Chapter Twenty-Nine
Twenty-Nine
He made it back to the Doorbell Club by fits and starts.
Spikes of icy pain in wrist and skull and ribs dragged him repeatedly to a halt.
Forced him to lean muzzily on whatever railing or wall was at hand until the spasm passed.
He tried not to let it show too much, moved on again as soon as he could.
It wouldn’t be a good moment to get pinched for vagrancy or drunk and disorderly and run into the cells.
But whatever Mebhuranon had done to him, it was taking its own sweet time to ease.
When he shoved at the buzzer by the club door, it was with a right hand still closed up involuntarily into a fist.
Arthur cracked the door, saw him and let him in.
“ ’lo, Campbell.” Under the stiff black fakery of the wig, shiny scar tissue features creased in something like concern. “You all right?”
“Been better. Crammond show up at all?”
Arthur shook his head.
“Belle?”
“In her office. You want to see her?”
“Christ, no.”
The gash mouth did its best to grin. “Probably just as well. She’s in a foul mood. Time of the month, y’know.”
Duncan blinked. “Woman’s troubles?”
“Nah. Payroll.”
He ushered Duncan down the corridor to the red-flock room, empty as yet of clientele. The barman from yesterday was there, stoking a fire in the grate. They took seats at the bar and waited until he got back to his post.
“What’ll it be, gentlemen?”
Duncan eyed the bottles on the shelf behind. The Doorbell obviously catered to an exclusive crowd, but south of the border that meant blended Scotch in place of any single malt a Scottish house might offer.
“Chivas Regal,” he decided. He needed something to drive out the Fae queen’s shivers, and it might as well be the good stuff. “Put it on my tab.”
The barman raised an eyebrow. “You’ve a tab? That’s news to me.”
“Put it on mine,” said Arthur. “I’ll have the same.”
“Look, you don’t have to—”
The fright mask turned to face him. “Yeah, I do. Any man Billy Crammond vouches for can drink on my tick all night long.”
He nodded at the barman. Duncan watched the glasses laid out, the Chivas poured.
He took his, lifted it in Arthur’s direction, knocked it back.
The polite, mellow taste smoked down his throat, made him shudder slightly, sat warm in his stomach like a banked fire.
The Port Ellen would have hit harder, smoked and smoldered more, but it seemed churlish to complain.
Mebhuranon’s face still loomed in his head, but blurred behind the whisky the way it had blurred and wavered across the fire on the platform at Miller’s Frith.
Later, he’d pick apart the encounter, but right now all he wanted to do was blunt the memory.
Arthur tipped his own glass back. Signaled for refills.
“Pozières,” he said. “In case you were wondering.”
Duncan said nothing.
“Command was planning to wipe out this Fritz garrison at Thiepval. We thought we had a pretty good chance. Big push forward, took a lot of ground, dug in. Fritz tried to chase us out of the trenches we’d taken.
” Arthur staring into nothing, glass forgotten in his hand.
“And they had flamethrowers. I mean, we held them off, but…yeah.”
He gestured at his own face.
Duncan nudged the new drink toward him on the bar. “And Thiepval? The garrison?”
The harsh, gash-mouth grin again. “Nah. Ten days, and they pulled the whole division back. Lost nearly three thousand men. Course, I missed most of that. I was too busy back behind lines at a CCS, screaming with my face scorched off. Or doped out of it on morphine.” He seemed to notice his empty glass for the first time, swapped it out for the refill. “Got told about it later, though.”
It was a familiar enough story. Duncan sipped at his own refill, told a matching tale. Arthur caught a reference to the Americans, asked about them. Duncan yarned about Remingtons and Winchesters and slamfiring enemy trenches clean. Out of habit, he kept it vague.
“Yeah, heard about that.” Arthur’s enthusiasm betraying an age younger than Duncan’s previous estimates. “Sweet! Germans wanted ’em banned or something?”
Duncan nodded. “Threatened to summarily execute any soldier taken prisoner with one. Course, then Pershing said they’d do the same to Germans with sawtoothed bayonets or—”
He stopped.
