The Thieves' Labyrinth (Albert Newsome 3) (20 page)

‘Perhaps. Did you notice anything strange about the man’s appearance?’

‘He had lost his hat out on the bridge, I suppose. And he was covered in blood.’

‘Was his clothing in any disarray? More so than would be expected from his hectic path to this toll-house? Were all of his buttons fastened? Were his garments torn at all?’

‘No . . . I cannot recall anything like that . . .’

‘Hmm. You are being most helpful, Mr Weeton.’

‘Really? Mr Batchem seemed quite unimpressed with my account. He even asked me if I had gone through the dead man’s pockets. Can you imagine?’

‘Did he indeed?’ Mr Williamson added the note into his book and underlined it. ‘There is one more question. Eldritch Batchem claims to have found a number of items upon the
bridge, notably an earring in a recess. Is such a thing common in your experience?’

‘Quite so. I told Mr Batchem as much. This cupboard here is full of such things.’

‘May I see?’

‘Of course. We have some most interesting oddities.’

Mr Weeton took a ring of keys from a hook on the wall and unlocked the cupboard door. He looked inside, choosing among the items there, and began to select some for Mr Williamson’s
interest, placing them on a tabletop for viewing. Each had a small paper tag appended with string, describing when and approximately where on the bridge it had been found. Coins were in tiny
envelopes marked with the same information.

‘It is mostly keys, jewellery and coins, sir. Anything smaller than a sovereign we give to the orphan home, but we also get some surprises. What do you think?’

Mr Williamson stood and looked at the things on the table. There was one very fine diamond ring that must have been worth many hundreds of pounds; a piece of dark wood carved into an obscene
tableau of Leda and the swan; a lethal-looking dagger with an ornamental handle in the Turkish style; a pistol with a stubby wooden grip; a moisture-curled book:
Dr Stuart’s Anatomy of the
Heart . . .

‘Does anybody return to claim such items?’ said Mr Williamson. ‘The ring alone is not something one would lose without searching the entire city.’

‘Sir, I am not an educated man, but I see my share of humanity upon this span and I have learned that people are strange. I imagine that each of these items has a story all of its own
– a story dark enough to warrant its loss (or at least its remaining lost) being of benefit to somebody. Do you, a detective, not wonder at such stories yourself?’

‘Hmm. Stories are often lies in my experience. What is this item here?’

Mr Weeton took the object between thumb and forefinger and held it up for a clearer view. ‘Ah, it is perhaps our oddest piece in the collection, sir. I am surprised you have not read about
it before. Look closely and you will see what it is.’

Mr Williamson moved in to scrutinize the curled brown specimen. It might have been a piece of wood or a twist of animal gristle, but the ridged and opaquely yellow flake at its end told a
different tale. ‘Am I looking at a human finger?’ he said.

‘Indeed, sir. That’s exactly what it is. See the nail there . . . the joint, and the nub of bone at the end?’

‘And it was found here on the bridge?’

‘All items are found items, sir. The date on the tag says it was logged a year ago. I am told that, when found, it was quite fresh and pink with life, but time has withered it into this
rather sorry object. It caused a stir at the time. The Bridge Company even took out an advertisement in
the Times
. . . in fact, I believe there is a copy of it in the cupboard.’

Mr Weeteon went again to the cupboard and withdrew a curled and faded scrap of newspaper, which he handed to Mr Williamson:

‘A curious item to be sure,’ said Mr Weeton. ‘Nobody came forward – or rather, none of the pranksters who did so were missing a finger. I often wonder, though: was it
severed on the bridge? Was it dropped by a passing gull? Was it carried in a pocket? It is a delicious mystery, is it not?’

‘Quite. I thank you for your time, Mr Weeton. You have been most helpful.’

‘A pleasure, sir.’

Mr Williamson returned his notebook to its pocket, put on his hat, nodded a goodbye and stepped out once again into the flow of people, leaving his interrogatee with the odd impression that he
had said far more than he himself knew.

Below the bridge seemed almost as busy as the span itself. Churned and furrowed by ceaseless ferries, the river slapped at muddy brickwork, sucked at timber pilings and gurgled
among the dozens of natural recesses. Steam whooshed from boilers and the choking black smoke of funnels washed back and forth through the huge arches to sting the eyes of waiting passengers.

Mr Williamson looked among the crowds and saw what he was looking for: a waterman smoking a long-stemmed clay pipe at his station by the stairs. The fellow seemed an unusual specimen of his kind
in that he was not haranguing passengers in a semi-threatening tone to take a trip in his wherry. Rather, he simply observed the bustle about him with a good-natured smile.

‘Good day to you’, said Mr Williamson to the waterman. ‘I would like to ask you a few questions if you have a moment.’

The waterman, pipe still in his teeth, looked his addresser up and down. ‘You are a policeman?’

‘Of a sort. Were you at your station on the night of the suicide six nights ago?’

‘You are fortunate, sir. I would normally not be here at that early hour, but I was returning from an evening of leisure early that morning and stepped down here to inspect the
water.’

‘To “inspect the water”? I am afraid I do not . . .’

‘You may have heard of me, sir, for I have a certain renown along this shore. No other man has pulled as many suicides from the river as I. Twenty to this day. I find that I have an odd
aptitude for seeing them where others see only a log or other flotsam. So, I came down just to have a look.’

‘It was very foggy that morning was it not?’

‘It was indeed. So much so that I saw nothing and made my way home. I suppose it was about the time of the death according to the accounts in the newspapers, but as you say . . . the fog
was as thick as I’ve seen it.’

