Blackstone and the Heart of Darkness (24 page)

Seven

From a distance the approaching narrowboat looked like nothing so much as a long green ridge tent, miraculously floating on the water.

‘That’s it,’ Drayman said almost mournfully, lowering his field glasses and turning to Blackstone. ‘That’s the
Bluebell
.’

Blackstone nodded. ‘So I see.’

‘There’s still time to decide you’ve made a mistake.’

‘I’ve made no mistake,’ Blackstone replied. And he believed what he was saying.

It was unlikely that the
Bluebell
was carrying jewels, he admitted, since—as Drayman had so clearly pointed out—it had loaded up at the mine rather than the salt works. And though he himself had mentioned the possibility of gold bars, he’d done it mainly to pacify the local inspector and did not give much credence to that theory either—because gold didn’t grow on trees and there hadn’t been a major bullion robbery in England for years.

But Bickersdale had to be up to
something
, or he’d never have had Tom killed and ordered an attempt on Blackstone’s own life. And if that ‘something’ didn’t involve the use of narrowboats, then why had he put Huggins in charge of one?

He turned his thoughts back to Ellie’s telegram. He’d been amused by the style in which she’d written it, and intrigued by the discoveries she’d made. But it had also disturbed him greatly. Reading it, a bell had rung in the back of his mind, and his mental warning light had flashed—almost as if the telegram was not about what was happening in Staffordshire at all, but was much more a warning to him personally. He didn’t understand why this should be the case, since Ellie was assisting in an investigation to track down a vicious killer, while he was attempting to arrest a smuggler. Yet the uneasy feeling it had given him refused to go away.

‘Five minutes left,’ Inspector Drayman said.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll get a result,’ Blackstone told him. ‘When this is all over, you’ll be a hero.’

‘When this is all over, I’ll be standing in the corner with a dunce’s cap on my head,’ Drayman replied. ‘And if I know my chief constable, he’ll probably leave me there for years.’

*

‘Bridget Latouche, I am arresting you…’ Patterson began. He paused. ‘Is that your real name—Bridget Latouche?’

‘Go to hell,’ the madam replied, with blazing hatred in her eyes.

‘If you refuse to supply me with any other name, then I must assume it
is
your real one, and that assumption will make the caution I am about to deliver valid in the eyes of the law,’ Patterson said evenly.

‘Do you know who my attorney is?’ the madam snarled. ‘Henry Knox-Partington! He eats coppers for breakfast—even fat coppers like you! He’ll have me sprung from that nick of yours before you’ve had time to take a shit and wipe your arse.’

‘Bridget Latouche, I am arresting you on the charge of procuring a girl below the age of consent for illicit purposes,’ Patterson said. ‘You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may be taken down and used in evidence against you.’

‘Then take this down,’ the madam said. ‘You’re pathetic, Archibald. You’re fat, and you’re ugly—and the only woman who’ll ever look at you is one you’ve paid for. Nobody will ever love you.’

Patterson smiled. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Miss Latouche,’ he said, thinking of Rose. And it was because of thoughts of Rose, he realized, that he had had such feelings of anger ever since this investigation began. Because if things had gone a little bit differently for her—if her mother had died or her father had turned to drink—she could well have ended up in a house like this one.

*

Blackstone and Drayman stood at the head of the dog-legged path that led from the bridge to the canal side.

‘I’ll go down first,’ Blackstone said. ‘If there’s any shooting, there’s no point in us both being in the line of fire.’

‘But why
should
there be any shooting?’ Drayman asked.

‘Because we’re dealing with dangerous criminals here.’

‘I think it’s far more likely that we’re dealing with an honest narrowboat man going about his legitimate business.’

There was no point in arguing the toss about it now, Blackstone thought. Within half an hour, one of them would have turned out to be a fool, and he was betting—against the odds—that it would be Inspector Drayman.

Blackstone walked down the path. The horse and boat were almost level with him. He stepped forward, and when he took hold of the horse’s bridle, the animal stopped moving immediately.

‘What the hell’s goin’ on?’ demanded the man at the tiller, at the far end of the boat. ‘Let go of me horse, before I’m forced to get off this boat an’ kick yer bleedin’ head in.’

He was a big, ugly bastard, Blackstone noted. And though he probably
wasn’t
Mick Huggins’s brother, he easily could have been.

Inspector Drayman appeared from out of the shadows. ‘Police,’ he said to the narrowboat man. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Peck. George Peck.’

Drayman held up the warrant for him to examine. ‘This gives us the right to search your boat, Mr Peck.’

‘I ain’t done nothin’!’ the narrowboat man protested.

‘And I’m not
accusing
you of doing anything,’ Drayman said levelly. ‘All I want to do is search your boat.’

‘It’ll be a waste of time. There’s nothin’ in my cabin that hasn’t been bought an’ paid for.’

Drayman gave Blackstone a worried look—a look which clearly said that if the narrowboat man was guilty of anything, he certainly wasn’t showing any signs of it on his face.

‘How about in the cargo section?’ Blackstone asked.

Peck laughed. ‘Oh, you’ll find somethin’ in there, all right,’ he said. ‘Finest Cheshire salt. Tons of the stuff.’

The two uniformed constables appeared at the bottom of the dog-legged path. Each of them held a large griddle in his hand.

‘You’re never goin’ to sift through all my salt, are you?’ Peck asked Drayman.

‘Every grain of it, if we have to,’ Blackstone said quickly, before Drayman had a chance to reply.

‘But it’ll hold me up too long,’ the narrowboat man protested. ‘I’ll never get to Liverpool on time.’

‘My heart bleeds for you,’ Blackstone said. He turned to the constables. ‘Remove the cover from the cargo hold.’

