Stonks jumped to his feet and a look of understanding, distant as yet, began to spread across the face of the slow Peckham Borrible. He walked along the bank to a point where the land advanced into the river and brought him nearer to the treadmill. For a long while he stared across at the slave who stumbled forward inside the wheel; he winced every time he heard the whip fall. Then Stonks’s head fell on his chest in a great sadness; he retraced his steps and sat once more by the others. The blood had drained from his face and his lips were white with rage. He closed his eyes so that he could not see.
‘It’s my mate out there,’ he said. ‘It’s Torreycanyon, the poor bleeder, he’s still alive, after all this time.’ Stonks’s voice cracked and it seemed that even the strongest of all the Borribles might break down and weep in front of his friends, openly and without shame.
‘It’s who?’ said Bingo, not believing his own ears.
‘Torreycanyon,’ cried Chalotte. Her voice rose with emotion and it was fortunate for her that the nearby groups of Wendles were talking loudly themselves and did not notice her. She looked at Spiff with hatred, baffled once again by his duplicity, but all he did was narrow his eyes, his face expressionless.
‘Don’t do anything silly,’ he said. ‘If you give the game away Flinthead will have us all down the mine.’
‘You knew,’ continued Chalotte, and her breath shot out of her lungs like steam under pressure. ‘You knew all the time.’
‘I wasn’t sure until I got here,’ said Spiff, his eyes flickering a little. ‘I couldn’t be certain.’
‘And the others?’ asked Chalotte, ducking her head to brush away the tears. ‘What about Knocker?’
‘Ah, your special friend Knocker, yes, he’s alive too. He’s down the bottom of the shaft with Napoleon, and Orococco goes behind ’em, boarding up the sides of the mine to make sure it don’t cave in.’
‘How do you know all this?’ asked Bingo.
‘Norrarf and Skug told me, of course,’ said Spiff, ‘when we arrived.’
‘And don’t the prisoners ever come out?’ said Stonks, holding down his anger with an immense effort.
‘They works there, eats there and sleeps there,’ explained Spiff. ‘The food is lowered down in a dirty old bucket.’
‘The bastards,’ said Chalotte, ‘and so are you, Spiff. You should have told us they were still alive; we’d have come willingly then.’
Spiff sneered. ‘Oh, yeah, you wouldn’t have believed me for a second. You’da taken it for a trick. I had to get you here some other way.’
‘Just so we could get the treasure for you,’ said Chalotte. ‘Don’t try to kid me that you want to rescue Knocker and the rest, I know you too well.’
‘There’s nothing to stop us doing both,’ said Spiff.
No one could speak for a long while after that. Chalotte could only think of the suffering that the prisoners must have undergone during their long months of captivity, and Bingo and Stonks sat gazing at the treadmill as it went round and round. Torreycanyon had
been Stonks’s mate; they had fought side by side at the Great Door of Rumbledom, and the more Stonks thought of his friend’s imprisonment the more he felt a hatred of Spiff rise up in his throat. But there was nothing he could do or say; he dared not give way to his feelings. He was, after all, surrounded by Wendles, Wendles who were now on the watch for the slightest thing out of the ordinary.
At length Stonks came to a decision and he stood up. ‘Let’s get back to the guardroom now,’ he said. ‘I think the others will want to ask Spiff a few questions; they might even want to shove his head through a brick wall.’
The four Borribles walked casually into a side tunnel so as not to attract the attention of any of the watching Wendles. But once out of the sight and hearing of the river bank Stonks raised his arm and caught Spiff a ringing blow across the helmet with his bare hand; the helmet dented under the blow and the sound of it echoed along the damp brick walls. Spiff fell to his knees and shook his head, stunned. A clout from Stonks was no light thing.
Chalotte was excited by the violence; her blood rose and she drew her sharp knife. ‘I’m gonna slit his throat,’ she said.
‘And so could I,’ said Stonks, ‘but if we do we’ll never find our way back … It was just that I couldn’t resist sloshing him the once.’ He stuck the knuckles of his right hand into his mouth and sucked the broken skin.
Bingo helped Spiff to his feet and shoved him forward. ‘Come on, Spiff,’ he said. ‘Take us home and we’ll see what the others have to say.’
