TimeRiders: City of Shadows (Book 6) (29 page)

As they watched, on the far side of the busy
street the thick oak doors of one of the archways swung open and several men worked
together, rolling casks of beer out, across the pavement and on to a flat-backed
cart.

Liam craned his neck to get a better look
through the open doors to the interior beyond. He could see archways and alcoves, all
seemingly stuffed with barrels, crates and boxes of all different sizes.

‘Let’s go over and get a better
look,’ he said. They crossed Farringdon Street, dodging and ducking between
horse-drawn vehicles that showed no intention of stopping or slowing for them.

Closer, Liam watched the three men working
quickly,
furtively
even, as they loaded the cart up. ‘Stay here,’
he said then made a show of looking casual, whistling tunelessly as he strolled past the
wide-open oak doors. He paused. Ducked down on to one knee and made as if he had a
bootlace that
needed tying up, all the while craning his neck to see
through the open doors, getting a glimpse of the receding maze of archways and alcoves
inside.

‘Hoy!’

He turned to find one of the men standing
over him.

‘Hoy there! You get enough of a look
inside, did ya?’

‘I … was, I’m
just …’ Liam stood up.

‘Pokin’ ya nose in where
it’s likely to get broken!’ A thought suddenly occurred to the man and he
grabbed Liam’s arm roughly. ‘You a snitch for them bluebottles? Is that it?
For the bleedin’ coppers?’

The man was short and tubby, with owlish bug
eyes that bulged beneath wiry brows. Liam found himself looking down at him. He
suspected the little chap was actually tougher than he looked – that or he was all
bluster.

‘What? No!
I’m … just … I’m …’

‘Cos I’ll get me lad, Bertie, to
shank you good if you –’

‘Actually,’ replied Liam,
‘I’m looking for business premises.’

‘Business premises? Likely
story!’

The stocky man turned to look at Rashim
approaching to help Liam out. He did an almost comical double-take at Rashim’s
dark skin. ‘Good God!’ he blurted. ‘You with this lad?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course I am.’

Rashim’s carefully enunciated,
alien-sounding English seemed to impress, or perhaps intimidate, the stocky man. He
cocked his head as if flexing a stiff neck. ‘Well, all right, then.’

The man released his grip on Liam’s
arm. ‘He your boy?’

Rashim’s eyes met Liam’s and he
struggled to stifle an amused smile. ‘No, not really.’

‘I’m not anyone’s
boy,’ sniffed Liam indignantly. ‘We’re uh … we’re
business partners, so we are.’

The stocky man pulled a face.
‘Business partners, is it?’

‘Uh … yes, he’s quite
right,’ said Rashim.

‘We want to rent one of
these … archway places.’ Liam glanced at the open doorway. The other two
men had finished loading the last cask on to the cart and one of them climbed up on to
the running board and coaxed the horses to life. Their hooves clattered on stone and the
wagon pulled away.

‘You seem to have a lot of space
inside there,’ said Liam. ‘Could we rent a bit?’

‘Well, what I got inside ain’t
none of your beeswax, lad!’

Bob emerged out of the gloom. ‘Are you
OK, Liam?’ he asked, striding towards the stocky man. His voice reverberated
beneath the iron and stone viaduct. A deep boom that made heads on the other side of
Farringdon Street turn their way. A lamb shank of a hand reached out and grabbed one of
the man’s upper arms in a vice-like grip. The stocky man’s bulging eyes
widened still further. He looked like a tree frog in a waistcoat.

‘Oh, I’m all right, Bob.’
Liam grinned at the man. ‘There’s no harm done.’

‘Bertie!’ the man gulped,
alarmed at the giant looming over him. ‘
Bertie!
Get over here and
help me
!’

His colleague, ‘Bertie’, took
one look at Bob and then backed up several steps into the gloom.

‘Can we not just have a little
talk?’ asked Liam. ‘If you’ve got a spare room somewhere in there? Or
perhaps you know of anybody else who does? That’s all.’

‘We have money,’ added Rashim.
‘We could pay a very generous rent.’

The man gulped, looking more like a toad
than a frog now. ‘Generous rent, eh?’

‘Aye,’ said Liam. ‘Bob?
Why don’t you let this nice gentleman’s arm go before you crush it to a
pulp?’

‘As you wish.’ Bob loosened his
grip and the man snatched his arm free, flexed his neck again and straightened his
ruffled waistcoat indignantly.

‘Well.’ His bug eyes remained
warily on Bob. ‘I suppose a little talk won’t hurt no one.’

