid. He glanced back, preparing to run, but
Armstrong gripped his arm.

“Come with us, Mr Mendick; we
have things to discuss.”

He shook away the hand.

“I don’t think there is anything
left to say.” He stepped toward the door, but Peter was there first, balancing
on the soles of his feet with his hands clenched and his head lowered like a
young bull.

“Best do what Mr Armstrong
says.” Peter raised his head, his eyes dazed. “Please, James, I don’t want to
hit you.”

Mendick nodded; he remembered
Peter’s strength and speed; he knew that he could never defeat him in a fair
fight.

“You just had to ask,” he said.
He glanced at Scott, who favoured him with a simpering smile. “There was no
need for the subterfuge.” He nodded to Peter, who remained immobile in the
doorway. “Or the threats.”

Armstrong grunted and produced
the pistol from within his jacket, caressing the barrel lovingly.

“No threats, Mendick, just a
reminder.”

Monaghan took them to a large,
draughty room immediately beneath the hall, his feet rapping on the floor of
stone slabs. He scraped a Lucifer, waited until the phosphorous flare calmed
down and lit a brace of candles. Yellow light immediately illuminated an oval
table and a single chair, on which Monaghan sat and extended his legs.

“This was the kitchen, when the
original hall was first built, and then it was used for storage before the new
store rooms were built.” He glanced at Mendick. “But you know all about them,
don’t you?”

Still faintly smiling, Scott
took up position on one side of the huge fireplace, with Armstrong directly
opposite. Armstrong tapped his pistol against the long spit that was slowly
rusting against the wall.

“How should I know about the new
store rooms?”

“You were there,” Monaghan said
quietly. “The day that you robbed Sir Robert’s larder to feed your men, you
snooped around and discovered the weapons store.”

“What?” As Mendick tried to
simultaneously look confused and angry he measured the distance to the door,
where Peter stood immobile with his arms folded. The muscles stood out like
wire hawsers.

“Of course we knew it was you,”
Monaghan said, his voice very quiet. “We always knew who you were.” There was
triumph in his smile. “Why else would Miss Scott single you out at the meeting,
and why else would we bring you into the fold? We played you like a fish and
you bit on our bait every time.”

Mendick tried to keep the horror
from his face as he edged closer to the door, but on a nod from Armstrong,
Peter turned the key in the lock and enclosed it within his great fist.

Armstrong pointed his pistol
directly at Mendick’s face. The barrel seemed as wide as a nine-pounder cannon.

“Show him, Miss Scott.”

“With pleasure.”

Reaching into his inside pocket,
Scott withdrew a folded document, which she handed to Mendick.

The letter from Scotland Yard
proclaimed his guilt with seven simple words:
Chartist Rally
, it read.
Infiltrate
and join the
cause.
Mendick stared, unable to say anything. The
Chartists must have broken into his London home and found that. But how? The
question screamed in his mind; how did they know who he was, and where he
lived? Somebody must have told them, and only then did he remember that
notebook of faces that Mr Smith had shown him. Somebody in Scotland Yard must
have informed the Chartists who he was, there could be no other explanation.

Scott smiled to him with her
head tilted on one side.

“Cat got your tongue?”

“And you thought that you were
so clever, too.” Monaghan shook his head in mock sorrow. “You came here from London,
inveigled yourself into our midst, and you even made a good job of training my
soldiers.”

“God!” Mendick felt his mouth
drop. “But . . .”

“But?” Rachel mocked him again.
“But why? But why not just kill you as soon as you arrived?” Her laughter
bounced around the bare stone room.

“Because if we did,” Monaghan
told him, “Scotland Yard might just send somebody that we don’t know about, or
even worse, somebody who was actually
good
at their job. This way, we
could keep an eye on you and ensure that you didn’t tell your bosses anything
important.”

“What’s wrong, James? You look
pale.” Stepping forward, Scott stroked his face with a soft hand. “Not as
clever as you thought?”

“Pale? It must be the chill.
It’s cold in here.” Mendick tried to keep his voice light as he thought
furiously. His life was unimportant, but he had to escape and warn about the
horrors that Monaghan was about to unleash on London. He glanced around the
room. With Peter holding the key to the only door, and Armstrong cradling his
pistol like a beloved baby, he only had one, very unlikely, chance.

“We’ll soon make it warmer for
you,” Armstrong promised grimly, with a significant glance at Peter.

“Look on the bright side,
James.” Rachel was still smiling. “At least we won’t have to question you. You
don’t know anything we haven’t already told you, and you haven’t sent any
information to Scotland Yard.” She leaned closer so her moist breath washed his
face. “We caught all your pigeons.”

“Mr Armstrong,” Monaghan spoke
in a conversational tone, “could you and Peter take Mr Mendick for a walk, please?
And don’t bother to bring him back.”

Lancashire: March
1848

The knowledge that he had only one
slender chance to escape before Peter’s iron fists closed on him awoke a long
dormant madness; Mendick feinted joyously for Armstrong’s eyes, watched him
jerk backward and swung a savage uppercut to his groin. For a second he
relished Armstrong’s high squeal of agony, and then he swept his hand sideways
at the candles. The first went out immediately, but the second rolled along the
table top casting dancing shadows until he snatched it up and rammed it against
Monaghan’s face. Monaghan screamed and all light was extinguished
.

Mendick hoped Peter would be so
petrified by the sudden darkness that he would remain static, blocking the
door. There was only one other exit from the windowless room, and he gambled
that nobody had even considered it. Pushing past the still yelling Monaghan, he
ducked under the chimney breast and thrust his head up the flue. The once
familiar smell of soot and the cool downdraught from outside spurred him onward
and upward, blessing his luck. In choosing the old kitchen for his
interrogation, Monaghan had given him the widest chimney in Trafford Hall.

Generations of soot had coated
the stonework, but there were still sufficient hand and footholds to pull
himself upwards. He was suddenly grateful for his childhood years as a climbing
boy, spent clambering up and around choking flues with his master lighting
straw in the grate to encourage greater speed. He remembered that most of these
old buildings had their chimneys placed in stacks where the flue was common to
two or more fireplaces.

As a child he could have
scrambled straight up and out the topmost chimney; although he was now far too
large for that route, the lower part of the flue was still spacious enough to
accommodate him. He pushed upward, feeling the stonework rough under his hands,
coughing as soot dribbled down upon him.

“Where is he?” A sliver of light
glinted from below, and he heard the distorted echo of Armstrong’s voice.
“Where in hell’s name did he go? He must have sneaked past you, Peter, you
useless bastard!” There was the sound of a slap and of Peter whimpering.

“He didn’t get past me, Mr
Armstrong, I swear. I was here all the time. He must be a ghost.”

“Some ghost.” That was Scott’s
voice, taut with fury. “He’s gone up the chimney!”

Mendick stopped moving, clinging
on with his fingertips and the toes of his boots. He had hoped to escape
through the fireplace of the great hall, one floor up, but the flue was more
restricting than he had expected.

“I can’t hear him!” That was
Monaghan’s voice. “It’s so bloody dark I can’t see anything up there either.
Are you sure that’s where he is?”

“He can’t be anywhere else,”
Scott told him.

“I’ll get the bastard!”

Mendick cringed from the
deafening crack of the pistol; the ball smashed against the wall of the flue a
few inches away from his leg, dislodging a torrent of soot.

“For God’s sake, Josiah!”
Scott’s words halted in a bout of coughing, and Mendick hoped that she choked
to death. “You’re as stupid as Peter!”