Doktor Glass (33 page)

Langton began to run. At the junction of Bath Street and New Quay, he tried to flag a hansom. The driver saw his dirty clothes and wild waving and drove on. Langton hurried up Leeds Street, heading north toward home. He half-walked, half-ran, slithering on the pavement’s compacted ice and snow. His breath erupted in white clouds and his lungs burned.

As Langton neared familiar streets, he clutched the Webley and slowed his pace a little, trying to take deep breaths. He kept to the crumbling slush at the pavement’s edge, where his footsteps would make less noise. Only a handful of pedestrians passed by, servants on their way to work. Langton ignored them. He paused at the corner of his street and looked around the black iron railings. No coach or cart outside his door; no constables or loafers. All seemed quiet.

With the revolver in plain sight now, held down close to his side, Langton approached his own house. No lights burned. No smoke came from the chimney. And as he reached the steps, he saw his front door ajar.

Slowly, step by step, he climbed to the door, moved to the right, and pushed it open with his foot. Nobody shot at him. Nobody rushed out. The still silence of an empty house.

“Elsie?”

No reply. Langton slipped inside the hall and listened. Only the ticking of the grandfather clock in the sitting room. Then, from the back stairs, a shuffling sound like clothes dragged across a stone floor.

Langton made for the noise. Every nerve in his body seemed stretched tight. Every sensation seemed stronger: the cold, crosshatched wooden handle of the revolver in his hands; the squeak of his boot heels across the parquet floor; the smells of beeswax and food and cordite.

Silent now, Langton crept down the back steps to the kitchen and scullery rooms. He peered into the kitchen and saw smashed plates, pots and pans lying on the floor, a dark pool of dried coffee or tea. And there, next to the central pine table, a body.

The man, heavy and wide, lay on his back staring at the ceiling. A knife was close to his outstretched right hand. A gunshot had exploded his chest. He must have died before he had even hit the ground.

Langton crossed the red-tiled floor, cursing as his left foot caught a shard of china plate and sent it ringing into a corner. In two strides he reached the scullery door and flung it open. He had just enough time to throw himself to one side before the bullet hammered into the door frame next to his head. The wood shattered.

“Elsie, don’t shoot. It’s me.” Langton pressed his back flat against the kitchen wall and felt his heart thudding an irregular rhythm. Something burned his cheek; he touched the spot and pulled out a small bloody splinter. “It’s all right, Elsie.”

From inside the scullery, a weary voice, “Sir? Is it really you?”

“Don’t shoot.” Langton took one slow step around the edge of the door, then another. “It’s all right, Elsie.”

With McBride’s revolver clutched in both shaking hands, Elsie sat on the cold scullery floor with the body of the sergeant sprawled across her legs. Wide-eyed and white with shock and cold, she stared at Langton for maybe half a minute before lowering the gun. “They would have done for me, sir, if it hadn’t been for him. He saved me, sir.”

Langton knelt beside Elsie and took the gun from her. He felt at McBride’s neck and found a weak pulse. Blood, still wet, trickled from at least two chest wounds that Langton could see. The man’s face looked grey and slack. More blood trickled from his scalp.

On Elsie’s face, cuts and swollen skin that would soon turn to bruises. Straggling hair hung down over her bloodshot eyes.

“We need to move McBride, Elsie. Are you ready? Elsie?”

She blinked up at him, then nodded. Langton set the guns down and took McBride’s weight to allow Elsie to slide out from beneath. Afraid to turn him over or move him too much, Langton lowered McBride to the cold floor, then helped Elsie to her feet. “Elsie, listen to me. Run next door and tell them to phone for a doctor and ambulance. Elsie? Quickly, girl. There’s still time.”

With an almost visible effort, Elsie seemed to pull herself out of shock. She started to walk, then run, through the kitchen. Her feet clattered on the stairs.

Langton slid out of his jacket and laid it over McBride. He slumped down on the floor beside him and pulled the guns closer. He didn’t know who had attacked the house, or whether they might return, so he stared through the scullery entrance at the back door. He listened for furtive steps or the sound of forced entry. Instead of those, he heard a groan and a wet cough. He leaned over McBride. “Don’t move, man. The doctor will soon be here.”

“So cold…” McBride said, his voice a whisper.