It was neither a simple nor a speedy process. First the tarpaulin that covered the entire frame had to be untied and rolled back. Then the individual side cloths, which underlay it, had to be unfastened too. And all the time this was going on, Inspector Drayman stood watching from the towpath—and visibly worrying.

When the cover had been finally stripped away, it was to reveal—just as Peck had promised it would—several tons of finest Cheshire salt.

‘Where did this come from?’ Blackstone asked.

‘The Melbourne Mine,’ Peck told him.

‘I’ve been there and seen the mine for myself,’ Blackstone said. ‘I doubt they mine this much salt in a year.’

Peck shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know about that. I work for Postlethwaite Carriers. I don’t have nothin’ to do with the mine at all.’

He was lying, Blackstone thought. The boat might be registered to a man called Postlethwaite, but Peck was one of Bickersdale’s thugs.

‘Start the search,’ he told the two constables.

The constables stepped on to the boat at its forward end and looked dubiously down at the cargo.

Drayman was looking dubious, too, Blackstone noted. It would be a truly mammoth task to sift all that salt, and the only way to stop the local inspector from ordering his men to abandon the job halfway through was to distract him with something else.

‘Shall we search the cabin, Inspector?’ he suggested.

‘What would be the point of that?’ Drayman asked, lethargically, but he followed Blackstone to the after end of the boat anyway.

George Peck had remained at the tiller throughout the whole proceeding, but now he stepped down on to the towpath and gestured towards the cabin door. ‘Be my guests,’ he said expansively, ‘but I’ve already told you, you won’t find nothin’ wrong.’

It was just a single step from the afterdeck into the cabin. A cast-iron stove filled most of the area closest to the door. Beyond that were cupboards and a let-down table. At the far end of the cabin there was a bed. Looking around, Blackstone found himself wondering how whole families ever managed to live in such a tiny space.

There was the sound of a gentle thud.

‘What was that?’ Blackstone asked.

‘It’s nothing,’ Drayman said dismissively. ‘When there’s a breeze, as there is now, the water in the canal ripples, and when it ripples, it bangs against the sides of the boat. You’d know that, if you lived around here.’

And your point is that I don’t live around here, isn’t it? Blackstone thought. Your point is that I’m a know-it-all from the capital, who’s come up here and got everything wrong.

A second thud followed, louder this time.

‘If it’s water, why does it seem to be coming only from the afterdeck?’ Blackstone wondered.

Drayman glanced through the open door. ‘Don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe there’s an invisible man out there, performing a clog dance.’

There were three more thuds in rapid succession.

‘It’s coming from
below
the deck!’ Blackstone said.

He stepped out of the cabin, on to the deck itself.

‘Did you hear that?’ he asked George Peck, who was still standing on the towpath.

‘Hear what?’ Peck asked.

He was trying to sound casual, Blackstone thought, but for the first time since they’d stopped the boat he was beginning to
look
concerned.

Blackstone stamped his foot on the deck, and heard a hollow sound. ‘What’s under here?’

‘A locker. For ropes an’ stuff.’

‘I think you’re lying,’ Blackstone said.

He was almost
sure
the man was lying. More than that, he had begun to understand why Ellie’s telegram had affected him as it had—and now he thought he knew exactly what lay beneath the deck cover.

Drayman had ridiculed his jewel-smuggling theory, and Drayman had been right. But only partly! There
was
smuggling going on—but it had nothing to do with rubies and diamonds.

‘I want you to open this locker for me,’ he told Peck.

Peck turned away—as if he was doing no more than expressing his contempt for Blackstone—then suddenly made his break for freedom up the dog-legged path.

‘Stop him!’ Blackstone shouted to the constables on the forward end of the boat.

Peck was moving fast, but without due care. Halfway up the dog-legged path he missed his footing and fell sprawling forward. He rolled over, and was back on his feet in seconds, but seconds was all it had taken the uniformed constables to reach him.

Peck threw a violent punch at the nearest constable. It connected with his jaw, and he went down, leaving the second constable ample space to swing his truncheon and catch the narrowboat man a cracking blow on the side of the head.

For an instant, it looked as if Peck might be able to withstand the assault, then his legs buckled beneath him and he fell to the ground.

Blackstone turned to Drayman. ‘Doesn’t look much like an innocent man to me,’ he said.

They unscrewed the deck cover, lifted it clear and got their first sight of the girl. She was wearing a dress that looked as if it had been made of rough sacking. Her hands and feet were tightly bound and she wore a gag across her mouth. Her torso had been strapped to the floor, but her head was free enough to allow for a little movement, and it must have been that with which she had beaten out her desperate message.

Blackstone unstrapped the girl, and lifted her gently out of the locker.

‘We’re policemen,’ he cooed reassuringly. ‘We’ve come to rescue you. You’re quite safe now.’

He carried her into the cabin, laid her on the bed, then knelt beside her. ‘Safe, very safe,’ he said softly, as he began to untie her. ‘As safe as houses. As safe as if you were in your own bed. Do you understand? Nod your head a little, if you do.’

The girl nodded.

Blackstone freed her from the last of her bonds. ‘I want you to move your hands and feet, just to get your circulation working properly,’ he said. ‘But nothing too violent. Just very, very gentle movements.’

The girl wriggled her ankles and wrists obediently, and Blackstone began to remove her gag. ‘Don’t try to speak immediately,’ he advised her. ‘Wait until I tell you to. And when you do, if you find it hurts too much, stop immediately.

She was a pretty girl of eleven or twelve, he noted. Her skin was very pale, which was only to be expected after all the terror and exhaustion she’d had to endure in captivity. But even allowing for that, he could see that at least a part of that paleness was her natural colouring.