‘Tell me – in your experience on the river, would it be possible for a man to stand on a boat below the arches there and throw up an iron to the parapet? Then could that man climb
up, later returning the same way?’

‘Ha ha! What you describe is quite fantastical!’

‘But is it possible? I accept that such a feat would be difficult.’

The waterman chewed his pipe and rubbed his chin. ‘Well, it certainly would be difficult. There is the tides, the darkness, the fog. I dare say there are seamen who can climb a knotted
rope to that height, but throwing it is a different matter . . .’

‘Hmm. You are a fellow of the river. Were you to perform the task yourself, what materials would you need?’

‘A puzzle, eh? Let me see . . . well, I suppose I would use a dredger’s boat: they are very stable vessels. And while I was at it, I might get myself a dredger also – those
lads who haul the gravel by hand have arms of iron. If not one of those, then a whaler’s harpooner; there are sometimes a handful of those about the docks. Then I would need two men to row
and one to climb. Yes – that might do it: four men and the vessel.’

Mr Williamson added the information to his notebook. ‘You are quite sure you saw or heard nothing on that morning?’

‘Sir – it was foggy, dark, and I was drunk.’

‘Very well. I thank you.’

Mr Williamson was about to ascend the stairs to the bridge when something caught his eye. Two men wearing unusual coats and hats with wide soft brims were engaged in an odd activity further
along the shore. Using long hoes, they were attempting to gather some object from the river’s surface.

‘Toshers,’ said the waterman, perceiving Mr Williamson’s interest. ‘Sewer-hunters – they are waiting for low tide and will enter the sewer mouths hereabouts in
search of their treasure.’

Mr Williamson walked past the ferry platform to where the two men had now managed to hook their object ashore. He was about to ask them if they had seen or heard anything that night when he saw
what the object was.

A long, rectangular board with scrollwork at its corners, it was badly charred all over. Still, as the ‘toshers’ turned it over to confirm that it was indeed the nameplate of a large
vessel, some vestigial letters could be partially discerned – a blackened and fire-eroded conglomeration of vowels to momentarily pause Mr Williamson’s heart:

Au - - - a

Noah Dyson had received the article in
the London Monitor
with no less consternation than had Mr Williamson. If nothing else, it meant that Benjamin’s visibility
about the city had been significantly increased now that people were looking out for a tall ‘Cyclopean’ Negro dressed in fine clothes.

Unlike Mr Williamson, however, Noah felt no humiliation. Rather, two questions plagued him: how did Eldritch Batchem come to know the things he knew? And how best could one respond to this man
who used such underhand tactics to unsettle his competitors? It was an unworthy play of the sort that even Inspector Newsome would not have countenanced.

Nevertheless, an opponent reveals more than they wish when they overplay their hand, and the nature of the inadvertent intelligence contained in that article was of use to Noah. It alluded, for
example, to the escape from Giltspur-street gaol that had occurred some months previously when Noah had been aiding Mr Williamson on a case. Necessarily, that event – which had ostensibly led
to the latter’s dismissal from the Detective Force – was known only to a very few: the warders of the gaol and some senior policemen. True, constables are notoriously indiscreet
gossips, but it seemed unlikely that Sir Richard’s men would have discussed it abroad, or that the gaolers would have been permitted to speak freely on the matter. Could it be that with all
of his lofty ‘private investigation’ among wealthy lawyers and bankers, Eldritch Batchem had somehow sniffed out the rumour?

Then there was the fact of Noah’s initials – perhaps the most concerning matter of all. His own neighbours did not know his real name, and his business contacts knew him only by a
variety of monikers. Even among the police, only a handful had any reason to know his true identity, though that selection did, admittedly, include Inspector Newsome, who cared little for the
anonymity of his one-time nemesis. Indeed, the only positive element in that otherwise worrying exposure of truth was that no mention had been made of Benjamin’s name. One would assume that
to know one name was to know the other, but the omission may have been pure oversight. The overall assumption seemed unavoidable: Noah – and most probably his co-investigators – was
being closely followed.

A skilled pursuer might, for example, easily have stood within earshot and heard Noah’s name being used by another. That they had not yet heard Ben’s was of the purest coincidence.
Such an explanation would also account for the connection with the cargo at Limehouse: somebody had simply followed Noah there, and thence to any number of clubs or private residences that
purchased the high-quality refined opium for their own medicinal or sybaritic requirements.

If this in turn were the case, two attendant questions presented themselves. One: Noah had not visited his warehouse for some weeks past on account of waiting for a fresh shipment to arrive
– in fact, since before the case of the
Aurora
was known to any of them. And two:
nobody
followed Noah Dyson without him knowing about it. A child of the city streets and of the
crowd, a needfully suspicious man, and a man of constant readiness for danger, he was intuitively cautious and observant. It would take a true master, a veritable artist of pursuit, to shadow one
such as Noah.

The Italian?

Had the man not invisibly followed the usually very perceptive Mr Williamson without being seen? Had he not also been audacious enough to make a lift in plain sight of the detective? Here was a
man with skills not to be underestimated. Eldritch Batchem, for all of his other faults, was to be congratulated on finding and employing such a fellow. But who might he be?

Noah himself usually had the benefit of much privileged intelligence. Through the gentlemen’s clubs, through politicians, and through his more dubious activities about the city, he knew
much of what happened beneath the veneer of news headlines and common knowledge. He had a ‘criminal’s map’ of the city in his mind that no cartographer would dare print (the
vantage points of pickpockets, the hunting grounds of prostitutes, the rooftop routes of cracksmen) and he had a mental index of most notable beggars, hoaxers, robbers, dissimulators and receivers
– but this Italian was truly an unknown specimen.