Doktor Glass (14 page)

“If you don’t mind, Inspector, we’ll walk along the front toward the Pier Head,” Dowden said, looking for a break in the traffic. “These tents belong to the new folks, the ones just arrived. The old sections are the most important. That’s where the decisions get made.”

Dowden spoke as if the camp existed as an entity in its own right, a city within a city. And the structures behind the barricade, not to say the barricade itself, became more solid, more permanent as Langton and Dowden approached the Pier Head: Wooden shanties replaced tents; cabins of reclaimed driftwood were covered with patchwork tarpaper roofs; even bricks and chiseled blocks of sandstone and granite supported makeshift buildings.

Behind the barricades, burly men with cudgels at their waists patrolled back and forth. Watching. Waiting.

The shantytown camp stood to Langton’s right. To his left, the incomplete shell of the Liver Guaranty Building, a smaller version of a Chicago newspaper office and already a recognizable monument. Steam cranes hauled granite, brick, and steel a hundred feet into the air to the waiting men working so precariously above.

“They reckon half of the Liver Building ended up as walls and roofs in the camp,” Dowden said. “They should have finished months ago.”

Langton had never before realized the full extent of the “temporary” camp. It stretched from Prince’s Dock, to the north, all the way along the Mersey’s banks to the Pier Head and farther south, all along George’s Parade and the Chester Basin, almost to the office of the Span Company. To the west, it seemed to wash up against the foundations of the Span’s massive first tower. It filled the stinking wasteland between the river’s high-tide mark and the busy streets. Tram cars and steam buses wheeled around their terminus yards from the barricades.

Opposite the fine buildings of the Customs House and the Mersey Docks and Harbor Board, the barricades bent inward to form a rough
entrance complete with gatehouse. Concrete blocks, set in a complicated pattern and separated by movable iron railings like portcullises, allowed in carts and pedestrians under the scrutiny of gatekeepers.

Here, the immense curving roadway of the Span’s entrance ramp swept above the camp and threw the gatehouse and half of the cabins below into shadow. Langton looked up at the suspended deck of concrete and steel less than a hundred feet above him; it seemed too solid, too massive to remain up there. Logic demanded that gravity pull it to the ground. But engineering defied both gravity and Langton’s eyes; the graceful arc swept up from the Span Company’s concourse and merged with the stone tower. Pigeons and gulls wheeled about the undersides, raucous specks of grey and white against the stone and steel.

And the itinerant camp had erupted beneath this great feat of engineering. “Why doesn’t the Span Company simply get rid of them?”

Dowden stopped near one of the lunch wagons next to the tram stops. “You’ve asked a good one there, Inspector. For one thing, the land they’re on is mostly derelict or common land, or nobody’s sure who owns it. For another, a lot of the families had loved ones who died on the Span; it wouldn’t look too good for the Company if they persecuted them, too. It’d take the shine off the Ninth Wonder of the Industrial World.”

Remembering his meeting with Lord Salisbury, Langton understood. The Company wanted to avoid bad publicity; they didn’t want to alarm their investors or the general public. At least not until the Span opened. “And what happens after the inauguration?”

Dowden stared out across the camp. “I give the poor buggers two, three weeks. Then the Company will send in the troops. Come back then and you’ll see nothing here but rubble and blood.”

That reminded Langton too much of the Transvaal, where the scorched-earth policy had been just that. Villages and farms reduced to embers. Foundations jutting from the black soil like broken teeth. Smoke and rubble and blood.

“Are you all right, Inspector?”

“Just a little tired, Mr. Dowden.”

Dowden led him to the gatehouse, a rough cabin of wood set beside the concrete blocks. A squat, red-bearded man moved away from the group of guards manning the gate. “Mr. Dowden.”

“Mr. Lloyd. You’re well, I trust?”

“As can be expected.” Lloyd looked Langton up and down. “I wouldn’t have thought to see you keeping company with coppers, Mr. Dowden. Disappointed, I am. Fair disappointed.”

“This is Inspector Langton,” Dowden said. “He’s looking for a man wanted for murder. You’ve heard of that fella with his face missing?”

“I have.” Lloyd didn’t change his expression, the same hard, set features as the guards watching the exchange.

“I’ve no interest in the workings of the camp, Mr. Lloyd,” Langton said. “I’m after one man and one man only. If he isn’t here, someone might remember him.”

