The Devil's Mask (8 page)

As soon as the children were standing before me, I sensed that tracking them down had been a waste of time. The link I'd imagined between the suicide, the stamped cask, the
Belsize
, and my … tedious endeavours on behalf of the Dock Company, had broken. The boy did not pause from chewing the mashed end of a willow wand to return my greeting. He had an insolence about him. And the girl, though cherubic in appearance, had so far remained mute. What I'd hoped to glean from them seemed ridiculously remote. I thrust my hands into the pockets of my greatcoat and dug out the oranges anyway.

‘Here.'

‘Just oranges?' said the boy.

His mother – if that's who she was; she seemed young for the job – immediately stuck her head out of the cottage door and hissed at him to mind his manners. He did not flinch, just slid both hands – and the fruit – behind his narrow back, as if suspecting the woman might snatch it.

‘That's all I thought to bring,' I explained. ‘What were you expecting?'

‘The only reward worth having is one that goes clink.'

‘Reward?'

‘For the dead blackamoor. We found it, and we didn't need to tell anyone.'

‘Tell anyone what?'

The boy's eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?'

I turned to the girl and asked her name. Kitty. She was still inspecting the orange I'd given her, and sucking on her plump lower lip. With her head bent forward I saw that her hair was a mat of curls streaked with sun and dirt. I thought of Anne Carthy's dreaded baths, and my own resolution to visit the barber, and was pricked with sympathy for the girl.

‘I've got a brother who can fit an orange in his mouth whole,' I told her.

She lifted her gaze to mine. ‘Really?'

‘It's true. He started out more modestly, on hard-boiled eggs.'

‘That's not nice.'

‘No. And I wouldn't recommend that you try it. There are better things to be good at.'

The boy was looking at his orange again. ‘I don't think he can eat it when it's in his mouth, can he? Chew it and such, I mean.'

‘No. I don't think he can.'

‘So there's no point in it.'

‘Which one of you actually found this body then?'

‘We both did,' the boy said.

‘Both of you?' I repeated, looking at Kitty. She had begun biting at her lower lip again.

‘And after you found it, what happened then?'

‘I went to get Sammy. He's our uncle. I'm in business with him.'

‘You both did?'

Kitty was shaking her head.

‘Just your brother went?'

Now she nodded.

‘Somebody had to stay with it in case it floated away,' the boy explained. He tossed the orange from one hand to the other. ‘What about apples. Could your brother manage one of them?'

‘I think the stalk might be a problem.'

I turned back to the girl, who was looking at me with a blank detachment which made her face ageless for a moment, so that I could see both the infant she had been and the woman she would become. I lowered myself to her level, squatting. ‘So you were with the body a long while, as the evening grew dark,' I said gently. ‘And I'm sure that must have been horrid.'

The girl gulped and nodded and the gesture felt to me like the first mark on a page, the mark which makes others possible, and I had a sudden hope that the thought I'd had may still return, and become sensible, with this girl's help.

‘I imagine that you didn't want to look at it, but that you did, because you're a clever girl, and clever people are inquisitive.'

‘She didn't do anything to it!' said the boy. ‘She just guarded –'

‘I know, and that was kind, kind to the dead woman, and sensible, because Kitty is a sensible girl. I can see that. I think she kept watch over the body very properly, just as you told her to, and I imagine that she looked at it carefully, just in case it would be helpful.'

The girl's eyes had a taken on a translucent quality which I suspected presaged tears. I went on quickly. ‘And if she is able
to help me' – I glanced at the boy – ‘if either of you are, then I'm sure I will manage a reward, and heaven knows, it may even clink. What I'm keen to find out, and what I'm sure Kitty can tell me, is this. Was there anything unusual about the woman's body? A mark on it, perhaps?'

The girl nodded.

‘And you saw it, didn't you, Kitty? You looked closely?'

‘There was lots of marks.'

My spirits slumped. I pressed on regardless. ‘But was one of them perhaps special, like a word, or some lettering?'

