Death and the Dreadnought Page 21

  I had no idea what they were talking about, and wasn’t all that fussed in any case. Between international espionage, revolution, murder, and the incessant attempts to kill me, the moral judgements of individual policemen about my mis-spent life weren’t a large concern. Bunce was determined to elaborate. ‘Twice he almost got his hands on you, Delamere. Ready for the arrest. And twice he got knocked out in the confusion. Lot of confusion around you, Delamere. Not to worry, Sergeant: third time lucky, eh? Shouldn’t be too long now.’

  I looked at Quinn’s victim a little more closely. I wondered what he really thought of me, and whether over time he would remember more about his night in Jolly’s theatre. It seemed that keeping Sergeant Bulstrode apart from my valet would be prudent.

  Mercifully, a conductor slid open the door to our compartment.

  The voice was as gloomy as the face. ‘Thought it was going to be an elopement,’ he said. ‘It usually is.’ He looked without interest at four dusty men. ‘I s’pose not.’

  ‘Police business,’ Bunce said. ‘Let’s be away.’ The train was already moving hard. The thump-thump of steam belching from the locomotive came clear, and I could feel the acceleration pressing me against the seat.

  The conductor didn’t seem impressed. ‘About the revolutionaries, is it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lot of young fellows talking about revolution. In Carriage G.’

  He shook his head, indifferent. Raikes, I suspected, would be short one proletarian when the great day came.

  52.

  At Stafford, Bunce leapt from the train while it was still slowing, and ran for the station building. Halfway there he saw the conductor, diverted, and yelled something which clearly caused the conductor no joy. The Glasgow express was going to be a little less express today, and relations between the Railwaymen’s Union and the Metropolitan Police considerably less cordial. Bunce raced on into the telegraph office.

  The minutes passed, while the Glasgow express built up steam and her conductor did much the same. After five minutes, Bunce emerged from the telegraph office and strode, rather than ran, back to our compartment. Another northbound train was pulling in on the opposite platform.

  Our conductor contrived to get the train moving just as Bunce’s hand and foot reached for it, bringing the Inspector swaying and stumbling through the door and into his seat. Rather sporting by the lugubrious conductor, I thought. As I closed the door, trying not to shut Bunce’s foot in it too hard, I saw a couple running across the platform towards our train. Too far and too blurred for me to be sure; a man and a woman, certainly. The man got a door open in the very last carriage, and pulled the woman in after him.

  When Bunce had come upright and stopped swearing, I said: ‘Anything?’

  ‘Questions, not answers,’ he said, before he’d remembered that he didn’t like sharing information with me. He turned to Stackhouse. ‘Need you to tell me exactly what’s going to happen with this apparatus of yours, sir, when it joins our train at Crewe.’ Sir, you see? Bunce could tell a worthy taxpayer when he saw one. Chaps like Stackhouse – polite, obedient, working for influential ship-building companies – were just the sort of chaps that policemen liked to serve.

  ‘Of course Inspector. Yes, that’s rather sensible of you.’ Nauseating, it was. ‘At the factory, the fire-control table will have been packed in a special crate – to protect the mechanism. The crate is then loaded onto a standard railway goods wagon. The wagon is locked, and the guard has the key. A goods engine pulls the wagon out of the factory on the rail spur to the main line, and I gather it’s a short journey to Crewe. At Crewe the whole wagon is treated like any other goods car; it’s coupled to the end of whichever regular train is going in the right direction. In this case the Glasgow express. This is all worked out and agreed in advance with the railway dispatchers, of course. I’ve never been part of it myself, even when it’s coming to our yard in London, but it seems to run pretty smoothly.’

  Bunce was nodding like a connoisseur of the railway freight business. ‘Right you are, sir. Well, we’ll try to keep it smooth today. We’re expecting the trouble in Glasgow, of course. But one step at a time, eh?’

  I stood, and slid open the compartment door.

  ‘Going somewhere, Delamere?’

  ‘Obviously, Inspector. I could piss out of the window, but I’m pretty sure there’s a by-law against it, and at sixty miles to the hour the wind makes it a little tricky.’

