Chapter 5
Five
brODIE
He folded the note he’d received and tucked it into his pocket, then glanced at the clock on the office wall as rain pelted the glass on the window.
The meeting earlier had gone overlong, as had every meeting the past several days. Not that he hadn’t expected it, coming into a newly created position with the Home Office.
Pieces of information followed seemed to lead nowhere in a particular ‘situation,’ as it was referred to, that had caught the interest of Sir Ridley and those in the CID. Those pieces were first discovered after a man was attacked and killed in a tavern six weeks earlier.
That of itself was not unusual. A quarrel, fights that broke out were the nature of establishments whose customers were day workers from the factories, those who worked the docks, crews who arrived aboard merchantmen from foreign ports and had solid ground under their feet and a hollow ache in their bellies after months at sea.
Along with those who spent their last coin on the drink in an effort to warm themselves against a cold desperation that never went away for those who lived in tenements with no hope of tomorrow, that fueled a quiet rage that slipped out over a pint of ale or a dram of whisky or gin.
Yet this was different. In the aftermath, the body was taken to the police morgue at the Yard.
The man was known only as Caspian, French by his accent, owner and captain of a boat that carried a suspiciously small cargo between England and France, according to those at the tavern who were questioned afterward.
The man had boasted that he was coming into a good sum of money soon that would allow him to retire from the sea, what with large steamers now transporting most of the cargoes that arrived in London and Liverpool.
He might retire to a Caribbean island where it was warm, as it became more and more difficult to earn a living with the larger shipping companies taking all the cargos.
The bragging and boasting were sharp contrast when it came to paying for his drink. He claimed he didna have the money yet, but soon.
The owner of the tavern ordered him out. As often happened in such situations, the man refused. That was when the fight began between the man and one of the regular customers. The situation boiled over, weapons were drawn, and the man Caspian ended up on the floor in a pool of blood.
Once again, not unusual. What was unusual and caught the attention of Sir Ridley when statements were taken from the customers at the tavern was the victim’s boast that he didna have to be concerned about payment for the shipment—the shipment itself was like gold!
With payment in a portion of that shipment.
Gold—he underlined the word in his notes. But did it mean what was said? Or did it mean something else?
Mikaela would have a good laugh on him if she saw him now, making lists, going over reports. Looking for any piece of information that might reveal more. And the questions that were there.
Was the talk of a shipment merely drunken boasting? When was the shipment to be ready? Where was it to be delivered? But equally important, what was the shipment and who had hired the man?
Brodie thought of Mikaela with her notes and lists that she made at the chalk board. Three, no, four days now since he stepped away from the office on the Strand.
He missed the sound on the chalkboard as she made her notes there.
The way she stood back and studied what she’d written, then frowned as another thought came to her.
The way she turned and inquired if there was anything she had missed—that was something new that had surprised him from someone he suspected rarely asked for another’s opinion.
She had changed as he had, in that way that he supposed two people changed with an arrangement such as theirs. Still, it was new to him—sharing his thoughts, speaking of things he saw no need to speak of.
He smiled to himself. She would deny it, stubborn that way. At the same time, she was intelligent in ways he hadn’t found in any of the women he’d known before. And she would speak her mind whether he asked it or no.
Yet she had her moments, when she went all quiet, looked at him with that calm expression that he’d learned could be a warning.
“There’s no need to shoot the man again,” she had once told him in a particularly difficult case.
“He’s obviously quite dead.”
Only once had she surprised him in that regard as she pursued the woman responsible for her sister’s disappearance and very nearly her death.
When she finally chased the woman down, she had emptied the revolver on the poor thing. She had then looked up when he caught up with her.
“She’ll not hurt anyone again,” she told him as calm as if discussing the weather.
He missed her...the easy banter they shared, the way she put her feet up on the edge of his desk, then stared him down if he had any objection.
