Assassin's Creed: Underworld (3 page)

The rain had eased off, thank God, and the water
level in the trench had fallen, but the machines remained silent. With a hand on his hat,
Marchant had rushed away to inform his immediate boss, Cavanagh, a director of the Metropolitan
Railway, while another man had been sent to find a bobby. It was the peeler who arrived first, a
young constable with bushy side whiskers who introduced himself as Police Constable Abberline
and then cleared his throat and removed his custodian helmet in order to get down to the
business of seeing the body.

‘Has anybody been down to it, sir?’
he asked Pearson, indicating the trench.

‘The area was cleared as soon as it was
discovered, constable. You can imagine it caused quite a stir.’

‘Nobody likes to see a dead body before
their elevenses, sir.’

Those assembled watched as the peeler leaned
tentatively to stare into the trench and then signalled to a man nearby. ‘Do you mind,
mate?’ he said, and handed the worker his helmet, then unbuckled and removed his belt,
truncheon and handcuffs before descending the ladder to inspect the corpse at close quarters.

They crowded round to stare down into the cutting
and watch as he stepped round the body, lifting one arm and
then the other.
Presently, the peeler crouched and the watchers held their breath in expectation as he turned
over the body.

In the trench, Abberline swallowed, unaccustomed
to being on show and wishing he’d left instructions that the men be asked to move back.
They lined both sides of the trench. Even the figures of Fowler and Mr and Mrs Pearson were
there. All of them were gazing down at him fifteen feet below.

Right. He turned his attention back to the
corpse, putting aside all self-conscious thoughts to concentrate on the job at hand.

The body then. Face down in the mud, with one arm
raised as though trying to hail a carriage, the dead man wore a tweed suit. His brown boots were
well shod, and though covered in mud were otherwise in good condition.
Not the attire of a
derelict
, thought Abberline. Crouching, heedless of the mud that soaked his clothes he
took a deep breath and reached to the man’s shoulders, grunting with the effort as he
rolled him over.

From above came a ripple of reaction but
Abberline had his eyes closed, wanting to delay the moment he saw the man’s face. With
trepidation he opened them and stared into the dead gaze of the corpse. He was in his late
thirties and had a bushy white-flecked Prince Albert moustache that looked cared for, as well as
thick side whiskers. By the looks of him he wasn’t a rich man but neither was he a worker.
Like Abberline he was one of the new middle classes.

Either way, this was a man with a life, whose
next of
kin, when they were informed, would want an explanation as to how he
ended up in a trench at New Road.

This was, without doubt – and Abberline
couldn’t help but feel a small, slightly shameful thrill at the thought of it – an
investigation.

He tore his gaze away from the man’s
sightless open eyes and looked down at his jacket and shirt. Visible despite the mud was a
bloodstain with a neat hole at the centre. If Abberline wasn’t very much mistaken, a
puncture wound.

Abberline had seen victims of stab wounds before,
of course, and he knew that people armed with knives stabbed and slashed the same way they
punched. In quick haphazard multiples:
bomf, bomf, bomf
.

But this was a single wound, direct into the
heart. What you might call a clean kill.

By now, Abberline was vibrating with excitement.
He’d feel guilty about that later, remembering that there was, after all, a dead man
involved, and you shouldn’t really feel anything but sorrow for him and his family in that
situation, and certainly not excitement. But even so …

He began a quick search of the body and found it
immediately: a revolver. Christ, he thought, this was a geezer armed with a gun who’d lost
a fight with a knifeman. He pushed the gun back into a jacket pocket.

‘We’ll need to lift this body out of
here,’ he called up in the general direction of the bossmen. ‘Sirs, could you help
me to cover him and put him in a cart for taking to the police morgue?’

With that he started to ascend the ladder, just
as orders
were called out and a team of men began to descend the other
ladders with varying degrees of eagerness and trepidation. At the top, Abberline stood wiping
his mucky hands on the seat of his trousers. At the same time he scanned the lines of assembled
men, wondering if the killer was in there somewhere, admiring his handiwork. All he saw was row
upon row of dirty faces, all watching him intently. Others still crowded around the mouth of the
cutting, watching as the body was brought up then laid on the flatbed of a cart. The tarpaulin
flapped as it was shaken out then draped over him, a shroud, the face of the dead man hidden
again.

By now it had started to rain in earnest, but
Abberline’s attention had been arrested by the sight of a smartly dressed man making his
way over the boards that crossed the expanse of mud towards them. Not far behind lolloped a
lackey carrying a large leather-bound journal, its laces dancing and jerking as the lackey tried
unsuccessfully to keep up with his master.

‘Mr Fowler! Mr Pearson!’ called the
man, gesturing with his cane and instantly commanding their attention. The entire site
quietened, but in a new way. There was much shuffling of feet. Men were suddenly studying their
boots intently.

Oh yes?
thought Abberline.
What have
we here?

Like Fowler and Pearson the new arrival wore a
smart suit, though he wore it with more style – in a way that suggested he was used to
catching the eye of a passing lady. He had no paunch and his shoulders were squared, not stooped
with stress and worry like his two colleagues. Abberline could see that when he doffed his hat
it would
be to reveal a full head of almost shoulder-length hair. But though
his greeting was warm, his smile, which was a mechanical thing that was off as quickly as it was
on, never reached his eyes. Those ladies impressed by his mode of dress and general demeanour
might well have thought twice upon seeing the look in those cold and piercing eyes.

