The Iscariot Sanction (3 page)

‘Perhaps he would not have to be, dearest, if…’

‘If I settled down, had his children, and gave up this foolishness?’ Lillian’s hazel eyes flashed for an instant. Dora knew that Lillian found her match-making and fussing tiresome, but what else could she do when her only daughter seemed intent on following her father and brother into danger? ‘We’ve had this conversation before, Mother,’ Lillian said, somewhat more gently, ‘and we both know how it ends. Now, I have received a summons that I cannot ignore—won’t you wish me luck?’

Dora Hardwick’s shoulders sagged, once more defeated by her daughter’s stubbornness. ‘Of course. Lillian, I do worry so… please be careful.’

‘I will, Mama,’ Lillian replied, stooping to kiss her mother’s cheek. As she did so, Dora whispered one last request into her daughter’s ear:

‘Do not follow Sir Arthur blindly. Please… he is a dangerous man.’

Lillian straightened. A confident smile played upon her lips, accompanied by the almost haughty expression that she had used since childhood to shield herself from the judgement of others. Yet to her mother, the façade was betrayed by the sad look in her eyes.

‘I’m a dangerous woman, Mama,’ she replied.

* * *

Lieutenant John Hardwick skirted the edge of the gloomy factory floor with practised grace. The noise of smelting, grinding and hammering was infernal. Sparks rained down onto gigantic conveyor belts, providing intermittent illumination. Chains rattled overhead as they slackened from enormous pulleys; coal furnaces belched fumes as they powered huge, static steam engines, and burly workmen toiled relentlessly. John could barely hear himself think, though he was glad that the noise and grimy darkness covered his infiltration.

The munitions factory was supposed to be inoperative. For over a month, no shipments had reached the War Office stores from this, their biggest supplier in Cheshire. Letters of bankruptcy had been filed from the factory’s owners, Messrs. Hopkirk and Myerscough. The closure of the plant should have been little more than an administrative footnote in the quartermasters’ ledgers. Until last week, when Corporal Moreton of the Hyde Yeomanry had been sent to deliver papers to the owners, and was never heard from again. Now the Order of Apollo was involved, and the evidence was overwhelming. Freight trains to and from Hyde had been loaded and unloaded at the factory every day this past month; so where were the products of all this toil?

John watched from the gloom as dozens of sweating, soot-blackened workers filled moulds with molten lead. Artillery shells, cast by the hundred, heading to the black market. John scowled. As if the world wasn’t in enough trouble from the Riftborn, that warmongers and crooks should also conspire to weaken the Empire and strengthen its enemies.

John kept to the shadows as best he could, treading lightly past gigantic stacks of crates and sacks. He stopped occasionally to peek into an open crate or peer under a loose tarpaulin upon a wagon, only to confirm matters. Every cart was laden with shrapnel shells, cases of bullets or kegs of powder.

He crept towards a black iron staircase that rose up into the even blacker heights of the building. John bounded silently up the first few stairs. Almost too late, he realised he had allowed his mind to stray with feelings of righteous indignation, and had been inattentive. The flare of a lucifer had registered only as John cleared the first few steps. In the hollow behind the staircase, a soot-faced factory worker had been loitering, sparking up a cigarette, and he stared at John from between the gaps of the metal treads.

The labourer stepped out of the shadows. John froze instinctively.

‘Now then, sir,’ the man said, in an abrasive Mancunian twang, ‘I don’t think the boss is in. What can we do you for?’ His question was fair, but his tone was adversarial.

John straightened and turned around, taking a few steps down towards the man. ‘Well, my good man…’ he began, but did not finish. Instead, he pounced forward and struck the man in the windpipe, before slipping around behind him and wrapping his arm around the labourer’s throat. He squeezed until the man passed out, blue-faced.

That was like something Lillian would do
, he mused. John was not usually one for violent confrontation, though he fancied himself a more than capable fighter. His sister, however, was a noted wildcat, and deuced formidable with it.