“Flamethrowers?” Arthur stared into his glass. “Could have gotten behind that myself.”
Duncan drank for cover. Cleared his throat.
“Aye, well, anyway, that was the end of it. Storm in a fucking teacup, and the war was over a few months later anyway. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was a damn good weapon.
You got to hand it to the Yanks, they know killing better than most. Jump down into that trench, slamfire three shells one way, swing and pump three more the other.
You don’t get much spread at close range, but it’s the chaos it causes. And you can’t miss, of course.”
He’d seen the Remington in action a few times before he got the chance to try it for himself.
Midway through an assault at Hamel, and the American shotgunner he’s advancing beside gets cut down by friendly fire shrapnel ranged too short.
He drags the man into a crater, sees he’s missing the back of his head, and lets go.
He lifts the trench gun and shell pouch, muttering obscenity and prayer, to what he’s not sure, checks the load as he’s been shown.
As soon as the barrage is called off and it’s safe to move, he charges out of the foxhole with the remnants of the American force, filled now with some trembling new rage at the senselessness of the other man’s death.
Vague recollection that he was screaming—gibberish, unstrung Skogurtal syllables—as he loomed up over the German trench, fired down into it with the Remington…
“Awright there, lads?” Crammond’s graveled tones behind them. “See youse started wi’oot me.”
Duncan turned with relief. He opened his mouth to ask the question, didn’t need to.
“Aye.” Grim set to the big Glaswegian’s pirate face, but his one eye gleamed. “We found yir Irish lassie.”
—
The Doorbell Club had an extensive wine cellar, only the front half of which served to store any actual wine.
The back half, behind a cheap carpentry and plaster wall, was given over to gaudily appointed alcoves kitted out to look like torture dungeons, complete with baskets full of tasseled, embroidered whips, hanging chains, and fur-lined manacles.
In the dim light of red-painted bulbs in the largest alcove, Duncan and Arthur moved a couple of bijou whipping posts out of the way, carried in a table with some odd holes cut in it, then spread and weighted an ordnance survey map of south Erlsley across its surface.
Crammond brought in a hurricane lamp with the wick turned full up, hung it from an overhead bracket currently being used to dangle handcuffs and tasteful lengths of slim silver chain.
“Ingram Street.” He prodded the map with a prosthetic finger.
“Looks like they took yir lassie there first, fir processin’, along with yir lad Gordon an’ they taxi drivers.
Let the drivers go soon efter, Gordon a wee while efter that.
But oor guy at the station says Niamh wiz still in the cells fir the night when he left.
Described yir lassie tae a tee. When he came back oan shift the next day, she wiz gone.
Word is, a pair o’ Branch detectives came an’ took her at dawn, bundled her in a car, nae questions asked. ”
“Does he know where?”
“He didnae ask. Thought nothin’ of it at the time.
Just a bitty gossip, Special Branch showin’ up like that, mystery woman o’ the night, so forth.
” Crammond saw Duncan’s impatience, held up his human hand to forestall it.
“Haud yir fire, wait fir it. Ah’ve asked aboot the toon a bit, anythin’ new or strange tae report, and there’s this—parcel o’ busies frae five different stations across Erlsley been reassigned tae Maunston fir quoate unquoate special duties.
Hard cases, all o’ them, nae the credit-tae-the uniform type.
Apparently, the word wiz altar boys need no’ apply. ”
“Maunston.” Duncan found it on the map, a meager once-hamlet, now cemented into the southern outskirts of Erlsley by decades of frenetic Victorian housebuilding and industrial growth. “That’s right out on the edge of town.”
“Aye, it is. Used tae be a big pottery works oot that way, they tell me. Lot o’ they workers lived close, in Maunston.
Then the Forest came, ate the pottery, so nae mer jobs, an’ every cunt runnin’ scairt.
These days, the place is deader than yir granny’s minge on a Monday night.
Houses all boarded up, nae inhabitants but a few squatters.
They closed doon the polis station three years ago.