And so, with his head buzzing from the great swipe he had received, Spiff staggered through the tunnels of Wendle country. Chalotte, Bingo and Stonks followed him, their hearts glad in a way that Knocker and his fellow prisoners were still alive, and yet sad too for the slavery they had endured and the continuing danger of their predicament.
Inside the secret house which served as headquarters for the SBG Sergeant Hanks dipped half a bread roll into the pool of egg yolk on his greasy plate and then, when the bread was sufficiently soggy, he folded it into his mouth. The loose flesh on his face wobbled with satisfaction and his blue eyes glinted with pleasure.
‘You should eat a bit more, Inspector,’ he said, forcing the words through his food so that they sounded moist, ‘then you wouldn’t worry so much.’ Hanks belched fiercely and with an expression of intense concentration began to pick his nose.
Inspector Sussworth lowered his mug of tea to Hanks’s desk and set off to the far end of the room. His strides, as always, were nervous and bouncy, like a dancer waiting for his music.
‘It’s all right for you, Hanks,’ he began, ‘but mine is the ultimate responsibility. History will look back at this crisis and ask how I handled it. I have the whole of the SBG deployed in Wandsworth you know; my reputation is at stake. The District Assistant Commissioner telephoned me this morning, wanted to know what we were up to.’
‘I hope you told him, sir.’ Hanks extracted something elastic and green from his nose, examined it closely and stuck it under his chair.
‘Of course I did,’ said Sussworth, revolving on his right toe like a tin toy. ‘I told him that we were on the point of apprehending the dangerous felons whom we suspect of having committed the Southfields murders. “A few more days,” I told him, “and the long arm of the SBG would have ’em by the collar.’”
‘If only we could go underground,’ said Hanks, spreading another large roll with butter and honey.
Sussworth stabbed the floor with his heel. ‘I know, but the sewer men have told us time and time again how dangerous it is. They only go down if they have to, you know, and even they daren’t go everywhere. I ask you, Hanks, what chance would we have? It’s a labyrinth. Every time you lift a manhole cover the noise can be heard ten miles away. Wendles can see in everything but pitch dark, we can’t. If we went into those tunnels they’d pick us off with their catapults, one by one. There are times for active discretion and this is one of them, we’ll have to starve them out.’
Hanks thought and rubbed his nose. ‘Why don’t we gas ’em?’ he said. ‘That would work.’
‘I’d love to,’ said Sussworth, his moustache quivering happily at the idea, ‘but imagine the fuss there’d be from all the do-gooders. We’d be pilloried as monsters.’
Hanks squeezed the bread roll between his teeth and honey oozed from it to form a golden waterfall down the front of his tunic. ‘Our hands is tied,’ he agreed through his half-masticated mouthful. ‘Them Borribles kneecap our best officers with their catapults, they steal, they squat in old houses, all that, yet if we so much as lay a finger on ’em there’s an outcry.’
‘Don’t worry, Hanks,’ said Sussworth, placing his hands behind his back and raising his body up on his toes, ‘I’ll get them. Our men will remain on selfless duty at those manhole covers till kingdom come. When those Wendles are starving they’ll soon get rid of those malefactors and then we’ll snaffle them, every one.’
The two officers were interrupted by footsteps on the landing; there was a knock at the door and it opened to reveal an SBG constable.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the prisoner.’
‘That’s right,’ said Hanks. ‘Bring him in.’
The door was opened a little wider and Ben shuffled into view. He looked tired and hungry, pale under his layers of dirt, frightened too; his shoulders cringed with fear at the sight of Sussworth and his hands trembled in the steel handcuffs he wore.
As soon as he had entered the room the door was shut behind
him and Ben leant against it. This was behaviour that Sussworth would not countenance.
‘You stand to attention, my friend,’ he said, ‘out in the middle here.’
‘How about some food, guv’nor?’ said Ben. ’How about some food, or a nice little drink, eh, what about it, Inspector?’
Sussworth ignored the request. ‘For the last time,’ he said, screwing his finger into Ben’s stomach, ‘how did those hooligans get out of Fulham police station? And what’s more important, where did they go afterwards?’
Hanks swallowed the last of the honey roll and, using his arms more than his legs, yanked himself from behind his desk, then strolled round it until he stood right up beside the prisoner.
‘Listen ’ere, you stinkin’ lump of scum,’ he said, and he started to push the exhausted tramp with his stomach, edging him back towards the door with every nudge. ‘Do you know what we’ve done to your black ’ole of Calcutta, eh? You don’t … Well, we’ve had it cleaned up for you, by order of the council.’