“We don’t like talking to the police. Almost as bad as the Span bastards.”

“I need your help, Mr. Lloyd. Three men are dead. I don’t want any more on my conscience.”

Lloyd thought for a moment. He looked at Dowden, back to the guards, then told Langton, “Wait here.”

As the man disappeared into the gatehouse, Langton wondered what Purcell or Major Fallows would expect him to do. Probably to burst into the camp with a squad of mounted police. Bash some skulls; break a few bones. And learn exactly nothing. Violence was seldom the best answer although often the first resort.

A booming echoed down as the ramp above him reverberated, sending echoes like distant thunder.

“One of their electric trains,” Dowden said. “Imagine what it’ll be like when the Company’s sending out one every fifteen minutes, fully loaded instead of empty.”

Lloyd appeared from the gatehouse. “I had a word with the
committee and if Mr. Dowden vouches for you, you’re to come in. But I’ll be by your side. Agreed?”

“Agreed, Mr. Lloyd.” Langton followed Lloyd and Dowden through the zigzag gates of concrete and iron. As he passed the gang of guards, one of them spat onto the ground a few inches from Langton’s boots. He ignored the taunt and walked on, scanning the face of every man.

The camp’s entrance opened up into a main central street running north–south. Here stood buildings of wood and brick, snug with glass windows and smoking chimneys. Ragged children ran splashing through the mud, their bare feet cracking the ice at the edges of puddles. Women wrapped in shawls watched from doorways or windows. Loafing men leaned against the jury-rigged walls.

It reminded Langton of the old slums in Bootle and Wavertree: families packed together, compressed into a small space, rife with the smells of cooking, laundry, and coal smoke. But whereas the old brick-built slums were a maze of narrow alleys, fetid lanes, and leaning buildings, this camp lay open and horizontal, and perhaps slightly cleaner. Almost as if planned.

“So, this man you’re after,” Lloyd said.

Langton gave a brief description of Durham. Lloyd called over some of the watching men and gave them instructions. As they strode off in different directions, Lloyd said, “They’ll ask around, find out if anyone’s seen him. If he has friends in the camp they’re not likely to admit he’s here.”

“I understand,” Langton said, already wondering if he’d wasted his time. “Durham worked as a guard for the Span Company—he wouldn’t be welcome here, would he?”

When Lloyd didn’t answer, Dowden said, “The people here have to get by, Inspector. Even the young comb the banks of the Mersey, every one of them a little
ragazzi
mudlark. The adults get to know people, friends of friends you might say, and sometimes the odd bit of cargo might slip out of the docks unnoticed.”

Langton understood. Some of the security guards, as badly paid as
the dockers, might look the other way or even supply “unnoticed cargo” themselves.

“The Corporation does what it can to help,” Dowden said. “We donate food; we try to supply clean water stand pipes and even basic sewer facilities. We can only do so much.”

“Tell him why,” Lloyd said, then offered the answer himself: “The Span Company fights everyone who tries to help us. Even the charities. If they had their way, we’d have no water, no coal, no food, nothing. We’d be sitting here rotting in our own filth.”

Langton could understand the Span’s attitude even if he didn’t agree with it. They wanted the camp closed down. He imagined Lord Salisbury looking down from that fine office and seeing this rash of humanity like a blemish on a fine painting.

“This here’s the oldest part of the camp: Bell Lane,” Lloyd said, pointing left down a wide alley. “The Caisson Widows.”

Beyond a rough painted sign fixed to a wall, Langton saw neat houses of wood, tar, and glass. “Caisson Widows?”

“They were the first,” Dowden said. “Their husbands worked on the most dangerous part of the construction: sinking the towers’ foundations.”

“Imagine it,” Lloyd said, skirting a wide scummy puddle. “One thousand and twenty-four towers between here and New York. And for every tower, at least three men dead. At least.”

“What happened?”

Lloyd explained how teams of men plummeted down to the sea- bed inside immense caissons of wood and steel, like bells a hundred feet across. Above them, the support ships pumped down compressed air to keep out the seawater and allow the men to breathe.

“Hard men, they were,” Lloyd said. “I couldn’t do it: hundreds of yards down, with your blood pounding in your ears, hardly able to take a breath. Half in darkness, with only a few electric lights lit. And you’re digging and digging, with the cold sea up to your waist.