The girl nodded again and sniffed. ‘Yes,' she said, pointing to her thigh. ‘Here.'

‘Can you tell me what the lettering said?'

The girl gnawed at her lip again and looked to her brother, who stuck his chin out and said, ‘She can't read, Sir, and nor can I.'

‘No, of course not.' Still squatting, I bounced impatiently upon my heels. The bellow of a distant cow gave way to the sound of the breeze swishing through treetops. ‘How foolish of me,' I murmured at length.

‘A crown,' muttered Kitty.

My knees cracked as I stood up. Was the girl no better than her grasping brother? Still, what an ordeal to have gone through. ‘A crown indeed,' I smiled. ‘You'll have to make do with a farthing each.'

The girl shook her head. ‘No. The scar thing on her leg. It looked like a crown, and a tree thing, and a moon.'

‘What's that?' I knelt before Kitty again, a hand on the knob of her shoulder. I tossed a coin to her brother, who caught it, and I popped a second farthing into the pocket of
her dress. Very gently, I said, ‘A crown, eh. With a tree and a moon. If we can just borrow that stick from your brother, and smooth out the dirt here, like so, do you imagine you could draw what you saw for me?'

I made my way back through Leigh Woods, past the new quarries, open wounds in the flanks of the gorge, and dropped down to follow the river. Soon I was amongst the glass factories and iron foundries of Bedminster. Their haze stained the sky and lay thick upon my tongue. Finally I crossed the Avon, at low tide, a slit in the mud beneath the bridge, to enter Bristol proper.

As I walked, my boots turning grey and then reddish and then black with muck, Captain Addison was foremost in my mind. The Captain hadn't been straight with me. But he had not been the only man aboard the
Belsize
.

A world in miniature, that's what they called a ship. It was impossible to keep secrets in such a confined space. The decks were drum-skins reverberating with rumours; intrigue buzzed in the rigging. I turned the corner into Prince's Street. Home was a street away and I felt better for the walk. I would seek out some other of the ship's crew to interview.

But before I could turn into Thunderbolt Street, a presence materialised beside me and immediately whoever it was had gripped me harshly above the right elbow. I lifted my arm to remonstrate, whereupon my assailant, in an unnaturally low voice, growled, ‘Easy, now!' and shoved something sharp into the softness of my armpit. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that he was masked; a red neckerchief strained high across the
bridge of his nose. Outrage gave way to fear, which flooded through me with nauseating suddenness. The man levered my arm back down to my side without lowering the knife, and marched me forward, his face now above and behind my shoulder, flat assurances coming at me in a gruff whisper, the two of us cinched together like a pair of monks in private conversation.

‘What in the name of –?' I broke off as the knife-tip nipped me again. There was something awful in the man's restraint.
I'm not pressing hard
– it said –
yet
.

‘Keep moving. There's nothing to be gained from stopping here.'

‘Where are you taking me?'

‘It's for your own benefit. Get in.'

We had approached a carriage waiting on the
northwestern
corner of Queen Square. I felt myself folded forwards and sideways at the knife's behest. The hand on my elbow slid up to guide me into the cab's recesses by means of pressure exerted upon the back of my neck. I pitched forwards on to my knees. Then the man was thrusting something over my lowered head. It was a sack. I felt myself struggle, but in truth I barely shuddered, the prospect of the knife being more than enough to snuff out my protest before I'd begun it in earnest.

‘Good chap,' said the voice. ‘Sensible.'

The bag was made from thick hessian and admitted no light. In the darkness its rough texture was exaggerated, so that tree bark or glass paper seemed to be pressing against my brow and cheek. There was something else, something repellently
reassuring
about the sack. It had a smell so familiar
and appealing that I could not at first place it. The carriage rattled from the paved street which ran around the square on to the uncertainty of a pitched road, and took off at a pace. Immediately I had no idea which way I was headed. The smell was warm and full and rounded. Coffee! A burning sensation worked in my throat.

