Mind the Gap (18 page)

She nodded.

“And that house?” He lowered his voice further. “Mortimer Keating’s house? Who chose that house in particular? You’re new to this line of work. Your friends have been in the game longer, but neither of them seemed bright enough to organize a tea party, much less a high-society burglary.”

“You underestimate them.”

Terence raised his cappuccino in a mock toast, then sipped it. “Maybe so. Regardless, someone sent you to that house. But I see you won’t tell me who it was. Fair enough. Can’t say I blame you.”

He set the cup down. “Have you ever heard of the Blackwood Club?”

Jazz started to shake her head but faltered. She’d never heard of any Blackwood Club, but the name Blackwood was familiar enough to stir up nausea in her gut. Josephine Blackwood had been present at her mother’s murder—indeed, she “saw to it herself.”

“No?” Terence asked.

“No,” she replied, barely able to get the word out.

Now, at last, he looked at her bag. Since she’d set it on the chair, he had behaved as though it wasn’t there at all, as though it did not contain the very thing for which he went to such great lengths at the house of the Uncle who’d once told her to call him Mort.
Mortimer Keating.
She let the name settle in her mind and found she liked having his identity. It made him less terrifying to her—made her feel like she could hurt him, if she could get close enough.

“If I ask you for it, would you give it to me?” Terence said, voice low.

“If I say no, will you try to take it?”

He chuckled softly, but then his expression grew serious again. “All that time, down there in the tunnels. I’m sorry, Jasmine, but I can’t believe it’s all coincidence.”

“I couldn’t care less what you believe.”

Something flashed in those ice-blue eyes, and for the first time she thought that Terence might be a dangerous man. “Does the phrase ‘the spirit of London’ mean anything to you?”

She took a long drink of her iced coffee, almost draining it, and when she set it down the ice clinked in the glass. Then she reached for the bag, grabbed the strap, and pulled it onto her lap.

“Thank you for the coffee,” she said. “But the conversation’s gone a bit dull, don’t you think? I’d best get going.”

Yet she could not rise. Those blue eyes fixed her in place, so intense was his stare.

“Do you ever see ghosts down there?” Terence asked.

Her heart skipped a beat and she caught her breath, knowing that her face had betrayed her. Understanding dawned in his eyes. What the hell did he know? Jazz had been willing to chalk it all up to coincidence and let it go at that, but now she realized it could not be. Whatever this thing in her bag was, and whoever Terence might be, it was all connected. How this related to her mother’s death and the Uncles she didn’t know, but Terence had just asked a question that destroyed any assumptions she had made.

“You should come home with me,” the thief said.

The words hung there between them. Jazz tried to make sense of them, but her confusion had become a maelstrom. What was true? Who could she trust? Surely not this man she had just met, this gentleman bandit?

Jazz leaned across the table and lowered her voice.

“You might think yourself something more, Terry, but you’re no better than me. You wear sophistication the way you wear that suit and tie, carry around your looks the way you carry that shoulder bag. Maybe you live high, but you might as well be down in the tunnels with me. You’re a thief, not a bloody baron.”

His brow furrowed and he stared at her a moment, then sipped at his cappuccino again. He sat in contemplation, searching her face for something—Jazz had no idea what. Slowly, Terence sat forward so that they leaned toward each other across the table. Prior to that moment, observers might have thought them uncle and niece, even father and daughter. But now passersby would think them quarreling lovers, no matter her age.

“I am a master.”

“You’re not
my
bloody master.”

He tapped one finger on the table, then sat back. “I could be. You have aspirations? I could teach you. Help you fulfill them. I could show you a life that would otherwise always be out of your reach. You have natural talent, but with proper training you could achieve a lot more. You could have almost anything, really, but given your present circumstances, you might begin with a warm bed, clean clothes, the finest foods. And the security and confidence not to be so frightened all the time.”

Jazz nearly shouted at him, denied being frightened. But he’d already pointed out the way she looked around, always on guard. There would be no point in lying now.

“I have friends. I couldn’t just—”

Terence stood, sliding his chair back. “You could. We’ve already established you haven’t been down there long. How close could you have gotten in that time? How well do you even know these friends?”

“Better than I know you,” she said.

But the question was not lost on her. The fact that Harry had chosen Mort’s house to rob lingered in the back of her mind. But as for how close she had gotten to the others in the United Kingdom, Terence had no idea. A single thought of Cadge was all she needed to know that she had friends in the Underground. And maybe, where Stevie was concerned, more than friends.