‘You see,’ said Sussworth, peering up into Ben’s face like a short tourist looking at a tall monument, ‘you’re a living health hazard, you are. All those dirty bottles with spiders hiding in them, gone. All those ancient tins of grub, thrown in the river. All those lamps and tin cans, sent for scrap. All that furniture and all those mattresses, burnt.’
Sussworth did a little tap dance to the window and back again, stepping neatly on to Ben’s ruined boots on his return.
‘We’ve left you a bed, a chair and a table,’ he continued. ‘The social services have disinfected everything; it smells like a Jeyes Fluid factory down there now. My, my, aren’t you lucky, Ben?’ And with this the inspector grabbed Ben’s nose and tweaked it until the tears ran down the old man’s beard.
‘And I’ll tell you what else I’m going to do if you don’t tell me what I want to know … I’m going to get a health department order on your shack. You shouldn’t be living there at all really. Feather’s Wharf is a rubbish dump, not a holiday camp. How would you like me to get your place bulldozered to the ground, eh? Answer me that.’
Ben shook his head and wrung his hands. ‘Oh, guv’nor, don’t do that to me; it’s me ‘ome. Please don’t, I’d have nowhere to go.’
‘We’ve thought of that,’ said Hanks, and he seized Ben by the beard and dragged him to an open space so that he could begin nudging him with his stomach all over again. ‘You see we’re going to be really nice to you. Our police doctor is going to tell us how ill you are, when we tell him to, and that way we’ll get you really sorted out. You’ll be fumigated, incarcerated and renovated. We’ll put you into hospital for months. You’ll be washed every week, clean clothes you’ll have, there’ll be nurses everywhere to make sure you get no beer to drink, and to round it all off we’ll have you committed to an old folks’ home where there’ll be a matron with a moustache to tell you what to do all day. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Ben?’
As the sergeant came to the end of his speech he gave a sharp thrust with his belly and Ben, off balance, fell to his knees. The tramp made no attempt to get up but simply raised his hands in supplication.
‘Oh, leave off,’ he whined. ‘Don’t send me away. It’s none of my business, all this, straight up it ain’t. My cell was open like it always is. Them kids was already outside when I got there; they forced me to help ’em, honest.’
‘You were heard talking to a girl on Wandsworth roundabout,’ said Sussworth, ‘and I swear if you don’t tell me what you know I’ll ram you into that old folks’ home so rapid they’ll think you arrived by parachute.’
‘All right,’ said Ben, ‘all right. This is what happened. I came out of the cell and they was out in the yard, see. There was a girl … she was leading the horse but I tried to walk past ’em, didn’t I? I mean it was none of my business, as usual—you know me—but they wouldn’t have it. There was about a dozen of ‘em too, tough little bleeders. They don’t take no for an answer, kids of today, do they?’
Ben looked up but Sussworth said nothing.
‘Well, they saw it was foggy like and said if I didn’t take ’em down to the river they’d beat me up. Battersea Bridge was what
they wanted but I said I only knew the way to Wandsworth, which is true.’
‘Why didn’t you call out for help?’ Sussworth wanted to know. ‘There were plenty of policemen within earshot.’
‘Call out!’ said Ben, amazed. ‘Cor, if I’d so much as opened my mouth there’d ’ave been six boots in it. They don’t hang about, them Bobbirols.’
Hanks grabbed Ben’s beard and banged his head against the wall.
‘Where did they go, you stinkin’ old goat?’
‘How should I know?’ said Ben. ‘Once we got across the bridge they pushed me to the ground, gave me a kick and ran off into the fog with that horse. They said something about getting to Battersea before the fuzz arrived.’
Sussworth took a turn round the office, hopping and sidestepping as he went. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Battersea, it keeps coming back to that, but I’m not convinced. I’m a detective, I am. It would have made more sense for them to have found a manhole and gone into hiding with the Wendles. They’re all Borribles together after all.’
‘I heard something,’ said Ben. ‘I’ll tell yer if you don’t put me away … I couldn’t stand that.’
‘Well,’ said Sussworth, ‘what is it?’
‘I heard ’em say something about not going to the Wendles, sounded like they’d had some fight with ‘em in the past and didn’t trust ’em. I don’t think they went down there.’