1 December 1888, Holborn Viaduct,
London

They stepped inside, through the double oak
doors, and the tall young man called Bertie pulled them closed. He was wiry-thin with
short dark hair parted on the side, long sideburns and a pitifully wispy attempt at a
walrus moustache.

There was a glare on the face of his short,
frog-like boss: a stern look at his young assistant very much along the lines of
we’re going to have a little talk later on, you and I.

Liam looked around. In one way it was very
much like the home they’d left behind in Brooklyn: an arched ceiling of dark red
bricks. But this archway was stuffed with stacks of wooden packing crates and casks of
whisky and liquors, barrels of beer, bottles of wine, sacks of mysterious goods, even a
rack of army-surplus rifles and small foil-sealed boxes of ammunition.

Off this main archway, through walkways
between mountains of boxes, he could see other archways and alcoves receding into the
gloom. It looked almost labyrinthine. An Aladdin’s cave.

The rotund little man sat down at a small
round table in the middle of his ‘warehouse’. A gas lamp glowed in the
middle of it. He cut a small wedge of cheese from a block the size of a shoebox.

‘So you mentioned a
generous
rent, eh?’

Liam sat down opposite him. ‘If
you’ve got an archway spare
somewhere among all this,’ he
said, gesturing at the receding gloom. ‘Then, yes, we can pay.’

‘Oh, there’s plenty more of this
maze beneath the viaduct available for tenants.’ He chewed energetically on his
cheese, looking casually up at the low ceiling. ‘If you know the right bloke to
talk to.’

‘And you’re that right bloke, I
suppose.’

He shrugged. ‘That’s what they
say around this manor.’

Liam offered his hand across the table.
‘The name’s Liam O’Connor.’

The man eyed it warily for the moment,
finishing his mouthful of cheese, then wiped his hand on his sleeve and shook with Liam.
‘Delbert Hook. Imports and exports is m’business.’

Liam looked around him and wondered how much
of the stuff in here was strictly legitimate business. And how much of it had
‘fallen off the back of a wagon’. There’d been a somewhat suspicious
haste in the way Mr Hook and his assistant had been loading up the wagon.

‘The lanky drip standing over there by
the door is my assistant, Bertie.’

The young man stepped forward. Offered his
hand tentatively to Liam. ‘It’s
Herbert
actually. Pleased to meet
you.’

‘Bertie’s what I calls
him,’ said Delbert. ‘He’s brighter than he looks.’

‘Actually, I have a part-time job
teaching mathematics,’ replied Herbert. ‘I do Del’s accounts for him
on weekdays and –’

‘
Mr Hook
to you, lad!’
He glared. Although his expression quickly softened. ‘Or
Hooky. Or,
if
I’m very, very drunk … then, and only then, you can call me
Del.’

Liam suspected there was something of a bond
between the two men, despite the mutual glaring.

‘And these other two?’
Delbert’s gaze rested on Bob. ‘Who’s this giant?’

‘That’s Bob, and this
fella’s my good friend Dr Rashim Anwar.’

Delbert pursed his lips appreciatively at
Rashim. ‘Doctor? A physician is it, eh?’

‘Not that kind of a doctor, I’m
afraid.’

‘Oh?’ Delbert sounded
disappointed. ‘Anyway.’ He cut another hunk of cheese. Liam noticed he
wasn’t offering any around. ‘For the right price and so long as you can
convince me you ain’t snipes working for the police … I might be able to
find you your very own archway.’

‘We need privacy,’ said
Rashim.

Delbert looked at him. ‘Well, of
course. What decent businessman don’t?’

‘There’s a power generator
located somewhere under this viaduct,’ said Rashim. ‘Isn’t
there?’

Delbert nodded at Rashim. ‘Oh, you
mean the Bell Electrical Voltaic Generation Machine! Yes, indeed. The first of its size
in the world, so they says. There was a big parade and marching bands an’ the like
here five or six years ago when they switched the ruddy thing on. Damn noisy it is too!
Sounds like a bloomin’ locomotive comin’ through the walls. You might want
one of the archways well away from the ruddy thing if you don’t want to listen to
it boomin’ away all day an’ all night!’

‘No,’ cut in Liam. ‘Close
to that’s fine for us, so it is.’

‘Close to it?’ One of
Delbert’s bushy eyebrows rose suspiciously. ‘You actually
want
the
noise, do you?’

Liam shrugged. ‘It won’t be a
problem for us.’