“They’ll be worried about me,” Jazz said, holding the bag on her lap.

Terence glanced at it, then reluctantly pulled his gaze away. He plucked a wallet from his pocket and tossed a twenty-pound note on the table. It was far too much for their coffees, but he showed no inclination to wait for change. The money meant nothing to him.

And if the money meant nothing, then why had he broken into Mortimer Keating’s house today? Why did he want that strange serrated blade?

“Tell me something,” she said. “What’s this apparatus you asked me about? What does it do?”

Terence hesitated a moment, then gave a small shake of his head. He pointed at the bag on her lap. “I need that. You have no idea how I need it. But I’m not going to try to take it from you. I’m hoping that at some point you’ll be willing to give it to me. But I also meant what I said about teaching you. You’re a remarkable girl, Jasmine. Only the dead belong so far underground. It’s time for you to come back to life.

“I’m going now. But think about what I’ve said. If you want to try a different path from the one you’re on now, meet me tomorrow afternoon at half-two in front of the Victoria and Albert Museum. I’ll wait, but not for long.”

Jazz stared at him.

Terence smiled, slung his jacket over his shoulder, and gave a small bow of his head. “A pleasure to meet you.”

“And you, strangely enough,” she replied.

He turned and strolled across the patio, weaving around other tables, and out into the park. In moments he was out of sight.

Jazz picked up her glass and drained the last of her coffee.

For weeks, Jazz had felt as though the gloom and shadow below the city were her natural habitat, and every time she went upside, into the daylight world, her eyes had to adjust. But she’d been aboveground most of the day, and by the time she descended once more into the Underground, she had to learn to adjust to the darkness all over again.

With the bag over her shoulder—the weight of the blade Terence so desired seeming to want to pull her deeper—she followed the tracks of an abandoned tunnel and descended farther. The geography of the underworld had become second nature to her now. Jazz moved as though on autopilot, her mind absorbed by her conversation with the gentleman thief, his blue eyes locked in her memory. She stepped through the hole Harry had found in a hastily bricked-up wall and then started down the corridor to the Palace.

On the other side of that broken wall, she found the bucket that Bill had set there with several torches inside. Jazz took one and clicked it on. The light seemed to be swallowed by the darkness. As she started down the arched corridor—its marble columns apparently put in place to make it somehow more acceptable a retreat from utter destruction for the royals, ministers, and members of Parliament who would have used it—she wondered if any of the others would have been positioned out here by Harry to wait for her.

Jazz faltered. She gripped the strap of the bag and swore under her breath. Flashing the light around, she tried to decide her next step. Part of her thought Terence a dangerous man and did not trust anything he’d said. But there were so many other things to consider. Her life had been nothing but a terrifying puzzle since her mother’s murder—a puzzle with a lot of missing pieces. Terence clearly had some of those pieces. Then there was the fundamental question of her future. Her mother had wanted her to hide forever, but there was more than one way to hide.

Her pulse raced with indecision. She didn’t want to deceive anyone, and she refused to betray the kindness of those who had given her a place to belong. But she had to think of herself.
No one is to be trusted,
her mother had told her so often.
And sometimes you can’t even trust yourself.
Jazz knew what she meant. Emotions could get in the way of the smart decisions.

She needed more time to think.

Slipping the bag from her shoulder, she glanced around. The torch picked out a square metal door, about three feet wide and waist high. The metal was rusted. Jazz went to investigate. She paused to listen for any sound that might indicate she was not alone in the corridor, but the only sounds were the rumble of a train above her head and the steady drip of water from somewhere nearby. Then the muffled sound of laughter reached her. It came from the Palace, but there were two doors and thirty feet of winding stairs separating her from the United Kingdom. For the moment, she was alone.

Shifting the torch to her left hand, she grabbed the handle on the rusted hatch and pulled. The door jerked. Rust sifted down. She tugged it again and it slid to one side. Jazz shone the torch into the hole and frowned. Searching with the light, it took her half a minute to realize what it was she was looking at. Though the pulleys must be just as rusted and any ropes rotted away by now, once upon a time this little three-foot-square box had been a lift of some kind, like a dumbwaiter in an old hotel. Whoever had built this retreat to keep bombs from raining down on the monarchy must have used the lift to bring down supplies and equipment. On the surface, it would have long since been covered over by something else. The mechanism was useless, but for the moment it would serve her well.