  My destination was the last carriage, but to get to it I had to pass the conductor’s revolutionaries in Carriage G. I wasn’t particularly worried: whether they were part of Raikes’s legion of dreamers or the narrower sub-set of Hertenstein’s thugs – or indeed some new outing of local enthusiasts – I doubted they’d want to be diverted from their respective causes of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and stealing British secret technology by starting a fight with me. But either way, I didn’t want complications, not at this point. And I was something of a celebrity among the radical movement, of course; got the photograph to prove it.

  One complication I particularly wanted to avoid at this point was Hertenstein. If he was to be involved in some attempt on the fire-control table at Glasgow, he might well travel up on this train. His gang would presumably stay among the group of international radical tourists for as long as possible. He seemed a chap who was willing to dirty his hands. Hand, anyway, now I’d blown a hole in one of his arms. If I suddenly hove into view outside his compartment window, I couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t go for me just for the hell of the thing. Nor, indeed, that I wouldn’t go for him.

  I swayed onwards from Coach E towards the back of the train. I found a newspaper in a luggage rack on the way, and had it part-shielding my face as I stepped through the jolting doorway from F into G.

  It was the same arrangement as all the other coaches, the type that’s been around for a few years now, with a corridor down one side and half a dozen compartments opening off it. As the conductor had suggested, Coach G was the radical jamboree wagon. Each compartment was full and more with my comrades from Birmingham. The same diversity of clothes and accents, the same holiday atmosphere. If I have one hope for my fellow man, as he contemplates upturning all Europe, it is that he seems fairly easily distracted by a free lunch and a day out. Some of the compartment doors were open, and the corridor was full of cigarette smoke and chatter.

  I got the impression they were in different national groups for each compartment. Garlic and weak cigarettes in one, no doubt, then comic opera, then sausage and philosophy, and then whatever it is that distinguishes Belgians. All very jolly.

  Until the last compartment in the carriage.

  The door to the last compartment was closed, and the curtains were half drawn. No suggestion of boisterousness; no sound. From behind my paper, and between the curtains, I could see half a dozen men sitting orderly and silent. In that brief glance, they seemed solid and intent. The same physical presence, the same certainty, as the two killers who’d come for me in Shulstoke wood. I couldn’t see the man himself. But I knew, instinctively, that these men were Hertenstein’s.

  53.

  In the last carriage, I found what I’d expected to find.

  ‘Cheap tickets today, is it?’ I said. ‘Fancied a trip to the seaside?’

  Quinn stood, and grumbled a courtesy. Bliss smiled up brightly. She was still looking a little flushed from her sprint across the platform, and terribly pleased with herself.

  I sat, and Quinn followed. ‘What in hell do you think you’re playing at?’ I was deliberately not looking at Bliss, but I could tell her expression had changed.

  Quinn’s voice dropped from grumble to growl. ‘It, er, wasn’t appropriate to leave the lady alone sir.’ Meaning she’d fluttered her eyes at him and begged to come. ‘Thought it best to catch up with you sir. Able to lend a hand.’

  ‘Charming idea, Quinn. But getting yourselves killed ain’t lending a hand.’ They were a liability – Bliss in pa
rticular. I wanted to keep her clear of the official party, and preferably alive. I’d also had the rough idea of staying alive myself and perhaps stopping a war; having to worry about the relative movements of Bliss, and Bunce, and the party of revolutionaries, on one single-corridor train was going to make that harder. I turned to her, and I didn’t hide my irritation. ‘Annabella, charmed as I am and so forth, please believe that you can’t help and you can only complicate, and you’re at great risk. Yesterday, three men tried to kill me. I shot one of them. I didn’t kill the other two, but I did have to interfere with their dead bodies in order to disguise who did. The game is getting more unpleasant, and more dangerous.’

  It was supposed to intimidate her. She just glared at me. ‘I run my own risks, Harry Delamere,’ she said, very haughty. ‘And I do as I see fit without consulting you.’

  ‘My compliments’, I said. ‘Stay here. Keep the curtains drawn on the compartment, and the door locked. Only open up if you’re sure it’s me – or I suppose the conductor. Do not, under any circumstances, wander around.’

