Death and the Dreadnought Page 22

  He moved on to the next telegram. ‘Hel-lo…’ he said hungrily. Clearly a special day for police efficiency. ‘And another little breakthrough in the business of your colleague – Mr Sinclair.’ Stackhouse was interested. ‘Investigations had shown that Mr Sinclair had seen a lot of one Samuel Greenberg.’ Delamere’s investigations, he might have added; he didn’t, though.

  ‘Was that what made you suspicious of poor David?’ Stackhouse said. Bunce sucked his teeth. Bunce was suspicious of everyone; hardly fair to particularize.

  ‘We didn’t know anything about this Mr Greenberg. But we found out his lodgings, and there were some photographs there, and we copied them and showed to them to his landlady and to Mrs Sinclair. We know what Greenberg looks like now.’ He was rummaging in an inside pocket. ‘Makes it more likely we can find him, ask him some questions.’ He glanced at me, as grim as ever. He was anticipating that the mysterious Greenberg would be able to confirm my involvement.

  I confess I was interested myself. Greenberg was perhaps the one man who could explain what had been on David Sinclair’s mind before his death. So much so that I’d become increasingly concerned that he’d suffered the same fate as Sinclair. If all those policemen could finally be put to good use and root him out of wherever he was hiding…

  Bunce pulled out a sheaf of papers from his pocket, to add to the sheaf of telegrams. ‘Here we are,’ he said. He was glancing between one of the telegrams, and a photograph he’d brought with him. ‘Sources confirm Figure B Greenberg.’

  He passed the photograph to Stackhouse. Stackhouse shrugged, and shook his head. I took the photograph from him, before Bunce could stop me. Not a very clear reproduction, but adequate. Three men, relaxed but at some formal event, smiling towards the camera. A, B and C had been pencilled in beneath them on the reproduction.

  Like Stackhouse, I shrugged and shook my head, and I passed the picture back to Bunce.

  Inwardly, I felt that familiar cold stab.

  Once again, Inspector Bunce was going to be disappointed. He wouldn’t be getting any useful information from Figure B, the man who called himself Samuel Greenberg. Figure B was dead. I was certain of this, but it didn’t seem prudent to mention it to Bunce.

  I recognized Greenberg.

  The last I’d seen of him, he’d been smouldering on my carpet.

  Bunce and Co. hadn’t recognized him because, by the time I’d finished with it, his head hadn’t been of the recognizable sort.

  For Bunce and for me, Samuel Greenberg had been the key to understanding the original mystery, and I’d shot him.

  Once again, it felt like the moment to stretch my legs.

  56.

  In the dining car I found Otto Immanuel Von Hahn.

  It was the wrong hour for anyone to be eating. He had the carriage to himself, and his isolation increased his grandeur. Amid the best of the finery that the London and North Western could offer, and behind the pure white tablecloth, he was vast and serene.

  He saw me, and the big face spread in a smile. He unrolled his hand and offered me the seat opposite him. Von Hahn would always behave as if he owned wherever he was.

  He probably did. No doubt he was a major shareholder of the London and North Western Railway. And a regular whist companion of the Chairman of the Board.

  I sat.

  He lifted a wine bottle. ‘A surprisingly adequate white,’ he said. Again the deep boom of the words, the heavy manipulation of foreign letter sounds. He made to pour me some of the surprisingly adequate white, but I shook my head. He frowned. ‘I thought that this abstinence was only when you gamble.’ I said nothing. ‘Ah, you see this meeting as a gamble!’ I smiled. Suddenly he looked grave. ‘It was your choice, Sir Henry, to enter my casino.’

  ‘I’m a lucky fellow.’

  He shook his head. Still the grave expression, the wise uncle trying to share important wisdom. ‘You must know this, Sir Henry: the house – always – wins.’

  ‘I’m rather a bad sport, if I think the game is rigged. Liable to tear the house down.’

  He considered this seriously. He nodded. ‘Tell me’, he said. He tapped a book that lay beside him on the tablecloth. ‘What sites of interest should I visit during my excursion to Glasgow?’

  ‘I’m English. I could tell you more about Cairo and Constantinople than I could about any British city.’

  He beamed and nodded.

