Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the New World

Alex Meade grinned self-consciously. ‘It’s not really one night’s work, is it, Sam?’

‘No,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘It isn’t. The more you learn about police work, Sergeant Meade, the more you’ll discover that most of it is no more than a long drawn-out grind.’

‘You’re quite right, of course,’ Meade said, humbly. ‘And anyway, I shouldn’t be telling you what I think we should do, I should be asking what you think we should do. Because I do want to learn from you, Sam — I know I can learn from you. So what do you think. .?’

‘I think you should take me to my lodgings, while I’ve still got the strength to stand up,’ Blackstone said.

The hotel was on Canal Street. It was called, as the desk sergeant had promised, the Mayfair Hotel, but with its cracked paint and peeling wallpaper, it was as different to any building in London’s Mayfair as it could be.

Alex Meade was mortified by the state of the place.

‘I knew that no hotel on Canal Street was ever going to be as swish as the hotels you find on Fifth Avenue,’ he said. ‘But even so, Sam. .’

‘The department probably booked me in here because it was no more than a short walk to the Mulberry Street police station,’ Blackstone said. ‘And as far as the place itself goes, it’s perfectly fine.’

Better, in fact, than his lodgings in London, he thought, because while no Scotland Yard inspector ever lived in a grand style, most of them managed to live better than a man who donated half his salary to Dr Barnardo’s Orphanage.

‘This has nothing to do with being close to Mulberry Street,’ Meade protested. ‘Some clerk in the office booked you in here because it was cheap . And that’s just typical of the stuffed shirts and pen-pushers who make this kind of decision. They simply don’t have anything like enough respect for real policemen, but I do — so why don’t you let me see if I can find you a room somewhere a little classier?’

‘And who’ll pay for this classier room?’ Blackstone wondered. ‘Will it be the police department? Or will it be you?’

Meade bit his lower lip. ‘Why does no one ever seem to want to take my money?’ he asked plaintively.

‘Maybe because, since you’re offering it so willingly, they think there has to be a catch,’ Blackstone suggested.

‘And do you think there’s a catch, Sam?’

‘No, I don’t. But I don’t want you running around, trying to find me a classier room, either. Not when you’ve got better things to do with your time.’

‘Like what?’ Meade asked.

Blackstone suppressed a sigh. ‘Like trying to find out exactly where Inspector O’Brien went last night.’

‘But that can’t be done in one evening,’ Meade countered. ‘You said yourself that it was a long, drawn-out grind.’

‘I said it could be a long, drawn-out grind,’ Blackstone replied. ‘But who knows, you could get lucky.’

Meade’s eyes lit up with newly rekindled enthusiasm. ‘Do you really think I might get somewhere?’

Not a chance! Blackstone thought.

‘It’s a possibility,’ he said aloud.

Meade hesitated for a second, torn between his desire to see Blackstone treated properly and his urge to throw himself back into the investigation.

‘Well, if you’re sure you’re happy with the accommodation that has been provided. .’ he said finally.

‘I am.’

‘Then I’ll see you first thing in the morning?’

Meade’s last words were meant to sound like a statement, but they came out as a question. As if he couldn’t quite believe that Blackstone would still be there in the morning. As if he feared that the magical policeman from London — from whom he hoped to learn so much — would simply melt away in the night.

‘I’ll be here,’ Blackstone promised.

‘Until tomorrow, then,’ Meade replied, sounding a little relieved.

Blackstone nodded. ‘Good hunting,’ he said.

The Third Street ‘El’ ran right past Blackstone’s hotel bedroom window, so that now, instead of being one of the travelling watchers — as he’d been earlier in the day — he had become one of the stationary watched. For several minutes, he sat looking at the faces rushing by in the elevated trains. Occasionally, he waved — though no one ever waved back.

He did not mind the noise that the ‘El’ itself produced or the rattling of window-frames it left in its wake. He was a Londoner, brought up on noise, and — in a way — he embraced it as a comforting familiarity in a land where everything else seemed strange.

He had told Meade that he was exhausted, and he had not been lying. But now he found that sleep — perversely — would not come to him, and he continued to sit on his bed, smoking and listening to the cockroaches scuttling along the floor.

And, as he sat there, his mind travelled back over the sometimes-hazardous journey which had been his life.

He had given serious consideration to coming to America when he had left the orphanage. But instead, he had joined the army and fought in a bloody war in Afghanistan — a war in which many of his comrades had died, and he had almost been killed himself.

He had had a second chance to cross the Atlantic when he left the army, but once again he had chosen a different course, and become a Metropolitan policeman — had deliberately plunged himself into a world of depravity and cruelty, where he had seen many things he would now rather forget, and had once, incidentally, saved the life of a queen.

He wondered what would have happened if he had decided, on either of those two occasions, to come to America.

Would he still have been the same man he was now — a man battered by life, but still able to face himself in the shaving mirror? Or would the country have changed him — for better or worse — as it seemed to have changed so many other men?

When sleep finally came, he fell almost immediately into a dream about a woman.

He often dreamt about the women he’d loved:

Hannah — who had loved him in return, but had betrayed him to the assassins anyway, and who had died herself in the process.

Agnes — who had betrayed him to her Russian paymaster, and who he had last seen on a lonely railway station in the middle of Central Russia.

And Dr Ellie Carr — who had not betrayed him to any man , but to her love of her work .

Sometimes only one of his women would appear in his dreams. On other occasions, though, they would all be there, merging into one another and then drifting apart — so he was no longer sure which of them he had truly loved, or whether he would have continued to love any of them, if fate had allowed him to.

But that night he did not dream of Hannah, Agnes or Ellie. That night — for reasons he was quite unable to explain to himself when he woke up — he dreamed of Jenny, the O’Briens’ timid parlourmaid.

The shoeshine stand was on 13th Street, half a block from where Meade and Blackstone were standing, and the shoeshine boy was kneeling down, buffing the shoes of a large man in a frock coat and silk top hat.

‘That’s him,’ Alex Meade said. ‘That’s George Plunkitt.’

‘Did you have any trouble in getting him to agree to meet us?’ Blackstone asked.

‘None at all,’ Meade replied airily. ‘Like I told you yesterday, after Inspector O’Brien’s death he must be a worried man — though not half as worried as he’ll be after we’ve been talking to him for a while.’

But he didn’t look worried — at least, from a distance.

‘Do you know what was one of the first — and of the most important — things that I learned in the army?’ Blackstone asked. ‘It was to avoid the temptation to start shooting at the enemy the moment you catch sight of him.’