‘Hmm …’ Delbert stroked his
bottom lip, both bushy brows lowered, almost a scowl. ‘You gonna tell me what yer
business is?’

‘It’s private,’ said
Liam.

‘
Private
covers a multitude
of sins, lad. I may not be entirely above the board here, but there’s some things
I won’t be a party to. You understand what I’m sayin’?’

Liam figured he might have to feed the man a
titbit of information. Just enough to satisfy his beady-eyed curiosity.

‘Science experiments.’ He nodded
at Rashim. ‘Dr Anwar here is something of a … a scientist.’

‘Science, is it?’ That seemed to
appeal to Delbert. ‘What are yer … some sort of inventor?’

‘I … err …’ He
looked at Liam. Liam nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose. Yes, an inventor.’

‘Good Lord!’ said Herbert.
‘Might I ask what kind of things you invent?’ He looked eager. ‘See, I
also have quite an interest in the sciences, sir.’

‘Not now, Bertie!’ Delbert sat
back in his chair and wiped his hands and finished his mouthful of cheese as he gave his
visitors some silent consideration.

‘All right, then. I’ll show you
what I got. Then you and me, lad … we’re gonna need to talk about the
money.’

Delbert got up, reached for the lamp’s
brass handle, lifted it off the table and waved for them to follow him. He led them down
through a tight squeeze between packing crates, along a narrow tunnel, low enough that
Bob had to stoop down to enter it.

They turned a corner to see by the dim glow
of Delbert’s lamp an archway almost as large as Delbert’s main one. Along
the left-hand wall were a few stacks of goods. Along the wall opposite were three evenly
spaced alcoves.

‘The one on the left leads directly
out on to Farringdon Street. I don’t use it myself, but I got keys to it. You can
use that access, just so long as you’re mindful to lock it secure at night. That
way you don’t need to be disturbing my business all the
time.
The middle one’s a small storage room. I don’t use it. The right one is the
one you can have.’

He walked over towards that alcove. It
receded further along than it first appeared to. Ten feet, a low, narrow tunnel. At the
end a small arched oak door with a thick padlock on it. Delbert fumbled in his trouser
pocket and pulled out a jangling keyring.

‘I’ll give you this key, of
course,’ he said as he picked out the keyhole and inserted the key.

‘That is the only copy of the
key?’ asked Rashim.

Delbert made a face. ‘Of course! Of
course!’

The lock clanked loudly and the thick door
creaked inwards. Liam heard it almost immediately – the muted sound of something not so
far away throbbing deeply. He glanced at Rashim who smiled back approvingly.

The generator’s close by.
Perfect.

‘Here we are,’ said Delbert,
stepping inside. He raised the lamp in his hand and shadows danced around the empty
space as they filed in behind him. Above the throb – more of a vibration sensed through
the brick walls and the floor than it was a sound – they heard the faint squeak of rats
scuttling for the safety of a dark corner.

The girls will just love the idea of
that.

‘I don’t believe yer goin’
to get any more private a place than this, gents!’ Delbert’s voice rang off
the bricks, an almost endless echo that seemed to take an eternity to finally fade to
nothing. He picked up a thick candle sitting on the floor amid its own solid nest of
melted wax and lit it.

With the extra flickering light, Liam took
in more details of their surroundings. It was about a third smaller than their archway
under the Williamsburg Bridge. And no other rooms off this space. This was it. A
rectangle of stone-slab floor, about twelve yards by six, encased by a low curving
ceiling of bricks.
Almost a dungeon … if you let yourself
think about it that way. Or like a large cabin aboard some vessel. Liam suspected that
the ever-present pulsing throb would eventually be no more a distraction after a while
than the engine of an ocean liner.

‘This would be an appropriate
location,’ rumbled Bob finally.

And we can make it like home,
can’t we?

The other place had been just as spartan and
grim as this. But they’d managed to make it comfortable. Make it theirs.

‘All right, Mr Hook,’ said Liam.
‘I think you have yourself some tenants.’

Delbert slapped him amicably on the back.
‘Oh, come now, to hell with this Mister Hook nonsense! Call me
Hooky
, or
Del
if you want, young man.’

He turned to face Liam with a mock-serious
glint in his eye. ‘But not
Delboy
. Right? I draw the line at that!’
He flexed his neck and tugged down on his waistcoat, a subconscious tic of his, so it
seemed. ‘The last cheeky plonker called me that ended up with a big fat lip.
Didn’t he, Bertie?’