Asked one o’ my guys, he says he thought it goat sold tae the army, but he couldnae be certain. ”
Something shifted and settled in Duncan’s chest, something whispered and chuckled through the hollow spaces in his throat and belly and skull. Stordalen’s blood, the Fae queen’s touch, who could tell? Maybe it was just the Chivas.
“Has tae be it, aye?” Crammond was watching his face intently.
“Has to be,” Duncan agreed, as if someone else was using his throat. And something bloomed indigo to crimson behind his eyes, like ink spilled across blotting paper. Faintly, he heard yells, gunfire, a high scream…
He shook himself, cleared his throat. “What have we got for wheels?”
“When ye wantin’ tae dae this?”
“Soon as we can. They’ve had her the best part of a week already. We can’t risk they move her again. Tomorrow night, latest.”
Crammond glanced at Arthur. “Cobb’s brother still goat that auld Vauxhall D-Type parked up over at Staid Street?”
Arthur nodded.
“Then we have wheels.” Turning back to Duncan. “Ye’ll love this—converted model fir ambulance service. Tough as auld boots.”
“Aye, I remember.” He’d been ferried wounded in a Vauxhall ambulance once, watched them in action on numerous other occasions.
He’d seen them plow through mud, snow, driving rain, over rutted, shell-torn roads and ravaged fields, the worst conditions the western front could throw at them, and still, more often than not, come rattling out the other side intact.
A thought struck him. “Not still painted as an ambulance, is it?”
Arthur shook his head. “Nice racing green.”
“Right.” He looked at Crammond. “We’ll need a driver, someone to stay on the clutch round the corner until I come out.”
“Ah’ll pull wee Mikey Collier fir that. Think he’d be up fir it, Arthur?”
Apparently, this was funny. Arthur chuckled.
“Ye dinnae ken him, Duncan,” said Crammond. “But take it fra me—boy’s sound as a pound. Staff driver in the war, handles a car like he came out o’ his maw wi’ a fuckin’ steerin’ wheel in his hands.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Oh, aye—my Webley’s still in my rooms on Skoldergate. Can you get me another one?”
“In this toon? Is the pope a fuckin’ Catholic?”
“Last time I checked. All right, tell you what—if it’s that easy, get me two Webleys. I don’t want to piss about reloading, if things kick off. Pouch of spare ammo, too, just in case.”
Arthur made an approving noise. Crammond nodded. “Nae bother.”
“Dumdum load, if you’ve got ’em. Cross-hatched and scooped.” He saw the other man wince. “None of your guys got this Maunston assignment, did they?”
Crammond shook his head.
“Good. Then we don’t have to worry.”
“We’ll need balaclavas,” said Arthur. Then, as the other two men looked at him. “What? Not like I got a forgettable face, is it?”
“Yir nae goin’,” said Crammond.
Arthur bristled. “I fucking am.”
“This isn’t your fight,” said Duncan quietly. “Appreciate the offer, but it isn’t.”
“That’s what you think! This bloody well is my fight!
You think I spent four years in the trenches, got my fucking face scorched off, all so I could come back to a land that bloody Lloyd George tells me is fit for heroes, and I have to watch British coppers act like the Bolshie secret police, just disappearing anyone they don’t like off the bloody streets? ”
“Anyone Irish they dinnae like.” Crammond nitpicked.
“My maternal great-aunt was Irish. So—”
“Arthur!” Duncan waited until he got the burned man’s full attention. Lowered his voice again. “We are going to kill men in this, Arthur. Policemen. Englishmen. Maybe more than just one or two.”
“Yeah, well.” Defiantly. “I killed plenty of German lads over there who deserved it a lot less than this scum. They were just following orders.”
“Aye, well, in all probability so are the men holding Niamh.” Duncan looked into the ruined face, the bright, desperate eyes—was shrewd enough to recognize the mirror it made.
He sighed. “Look, you’re welcome to ride along.
Could probably use the manpower, if I’m honest. But I want you to know what you’re getting into first.”
Arthur nodded.
“Kind of you,” he said dryly. “It’s more than that fuck Kitchener ever did.”