Unzipping her bag, she slid out the two framed photographs and put them inside the rusty metal box. The blade followed. She looked at it for several seconds, trying to make sense of the hole in the metal—big enough for her to slip her hand through—and the jagged teeth at the end of the thing. It might do someone a wicked bit of damage, but now that she studied it, the thing didn’t really seem like a dagger or sword at all, rather a part of something else, some other…
apparatus.

A screech of metal came from down the arched corridor.

Jazz thrust the blade into the old lift and slid the door closed as quietly as she could, pulse racing madly. She zipped the bag and put it over her shoulder, then pointed the torch down along the corridor in the direction of the sound—which had to have been the door that led to the spiral stairs down to the Palace.

“Nothing up my sleeve,” a voice whispered behind her.

She spun around just in time to see something tumble to the stone floor. Her torch caught it as it struck the ground—a top hat with a thick brim. It rolled in an arc along the stones. When it came to rest, something moved inside. Jazz held her breath. A tiny rabbit poked its face out from inside the hat, sniffing querulously at the rust-flaked air. The little creature emerged, paused a moment, then darted toward the wall, where it vanished.

Jazz’s throat felt dry. It had looked so real, not like a phantom at all. She crouched and reached for the brim of the top hat, but it faded out as her fingers passed through it.

She raised her torch and pointed it back into the darkness the way she’d come. The magician again. She had seen him more and more frequently, and he seemed to be growing more tangible somehow. Yet like the rest of the spirits of old London that lingered in the Underground, he had always been just an echo, never showing anything resembling awareness. So if he was a ghost, either a manifestation of the resonance that past events had left on the city or actually the spirit of a person who had once lived, why did he show up more than the other ghosts? The other specters haunted the Underground, but it had begun to feel as though the magician haunted
her.

A cough sounded from the direction of the Palace. Jazz swung her torch round.

“Who is it?” came a voice from along the corridor. The orange glow of a cigarette burned in the shadows. “Who’s there?”

She sounded afraid. Jazz couldn’t blame her after those men had discovered their previous shelter—after Cadge’s murder.

“It’s just me,” she said, hurrying toward the other girl, bag over her shoulder.

“Jazz?”

“Yeah.”

Then they were close enough to make out each other’s face in the illumination of the torchlight. Leela stood gaping at her, cigarette dangling from one hand. The girl’s exotic beauty transformed into a fool’s grin and she rushed to embrace Jazz.

“Fuck’s sake, girl. We’ve been worried sick. Harry’s out of his mind.” With a laugh Leela stood back and looked Jazz over. “None the worse for wear, are you? Let’s get you home, then.”

The girl tossed her cigarette down and ground it underfoot. She took Jazz by the hand and hurried her back to the metal door, and they descended the spiral staircase to the United Kingdom’s lair. When Leela opened the door at the bottom and they stepped out into the monarchy shelter, most of the others didn’t even look up. Hattie and Gob were playing cards on the floor. Switch, Bill, and Marco were eating big bowls of pasta with red sauce at a round table. Off to the right, near the shelves of books that were their mentor’s own personal library, Harry and Stevie were talking quietly, drinking from tumblers of whiskey.

“Harry,” Leela said.

“Back so soon?” Harry asked as he turned. Then he saw Jazz and his eyes lit up. “Well, now, my pets, didn’t I tell you she’d be back? Come in, Jazz girl! Come in!”

The others started calling her name. Bill remained silent, as always, but gave her a smile and a thumbs-up sign. Gob and Hattie jumped up and rushed toward her, but Harry beat them to her. The old man wrapped her in his arms. Jazz couldn’t help smiling, and she loved the musty scent of his clothes and the dash of cologne he sometimes used. His stubbly cheek scraped hers. Then Harry stepped back, holding her at arm’s length.

“Let me look at you! Still in one piece. Good. Good.”

“Glad to see you, Harry.”

“Glad to see me, she says!” he crowed, looking around at the others. “We were worried sick about her, weren’t we? I sent ’em all out looking for you, Jazz girl, but no sign of you at all. Even kept an eye on the police station myself, just in case they’d brought you in.”

Stevie drifted up behind Harry during this speech. He had his arms crossed, betraying no interest in hugging her, much to her dismay.

“I told him not to panic,” Stevie said. “You were off and running.”