‘Take what you want! My billfold, pocket-watch. Just let me go. I beg you.'

There was a burst of laughter. It sounded oddly
under-confi
dent
. Then the growl came again. ‘Pull yourself together. I'm not here to take anything from you. On the contrary, my orders are to
give
you something.'

‘Fine. Give it to me. Then set me down. I'll breathe no word of this. I swear.'

This plea was met with more staccato laughter, followed by, ‘Ever the optimist. Just sit pretty. All will be explained.'

I gripped my elbows and hunched forward on the seat, which attempt to protect myself only increased the horrible sensation of vulnerability. The man still had hold of my arm, the knifepoint was still pressed into my side, though lightly now, perhaps to accommodate the jolting of the carriage as it churned the rutted streets. Uphill. That didn't narrow things down by much: Bristol is all hills. On we dragged, to the sound of the road-noise and wind. The man did not speak again. In time the raw fear faded. It was replaced by a low panic which still rendered sensible thinking impossible, so that although I tried to imagine how best I might escape unharmed, I could not. Absurdities flitted about me instead. I wouldn't have time to attend the barber's today, not now. Why wasn't I more resolute about improving my drawing?
And how could Lilly's wide-eyed smile be at once adorable and infuriating?

The coffee smell. I focussed on that. Maybe I imagined it, but there seemed to be something else behind the smell, the sharpness of strong alcohol. Christ! I coughed and shook my head and steeled myself by listening for the sound of the wheels grinding on.

Up we went, up. The horse was blowing between the shafts, and the carriage rattled upon its axle, wooden-wheels slipping and biting and clattering over the broken road. Then we were slowing and twisting and heaving over what felt less like a road than earth and rocks. The man had a rough hold of my collar to steady me against the movement, which solicitude I could not help feeling as a kindness, even as I crouched there in the black shadow of the sack. Finally, the seat beneath my thighs bounced to a stop.

‘Down you get.'

The hand and the knife-tip steered me through the carriage door. I felt gingerly for the step. Beneath it my boot stumped into something wet. I squelched my way forward, the wind tugging at my coat-tails, and then there were planks beneath my feet and my footsteps acquired an echo which, taken together with the yawning stillness above me, told me that I had entered a building. I was manhandled to a staircase and prodded to climb it, feeling for each step. From the curve of the landing, I could tell the stairs belonged somewhere big. Up and up we went. Finally, I was jostled on to floorboards which flexed and clattered as I crossed them. They had not been nailed in place. Fearing a hole in the floor, I baulked, but the knife digging into the small of my back would brook
no resistance. Rough wood snagged beneath my leather soles as I scuffed my way forwards.

‘Good man. Steady. There's the spot.'

The point of pressure at my back eased and I stopped shuffling. I could still sense the man looming behind me, and a fearful nothingness before me; though I locked my knees they were shaking unreliably, as were my hands. I clasped them together and clamped my teeth shut so hard that my ears rang.

‘Look straight ahead. Don't turn around.'

The man attempted to jerk the bag off my head, but his fingers took hold of a chunk of my hair along with the hessian. I winced and swung my head from side to side and the hand pulled and finally, as my eyes pricked full of tears, the bag came off.

I was standing on the edge of a precipice! I gasped and blinked and reached to steady myself against the stonework. There should have been a door here on to a balcony of some sort, but there was none. Just a ragged opening in the wall of a house perched high above the city, with a sheer drop down the front of the building on to broken stone and earth sixty, no, eighty feet below.

The voice growled in my ear again. ‘Don't look around, or my face will be the last thing you have the good fortune to see.'

‘What do you want from me?'

‘Just look, and listen.'

