The Black Hand

13

Clerkenwell was unexplored territory for me. Most of the buildings were tumbledown, swaybacked old piles of red brick and pantiles, looking like the kind of sentimental paintings of old London one buys from street stalls for a few shillings. Down at ground level, the streets look as Italian as Rome. Street musicians played the violin or the hurdy-gurdy, black-haired children ran about the streets looking nothing like Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger whom Dickens put there, and men and women sat on steps and balustrades discussing the events of the day in their native tongue. A slum, some might call the area, but flowers bloomed in every window box. Most of the people seemed to be enjoying their lives so far from the shores of their homeland.

I noticed a man we passed wearing a piece of cloth on a cord around his neck, and had not gone another twenty feet before seeing a similar one around the throat of an old woman.

“What do you suppose those charms are?” I asked my employer.

“They are the brown scapulars of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The Italian Catholics think a lot of this apparition of the Virgin Mary. They hold a festival in midsummer in which they carry a shrine through the district.”

“I must say, you have an unusual knowledge of Catholic beliefs for a Baptist.”

“I noticed them the last time I was here. This kind of charm is just the sort of thing that caused the formation of the Church of England in the first place. Nothing scares an Englishman more than a powerful organization in London with strong ties to the Continent such as the Roman Catholic Church.”

“I thought it was merely old King Henry wanting to be shed of a wife,” I said.

“Aye, that, too.”

We walked on. It came as no surprise to me that the Italian quarter was dominated by a large church, which was called Saint Peter’s. In fact, the street we were on led us directly to it. Barker stopped in front of a large notice board by the entrance, which was plastered with leaflets and handwritten notices, none of which I could read. I hazarded this must be the hub of the community.

“Speak any Italian, lad?”

“I know Latin, and my French isn’t too bad. I suppose I could translate something if I had enough time. Do you speak it?”

The Guv gave a sigh. “Not a word, I’m afraid. You see the value of knowing languages in our line of work? Something on this board could be of great use to us and we wouldn’t know it. If I were in charge of Scotland Yard-and there’s about as much chance of that as my becoming the Duke of Newington-I would make all my detectives study languages, and I don’t mean Latin. Let’s go inside.”

“In the church, sir?”

Barker gave a thin smile. “I see Methodists are as wary of Catholics as Baptists. Yes, in the church. If anyone knows what’s going on around here, it is a priest.”

I will admit I stepped in with some degree of trepidation. Coming from a Low Church, Wesleyan upbringing, one can imagine the impressions I received during my childhood about those so-called idolatrous, land-stealing, Protestant-burning Catholics. As far as my minister and my mother were concerned, they still sold indulgences and put non-believers to the rack. The inside of the church, of course, was not much different from others I’d been in, though rather crowded with medieval-looking statuary. To tell the truth, I was a bit disappointed. Not a rack in sight. I’d missed the heyday of the Inquisition by a good few centuries.

We wandered into the sanctuary and watched people enter, pray, and leave, for there was no Mass going on. I recognized a group of booths to one side as being confessionals, and when a priest poked his head out like a mole from its burrow, Barker pounced and held him in conversation for a moment. The priest led us through a maze of hallways to a door and ushered us inside.

Behind the desk in the book-lined study sat a sturdy bulldog of a man of about fifty years in a cassock and skullcap. He seemed a mild enough inquisitor, though he looked more like a businessman or bureaucrat than a cleric. The priest regarded us from under thick, tufted brows, and over Barker’s business card.

“I am Father Amati. What can I do for you gentlemen?”

My employer sat down and over the next fifteen minutes told him everything that had occurred since we were called to the Wapping docks. I was surprised, for he held back only my training with Gallenga and recruiting Hooligan. Father Amati sat back in his worn leather armchair and listened intently without comment and with little movement. Finally, as the Guv finished, the cleric became animated again and nodded solemnly several times.

“What you have said, tragic though it is, I have been expecting for some time. I’ll wager a quarter of our Italian citizens here are in the country illegally, although most are not criminals. Families come here to work hard and prosper, and to no longer have their lives threatened by criminals. In fact, I would say the immigration laws in this country exclude the best Italians and Sicilians, while the criminal element has no problem smuggling itself into England.”

