The Incendiary's Trail (38 page)

‘No, sir,’ said PC Cullen. ‘They are waiting for you at the entrance to the Gardens. I took the liberty of passing the news among them that you had captured your men and would
meet them there.’

The inspector reined in his apoplexy and breathed deeply. The tableau remained frozen. ‘Mr Williamson, I can assure you that your accusations are baseless. However, I am certainly not
about to ask a multiple murderer to provide my alibi. If you wish to charge me with anything, you will present your evidence in a court and I will answer it – as I will present mine against
you. Now is not the time.’

‘Sir, I cannot allow you to arrest Noah. Much of what he has done has been in your service and with the sole aim of capturing Mr Boyle. We would not be standing here now without his
efforts.’

‘This whole business has been a mistake on my part. I am glad it will end with the capture of the criminal.’

Noah was still holding the dagger in a white-knuckled palm. Lucius Boyle was still watching Noah intently. He knew something that nobody else had yet discerned in their heated claims and
counter-claims.

Unnoticed by all except Mr Boyle, Edgar had been bleeding constantly since the shot had been fired. The bullet had entered his abdomen and caused severe damage there. A lesser man would have
collapsed instantly. Now his grip on his prisoner was gradually loosening and Lucius could feel it. Inevitably, the giant would not be able to withstand the loss of blood, which had been seeping
relentlessly from the wound, for much longer.

‘Arrest Mr Boyle – he is the murderer that the newspapers and Commissioner Mayne have been baying for, ’ urged Mr Williamson. ‘He is your blackmailer and the one who has
almost succeeded in sullying your name and reputation.’

‘How many times must I repeat it?
He is not my blackmailer!
That is pure fantasy on your part. You have misread your evidence!’

Noah alone, who had been disregarding the policemen’s debate lest his enemy flee once more, noticed Edgar wobble. The giant’s eyes rolled back. His mouth opened dumbly. He fell
forward like a sawn pine, hitting the wooden planks a with resounding crash.

And Lucius Boyle was off. He sprinted for the entrance, not pausing for the obstruction of PC Cullen, whom he brutally dispatched with the empty pistol swung underarm like an iron bar to connect
with the policeman’s jaw. Immediately, a commotion was heard to strike up beyond the doorway.

‘
Stop him!
’ roared Noah.

All three charged outside, where the fugitive audience had been waiting
en masse
for the outcome of the drama within. Some pointed in the direction that Boyle had taken. His pursuers
raced there.

‘He cannot escape!’ panted Inspector Newsome. ‘All exits are covered!’

But he had not reckoned on every manner of escape. Lucius Boyle would not knowingly have entered a trap unless every means of flight had been fully considered. Shouts and screams from the nearby
balloon ground showed the direction of his progress.

One balloon was rising as the three men arrived. The tethers had been severed and a prone body lay surrounded by concerned revellers on the flattened grass where the car had sat.

‘It’s Boyle,’ said Noah, arriving at the scene first and looking up at the receding car. ‘We’ll take the other balloon.’

‘You will not, sir!’

The man barring his way was none other than the illustrious Mr Charles Lyme, he who had flown from this very spot to Germany and who had risen to heights unthought-of by lesser aeronauts.
Naturally, he did not want to lose a second balloon.

‘This flight has already been reserved. You may not board.’

Inspector Newsome spoke: ‘Listen, man! That other who has fled with your balloon is the man they call “Red Jaw” or “the General”: the murderer of Mary Chatterton,
Mr Coggins and the Reverend Josiah Archer. Tonight he has killed another. Will you let him drift away? I command you to aid the Detective Force in this matter.’

Noah, the dagger still clasped in his hand, was watching Boyle drift higher and further beyond his grasp. For him, it was no longer a matter of asking permission.

Perceiving this, Mr Williamson added his weight to the argument: ‘Mr Lyme – I am a keen admirer of yours, but I will be forced to arrest you if you do not aid us. I suspect that you
are working in collusion with the killer in this matter.’

‘Well, I declare—’ began the aeronaut indignantly, but Noah had already boarded the car and was hacking at the ropes with a hatchet presumably provided for the purpose.

‘Take us, Mr Lyme, or watch us leave without you,’ added Mr Williamson, himself heading for the car.

‘Stop! You cannot navigate alone! You need an experienced pilot,’ yelled the aeronaut.

