Anne Perry - Death Of A Stranger

There was something he needed to do: it mattered more than anything else, even the risk of his own life. It dominated everything, mind and body, obliterating all thought of his safety, of physical pain, exhaustion, and carrying him beyond even fear-and there was everything to be afraid of! It roared and surged around him in the darkness, buffeting him until he was bruised and aching, clinging on desperately, fighting to… what? He did not know! There was something he must do. The fate of everybody who mattered depended on it… but what was it?

He racked his brain… and found only the driving compulsion to succeed. The wind was streaming past him like liquid ice. He strained against a force, hurling his weight against it, but it was immovable.

There was indescribable noise, impact, and then he was running, scrambling, blind with terror. All around him the sound of screaming ripped through him like physical pain, and he could do nothing! He was closed in by confusion, thrashing around pointlessly, bumping into objects in the darkness one moment, blinded by flames the next, the heat in his face and the cold behind him. His feet were leaden, holding him back, while the rest of his body ran with sweat.

He saw the face again above the clerical collar, the same as before, this time gray with horror, scrambling in the wreckage, all the time calling out.

He woke with a violent start, his head throbbing, his lungs aching, starved of air, his mouth dry. As soon as he moved he realized the sweat was real, sticking his clothes to him, but the carriage was bitterly cold and his feet were numb.

He was alone in his compartment. The smell of smoke was in his imagination, but the fear was real, the guilt was real. Knowledge of failure weighed on him as if it were woven into every part of his life, staining everything, seeping into every corner and marring all other joy.

But what failure? He had not saved Dundas, but he had known that for years. And now he was no longer rationally sure that Dundas had been innocent. He felt it, but what were his feelings worth? They could have been simply born of the loyalty and ignorance of a young man who owed a great deal to someone who had been as a father to him. He had seen Dundas as he wished him to be, like millions before him, and millions to come.

The dream was a crash-that was obvious. But was it from reality, or imagination read into the accounts of those who were there, or even a visit to the scene afterwards, as part of the enquiry into what had happened?

It was not the rail line which had caused it. It was not the land fraud, which could make no difference to anything but money.

So why did he feel this terrible responsibility, this guilt? What was there in himself so fearful he still could not bear to look at it? Was it Dundas-or himself?

Could he find out? Was he just like Katrina Harcus, driven to discover a truth which might destroy everything that mattered to him?

He sat hunched in the seat, rattling through the darkness towards London, shivering and icy cold, thoughts racing off the rails into tunnels-and another, different kind of crash.

The house on Coldbath Square was almost empty of women injured in the usual way of trade, because there was hardly any trade. Many of the local populace had found ways around the constant police presence and now conducted what business they could elsewhere, but the Farringdon Road was outwardly much the same as always. It required a more practiced eye to see the stiffness of street corner peddlers, the way everyone was watching over their shoulders, not for pickpockets or other small-time thieves, but for the ubiquitous constables placed, in frustrated boredom, as prevention rather than solution.

“On our backs like a jockey floggin’ a horse what won’t run,” Constable Hart said miserably, nursing a mug of hot tea in his hands as he sat opposite Hester at the smaller of the two tables. “We won’t run ’cos we can’t!” he went on. It was mid-afternoon and raining on and off. His wet cape hung on one of the hooks by the door. “We’re just standin’ ’round lookin’ stupid, an’ gettin’ everyone angry at us,” he complained. “It’s all to make the Baltimore family an’ their friends feel like we’re cleanin’ up London.” His expression of disgust conveyed his feelings perfectly.

“I know,” she agreed with some sympathy.

“Nobody ever done that, nor ever will,” he added. “London don’t wanter be cleaned up. Women on the street in’t the problem. Problem is men what comes after ’em!”

“Of course,” Hester conceded. “Would you like some toast?”

His face lit up. It was a completely unnecessary question, as she had known it would be.

He cleared his throat. “Got any black currant jam?” he asked hopefully.

“Of course.” She smiled, and he colored very faintly. She stood up and spent the next few minutes cutting bread, toasting it on the fork in front of the stove, and then bringing it over, with butter and jam.

“Thanks,” he said with his mouth already full.

She and Margaret had spent their days trying to drum up more funding, having further conversations with Jessop which varied from placatory to confrontational and back again depending upon tempers, and pledges of help. Hester had never disliked anyone more. “Are you any closer to finding whoever killed Baltimore?” she asked Hart.

He shrugged, an air of hopelessness filling him as he stared gloomily at the crumbs on his plate. “Not as I can see,” he admitted. “Abel Smith’s girls all swear blind they din’t do it, an’ speakin’ purely for meself, I believe ’em. Not that the higher-ups are goin’ to listen to what I say.” He looked up at her with sudden anger, his face set hard.

“But I’m damned if I’m goin’ to see some poor little cow topped for killin’’im just to satisfy ’is family an’ their like, an’ get business back to normal. No matter whoever says, ever so soft, that they’d like it that way!”

Hester felt a chill. “Do you think anyone would try to do that?”

He caught the doubt in her voice. “You’re a nice lady, brought up proper. You don’t belong ’ere,” he said gently. He glanced around the long room with its iron beds, the stone sinks at the far end and the jugs and pails of water. “ ’Course they would, if it comes to it. Can’t go on like this much longer. Right and wrong gets to look different when you’ve bin ’ungry for a while, or slept in a doorway. I’ve seen ’em. It changes folk, an’ ’oo’s to say it’s their fault?”

She wondered whether to tell him anything about Squeaky Robinson and his very different establishment, apparently somewhere near Reid’s Brewery on Portpool Lane, or close beside. She was only half listening to him as she weighed it up.

“Of course,” she agreed absently. If she told Hart he would feel obliged in turn to tell his superiors, and they would go blundering in, and very possibly warn Robinson without learning anything about Baltimore. After all, Robinson would deny it, just as everyone else was doing. Almost certainly he already had done.

“Not as I’m sure we want to find the truth,” Hart went on dismally. “Considering what it’ll be, like as not.”

Now she did pay attention. “Not find it?” she challenged. “You mean just go on with the appearance until they get tired of it and say they’re giving up? They can’t keep half the London police force in Coldbath forever.”

“Another few weeks at the most,” he agreed. “It would be easier, in the end.”

“Easier for whom?” Without asking, she poured him more tea, and he thanked her with a nod.

“ ’Em as uses the ’ouses ’round ’ere for their pleasures,” he answered her question. “But mostly for ’em in charge o’ the police.” He grimaced, shaking his head a little. “Would you like to be the one what goes and tells the Baltimore family that Mr. Baltimore came ’ere to gratify ’isself, an’ maybe refused to pay what ’e owed, an’ got into a fight with some pimp in a back alley somewhere? But the pimp got the better of’im, an’ killed’im. Maybe ’e didn’t even mean to, but when it was done it were too late, an’ so ’e settled some old score or other by dumpin’ the body at Abel Smith’s?”