Langton pulled down aprons and towels from the scullery shelves and packed them around McBride’s body. “Don’t talk. Save your strength.”

“No time…” One red eye focused on Langton. “They burst in…three o’clock…too many…”

“Save your strength, McBride,” Langton said, even though one part of him wanted to hear the story while another part wanted to blame the sergeant.

McBride wouldn’t rest. “It was Springheel Bob’s gang, sir. They took me for you—”

A fit of wet red coughing interrupted him. Langton looked on, helpless yet rapt.

“I winged one of them, sir, but they got me front and back. Me and
Elsie stumbled down here and made a stand. She’s a plucky one, Elsie is. A fine girl…”

Langton wanted to ask so many questions: Why had the remnants of the other Jar Boy gang targeted him? Why had McBride joined Doktor Glass? McBride wouldn’t have the strength to answer; the sweat stood out of his forehead and fresh blood stained the white towels.

Instead of questions, Langton said, “I know about Doktor Glass.”

McBride’s eye opened wide.

“I know you informed on me,” Langton said. “I’m glad you were here to save Elsie’s life, but you betrayed me.”

“I did, sir. And I’m…I’m sorry.”

Langton leaned closer. “Why, man? Why do it?”

A crooked smile. “He promised me promotion, sir.”

He? Not
she
? “But…you worked for Doktor Glass.”

“I never met Doktor Glass, sir. Never.”

From the hall above, the sounds of voices, footsteps on the polished wooden floor.

“Then who did you tell?” Langton said, his face almost touching McBride’s. “Who was it?”

As the two white-clad orderlies rushed into the kitchen, followed by a doctor, McBride whispered. “The Chief, sir…Purcell…”

*  *  *

C
OLD GRIPPED THE
house. Alone in the sitting room, Langton sat staring at last night’s ashes in the grate. The orderlies had taken McBride away, with the doctor shaking his head as he followed them. Langton had sent Elsie—accompanied by his neighbor’s maid—home to her mother’s. The doctor had given her a sedative for the shock, but Langton knew it would be a long time before she recovered her usual nature. If ever.

Exhaustion sapped Langton’s will. He wanted nothing more than to sleep. He couldn’t even summon anger for Purcell, not after that first reflex reaction at hearing McBride’s admission.

Could it be true? It made a kind of sense: McBride would pass on Langton’s movements and discoveries to Purcell, who would then pass them on to Doktor Glass, or Sister Wright, as the world knew her. And Purcell had access to Fallows, indeed to every aspect of life at headquarters. He would know where Jake was being held, and where the supposedly dead body would be transferred. There could be no more useful informer than the Chief Inspector himself.

Why would he betray them all? What hold could Doktor Glass have over Purcell?

The jars. Langton remembered the shelves of jars in the dockside warehouse. All those jars that must have once packed the shelves in Redfers’s basement. Society’s most respectable people—male and female—had paid good money to vicariously enjoy the sensations of the dead or dying. The great and the good of Liverpool had sampled the illicit trade. Perhaps some of them had formed a habit.

The thought sickened Langton. He could see Purcell grasping the jars in his fat fingers, his mouth slightly open as he plundered the memories of some poor, trapped soul. Maybe even of Sarah.

That drove Langton to his feet and almost to the front door. Then he froze. Sister Wright had asked him to do nothing. Confronting Purcell would shock the whole edifice of headquarters. Everyone would learn the truth about the Jar Boys and Doktor Glass.

For the first time since leaving the army, Langton felt truly and completely helpless, no longer master of his own actions. Sister Wright owned him now. She controlled him. He saw how far he’d sunk. But the reward for his silence…

Sarah. Oh God, Sarah.

Standing there in the hall, Langton rubbed at his eyes and forced himself to concentrate. Like a man learning to walk after an accident, he placed his thoughts one after the other. Work would see him through this. He needed tasks.

First, to bathe and change. He lit the back boiler in the kitchen and brewed coffee while it heated. After a tepid bath and shave, he found
clean clothes and checked his appearance. He looked like a walking corpse, ashen and gaunt, but at least presentable. He had to play his part well on this day of the Span’s inauguration. He couldn’t afford to arouse any suspicion, especially among headquarters staff.

His composure crumbled in the hansom cab taking him to Victoria Street. He tapped on the ceiling hatch and told the driver, “Take me to the Pier Head instead.”