  ‘I thought it was the docks you’re interested in,’ I said.

  He shrugged. For him, shrugging was an enormous movement, like a buffalo coming out of a swamp. ‘I leave these things to the mechanics.’

  ‘Yes, you do, don’t you? Bloody mayhem across the country, and it’s all your doing, and we’ll never be able to prove any of it.’

  He watched me silently, satisfied.

  ‘Men like Greenberg, who was your front man for bribery and blackmail and running secret agents: they must come out of the shadows to do your bidding; they must speak, they must leave their fingerprints on everything, they must run the risks and sometimes they must die. Men like Hertenstein the first, the brother: he had to show himself, and fight me to the death.’ Von Hahn took a sip of the wine. ‘But not you. You stay in the shadows, and you leave no marks, and you run no risks.’

  ‘You were a junior officer, Delamere, I think. But you understand how armies work.’ The words growled out, unfamiliar in his accent. ‘A general who forgets the battlefield and focuses on the capture of one strongpoint, a general who picks up a sword and runs to the front of the attack, this is an imbecile.’

  ‘And now your agents are going to try to steal a fire-control table.’

  He was silent for a time, just watching me. There was a faint superior smile lurking in the eyes and mouth. I resisted the urge to punch him in the face.

  At last he said: ‘I have not heard of such a thing.’ He was more serious suddenly. ‘Is it yet another machine by which England exercises her aggressive dominance over the world, while other nations must struggle for crumbs, for enough air to breathe?’

  I considered him. ‘You’re doing alright for crumbs and air, Von Hahn. Come on, admit it. I still can’t prove anything, but satisfy my curiosity. You set your agents to all of it: to the attempts to buy or steal a copy of the technical drawings, and now to steal the machine itself; you’re behind all those deaths. And you’ve tried to kill me… what, three times?’

  He considered the wine, swirled it gently in his big paw.

  ‘I decline,’ he said at last, ‘to satisfy your curiosity. Bragging is a bad habit, anyway. So no, you do not get no confessions out of me, Sir Henry.’ He smiled. ‘It might be amusing to put us against each other in the witness box, and see whom your establishment believes. The honoured foreigner over the disreputable Englander, I fear.’

  He pulled a watch on a chain out of his waistcoat pocket. ‘But you must allow me my discretion.’ The watch was sized like the man, a great gold onion. He looked up at me. ‘four-twenty-eight,’ he said.

  ‘You have an appointment?’

  ‘No, Sir Henry.’ Still the all-powerful gaze. ‘You do.’

  I took a breath. ‘Oh really? And what is this appointment?’

  For a moment he looked as though he might tell me. Then he smiled and shook his head. ‘Sir Henry, I have been observing you for many days now. You are a man of action. Not so stupid, I mean, but you are best in the moment of crisis. I think I leave you to respond according to your instincts.’ Another big smile. ‘That is the sporting approach, I think!’ He’d enjoyed that one very much. His big body shuddered.

  He wasn’t fat, I realized now. Just vast. A great ox, arrogant and utterly sure of his greatness and his power.

  ‘You’re running a risk, Von Hahn. A man like me – reckless, disreputable – perhaps I might do something desperate just to stop you.’

  He gazed at me for a few moments, eyes narrow. Then he shook his head. ‘No risk, no. The man who is in control, this is the man who may calculate. In
the calculation of an intelligent man, there is no risk.’ He leaned forwards again. ‘It is the man who finds himself hunted in the theatre or the forest, and must fight for his life, the man who is trapped in an office and must run through the fire, this man runs risks.’

  It was rather a good point.

  ‘You must decide if you wish to play this game, Delamere. You have now… one minute to decide.’

  ‘I decided a while back. I’m taking you on.’

  He looked as if I’d made a dirty joke. ‘My fight is not with you personally, Sir Henry Delamere. You are… incidental. If you are destroyed by interfering in my affairs, this was your choice. But – how would you put it? – outside the boxing arena, there shall be no underhand tactics.’

  ‘And you trust me to be so sporting?’