‘It could be true,’ said Hanks. ‘Remember that Borrible we captured once who told us there’d been some kind of war between the Southfields killers and the Wendles.’
Sussworth rubbed his chin. ‘I know that, but I’ve got a feeling and my feelings are always right. You see I’ve stationed a couple of SBG men, disguised as costers, on a barrow in Battersea market. I’ve supplied them with descriptions of our villains and they’ll report to me as soon as they’re seen.’
‘Ah,’ said Ben, ‘but they’d lie low, wouldn’t they, very low?’
He leant against the wall and pushed himself to his feet.
Inspector Sussworth went over to the tramp and sniffed. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘but you do smell.’ He walked to the end of the
room in order to place himself as far away from Ben as he could. ‘Look here,’ he went on. ‘I’ll give you one last chance, you can go back to that slum of yours …’
Ben smiled.
‘ … but on one condition only. You’ve got to render us every possible assistance; you’ve got to keep your eyes open and report to us every day.’
‘I want to help, sir,’ said Ben, ducking his head once or twice, ‘but how can I?’
Sussworth explained: ‘You’re always out and about, up and down every street and alley in your part of Wandsworth, scrounging and begging; criminal offences both of them, of course. You see a lot of things that we don’t. People clear the streets when they see a copper coming, but not when it’s a drunken old tramp, they don’t.’
‘Oh, yes, sir, they trusts me,’ said Ben, nodding sagely. ‘I knows and sees a lot of things, I do, that aren’t really my business.’
‘Well you make it your business, you phone me up and tell me, and we’ll give you some lovely money for your trouble, we will. I want to see you alert, Ben. Spying round corners, talking to kids, Borribles especially, and then you report everything to us. You do this and I’ll see to it that you are left alone. I can make it easy for you Ben, very easy.’
Sussworth made a sign and Sergeant Hanks fished a key from his pocket and undid the tramp’s handcuffs. Ben rubbed his wrists.
‘You wouldn’t have a few bob on yer, would yer, sir?’ he asked Sussworth, giving a little bow. ‘For the phone calls and such, and I’m ever so hungry, yer see. I won’t get any food till I gets back to the wharf and starts sorting the rubbish.’
Inspector Sussworth laughed and felt in his pocket. ‘What a scrounger,’ he said, and he gave a few silver coins to Hanks who passed them on into Ben’s filthy palm.
‘There’s one more thing,’ said Hanks. ‘If you give us the information that leads to the capture of the Southfields killers there’ll be a special reward in it for you, Ben, lots of reward.’
Ben’s face shone. ‘Really, sir, that is good news, oh yes, you can count on me. I’d do anything to get me ’ands on a quid or two.’
Hanks threw open the door. ‘Right, get out of here, and remember I’ll have someone watching you night and day. You try to slip one over on me and I’ll hang you up by your feet and have you put through a hot car wash.’
Ben bobbed his head again. ‘My Gawd, yessir,’ he said. ‘Anything I hears, rely on me,’ and he sidled into the corridor.
‘They make me sick,’ said Sussworth when the tramp had gone. ‘Sell their grandmothers for a pint of beer. Swine, animals, that’s what they are.’
‘I agree, sir,’ said Hanks, opening a cupboard and taking out a large tablet of chocolate, ‘but it is our task to make use of the materials we have. Care for some fruit and nut?’
Inspector Sussworth took a square and absent-mindedly conveyed it to his mouth. ‘I suppose you’re right, Hanks,’ he said. ‘Even that dirty old man may be able to help us in our crusade.’
A quarter of an hour later Ben was sticking a fork into a steaming plateful of bangers and mash in a workman’s café along the Fulham Road. He sat in a corner, by the window, and talked to himself as he ate.
‘He’s mad, that inspector,’ said the tramp, ‘mad. Help him, sunshine? I should cocoa! I wouldn’t fart in his face if he was dying of suffocation. Got some money out of him though, didn’t I just? Tuck in, Ben, bet you’re hungry. I am, yes I am, and that is my business. Wonder ’ow those kids are, wonder ‘ow they are? Dying for a drink, ain’t I? Don’t worry, I’ll go and get one in a minute and drink to Sussworth’s ’ealth, his bad ‘ealth of course.’ And laughing, Ben nearly choked on a mouthful of sausage and quickly downed a draught of hot tea to clear his gullet.