“Don’t know if I can, sir,” the driver said, still looking at the road ahead. “The police have got it all roped off.”

“Get me as close as you can to the encampment.”

“The camp? Do me best, sir.”

As the hansom crawled and cursed its way through streets thronged with decorations, Langton considered the wisdom of what he was about to try. Mrs. Grizedale might have fled the camp. She might not want to cooperate. Almost certainly she would not want to. But Langton needed answers, or at least reassurance. If only he’d had the courage to grasp the connectors of that jar in Doktor Glass’s storeroom, then he would have known for sure.

The hansom made it as far as Islington before Langton had to climb down and walk. Even now, at eight in the morning, people flocked toward the Pier Head and the Span. Young, old, poor, well dressed; loafers sidling along with hands in their pockets and caps pushed back. Children in thin clothes. Middle-class matrons carrying wicker hampers. A microcosm of Liverpool life. All streaming toward the inauguration like iron filings to a magnet.

Langton pushed through the crowd and headed for the camp. Heavy timber barriers now blocked access to the Mersey’s banks; Langton showed his warrant card to the constables on duty and then headed across the concourse. Stalls for food and souvenirs had been set up here in front of the half-finished Liver Guaranty Building hiding behind its temporary painted hoardings. Band music drifted over from the TSC compound. It turned the Pier Head into an ersatz fairground waiting for customers.

A line of policemen guarded the camp entrance. “Can’t let no one in or out, sir.”

Again, Langton produced his warrant card but had to wait until the sergeant went away to check. The cold shadow of the Span’s soaring entrance ramp threw the camp’s gates into twilight. The first support tower reared up above Langton like a monument. Mist or low cloud hid its apex.

The sergeant returned. “Major Fallows said to let you through, sir, and he asked if you’d see him soon as you could. He’s over with the main party.”

Langton slid through the police line and made for the camp gates. He searched the faces of the guards but couldn’t see Mr. Lloyd. One of the men went to fetch him but made a show of not hurrying. After ten slow, painful minutes, Lloyd appeared. “Inspector. You come to check up on us as well?”

“I need to see someone inside the camp.”

Lloyd stuck out his chin. “Business?”

“No. Personal.”

When Lloyd hesitated, Langton said, “Please. It’s important.”

Lloyd stared at him a moment and then told the guards, “Let him in, boys.”

Once inside, Langton tried to orient himself. He recognized the main street and the narrow alleys that led down to the rocky base of the Span’s first tower, where he’d almost captured Durham.

“Who are you looking for?” Lloyd asked.

Briefly, Langton described Mrs. Grizedale, then started down Main Street, trying to find the window where he’d seen Meera’s face.

Beside him, Lloyd coughed and said, “Mr. Dowden told me about your wife. Sorry to hear it.”

Something twisted in Langton’s side. “Thank you.”

“Been a sad century, this one,” Lloyd said, as if to himself. “Be glad to see the back of it.”

A sudden loud groaning made Langton stop and look around. It sounded like a great metallic beast in pain.

“It’s the Span, Inspector. Listen.”

A cold wind brushed Langton’s face. A second later, a grinding and creaking came from the enormous structure overhead. Then a long, haunting wail that Langton felt in his teeth. It seemed impossible for something so immense and solid to flex and move.

“Frightening, isn’t it?” Lloyd said. “You want to hear it in a storm. No wonder the kids have nightmares.”

A little farther along Main Street, Langton recognized the shack where he’d seen Meera. A gaunt woman in a frayed red shawl opened the door. She nodded to Lloyd and looked up at Langton, who asked for Mrs. Grizedale.

The woman pursed her lips. “What’s she done?”

“Nothing. I just need to ask her—”

A movement behind the landlady, then Mrs. Grizedale’s tired face appeared. “I recognized your voice, Inspector. It’s all right, Mrs. Miller. I know this gentleman.”

“I’ll be outside,” Lloyd said as Langton entered the shack.

He followed Mrs. Grizedale up rickety stairs and into a front room that leaned and tilted like something from a fairground fun house. Against one wall, a pair of bunks ripped from some ship. A fire burned in a small grate and leaked half its smoke back into the room.

“Mrs. Grizedale, I didn’t want to trouble you again—”

“I’m relieved you came back.”

Langton, still standing in the doorway, stared at her. “Relieved?”