‘And you are he,’ added Mr Newsome, roughly taking him by the arm and pulling him towards the car.

Perhaps Mr Lyme saw that the only way to protect his balloon was to accede to the demands of the policemen. Certainly, it would be safer with him aboard. He climbed in the car, where Noah was
still hacking frenziedly at their restraints.

‘Not that one!’ cried Mr Lyme, halting Noah’s arm. ‘That is the guide rope. Throw those three bags of ballast overboard – he is only one and we are four. He has the
advantage of buoyancy, but he lacks the skill.’

With the last rope loosed, the balloon rose soundlessly. Or rather, from the point of view of the passengers, the earth seemed to fall away beneath them without jolt or judder. The faces around
them retroceded, becoming smaller and more distant until they appeared mere characters upon the illuminated night-time canvas of Vauxhall Gardens itself, whose gaslit walkways and concert areas
gleamed like chains of pearls amidst the inky foliage.

Mr Lyme bade the four men sit around the car’s rim, which was only four feet tall. A hoop hung down from the horizontal ring above them where the balloon’s net was fastened, and upon
this hoop were located the various brass and teak aeronautical instruments necessary for flight: a barometer, a compass, a telescope and others unnameable which were in an experimental state. Now
becalmed and in his natural element, Mr Lyme consulted his needles, dials and mercury readings as another might look upon the commodities listing in
the Times
.

‘The wind is taking us north across the river,’ he said. ‘We are currently rising past two hundred feet. The full moon will reach its apogee at around one o’clock and it
is a fine clear night for flying.’

Noah peered through the telescope and focused upon Lucius Boyle, who appeared to be consulting the instruments in his balloon with considerably less proficiency. He turned and looked at his
pursuers often, confident in the knowledge, at least, that there was nothing they could do to go faster. They were all at the mercy of the wind.

Mr Williamson clutched the edge of the car as if he were in a boat. He peered down to the dark ribbon of the Thames that had appeared on his left and saw the stone flower of Millbank
penitentiary glowing spectrally in the moonlight. As they rose, the city seemed more and more like a map spread below him, Westminster-bridge a mere strand across the water and St James’ park
a great black lung sliced silver by lunar reflection. His city. Seeing it thus was like floating in a febrile state above his own prostrate form, recognizing and yet not recognizing. Up here, amid
the smoke of countless hearths and manufactories, he had entered the very
pneuma
of London.

‘He is rising faster than we,’ said Noah, pointing to the other balloon, which was a good hundred feet higher against the starry sky.

‘Of course. He has less weight,’ said Mr Lyme. ‘But he cannot go faster. And he must come down.’

‘Can we do nothing?’ asked Inspector Newsome.

‘We are at the mercy of the breeze, sir. I recommend that you enjoy the view and allow me to worry about the flight.’

‘Enjoy the view, man? Do you understand the urgency of our pursuit?’

‘Science will not be rushed.’

‘He is manipulating the valve,’ interrupted Noah. ‘Here, look through the telescope.’

Mr Lyme took the instrument and beheld Lucius Boyle within its glassy eye. He was indeed touching the valve as if trying to understand the mechanism. As Mr Lyme watched, Lucius seemed to
perceive the gaze upon him and glared back with a look that magnified its hate through the lenses into the blinking eyeball at the end. The aeronaut shivered.

‘Yes, he is perhaps trying to release gas and descend. If he does so over the city, there will be casualties for certain. And if the balloon is ruptured, the coal gas will escape and . . .
well, it could be very nasty.’

He applied himself once more to the telescope: ‘Wait. He has stopped with the valve and is checking his instruments. Perhaps he has understood that he has the advantage of
levity.’

‘Just do as he does,’ advised Inspector Newsome. ‘If he descends, descend. Do not let him escape us. The pursuit is in your hands.’

Mr Williamson seemed mesmerized by the passing city. They were crossing the river now, just south of Waterloo-bridge. Moored boats were as twigs at the edge of a streamlet and he fancied that he
could smell the water itself: a muddy exhalation of wet wood, waste and damp stone. Even at this height, the sounds of the city could be heard quite clearly from the spider-web of gaslit
thoroughfares.

For a moment, the four men paused there in the eternal aether and listened to snatches of sound brought to them on breaths of air: cart wheels on stone; the chorus of a drunkenly bellowed song;
a scream that could have been of pleasure or of death; and beneath it all, seemingly, the ghostly murmur of manifold invisible lives rising on the smoke.