  Suddenly he looked ominous. ‘Yes, Sir Henry, I do.’ He leaned forwards. ‘You act the lone wolf, but even you have your points of weakness; points of… affection. You were seen with a woman in London. And of course the most wonderous Lady Victoria.’ He pulled back, which meant he’d seen the immediate hardening of my face. He watched me carefully for a moment. Then he relaxed, and smiled again. ‘This, you see?’ He waved his hand towards me. ‘This emotion. Emotion is weakness, Delamere. Affection is vulnerability.’ He sat back.

  I did the same. I considered him. At last I smiled at him. ‘Very well, Von Hahn. I think you’ll dislike defeat more than you’d dislike danger. So you sit back and watch, and see what happens.’ I leaned forwards. ‘I think you’ve miscalculated.’

  Again he gave the great shrug. And again he pulled the watch from his pocket, and this time he placed it carefully on the table between us.

  The ticking of the second hand was loud.

  ‘I was saying to someone a short while ago,’ I said, ‘that I couldn’t work out why you’re on the train.’

  Cold, cold eyes. Tick, tick, tick.

  ‘Why Sir Henry: a pleasant day out, and a little sport – surely this is the most English of diversions, no?’

  Together we watched the second hand tick round, and then reach the half-hour.

  From somewhere back along the train, there was an explosion.

  57.

  I ran back through Carriage D, and through Carriage E, pushing past concerned citizens. Our compartment was empty, the door wide; hasty departure.

  At the near end of Carriage F I found Bunce, and Stackhouse, and the Sergeant and another policeman crowded round the door of the lavatory.

  ‘Caught short, Inspector?’ I said. ‘Must be tiresome in your business.’

  Stackhouse said: ‘Some kind of explosion.’

  I peered between their bobbing heads. Inside the lavatory, a policeman was beating out a few last flames, on the scorched and pocked cubicle wall. There had indeed been a small explosion.

  ‘Clever way to start the revolution,’ I said. ‘With the privies out of commission, we’ll all explode naturally.’ But I doubt they heard: I was already striding down the carriage towards the back of the train.

  In Carriage G, the revolutionaries were milling around like everyone else. But not the last compartment. The six solid silent men I’d glimpsed through the curtains had gone. I hurried on into Carriage H.

  ‘Stand fast sir!’ The compartment door beside me was half-open and Quinn’s arm had shot out to block my way. I glanced at him, stepped into the gap. He nodded towards the back of the train. ‘Gunshot, while everyone was fretting about the explosion.’

  I drew the Webley from its inside pocket. Another gunshot rang clear from the rear of the train, and then a scream from somewhere. ‘Bunce!’ I yelled. ‘Come out of the privy. You’re missing the party.’ From the next carriage, I heard the bellowing of an Inspector barging his way through a couple of dozen radical tourists. ‘Sit tight,’ I said to Quinn, and set off towards the back of the carriage.

  Bunce was less cautious than me, and we reached the end of Carriage H at the same moment. In the last compartment a policeman was lying on the floor, unconscious, with a nasty-looking knock on his head. Round the corner, at the very end of the carriage, another was lying on his side, groaning and clutching at where he’d been shot. Beyond him was the door that led through the end of the carriage into the regular luggage wagon. The door was half open, and the luggage wagon was in darkness.

  Bunce lunged forwards to his wounded man and I grabbed him back and another shot cracked. ‘Idiot’, I hissed. ‘I want you alive to see me proved right, remember?’ I raised the Webley. ‘Ready?’ He nodded.

  I fired twice through the gap into the darkness of the luggage wagon, and Bunce swooped to his man and dragged him back into the main corridor. Two more shots echoed back.

  More of Bunce’s policemen had come up now, and were looking in concern at their wounded comrades. ‘Quinn!’ I called down over the heads. ‘Medical detail!’

  ‘What in hell are they up to in there?’ Bunce hissed at me.

  ‘Hacking their way out of the other end of the luggage wagon, I guess. Then through into the wagon beyond, where the fire-control table is.’

  I heard a smash from the luggage wagon. Bunce said: ‘Cover me again. I’m getting in there.’

  Cautiously, I stuck my head around the corner at the end of the corridor, until I could see the doorway again. ‘Tempting,’ I said. ‘But I think the game has changed.’ Through the doorway I could see flames spreading rapidly in the darkness of the luggage wagon. Smoke began to drift out towards us. ‘I guess they’re through and away.’