  Bliss looked out of the window.

  In the doorway, Quinn murmured ‘sorry about this, sir. But she–’

  ‘I know, I know. She’s best with you, anyway. With your life, you hear?’ He nodded. ‘Glad you’re around, Quinn.’

  He produced what passes for the Quinn smile. ‘Looks like it might be another lively day, sir,’ he said. And from unknown pockets he produced and handed over the Webley, and a packet of sandwiches.

  54.

  At Crewe the train stopped for ten minutes. This was part of its regular schedule, and today it gave time for the extra wagon with the fire-control table to be added.

  Bunce dashed off to the telegraph office. He’d be expecting answers to questions he’d asked at previous stations, and sending more. Efficient, as pestilences go. Quite a few passengers took the chance to stretch their legs, and I joined them.

  Stackhouse walked off towards the back of the train to watch the extra wagon being shunted in. As Bunce had said, the trouble was due in Glasgow. But Stackhouse was incapable of anything less than professional care.

  The philosophers of Carriage G were quick off, chattering happily. Crewe railway station’s an impressive place, if you’re interested in the lot of the working man. Not one of the fine architectural specimens: a sprawl of brick and iron and wood and wire built and run in the service of the industrial age. The group arranged themselves for a portrait photograph against a locomotive on the adjacent platform. This time I wasn’t invited to join them.

  The photographer was just preparing to make the exposure, when I heard what sounded like a shot. It came from the direction of the front of our train.

  There was so much noise: the constant belching of steam, the thumping as it was forced through pistons, and the screaming of whistles, and the shouted instructions.

  And then another shot, surely. And a scream.

  I still wasn’t certain. I made for the front of the train anyway.

  At the locomotive I found Bunce, shouting up to the driver. ‘You hear that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shots, maybe!’

  The driver shrugged. His fireman, comically short beside him, shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ the driver said. ‘Over there maybe.’ He pointed.

  I followed Bunce between the back of the locomotive and its tender, stepping over the tracks and ducking under the coupling. It’s all much bigger when you’re close up. On the next platform we found a uniformed railway man, gazing around confused. He also shrugged at us. He also had heard something. There was no sign of the something.

  I dislike running around to no purpose. I dislike the impression that I’m getting jumpy.

  Back on our platform, another uniform was trying to comfort a shaken woman. She was fighting tears, fighting for breath. This was Bunce’s element, and he was quickly engaged. A masked man, she said. Two masked men, perhaps. What exactly? Where exactly? It was difficult to say. What exactly had she seen? It was difficult to say. A mask? Well, she hadn’t seen all of his face…

  Bunce looked angry; frustrated. He looked at me, presumably wondering if this also was somehow my fault. I said: ‘Perhaps she broke into the Thames Ironworks shipyard, too.’

  He didn’t find it funny. Nor did I. We were both edgy, both confused. Chasing shadows.

  The whistle shrieked from our train. The conductor yelled something. Bunce knew he’d get nothing more from the woman, and we hurried back.

  We met Stackhouse, at the door to our compartment. ‘All right?’ I said.

  He nodded, stability restored. ‘Coupled up now.’

  Another whistle, and we boarded.

  We’d passed Warrington – wherever on earth that is – when there was a knock on the compartment door.

  It was Quinn.

  I wasn’t all that pleased to see him – I’d hoped to keep him away from the official party, as I’d said – and Inspector Bunce certainly wasn’t. ‘Where the hell did you spring from, my lad?’

  Quinn has a strong and subtle sense of the hierarchy of things, and I don’t think it includes policemen talking to him like that. Particularly not policemen who’d spent a day or two messing up his domestic order. ‘A scheduled service on the spur line from Birmingham to Stafford,’ he said stiffly. ‘No doubt you were aware of the possibility.’

  ‘This is Sergeant Bulstrode, Quinn,’ I said quickly, pointing to same. ‘Quite the warrior for the cause, eh sergeant?’ The sergeant grunted complacently, and nodded at Quinn. ‘You’ll not believe it, Quinn, but the sergeant was knocked out twice in one evening, on the track of these villains.’