‘What is that?’ asked Inspector Newsome, pointing to their left at a patch of relative darkness like a bloodstain upon the urban fabric.

‘St Giles,’ mumbled a lugubrious Mr Williamson.

‘Are you still brooding on your ludicrous suspicions about me, Mr Williamson?’

‘Until I have evidence to the contrary.’

‘You have no evidence
now
– only supposition. Do you really think I would have allowed you to undergo a beating such as you experienced there in that inky parish? I abhor this
man Boyle as much as you. Unlike you, I vowed to do anything to catch him, even if it meant utilizing another criminal.’

‘So you are not the father of Eliza-Beth? You have no personal investment in this case at all, other than seeing justice done?’

‘I have no children. You know that. The only personal aspect of this case is my desire to see the man at the end of a rope.’

‘Which man?’ said Noah.

‘Boyle, of course. I will be frank – you mean nothing to me, Mr Dyson. One criminal is the same as another to me. You are all worthy of the gaol and the gallows. But that man . . .
that man has plagued me like no other.’

‘And me? I, too, am a criminal in your eyes,’ said Mr Williamson.

‘Yes. Yes, you are. You broke the law when you allied yourself with Noah.’

‘Will I be prosecuted when we land?’

‘What would
you
do, Mr Williamson? You are the rigid backbone of the Detective Force. You are the one who lives by the rules and regulations. You are the one who would reason with a
fist-fighter using only Royal proclamations in your defence. What would you do in my position? Tell me and I will be guided by your superior morality.’

Mr Williamson looked out again over the limitless charcoal smudge of the city. It might be a sea of ashes from this altitude, all consumed. The British Museum was a masonry oasis of civilization
down there, amid the holocaust. He closed his insubstantial judge’s robes about him for warmth.

‘Well, Mr Williamson? Have you been taken in by the rhetorical patter of Mr Dyson here, our gentleman thief? But a thief all the same. Where is the young policeman I knew who would send a
boy to Botany Bay for taking a loaf of bread? Where is
he
now?’

All eyes were upon Mr Williamson. But he did not speak. Mr Lyme, who was oblivious to the convoluted tale that had brought these men to his balloon, cleared his throat and took the telescope
once more.

‘The man is again attempting to loosen the valve!’ he said.

‘Let me see.’ Noah looked through the telescope at the balloon ahead and above them. ‘Yes. Do you think he will try to descend? There is a patch of open land there near the
Regent’s Canal.’

‘It is not possible to descend so quickly or accurately. He would be foolish to try.’

‘Not foolish – desperate,’ said Inspector Newsome.

‘If he is descending,’ said Noah, ‘we must do likewise.’

‘One cannot simply let the gas escape. It would be too slow. We must first rise to a higher altitude to use the air-pressure differential.’

‘If
he
is doing it, so must we,’ said Noah.

‘You are insane – all of you! This is not a carriage to stop anywhere you choose. We could be cast against a roof and fall to our deaths. We must first rise – and so must
he.’

‘Sergeant Williamson, do you have your handcuffs there?’

‘Indeed, Noah.’

‘Listen to me, gentlemen!’ pleaded Mr Lyme, ‘one cannot cheat science. We must rise before we fall. Look – your man is still rising. Would you have us descend?’

‘All right. All right,’ said Inspector Newsome, ‘do what you must, but do not lose sight of that man.’

The balloon continued to rise as they passed over Islington. By now, the city might equally have been the sky: an immeasurable darkness pinpointed with light, an unknown galaxy that might or
might not contain life. Breath billowed from the mouths of the four men in the chill upper atmosphere and Mr Lyme produced woollen cloaks to drape around their shoulders. They sat thus in impotent
silence, thinking their separate thoughts and waiting for gravity and pressure to aid their pursuit. Inspector Newsome extracted a pipe and made to light it.

‘Do not light that match in this balloon!’ yelled Mr Lyme. ‘Don’t you know that we have thousands of cubic feet of coal gas above us? I will not have you be Icarus to my
Daedalus!’

Noah smiled slightly at the classical reference. But it was a cold smile. He could not take his eyes off the other balloon and its lone occupant. The two of them might have been satellites
– but which revolved around the other? Whose gravity was strongest?