Hattie came up beside Jazz and bumped shoulders with her. The girl wore a purple French beret, hair tucked underneath it, and smiled saucily at her. “Don’t listen to a word, Jazz. Our Mr. Sharpe was even more worried about you than Harry. Thought you’d been hurt or lost or fell down a hole or something. Jazz through the looking glass.”

“Well,” Stevie said, glancing awkwardly away before meeting her gaze again. “Had to come up with some reason for you to have been gone so long. What I said was, I knew you hadn’t been nicked. And the bloke with the bag who was chasing you, we slowed him down enough so he just gave up. Wanted to get out of there even quicker than us—hopped in a cab and was gone.”

Harry linked arms with Jazz and escorted her to the table. The others all gathered round as she sat down. The old man had seemed spry enough, but as he leaned on the back of a chair, she saw how much the injuries from his beating still pained him. His smile faltered but he did not let it vanish.

“What about that gent, love? I’m afraid when Stevie told me about the fellow, I couldn’t make any sense of it. You all saw the mark leave the house and set the alarm. Far as we know, nobody else lives there, so where did this mysterious man come from?”

Jazz fought to keep her smile on her face. Harry talked about the mark—about Uncle Mort—like the house was chosen at random. But from what Terence had said, and what Jazz herself had seen in that house, that was simply too much coincidence for her to swallow. One of the thugs the mayor had sent into the tunnels had been a BMW man who worked for the Uncles, and now one of the wealthy men they’d stolen from had been an Uncle, a man present at the murder of her mother.

The temptation to confront him with her questions that very moment was strong. But Jazz felt sure that Harry wouldn’t make it so simple. She had no doubt his concern for her was genuine, but there were many things she suspected he wasn’t telling her, and that troubled her.

“No idea who he was,” she said, putting on a mystified expression as she gazed around the gathered faces of the United Kingdom. “But he’s a thief too.”

She proceeded to tell the story of her break-in to Mortimer Keating’s house, including the moment the motion sensors clicked off and her flight from the premises upon being discovered by the house’s other intruder. But Jazz didn’t mention that Terence had caught up to her, and she told Harry she hadn’t even gotten a good look at the man’s face.

“He knew what he was doing,” she said. “Had these little hi-tech gadgets that he attached to the keypad for the alarm to keep it from going off.”

“What did he steal?” Gob asked.

Jazz shrugged. “No idea.”

“Who cares? The question is, what did Jazz take?” Leela said, blowing plumes of smoke from her nostrils. Harry didn’t like them smoking down here, but in the excitement, he didn’t seem to have noticed.

“Excellent question,” Harry said, eyeing the bag she’d set on the ground by her chair.

Jazz grinned and pulled the bag up onto her lap. Her pulse sped up again and she chided herself for being nervous. It wasn’t as if anyone could tell that she’d had anything else in the bag.

“First and most importantly, there’s this,” she said, pulling Hattie’s pink bonnet from the bag. Hattie squealed, grabbed the hat, and held it against her as though she were five years old and Jazz had just returned her favorite stuffed bear.

“Otherwise, not much, I’m afraid. Our mystery man was there almost immediately.” She reached into the bag and pulled out several silk ties, a quartet of antique books, a couple of rings, and the wedge of cash she’d found in Mortimer Keating’s sock drawer.

Marco reached for the money and Harry slapped his hand away. Picking it up, he counted silently, fanning the bills with the speed of a bank teller. Harry’s smile grew wide.

“Over two thousand here. Considering the circumstances, well done, Jazz.”

“Who keeps two thousand pounds in their sock drawer?” she asked.

Switch laughed. “Rich fucking bastards, that’s who.”

“Language,” Hattie snapped, and Switch looked properly chastened.

“There’s also this,” Jazz went on. From the bag she took a gold watch with diamonds set into the face. It sparkled in the dim light of the bunker.

“Now, that
is
lovely,” Harry said, nodding. “You keep that for yourself if you like, Jazz girl. No less than you deserve for your quick mind and fleet feet today.”

“I couldn’t,” she replied. “Besides, it wouldn’t fit me. You take it.”

Harry seemed overcome by the gesture, but she couldn’t tell if his reaction was genuine or merely theatrics. He clutched the watch to his chest, nodding, and then looked up at her.

“What I’d really like to know, lass, is where you’ve been all this time. We truly did fear for you.”