  We both took deep breaths, ducked low, and stepped through the door and the short concertina passageway that joined the carriage to the luggage wagon. The doors would normally have been locked, and I could see where the locks had been hacked open.

  The luggage wagon was a little inferno, a box of darkness with a fire blazing at its heart and spreading. Everything in the luggage would burn nicely, and I guessed the smash had been an oil lamp. ‘Sergeant Bulstrode!’ Bunce yelled, and the sergeant acknowledged. ‘Three men! In here now!’ Through the flames and smoke, in the back wall of the wagon I could see a rough rectangle of daylight where the attackers had hacked through. I sensed the policemen behind me. ‘Jump to it!’ Bunce hissed between coughs. ‘Drag away anything that’s not burned. Find heavy clothes in the trunks and beat out the flames.’ It was smart thinking, and immediately the policemen were at work.

  Dimly, in the rectangle of daylight, I saw figures moving.

  ‘Give me two yards’ run-up first,’ I said. The fire dominated the centre of the wagon, but it wasn’t climbing at the walls yet.

  It didn’t seem so deep. I’d probably make it.

  Someone said ‘What?’ and grabbed at my arm and I pushed them away. I stepped back to the doorway, handed the revolver to Quinn, and took in a breath of goodish air. Then I turned. It didn’t bear too much thinking about. I put one arm up over my face, and took a three step run towards the flames and leapt. Something snagged at my boot but didn’t stop me and I landed and stumbled and dragged myself forwards. Another couple of yards and I was at the back wall.

  I raised my head above the sill of the rough doorway they’d hacked in it. Immediately they were in front of me. They’d hacked a matching doorway in the rearmost wagon. One was standing in that, holding another by the belt as he bent and fiddled with the coupling between the wagons. For a moment they didn’t see me, then I must have moved again in surprise at their proximity. Two faces gaped, and the one hanging over the coupling swayed dangerously over the gap and swore at his mate. The other yelled something. I could see more movement in the wagon beyond.

  The man working at the coupling and the man holding him both had their hands full. It was a moment’s chance. I braced myself between the two sides of the doorway, put one boot on the sill, and swung a kick at the crouching man. He went stumbling back, pushing his comrade. The coupling held; they were still attached to the train. I was swaying wildly, clinging to the shattered planks of the wagon and trying to hol
d my balance on one leg on the narrow sill. The sky and the countryside reeled around me, and then below me the rushing stones and sleepers of the railway track.

  I got myself up and steady in the doorway, and was immediately confronted by a pistol projecting from the rear wagon just a foot from my face. I flung myself backwards into the luggage wagon as the shot roared over my head. Angry, stupid, I was back in the gap in an instant. Chummy was bent over the coupling again. I pulled myself into the doorway. As I got there, he was rising with something metal in his hand and I jumped for him.

  We both toppled towards the other wagon. And now the movement changed sickeningly. Whatever I was standing on seemed to change direction, and then one of the bandits got an arm free and landed a punch on my shoulder and I swayed backwards again. The wind and the world roared around me and I was tottering on God knows what bit of the coupling, and the enemy were accelerating away from me and I was alone and swaying in the sky and then I fell.

  58.

  The world was a wild blur of light and wind. Now I pretend I remember fragments of what I saw as I fell: the smouldering luggage wagon, or perhaps the other wagon with the fire-control table and the faces of the bandits dropping away behind, the sky, the Cumbrian landscape, the horrendous rushing of the track beneath me.

  I saw none of it. I fell and it was sickening and I knew it was the end. My whole body jerked and twisted and my head jarred on something and I was stunned. I felt my boots dragging on the rushing ground and I flailed desperately. My arms, somehow, were flapping at the coupling. My feet were being flung around by contact with the ground and I was horribly aware of the metal wheels of the train whirling and screaming near, and still I hung over death.

  I doubt I’ve mentioned my tailor before.

  Why would I? Cockayne is nothing out of the ordinary: ordinarily hysterical about occasional delays in the settling of my account; ordinarily susceptible to little fads of cut or embellishment from the continent; ordinarily expensive.