The Inquiry Agent

  Tobin smiled. “Now why don't you tell me what you came to say, Mr Brodie?”

  He risked a grin at the girls and I realised that he wasn’t pointing the firelock at me as a threat but to impress them with what a dashing and dangerous man he was. Like my son Donald, Bart Tobin had a taste for tales of highwaymen. He probably dreamed of giving his last defiant speech from the gallows as Jack Ketch put the rope around his neck; a surprising number of his type do.

  His grip was steady though and the barrel of the weapon never wavered. I had no doubt that he could pull that trigger if he really wanted to. A lot of men can the first time. They have no real idea what happens when a bullet hits flesh. Reading the bloods doesn’t prepare you for that.

  For a moment, my mind was a blank. It happens to the boldest when they are confronted with a loaded gun even in jest. You very suddenly and very intensely feel exactly how fragile a thing a human life is and you are aware just how little pressure on a trigger is needed to send you to your maker.

  “I'd be careful with that, Bart. Those flintlocks are prone to misfire. You might lose a hand.” My tongue felt as thick as a sausage and it was like I was forcing the words out through a mouth filled with sand but they came out nonetheless.

  “I'll take my chances, Mr Brodie.”

  “There's no need to point that thing at me, Bart,” I said. “I have come to do you a favour.”

  “Oh, you've come to do me a favour, have you? That's nice of you, Mr Brodie. That's bloody thoughtful of you. And what might this favour be?”

  “There was a burglary last Monday night down at a place called Brighton House.”

  “Burglary is a hanging offence, Mr Brodie.”

  “It hasn't been for a while, Bart. It's the menacing people with guns and threatening them with torture, that's the hanging offence if the judge decides he doesn’t like the look of your face.”

  “If I ever need a lawyer, Mr Brodie, I will give you a shout.” Bart turned to the two girls and laughed. “Do you hear that, girls? Mr Brodie is accusing me of knowing about hanging crimes. That's very naughty of Mr Brodie. Both of you know where I was last Monday night, don't you?”

  Now he sounded pleased with himself, as if the accusation redounded to his credit rather than otherwise, and I suppose in the circles in which he moved, it quite possibly did.

  The girls giggled and Bart leaned over and gave one of them a long kiss. He seemed unconscious of the fact that anyone was watching. He was a good actor. “And the night before that,” he gave the second girl a kiss, “and the night after that too.”

  I let out a sigh. “I don't care where you were on what night, Bart. I have been hired to get back what was stolen and not ask any questions or lodge any prosecutions. I have been authorised to pay a fair price too. No one is interested in getting you hung.”

  Bart shrugged and put the pistol back down on the stool, carefully, so the barrel pointed at the far wall and not at either of us. My legs felt a little weak with the reaction. “Then it's a pity I don't do what you're talking about, Mr Brodie. For I'm as keen to earn money as the next man.”

  “Why did Ginger Jim Matthews bring me here then?”

  “Maybe he has a strange sense of humour.”

  “Somebody has. I'm sorry for wasting both our times. I'll be on my way.”

  “Is that it, Mr Brodie? I am disappointed.”

  “That's it, Bart. That's all I have to say. I'm sorry we couldn't do some business. Maybe next time.”

  “I hear there may not be a next time, Mr Brodie. I hear Billy Tucker is looking for you. I hear you might not be with us much longer. Judging by those bruises I'd say there was something to that rumour.”

  “I'm not scared of Billy Tucker,” I said. “I sent him off to Botany Bay 10 years ago.”

  “Ah, but he's back and you ought to be scared, for our Billy's not a kid anymore. He’s become a very frightening young man. As it seems you found out. “

  “Maybe I'll look him up and set him straight on a few things.”

  “I think it's his brother he'll want to talk to you about, Mr Brodie. And I think he might use more than harsh language. He’s good with a knife is Billy or so I’m told.”

  “I'll be seeing you.” I turned to go and at that point Bart decided he'd got enough amusement out of our little scene and that it was time to get down to business.

  “Let us say, just for a moment, hypothetically speaking of course, that I could put you in touch with the housebreakers. What would you have me say to them?”

  “I would have you say that there is a good offer on the table, better than you would get from any fence.”

  “How good?”

  “£300.”

  “If I did know somebody who knew something they would want more than that.”

  “That might be possible. Of course, I would want something for brokering the deal between them and the householder.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten per cent.”

  “That sounds fair. Of course, it would be in your interests to get the householder to pay more under those circumstances.”

  “I might be able to get them to go as high as £400.”

  “If you could get them to go as high as £450 the people I know might be interested.”

  “I would have to talk to the householder. It might be possible but I doubt it.” There was no sense in making Bart so greedy that he would ask for more than Mr Soames was willing to pay.

  “What else would you have me pass along to them?”

  “I would need some sort of proof that they had the goods I'm looking for.”

  “What sort of proof would you have in mind, Mr Brodie?”

  “There were some letters and other documents, of no use to anybody but the householder, if you could bring me those that would constitute acceptable proof and I might be able to broker a deal from that.”

  “That might be possible.”