The view before me swam into focus. The whole city seemed to tumble away from the foot of this half-built shell of a building. Braced against the bare casement, I glanced left
and right at the sweep of windowless, roofless terrace either side of where I stood. It looked like a wave of stone about to break upon the town. Though I'd never been inside it before, I understood now that I was standing inside the great unfinished crescent on the brink of Clifton Hill. The sky burned dull white for an instant as the sun tried to break through a seam in the canopy of cloud above me, then the wind swept shadows over the hill and the light turned grey again. Beneath the scudding cloudbank stood another, yellower layer of smoke which pulsed from the factories and tanneries and smelting houses and lay ragged and yellow in the basin of the city. From up here I could even make out a dirty slice of harbour stabbed full of masts, and, in the distance, monochrome hills gritted with sheep.

I flinched as the man laid a hand upon my shoulder again.

‘Well?' he growled. ‘What strikes you in the scene? What do you … make of it all?'

‘Strikes me? It's, it's, it …'

‘Come on!'

‘I don't know what you want me to say!'

‘Say what you see!'

‘It's … the city. It's Bristol. And beyond, the hills.'

‘The city and some hills. You can do better than that!' There was something almost comical about the rumbling depth of the man's voice. It seemed put on. ‘For a man of your sensibilities, a
professional
man,' he continued. ‘I expect something more evocative! This is the top of the world!'

‘Clifton Hill then. And an almighty drop! Rubble, piles of stone, timbers, unfinished buildings. And beneath us the
factories, and the smoke, the docks, and … For God's sake! What do you want from me?'

‘What are your thoughts concerning the rubble?'

‘I … don't … it's just rubble!'

‘
Just
rubble! No, no, no. Think again! What does it signify? What's it for?'

‘I've no idea. Building works I suppose.'

‘That's it.' The knife pushed me further into the opening. ‘You suppose right. And that's why I have brought you here, to survey these half-cocked building works and to take in this scene.'

The wind beat against my face. My feet were inches from the stone threshold. The man's demeanour seemed less threatening than it had in the carriage. But my knees were still trembling beneath the hem of my coat.

The man went on. ‘You see, this great half-cocked edifice is just part of the problem. Like so many other noble works, the spat with Bonaparte has condemned it to stand unfinished these how many years? War has sapped the city of funds. Without money everything grinds to a halt. I'll tell you a secret. Thieves come here at night to strip the shells of these houses of everything valuable: stone, tools, even roofing lead! But the owners have had enough. They have sprung mantraps in the basements! Men of action won't be stopped, you see. The war has slowed them down, but with the end in sight they are stirring again. The city needs money. Men of action make it. They will complete these buildings, and set those factories to work, and keep our ships floated above the sucking silt. They are the force behind this city, you understand, the heart which pumps its sustaining blood.'

A gull hanging in the wind above the great crescent now dropped a wing and veered sideways and away. It screamed in my face as it went.

‘But what has this to do with me?'

‘What the men of action want is for the benefit of the city, not just for themselves. Yet their ends are frustrated. By the war and by parliament, forces they have been all but powerless to resist. Now they find further …
petty
… obstacles in their way. Your meddling in the affairs of the dock is not welcomed.' The voice had risen half a notch: ‘Not welcomed at all.' The knife-tip dug into the small of my back, forcing me forward and on to the edge of balance; the barest push would have sent me toppling through the gap. ‘The last thing anyone wants is for you to investigate the rubble beneath us at close quarters. But …' fingertips bored through cloth and muscle, then jerked me back a step … ‘but I have been sent to warn you that this is your last chance.'

I tensed from toe to jaw and rocked backwards on to my heels. My fists tightened to hammers. I was a half-beat from spinning round to assault this man, knife or no knife, and he knew it. His voice was hot against my ear again, very low again, insistent, and yes, sharp with spirits. ‘Don't fight, Inigo. You'll only make things worse.'

I dared not breathe. I lowered my chin on to my chest and shut my eyes and heard the wind rise across the face of the building. My shoulders slumped, my hands hung open and the wind rose higher and then dropped again. In time footsteps behind me jarred the planks. I listened and listened and did not turn around until their report had disappeared.