Now, John scanned the vicinity until he was certain no one else had seen or heard any commotion, and dragged the unconscious man to the nearest pile of crates, covering him with a tarpaulin before continuing on his way.

John carried on up the stairs, more cautiously this time, circling around the edge of the sweltering factory floor to a dizzying height. At the top of the stairway was a long, thin catwalk, with a full view of the manufacturing operation on one side. From this vantage point he watched the employees scurrying like worker ants, illuminated by the flickering red light of the furnaces, then turned his attention to the row of doors ahead.

He walked past the first door, marked ‘Foreman’, and stopped at the second, marked ‘General Office’. Once he was certain there was no one about, he opened the door and slipped into the darkened room.

‘Same to you n’ all, you stuck-up cow!’

The dolly-mop took her leave of Lillian Hardwick, still chuntering in a gin-slurred cant as she pushed through a group of bemused Jack-tars and back into the smoky embrace of the Jolly Sailor public house.

Sir Arthur braced himself as Lillian, face hard and eyes ablaze, strode back to him, trying her best to ignore the taunts and unsavoury jeers of the sailors and dockers.

‘So this is all I am worth?’ Lillian snapped. ‘I was assigned to help you because a woman’s touch might persuade these… these bang-tails… to be more free with their information? Perhaps you would have more luck extracting information if you came back later and paid the going rate.’

‘Don’t be vulgar, Lillian,’ Arthur chided. But in a way, she was right. She’d been waiting a long time for her father to send her on a more taxing assignment, but this one was ill thought-out. The prostitutes of the Ratcliff Highway would not freely speak with those in authority, and certainly not in the open, beneath the watchful gaze of their cash-carriers, who loitered in the shaded alleyways nearby.

‘We’re no better at interviewing these wretches than the police.’ Lillian nodded towards the two constables sent to escort them through the arterial narrows that branched from the notorious highway.

‘This investigation is out of the hands of the police now, and into ours. Where the police have failed to find this mysterious killer, Apollo Lycea hope a Majestic will succeed.’

‘I do not wish to cast aspersions upon your psychical prowess, Arthur, but this is the last resort. You’ve dragged me to every place of ill repute for miles about, and for what? A fine way to spend a birthday.’

‘Birthday? Oh, damn it, Lillian, I forgot—’

‘I was not trying to make you feel guilty. I just meant that… well, suddenly tea in the company of gentlefolk doesn’t seem so terrible.’

Arthur turned away, trying not to smirk at that. He could imagine that for Lillian Hardwick even trawling these low alleys was preferable to ‘tea with gentlefolk’. Nonetheless, he resolved to send Jenkins out later to buy Lillian a present.

He looked up at the sky. They had seen the worst of London’s gin-palaces and bawdy-houses that afternoon, from the notorious White Swan to the doss-houses of Shadwell, and now it was getting late—these days it was never truly dark in London, which was not as reassuring as it sounded, especially to a Majestic. One could only tell that night was falling when the sun’s wan light slowly transformed into the crimson glow that permeated the darkness, and the devilish fire that licked at the clouds became more prominent. Arthur felt the fearful gnawing at the back of his mind growing more insistent as the hour drew later and the burning sky grew hotter. Other thoughts and other voices fought to enter his mind. He kept those doors locked.

‘There are other means of finding what we need,’ he said, keeping his esoteric worries to himself. ‘But without some physical link to the missing girl, I’m afraid my skills are limited.’

They had spent hours trawling the pubs known to have been frequented by one Molly Goodheart. The unfortunate had gone missing almost two months before, but no one had seen fit to report it until a spate of similar disappearances had made the newspapers. Why these acts—not uncommon in the East End—had drawn the attention of Apollo Lycea was anyone’s guess. Arthur had learned not to question the leaders of the Order on such matters. On the streets, however, uncertainty over the culprits’ identity brought fear of reprisals for common folk, and no one would admit to even knowing the girl.

Lillian looked thoughtful. Arthur frowned—with that look usually came trouble.