“And sometimes the sea would break in; either the pumps would
fail or the caisson would tip to one side. Or strange sicknesses would get them; I’ve heard stories of men’s hearts exploding on the way back up to the surface, of blood running from eyes and ears. Or dying days or weeks later, after cramps and seizures that bent them double.”

Lloyd paused and looked back at Bell Lane. “The Company said it wasn’t their fault. Nothing to do with them. The widows got no compensation. Some of them even had to pay for the bodies to be brought back. That’s why they never left here. To shame the Company.”

From what he’d seen and read, Langton doubted that the Span Company suffered much from shame or guilt. Bad publicity, yes; adverse news that might affect shareholders or public confidence, certainly. Not shame.

Even as he thought this, and as he listened to Lloyd’s explanation, Langton searched the faces of the men around him. Some of the men did resemble the fugitive security guard, but Durham had no doubt moved on. His trail had cooled.

A quick shower of hail sent the children cowering into doorways or under eaves. Langton joined Lloyd and Dowden under the tilting porch of a house where a piebald dog watched them from the open door. A man ran along the side of the muddy street, holding his cap on with one hand while the other gathered his sodden jacket closed. He saw Lloyd, veered toward him, and whispered in his ear.

“Any luck?” Langton asked.

Lloyd sent the man away and turned to Langton. “Nothing yet. We get hundreds of new people every week. Mostly steerage.”

Before Langton could ask, Dowden said, “Families waiting to emigrate to America. If they can’t get on the boats, they hope to buy fourth-class steerage on the trains.”

Hope. The foundation of the entire camp, Langton realized. The Caisson Widows and their fractured families hoped for compensation or apology; the newcomers wanted a better life. Langton looked across the muddy, potholed street, through the curtains of hail, and wondered if any of the inhabitants’ hopes would ever be fulfilled.

He focused on a window. A face watching him through the grime, wide-eyed with surprise.

Meera.

Langton took a step forward, then stopped.

“What is it, Inspector?” Dowden said. “You’ve spotted him?”

Langton saw the face pull away from the window. “No. It was nothing. Shall we go on?”

“We’ll try the Bull and Run,” Lloyd said, testing the lessening hail with one outstretched hand.

“Pardon me?”

“It’s their pub,” Dowden said, smiling. “They named it after the Company.”

“Aye, ’cos that’s all we get from them,” Lloyd said. “Bullshit and the runalong.”

As he followed Lloyd and Dowden along a side alley, Langton wondered why Meera had brought Mrs. Grizedale to the camp. Did she have family here waiting to emigrate? Obviously she thought it safe. Either way, he didn’t want to cause them any further trouble or draw attention to them.

A vast groaning and creaking made Langton stop and look up. The complaining echoes of metal under stress sounded like a beast in pain. Langton stared at the underside of the ramp, sure it was about to fall and already bracing his body for the impact.

Dowden touched his arm and said, “She’s just settling on her haunches, Inspector.”

Lloyd said, “It’s worse when the bridge starts singing.”

“Singing?”

“Oh, aye.” Lloyd shielded his eyes and looked upriver. “When the wind comes down the Mersey and hits the Span just right, the whole thing starts wailing and groaning. Restless, she is.”

Langton wondered why men always called large vessels or structures
she
; perhaps it made them think they could control them more easily.

“See those wires,” Lloyd continued, pointing up to the vertical steel cables linking the road and rail deck to the curving support pipes. “Look like the strings of a harp, don’t they? Sounds like one too, sometimes.”

The Span’s strange “song” accompanied them to the door of the pub, where a surprisingly ornate painted sign swung over the door. Inside, a fug of smoke, coal, and tobacco gripped Langton’s throat. Behind the counter, a thick-armed barmaid in a red shawl smoked a clay pipe. A pyramid of barrels faced a stove that looked as though it had started life as a ship’s boiler, and a horseshoe of morose men sat facing the flames, clay mugs clasped in their hands. They made room for Lloyd and his charges.

Langton warmed himself and accepted a mug of warm ale tasting of cloves. He wondered where the beer barrels had come from. Probably best not to ask. Eyes heavy, he let the heat settle through him as Lloyd and Dowden discussed life in the camp. He sat up when he heard them speak of ghosts.