Andrew Williams - The Poison Tide

‘Mention it to Captain Gaunt, why don’t you?’ Wolff remarked.

Masek smiled wryly. ‘She come down at last — speaking to an old man, grey beard, bushy like this,’ he held his hands beneath his chin, ‘brown jacket — patches here and here,’ and he touched his elbows.

‘Devoy,’ said Wolff; ‘one of the Irish leaders. Clan na Gael meets in a judge’s office above the bank.’ It was where he’d met Laura for the first time.

‘She talk to the old man few minutes then go. Think she heard bad news. Looked sad. She cry a little on train.’

Wolff felt a pang. ‘Something the old man said to her?’

Masek shrugged.

They took turns to stretch their legs and grab something to eat. Masek returned with a bottle of liquor and five packets of cigarettes. ‘We find men to help us?’ he suggested.

‘Tomorrow — if we need to.’

But the little Czech didn’t have time to remove the top from his bottle before a taxicab drew up to the kerb. Laura appeared at the window, glancing up and down the street. Without a word, Masek pushed the starter and slipped the Cadillac into gear.

After a couple of minutes the door of the apartment block opened and Laura stepped out to speak to the cab driver. She looked anxious, her right hand to her temple. Turning most of a circle, she checked the street again, then walked back to the door.

‘Not a good spy,’ Masek observed laconically.

‘I think she’d take that as a… hello.’ Dilger was scuttling across the sidewalk, his hat pulled down over his face. Swinging at his side was the brown leather doctor’s bag he’d given to Hinsch in the parking lot at Laurel.

‘Is it him?’ Masek enquired.

‘Yes, it’s him.’ His bloody bag had been sitting in Laura’s apartment. Now it was in the back of the cab between them.

Masek swung the Cadillac out of the lot.

‘Not too close.’

Masek gave Wolff a reproving look.

The last of the sun was blinking in the windscreen as they drove west towards the Hudson. The taxicab turned left on 12th Avenue to run along the river, stopping briefly for lights at the Recreation Pier. They tried to keep their distance but Masek was afraid they would lose the cab in the evening traffic.

‘You think it’s a trap?’ he asked, braking for another set of lights. ‘Why this woman? I think it’s because of you.’

‘I think so too,’ Wolff said. ‘I’m not sure why. Perhaps they suspect me, perhaps they’re testing her.’

The traffic was flowing left on to 14th Street and Wolff was expecting the cab to do same, but at the junction it pressed on along the waterfront towards the abandoned piers running into the river opposite Castle Point. They bumped over granite setts in pursuit, passed empty and boarded warehouses, navigation buoys rusting on their sides, the carcase of an old tug on stocks, cranes, cables and carts, the dockyard detritus of decades that might have been heaved from the river by a great harbour wave.

‘Drop back,’ Wolff commanded. It was dusk now and if the cab driver had a mirror he would notice their lamps.

A few hundred yards more and the cab turned to the right and was lost behind a warehouse.

‘Pull up, they’re stopping.’

Masek guided the Cadillac into the shadow of the same building.

Reaching under his seat, Wolff lifted out a waxed canvas package.

‘Honey and plenty of money.’ It was Thwaites’ service revolver.

Masek frowned. ‘Don’t understand.’

‘Nor do I,’ said Wolff. ‘Wait here.’

It was just a few yards to the corner of the warehouse. The taxicab had come to a halt at the entrance. Parked beyond it were three more motor cars, the largest Hilken’s burgundy-and-orange convertible. Dilger had climbed down from the cab with his bag and was offering to help Laura but she was in no hurry to rise. Two men came out of the warehouse, the elder of the two, Devoy, his Old Testament beard sickly yellow in the light spilling through the open door. He shook Dilger’s hand, then leant inside the cab to say a few words to Laura. She had sheltered and delivered the doctor and her task was complete. Wolff was relieved when, a moment later, the taxi pulled away. He waited with his back pressed to the wall as the cab turned in a large circle to return the way it had come. Devoy had escorted Dilger into the warehouse and shut in the light. But by the dim glow of the city Wolff could see the silhouette of a driver lounging against the hood of a motor car. He was going to have to take a chance. Cocking the revolver, he put it back in his pocket, took a deep breath, then stepped forward like a man with an urgent appointment to make.

The chauffeur heard his footfall. Stamping guiltily on his cigarette, he turned and was plainly relieved to find a stranger. Heart pounding, Wolff opened the door of the warehouse and glanced inside. ‘They’re in here?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He felt a moment’s relief: the corridor was empty, gloomy, double doors at the end, to the left an iron staircase. Stepping lightly, quickly, damp fingers round the grip of the gun, he paused at the door to listen to voices and judged them only feet away. Christ, I should burst in and shoot the bastard, he thought. Instead he settled for the stair, moving carefully in the darkness, a steadying hand to the wall as he felt his way up the last few steps. The door at the top was stiff and he needed to ease it open with his shoulder. He misjudged the pressure; it grated and he froze, holding his breath, expecting a shouted challenge or the ring of boots on the stair. A cold night but he was perspiring, his shirt clinging to the small of his back. Through the open door a confused echo, movement, voices, someone speaking English, issuing instructions perhaps. After three or four minutes he was calm enough to try again. This time he was able to prise it free without a sound and in the blue light from a gallery of broken windows he could see a broad iron gantry, thick with dust and glass and pigeon shit. In a pool of light on the empty warehouse floor beneath it, a dozen men stood about a table, most of them dressed in pea coats and woolly bonnets, and in their midst the distinctive shaggy grey head of John Devoy.

Dropping to his knees, Wolff emptied his pockets, placing the revolver carefully by the door, then crawled forward until he was almost directly above the lamp and in the middle of the circle. He could see Dilger in the shadow at its edge, whispering to a heavily built man with a moustache who looked like Carl, the driver of the Winton in the station lot at Laurel. The medical bag was sitting on the table.

Bang . Wolff almost jumped out of his skin as the door beneath the gantry swung heavily to, starting pigeons from the rafters and making the men on the floor flinch. A few seconds later Hinsch rolled into the light with Hilken in tow at his heels.

‘Doctor, you can speak to them now,’ he announced in his thick English.

Dilger muttered something Wolff couldn’t catch in reply and stepped up to the table.

‘I’ll be going, then. Until tomorrow.’ Devoy was shuffling from the circle. ‘Good luck to youse all,’ he declared, addressing his remarks in particular to the men — his men. ‘Beidh an lá linn. Remember — our day is coming.’

Dilger had removed from his bag, gloves, a mask and a box of phials like the one Wolff had taken from McKevitt.

‘My brother’s shown you what you must do?’ he asked, turning to his companion with the horseshoe moustache. Someone replied very sullenly in the affirmative.

‘Be sure to wear these when you handle both the phials and the sugar cubes.’ Dilger held up the mask and gloves. ‘If you don’t, you’ll… well…’ He paused to let them ponder the consequences. ‘If you’re careful you should have no difficulty; it’s a simple procedure.’