  “Good. When can you get the proofs?”

  “Perhaps this evening. I'm not saying it's likely, just that I might be able to get my hands on what you're looking for. And if I can I will be at The Rat's Nest tonight at nine o'clock.”

  “I will look in them.”

  “You do that, Mr Brodie, and we might just be able to work something out. You can represent the householder and I'll represent the other parties in the transaction.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Be careful of the stairs on your way out. I wouldn't want you to fall and break your neck. We wouldn’t want to rob Billy of his revenge would we?”

  I thought about Bart and his gun. I was angry and I was afraid as I got to the door and for one brief mad moment I considered pushing Fat Frank over the balcony, knife or no knife. I think he sensed it to, for he brought his blade up defensively.

  I walked down the stairs carefully, trembling a little, like a palsied old man. The urchins ran away shouting when they saw me. There must have been something wicked written on my face.

  As I limped away I kept replaying the encounter over and over again my mind, thinking of the things I could have said and done differently, making a play of it in which I looked more like a hero and less like a fool. I'm sure you've had the same experience yourself, when things have gone wrong between you and someone else.

  It did not make me feel any better. Once I was out of the immediately dangerous alleys of the rookery, fear and anger and the sense of having been put down filled my mind. I told myself to be sensible, that at least I'd come out of it alive, that it could have been much worse, that there was nothing I could have done differently anyway. It did not stop me imagining myself with a pistol in my hand the next time I met Bart Tobin.

  Of course, underneath all the anger was fear. Fear of all the things that might have gone wrong, that I might even now be lying dead in a kennel, and the children would be orphans left to the street or the workhouse. I told myself I had been lucky and should be grateful but I could not quite bring myself to believe it.
r />   It was only as I reached Bow Street that a small feeling of satisfaction seeped into my mind. I had made the initial contact and cagey though Bart was he had all but admitted that he was behind the crime. Now all I had to do was work out some way of paying him off and getting Mr Soames's goods back without getting a knife in my back or a bullet in my head or another beating or worse from Billy Tucker.

  I had a feeling that would be easier said than done.

  When I got back to my office there was someone waiting for me, a woman I did not recognise. She was thin, unhealthy looking, stick-like in her leanness, with near translucent skin that gave her the appearance of a walking skeleton. She looked as if she had not had a good meal in the past decade and that was quite possibly the case.

  She watched me hopefully as I approached my office door and put the key in the lock. She gave the impression somehow that she'd been waiting there for a very long time. I turned and looked at her. I didn't say anything, just waited for her to speak.

  “Are you Mr Brodie?” she said.

  “And what if I am?”

  “Sarah sent me. She said she needs to see you. She says it's important.”

  I was immediately suspicious. After my encounter with Billy Tucker and his boys that was probably a wise response. “Why can't she come and see me herself? She knows where I am.”

  “That she does. She told me I would find you here. She sent me.”

  “You still haven't told me why she can't come herself.”

  “She's in a bad way, Mr Brodie. She looks worse than you do and if you'll forgive me for saying so you look like death warmed over.” Coming from a walking bag of bones like her that was a bit rich.

  “Is she sick?”

  “She's in a bad way. Worse than you. It was men did it to her. Men connected with you. Will you come and see her or not? I can't stand here all day -- I have business of my own to look out for.”

  “Wait a minute. I'll come with you. Take me to her.” She was already walking away so I followed her. I think it was her willingness to do that which convinced me. If she'd been sent to lead me into a trap she would probably have been more persuasive.

  Had I been in my normal health the walk to the part of St Giles where Sarah lived would have been an easy one. With all my injuries it was a long hard limp. During it we crossed that strange barrier where the respectable city was transformed into the rookery. Once again, I found myself walking beside the kennel in dirty alleys. I felt a faint flicker of fear that was swiftly fanned into real alarm when she disappeared into a darkened doorway in one of the most rundown old buildings I had seen.

  I paused for a moment, squinting into the darkness, trying to see whether there was any shadows waiting for me with knives in their hands. There were definitely people in there but they moved in a normal manner, with no attempt at stealth, as if they were going about their ordinary everyday business. I waited for a moment and the stick woman turned and I saw her outline beckoning to me, dark against a deeper darkness, “Come on. Come in. What are you waiting for?”

  I followed her downstairs into a dank cellar. Some light managed to filter its way in through a small, barred window. Dust motes floated in the beam. Lying on a straw palate, covered with a thin blanket, was Sarah. She really did look worse than I did and probably for much the same reasons. Her face was swollen and bruised, someone had blackened one of her eyes. Teeth were missing. She was no longer beautiful. Perhaps she never would be again.

  I limped over and kneeled beside her. She looked up at me at once frightened and in some strange way pleased and tried to smile.

  “You look worse than I do,” she said through mashed lips. “I'm sorry, Mr Brodie. I'm very sorry.”

  “You've nothing to be sorry about, girl. Who did this to you?”

  “The same people as did it to you I'm guessing.”

  “Billy Tucker and his mates?”

  “Yes.”

  “They beat you?”

  “And worse.”

