The Black Hand

14

"I knew it was only a matter of time before Faldo found me,” said Pettigrilli. It had obviously been penned by the same author as the previous notes. Pettigrilli translated for us: “Your days on this earth are numbered. I am the eraser that will wipe away the chalk marks of your days.”

“Poetic,” Barker commented, “if a trifle melodramatic. What is your plan?”

Pettigrilli folded it and put it back in his pocket, patting his breast. “I’m taking it to Scotland Yard,” he said. “I know a serious threat when I see one.”

“Why are you here in Clerkenwell?” I asked. “It is out of your way.”

“I leased a flat here last week, but this has changed my mind. London is no safer than Palermo. I have collected my belongings and terminated the lease. I believe I shall return to Paris immediately. Ah! But, forgive my manners. This is Constable Newton, who, he assures me, is no relation to the great philosopher and astronomer. He met me at Euston Station and is to escort me as far as Whitehall.”

The constable tugged on the brim of his helmet in greeting.

“Mr. Barker, I wonder if you and your assistant would accompany us back to A Division as well,” the inspector went on. “It was a mistake to come back to Clerkenwell. I have noticed the stares from passersby. They know something is afoot.”

“Certainly we shall see you back,” the Guv said. “There is a cab coming down the street now. We’ll follow you.”

We snared the hansom and were soon following Pettigrilli and Constable Newton.

“There are certainly a lot of Black Hand notes fluttering about London lately,” I commented. “Perhaps whoever is plotting this Sicilian onslaught has engaged the services of a professional scrivener.”

“I’ll wager that note was posted to Liverpool from here in Clerkenwell,” Barker growled.

“If they were Irish instead of Italian, Scotland Yard would have this entire district locked up. Come to think of it, wasn’t the very first Irish bombing here in Clerkenwell?”

“Very good, lad,” Barker said. “That was in ’sixty-seven, long before my time. This was the Irish district then.”

“And before that, it was the setting for Oliver Twist.”

“Who?”

I keep forgetting Barker doesn’t read popular literature. “Dickens, sir. It’s another book by Charles Dickens.”

“I suppose I shall have to read him, if merely to understand your references. Blast!”

This latter was due to a delivery van that had insinuated itself into the space between our two vehicles. Our cabman cursed loudly and pulled the reins hard, bringing us to a shuddering standstill. The van took its time crossing in front of us, while the deliverymen traded remarks with the cabman in two languages. One of them unlocked the gate to a small courtyard, while the other backed his pair of draft horses into it step by step. Farther down the street ahead of us, there was a loud report, followed a moment later by another.

“Pay him!” Barker cried, struggling through the doors of the cab. I reached into my pocket and tossed up a handful of coins through the trapdoor before jumping down to the pavement. I was under no illusion that the sounds were something innocent. I followed Barker as best I could, noting as I ran that there was no sign of Pettigrilli’s cab anywhere ahead of us.

Barker stopped, and when I reached his side, I caught the acrid odor of gunpowder. My employer pointed down to fresh wheel tracks crossing the pavement in front of us leading to a pair of livery stable doors. We both reached into our coats for our pistols, making an elderly gentleman coming toward us turn and scuttle away. Cautiously, we pushed the doors open and stepped forward. The odor was stronger inside the stable.

My eyes took a moment to adjust to the change from sunlight to deep shadow. Motes hung heavily in the air. In the center of the stable was Pettigrilli’s cab, its horse pushing and pulling in an effort to get out of the traces. There was no one on the driver’s perch and the stable appeared empty. We moved forward cautiously. The windows on either side of the vehicle had been blown out, shattering glass and wood. A pair of limbs extended out under the bat wing doors, unmoving. Gingerly, I leaned in and then wished I hadn’t. The cab was awash in gore. Constable Newton and the inspector lay slumped over each other, their heads almost blown apart. Each had received a blast through the windows beside them.

“Lad,” Barker said, pointing with his gun. A second pair of doors on the other side of the stable had been left open, and there were wheel tracks in the straw.

“A second vehicle,” I conjectured.

The Guv crossed to the second entranceway and stepped out. “They came in through Clerkenwell Road and exited into Clerkenwell Green,” he said.

“Should we give chase?” I asked.

“No, they are gone. We must secure the area and alert Scotland Yard. They will not be happy to hear this news, one of their own dead and a guest in our country assassinated.”

Barker handed me the police whistle he always kept on the end of his watch chain and nodded me out the front doors. I closed them to discourage onlookers, then stepped out into the street and blew for all I was worth. It instantly drew a crowd, but I refused to answer questions until I saw a constable coming toward me in that steady, reassuring trot they train the men to use in an emergency. I opened the doors with a brief explanation and waved him inside, pushing them shut behind him. The crowd assaulted me with questions, but the most I would say was “police business.”