She turned abruptly, staring into the nearest alley where a group of four men spoke in hushed tones, spitting plugs of tobacco onto the already filthy pavement. Then she was off, striding purposefully towards the men, who saw her coming and looked around skittishly. Arthur hurried after her.

‘’Allo, missy,’ said one of the men, a grin of bravado on his flat features.

‘Lookin’ for a change o’ career, are ye?’ said another. ‘Know just the fella who can ’elp you with that.’ A round of guffaws rippled through the group.

Lillian hadn’t broken stride. Arthur had hoped Lillian would keep a cool head in such environs. He should have known better.

‘That’s not all I can help you with, love,’ sneered another man, his grin revealing an uneven row of sparse yellow-and-black teeth.

The fourth man had said nothing. He stood further back, tall hat shading his features, quick eyes shining in the light from the reddening sky. He had menace about him—a ringleader. Lillian headed straight for him.

Laughs died on the lips of the three hangers-on as Lillian stepped through their circle and drove a fist into the nose of the quiet man, who staggered backwards yelping. The thug with the bad teeth put a hand on Lillian, and almost lost it as she twisted him around so violently everyone nearby heard his wrist crack. She spun him about, slamming his face into the brick wall, before turning her back on the others and marching straight to the leader once more. Arthur knew she was trusting him to protect her back. He drew his pistol, and stepped between Lillian and the three thugs, who froze and eyed him warily. Behind them, Arthur saw that Lillian’s antics had caused quite a stir in the street, and the two policemen were already struggling to maintain order. He glanced over his shoulder to see how Lillian fared.

The ringleader growled, ‘I’ll kill you, you filthy—’

Lillian kicked the man’s crotch so viciously that he could not complete his insult. He dropped to one knee, but Lillian dragged him up by his throat and pushed him to the wall, before drawing a long, silver pin from her hat, and placing its gleaming point to the man’s eye.

‘You… you can’t…’

‘Can’t what? Torture you? Beat you? Tell me, is that because I’m the law, or because I’m a woman?’ The needle pricked at the sagging flesh beneath the man’s left eye, and he took on an aspect of panic, swallowing hard. ‘I assure you, you are wrong on both counts.’

‘Whatever you’re doing, Lillian, do it quickly,’ Arthur warned. He was standing beside her now, and the three men at the end of the alley were reluctant to leave their boss. Arthur doubted very much that they were unarmed.

‘Molly Goodheart,’ Lillian said. ‘One of yours?’

‘Never ’eard of her,’ the man said.

Quick as a flash, Lillian pulled the sharpened hairpin away from the man’s eye, and pushed it through his earlobe, yanking him away from the wall, leading him at a stoop almost like a farmer leading a prize bull.

‘Molly Goodheart,’ she said again. ‘Who knew her? Who was her cash-carrier? Speak up, or the next time your friends see you, you shall be missing a few vital parts.’

The man screamed with pain and impotent rage. One of his accomplices moved forwards, but Sir Arthur waved the gun at him and he backed away again.

‘All right, all right. I swear it weren’t me. But I saw her. I saw her the night she went missin’; saw her get into a cab with a gent.’

‘Who?’

‘I dunno, some nob.’

With each question, Lillian tugged up and down on the hairpin. Arthur winced at the man’s shrill cries.

‘The cabbie, then. Local man?’ Lillian asked.

‘Dresden,’ the man gasped. ‘Jeremiah Dresden, off Butcher Row. That’s all I know, woman—leave me be!’

Lillian withdrew the pin and pushed the man away. ‘There, that wasn’t so difficult, was it? Sir Arthur, would you mind awfully checking if this man is telling the truth.’

She stepped forward and took the gun from Arthur, keeping an eye on the shifty trio. Arthur cracked his fingers and stepped towards the cowed leader, one hand outstretched, the other held to his temple.

The thug backed away as a look of dim comprehension crossed his features. Arthur feigned a look of intense concentration, half-closed his eyes, and moved forward slowly, until his hand almost touched the man’s forehead.