He missed the quiet at the end of the day in a way he’d never experienced before, the warmth of the fire in the coal stove on a cold evening, a shared dram, and the way she laid her head on his shoulder when they lay together.
He forced his concentration back to the matter at hand.
Sources and connections, Sir Ridley had called it, when he was approached about the position with the CID. True enough, though some of those had come through Mikaela and her great-aunt.
Granted, there were difficult cases no one else seemed capable of resolving, that always made him ask the next question and the next, no matter whom it might offend.
And now the question about that cargo Captain Caspian was to carry in a few weeks’ time before he was left on that tavern floor. What was its importance?
A lucrative cargo? Enough that the man had openly boasted that he might retire?
He pushed out of the chair in the office he’d been given.
Light shone through the glass in the window that separated his office from that of his new assistant, Alex Sinclair, late of the Agency, whom he’d insisted on for the position.
He was from a well-placed family, highly educated at university, unlike himself. The young man was articulate, sharp when it came to putting pieces of information together with an unapologetic sense of humor.
Much like himself, Alex had been set adrift when the Agency was reduced to a clerk when Sir Avery was given other tasks.
He had worked with Alex before, at times with information passed on that could have been the end of the man’s position simply because it was the right thing to do. And he could trust him.
Over the past several days, Brodie had contacted people he knew who knew other people, had Alex follow up information, and had now received that note. The next report that was expected would have to wait.
He took his long coat from the stand, slipped the revolver that he always carried into his pocket, then opened the door between the offices. Alex looked up with an eager expression.
“Yessir? Was there something in the note?”
“Ye will need yer coat,” Brodie told him.
The young man’s habit of addressing him as ‘sir’ was amusing. He grinned as he came out of his chair.
“These lists and reports are tedious,” he replied and reached for his own coat. “It’s a fine evening for a walk about,”
“Do ye have a weapon?” Brodie inquired.
Alex returned to his desk, opened a drawer and retrieved a pistol.
“I took the liberty of acquiring this when I was termed from the Agency. I thought it might be convenient for hunting rabbits and squirrels.”
Acquired. An interestin’ choice of words.
“A bit more than one might need for rabbits or squirrels,” Brodie commented.
“You never know what other creatures might be out and about,” the young man replied. “I’m accomplished as a marksman. And now working with you...”
Brodie nodded. “It will do.”
“Do we need authorization for this walk-about?” Alex inquired. “A request form submitted for approval?”
They exchanged a look. Alex grinned. “Understood.”
No further explanation was necessary.
The information they were following had come from Mr. Cavendish. One of several sources Brodie chose not to divulge or expose as far as the Home Office was concerned.
“You have connections, Mr. Brodie, among certain persons who have assisted you in your past inquiry work, along with those in other places. Sources, they’re called, that could be valuable to our efforts.”
That information had no doubt come from the Prince of Wales after the successful conclusion of a threat against the Royal Family.
Still there was that part of him—call it experience from his time investigating crimes for the MET, or from his time as a lad on the streets. There were few he trusted. And his sources and connections were part of that.
It was one of those unspoken agreements, like a code, that he would not divulge or expose them in exchange for information from time to time. In that exchange, he had often passed along information to them that others would have disapproved of. It kept a sort of balance of things on the streets.
He had learned about that unwritten code a long time ago in Edinburgh. It existed in London as well. It had helped him survive.
The Metropolitan Police might control the surface streets in most parts of London.
But there was an entirely different world that existed in the back alleys of the tenements, amid the warehouses along the docks, and on backstreets where there were no streetlamps, only darkness that hid those who went about their business in the shadows.
The Home Secretary had spoken of ‘sharing’ information when he first approached him.
“If I were to name those who provide information they would no’ be willing to trust me. It is the nature of the trust they give me, and meself to them. If that is a condition of the position you are proposing, then I respectfully refuse.”
That had been the end of that particular conversation with the agreement that he was free to use his discretion in such matters.