A moment later, Barker stuck his head out and requested that I whistle again. I daren’t risk stepping away from the door, so I whistled in the crowd’s faces. There are too many people in London these days, I’ve decided-four million of them in fact-and most of them noisy and inconsiderate. One of the onlookers, seeing how small I was, reasoned that there was little to stop him from satisfying his curiosity. He tried to pick me up and move me aside, and I was forced to use one of the Japanese wrestling tricks Barker had taught me. I stuck my thumbs into the corners of his mouth and tugged outward. He fell back, slurring a curse, and pushed his way out of the crowd, but a second fellow took up his cause, perhaps thinking I’d merely had a bit of luck. He seized my lapel, but a quick poke in his left eye soon disabused him of the notion. I was still blowing the whistle all the while, and was beginning to grow a trifle faint.

Finally, two more constables arrived. One of them stationed himself outside, while the other went in with me, or tried to. The stable door had been barred from within. A knock brought Barker to the door, and we were admitted.

Inside, after being apprised of the facts, the constable volunteered to go to Scotland Yard. Barker gave him Poole’s name as the inspector already working on the case, and the P.C. ran out to find a cab. The second constable pulled me over to the other door, which I noted had also been barred, and questioned me thoroughly.

Barker looked about as I was being questioned, and I followed him with my eyes. He studied the damage to the cab and the bodies. The driver was missing, and he might have had something to do with the murders, but I could not recall his appearance. Barker began patting his pockets, and by the time the constable had finished questioning me, he had his pipe going, standing in a cloud of smoke in front of the carriage.

About twenty minutes later, the stable door squeaked open and Poole’s thin form slipped through. He came over to us almost casually and stood beside Barker, looking at the corpses inside the vehicle.

“You and the boy are under arrest, Cyrus,” he said conversationally.

“I know it,” Barker said in his lowland Scots accent. It was more pronounced when he was angry. “ ’Tis why I’ve been smoking. It may be hours until I can again.”

“How could you let this happen?” Poole asked, waving his hand at the cab. “He was a guest of the Yard, of this country. Commissioner Henderson’s on his way. You cannot be here when he arrives. The two of you are going to A Division in bracelets.”

“I’ve got a case,” the Guv insisted.

“You had one. Now it’s ours. We’re going to open Clerkenwell like a tin of smoked kippers.”

“It’s about time you did.”

“Constable!” Inspector Poole barked, as if the fellow and I had been playing marbles together in the corner. The P.C. stepped forward and tugged heavily on the peak of his helmet.

“Yes, sir!”

“Have you taken down both of these gentlemen’s statements?”

“I have, sir.”

“Then put the little one in darbies and escort him to Scotland Yard.”

“Little one?” I sputtered. “You can go-”

“Lad!” Barker thundered.

“Blast it.” I held out my wrists for the irons, cursing in my mind the constable; Poole; Henderson; Barker’s standards of decorum if not the man himself; and even Mr. Hiatt for his new, constantly improved, patented wrist restraints.

A half hour later I was cooling my heels in an eight by ten foot holding cell in Scotland Yard. It had taken me less than two years to find myself incarcerated again. Perhaps I was fated to spend my life behind bars. I felt like a football in a celestial game being punted from one angry deity to another.

Time palls in a cell, but eventually a sergeant came and took me to an examination room where Poole went over my testimony several times, as if I was trying to trick him. I’m afraid I snapped. Barker would not have been proud. As I recall, I told him he couldn’t find the killer if the two of them had played blindman’s bluff in the holding cell I’d just vacated.

“Shut it, Llewelyn!” he finally shouted at me. “I could have gone a great deal harder on you than I have.”

“You didn’t have to arrest us,” I maintained.

“Oh? And how would you know?” he replied. “Are you an expert on criminal procedures? We’ve just had a guest of Her Majesty’s government murdered by the very people he had come here to flee. A hundred inspectors out of a hundred would have arrested you. If I hadn’t gotten the two of you out of there, Henderson would have fallen on you like a ton of bricks. If he had his way he’d have hoisted you up in that stable and beaten a confession out of you. He’s hated Barker ever since the Limehouse case. I’ll speak plainly so you can get it through your thick skull. The two of you have been involved in the deaths of three officers in one year.”

“Technically, the constable’s not an officer.”

“Shut it, I said! You’re getting my ulcer up. I’m beginning to think a man can be a friend of Cyrus Barker or a member of the Metropolitan Police, but it is impossible to be both.”

“When are you releasing us?” I demanded.

“When I’m ready. And every time you make my ulcer flare, I’ll add another half hour to it.”

“Perhaps I could speak to Commissioner Henderson myself. He doesn’t scare me.”

“The commissioner doesn’t have time to waste on minnows like you. I’m sending you back to your cell. You can rest at our expense until your employer’s fancy solicitor comes to release you.”

Back in my cell, I lay on the bed and leaned back on the bit of stained sacking that the Yard dares call a pillow, staring at the ceiling. Barker and I had just been neatly elbowed out of the way, and I for one was not sorry for it. There were too many death threats being handed about lately. As far as I was concerned, Marco Faldo could keep himself occupied sending notes to the various members of A Division. I might even help him write a few.