“I agree with you,” Barker rumbled. “But that is a long-term problem and does not address the present one. How do we stop a war between the old established Camorrans and the upstart mafiusi?”

“We cannot,” the priest said, raising a hand. “It is bound to happen. These criminals are not intelligent. They may be cunning, even brilliant in their planning, but they think on the most traditional level. All slights are to be avenged. All attacks demand retaliation. Every death requires a vendetta.”

“You have prayed over this?”

“Until blood stood out on my forehead,” Father Amati replied. I assumed he was speaking metaphorically. “I’ve lived with this situation all my life.”

“Where are you from, sir? I hope you do not mind if I refrain from the use of titles.”

“Not at all. I am Cumbrian.”

“Ah,” Barker said. “The ’ndrangheta.”

“You know your secret societies, Mr. Barker. My mother wanted me to be a priest to save my life. I’ve lost two brothers to interfamily warfare and any number of uncles and cousins. When my father died and I was assigned here I brought my mother with me.”

All of a sudden, his voice cracked and he put both hands upon the desk to steady himself, as if he were having a convulsion.

“You don’t understand. You cannot understand. The members of my parish have all lost relations, been threatened, bullied, and beaten. They-we-thought we had escaped all that. It is England’s character and sense of fair play that brought us here. We endure your cold, gloomy climate as the price we must pay for our freedom.”

Father Amati stopped and blew his nose in a red silk handkerchief. The last thing I expected upon seeing this pugnacious-looking man was a display of emotion.

“You must forgive me, gentlemen,” he said, sniffing once or twice. “This is a spiritual battle that I have fought my entire adult life.”

“Not at all, sir,” Barker replied. “It does you credit. Tell me, do you have many Sicilians who are members of your parish and come to Mass?”

“Yes, hundreds. We are too small a district to divide ourselves by point of origin.”

“Could you speculate upon how they would feel if the Mafia were here?”

Amati gave a grim smile. “You needn’t be so circumspect, Mr. Barker. The Mafia is here. I know it. I see the signs. We all do. As to your question, the old ones are fearful. They have seen too much. The young are impressionable and idle. They can’t find enough work to keep them occupied. These are the same conditions under which the Mafia began. As for the rest, they don’t want the Honored Society here, but they have been conditioned to fear and obey; and they, too, struggle to find work. I wish I had something better to tell you, but there you are. You are not Catholic?”

My employer and I glanced at each other.

“No, sir,” he replied. “We are both nonconformists.”

“But you are men of faith?”

“Aye,” Barker replied. “I think we can agree on that term.”

“Then I shall renew my prayers and add your names to them, if you don’t mind.”

“I thank you, but don’t mention our names to anyone else. At this point, we don’t know for certain whom to trust.”

The remark made me think of the Barker clan motto, which was painted on a faded shield on the wall behind my employer’s desk. Appropriately enough, it was in Latin. Fide, sed qui, vide. “Trust, but be careful in whom.”

“That is a difficult thing to know, even in the best of times,” the priest replied. “My office is at your disposal. If I can help you in any way, you have but to ask.”

We stood and made our way out of the church and then walked several streets in silence. Barker was deep in thought, sometimes coming to a stop in the middle of the pavement. I let him alone, knowing he’d tell me when he was ready to speak.

“I keep thinking that a smarter man than I would find a better way to flush out the Mafia than the way a beater does partridges. They do beat for partridges, don’t they, Thomas?”

“I believe so,” I hazarded.

“A smarter man would not use something as obvious as a fight at the docks. There must be a better solution. If only I could think!” The latter remarks were punctuated by my employer smiting his forehead with his fist.

“Perhaps there isn’t a better solution,” I told him. “If there had been, I’m sure you would have thought of it. They may be common uneducated criminals-”

I never finished my sentence. A cab pulled to the curb, scraping the wheel against it. We both reached into our pockets and grasped our revolver butts. The occupant leaned forward out of the gloom of the cab, and he was the last person I expected to see.

“Inspector Pettigrilli,” Barker rumbled. “I thought you were in Liverpool.”

“I was,” the inspector replied, reaching into the confines of his coat. I had a premonition of what he would give us. “This was waiting for me at my hotel. How did they know? They are dogging my steps even now!”

His hand shaking, he gave Barker the note. From where I stood, I could see that it was marked with the accursed black handprint.