  “Billy and Tiny and Dave did this?”

  “Billy and Dave. Dave mostly. He's sick in the head when it comes to women. Tiny said he wanted nothing to do with it and walked away.”

  “Why did they do this to you?”

  “They wanted to know about you. They knew about you and me. They wanted to know where you were and what you were up to. And I told them. I tried not to at first but Dave kept hitting me and shouting.”

  “I think I'll teach him how that feels,” I said. A slow anger started to burn in my belly. I had been afraid of Billy and his friends. I don't mind admitting that. A beating will do that to you, make you flinch at the very sight of someone. It affects you at the most primal level, associates them with the pain, and your body doesn't like pain. If I had never seen Billy and his friends again I would have been perfectly happy after our encounter at Haymarket. I would have avoided them if I could, crossed the street if I'd seen them coming.

  But now, looking at what they had done to Sarah, for no other reason than the fact that they hated me, I started to feel very, very angry. It happens that way sometimes, anger and fear being the flip sides of the same half crown.

  She was crying again, and apologising incoherently, and saying over and over again that Dave just kept hitting her. I would have stroked her hair but she flinched and that one small gesture told me all I needed to know about the damage done. And it reminded me of what they'd done to me and it started to make me angry at myself and at Sarah for reminding me of it.

  “Now, girl, less of the blubbering. You'll get better.”

  “I'm sorry,” she said. “Don't be angry at me. I couldn't stand it if you were angry with me as well.”

  “I'm not bloody angry with you,” I said, and she flinched again at the tone of my voice. “I'm angry with them.”

  “You should leave the city. Billy will kill you when he gets his hands on you. He told me that. He's got a flensing knife and is going to make a coat out of your skin. And you're going to be alive when he does it.”

  I rose up and began to walk up and down across the room. I didn't have very far to walk for it was a small chamber, little more than a coal cellar, which perhaps is what it was intended to be.

  In the other corner, was Sarah's landlady and the bed and all the possessions she shared with her family. A rope had been strung across the room and some old sacks hung from it to divide the place and give some semblance of privacy. The sacks had been all pushed to one side at that time. The landlady sat on her bed and stared at me, she'd been listening the whole time.

  I dug into my pocket and pulled out some money and give it to her and asked her to go and get some laudanum and she did so, all the while staring at me with hot, hate-filled eyes, as if I were somehow to blame for what had happened to Sarah. I limped back over to where the girl lay and knees creaking and bones aching, I knelt down beside her.

  She did not look well and I wondered if perhaps some bones were broken or she had suffered some internal injury. I would have sent out for a doctor but a man like Davies would never have come here, not unless he was doing statistical research or investigating sanitation or some such thing.

  “How did they know that you knew me?” I asked her as softly as I could.

  “I don't know. Someone must have told them. I've told a few of the girls about you.”

  “What did you tell them?” Strange as it may sound, she looked away as if embarrassed and wouldn't say anything.

  “What did you tell Billy and Dave?”

  “Oh them. I told them you are looking for Ginger Jim Matthews and that he was usually at the Haymarket on a Saturday night. The same thing as I told you. I'm sorry, Mr Brodie.”

  “Stop saying you're sorry. You've nothing to be sorry about. You didn't do anything wrong.”

  “I told them where to find you. And I told them after Billy had told me he was going to kill you. I didn't want to. I didn't mean to. The words just came out. Dave kept hitting me.”

  “I've seen it
happen sometimes, to the hardest of men. They don’t mean to talk. But somehow in the middle of a beating the words just come out and then they babble. I don't doubt for a moment that under the circumstances I would have done the same.”

  She looked at me. “No, you wouldn't.”

  She had more faith in me than I had myself and I told her so. She shook her head and lay there staring up at the ceiling. I could not think of anything to say myself so I squatted there, holding her hand until her landlady returned with the medicine.

  I held the bottle to her lips while she drunk and took it away from her before she could swallow too much. I gave the bottle to the landlady and told her not to let Sarah have any more until nightfall. It wasn't long after that that she fell asleep, still holding my hand.

  “Well,” the landlady demanded. “What are you going to do now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She can’t go to work like that. There's no way she can sell flowers in that condition.”

  “You wouldn't put her out in the street with her in that state, would you?”

  She looked outraged at the suggestion. “Of course not. We can live without her rent money for a few weeks at least. But things are tight enough around here as it is. How am I going to feed her?”

  Her voice faded on the last sentence and she looked as if she was going to cry. I realised then that I'd done this skeletal woman a great disservice. Poor as she was and despite the strain it would place on her meagre resources, she was prepared to look after Sarah. She was only voicing her despair at what was going to happen, for it was quite possible that looking after the beaten girl would drag her and her family under as well.

  She made me feel ashamed of myself. I came to a decision. I dug into my pocket and found a sovereign and handed it to her. “That should keep her for a little while,” I said. “Stay with her for now. I'll be back in a little while with a doctor.”

  As usual, the good doctor was not pleased to see me. I had disturbed him once again while he was eating. He looked up at me and said, “Is your daughter worse?”