  Quinn considered the Sergeant. ‘Now I call that low,’ he said at last. ‘Assaulting an officer doing his lawful duty.’ It was shameless. The sergeant started to say something sturdy and fake-humble, and Bunce started on who the real villains might be, but Quinn wasn’t finished. ‘I wonder if I could invite you into the corridor, sir,’ he said to me. ‘There’s a… a particular view hereabouts that my cousin Gerald insists is worth looking out for.’

  I followed him out of the compartment. ‘Gerald?’ I said. ‘Always the danger of over-elaboration, Quinn. And you’d better watch yourself around that sergeant.’

  Quinn glanced dismissively back towards the compartment. ‘Devon accent, sir, I fancy. Nothing to worry about in that head. Next time I’ll hit him properly.’

  ‘Well?’

  He checked that we couldn’t be heard from the compartment. ‘Your hefty German acquaintance, sir. Thought you should know: Miss Bliss says he’s on the train.’

  It wasn’t a shock or even a surprise.

  ‘Is he now?’ My mental sketch of the mechanisms of European chaos was becoming a little complex. ‘Wait – how in hell does she know? Telepathy? Lucky guess?’

  ‘She insisted on going to the lavatory, sir, and–’

  ‘Oh, Christ. Disguised as a…?’

  ‘I convinced her that a veil was enough. She’s… wilful, sir.’

  ‘She’s a pain in the arse.’

  ‘If we will involve the ladies in our activities, sir…’

  ‘She more or less saved my life, Quinn. And she looks damned fine in a burgundy corset.’

  ‘That’s a lot of detail, sir. Perhaps next time just a courteous word of appreciation, or flowers.’

  ‘Alright, alright. Did Von Hahn see Bliss?’

  ‘No, sir. She was definite on that point.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. She was dressed as a station porter by this point, of course, or a rhododendron bush.’ I reflected. ‘Very well. Back you go and keep an eye on her. I’d like to keep you in tactical reserve, Quinn. Behind the kopje, where the enemy can’t see you, yes?’

  ‘Aye, sir. You worried about him?’

  ‘Well, I’m more worried by the revolutionaries on the train. And the revolutionaries not on the train, the Metropolitan Police, and indeed the conductor. But he’s on my list, yes.’ I considered. ‘He’s surely n
ot going to be doing any dirty work himself. So why is he on the train?’

  55.

  As we pulled in to Wigan, where the branch lines come in from Liverpool and Manchester, half a dozen policemen were waiting on the platform. I assumed this was the fruit of one of Bunce’s earlier telegrams. He sent one of them forward, just in case there was any trouble at the locomotive. One he kept with him as a runner. Two went to lurk around coach G, to keep an eye on the radicals. What they were supposed to do there wasn’t clear, beyond cautioning the tourists for being foreign without due care and attention. And two he sent as far back as they could go – coach H that would be, where Quinn and Bliss were, just before the luggage wagon and the special wagon.

  As usual, when Bunce stopped trying to think, he was impressive. There wasn’t anything more that could be done to protect the fire-control table, solitary in the last wagon. And trouble if any wasn’t expected until Glasgow docks. But Bunce had gathered what forces he could and deployed them as best he could.

  One of his policemen had also brought an update on Bunce’s preparations. ‘All lining up nicely in Glasgow,’ he said to Stackhouse. ‘It’ll all be ready for us, sir.’ He waved a telegraph form like his winning ace. ‘Special measures, as I requested.’ He looked down proudly at the paper. ‘Glasgow police and detectives will meet you on arrival Greenock Docks Stop. Known radicals watched Stop. Military standing by Stop.’ Each ‘Stop’ was proof of the brisk efficiency of the British constabulary, and treated accordingly. ‘Regular movements at yard suspended Stop.’ He looked up. Stackhouse was nodding polite approval. ‘Not sure we’ll need the Army in this. Not ideal. Upsets the civilians. Anyways, we’ll be ready in case anyone does try anything against your apparatus.’