As the man and his lackey drew close to them
Abberline looked first at Pearson and Fowler, noting the discomfort in their eyes and the
hesitation in Charles Pearson as he introduced the man. ‘This is our associate, Mr
Cavanagh, a director of the Metropolitan company. He oversees the day-to-day running of the
dig.’

Abberline touched his brow, thinking to himself,
What’s your story then
?

‘I hear a body has been discovered,’
said Cavanagh. He had a large scar on the right side of his face, as though somebody had once
used a knife to underline his eye.

‘Indeed, sir, it has,’ sighed
Pearson.

‘Let’s see it then,’ demanded
Cavanagh, and in the next moment Abberline drew back the tarpaulin only for Cavanagh to shake
his head in non-recognition. ‘Nobody I know, thank God, and not one of ours by the looks
of him. A soak. A drunk like the poor soul serenading us over there, no doubt.’

He waved at where, on the other side of the
fence, a broken-down man stood watching them, occasionally breaking into song as he brandished a
bottle of something foul and broken.

Cavanagh turned his back on the cart.
‘Marchant! Get these men back to work. We’ve lost enough time as it is.’

‘No,’ came a lone voice, and it was
the voice of Mrs
Pearson. She took a step in front of her husband. ‘A
man has died here, and as a mark of respect we should suspend the dig for the
morning.’

Cavanagh’s automatic smile was switched on.
Instantly oleaginous he swiped his tall hat from his head and bowed low. ‘Mrs Pearson,
please forgive me, how remiss it is of me to forget that there are more delicate sensibilities
present. However, as your husband will attest, we are often the site of misadventures and
I’m afraid that the mere presence of a dead body is not enough to prevent the tunnel work
continuing.’

Mrs Pearson turned. ‘Charles?’ In
return her husband lowered his eyes. His gloved hands fretted at the handle of his stick.

‘Mr Cavanagh is correct, my dear. The poor
soul has been removed; work must continue.’

She looked searchingly at her husband, who
averted his gaze, then Mrs Pearson picked up her skirts and left.

Abberline watched her go, noting Cavanagh’s
air of sly triumph as he went about the business of mustering Marchant and the men, and the
sadness in the face of Charles Pearson, a man torn, as he too turned to leave in the wake of his
wife.

Meanwhile, Abberline had to get this corpse to
Belle Isle. His heart sank to think of it. There was scarcely a worse place on the whole of
God’s green earth than the Belle Isle slum.

Among the men who were, at that very moment,
being urged, cajoled, bullied and threatened back to work by the
site
manager was a young Indian worker who, though he appeared on the worksheet as Bharat, and if any
of the men working beside him were curious enough to ask that was the name he would give them,
thought of himself by another name.

He thought of himself as The Ghost.

To all outward appearances The Ghost was
unremarkable. He wore similar clothes to the other navvies: shirt, neck scarf,
railwayman’s cap, waistcoat and work coat – though no boots, he went barefoot
– and he was a competent, conscientious worker, no better or worse than the next man, and
he was perfectly personable should you engage him in conversation, not especially loquacious and
certainly not the sort to initiate a conversation, but then again not particularly retiring
either.

But The Ghost was always watching. Always
watching. He’d caught sight of the body and by good fortune had been close enough to look
before the order was given to evacuate the trench. He’d also seen the drunkard by the
fence and in the ensuing commotion had been able to catch his eye and then, as if responding to
an itch he had rubbed his own chest, a tiny insignificant gesture practically invisible to
anybody else.

And then he’d watched as Abberline arrived.
He’d watched Cavanagh come bustling on to the site, and he’d watched very carefully
indeed as the tarpaulin was drawn back and Cavanagh had gazed down upon the face of the dead man
and hidden his look of recognition.

Oh, he was good. The Ghost had to give him that.
Cavanagh’s powers of concealment were almost on a par
with his own,
but his eyes had flickered briefly as he looked down upon the face. He knew the man.

Now The Ghost watched as Abberline left on the
cart, taking the body to Belle Isle no doubt.

And he watched as shortly after Abberline had
left, the drunk had departed also.

Prince Albert had been dead some months, and
though his taste in facial hair lived on, his adherence to decency and good manners had
evidently failed to percolate through to the general public. Quite the reverse it seemed; there
was a pall that hung over London, dark and malignant. Some blamed it on the queen’s
absence; she mourned Albert still and had taken to the Highlands to do so. Others said the
overcrowding was to blame – the terrible stink, the poverty and crime – among them
those madmen who thought the best way to solve that problem was by building an underground
railway. Still others said that actually it was not the overcrowding that was to blame; rather
it was the construction of the underground railway that had thrown the city into disarray. This
last group were apt to point out that the underground railway had thus far exacerbated
overcrowding by evicting thousands of tenants from their homes in the Fleet Valley, the
city’s biggest slum. Which was true; it had.

Ah, but at least we’ve got rid of the
city’s biggest slum, said the first group.

Not really, scoffed the second group.
You’ve just moved another slum into first place.

Have patience, pleaded the first group.

No, said the second, we won’t.

Sitting on the board of his
cart, reins held loosely in one hand, Abberline thought it over, how the higher-ups made
decisions in the clubs and boardrooms that affected us all. And to what end? For the greater
good? Or their own personal benefit? A line from Lord Tennyson’s poem about the charge of
the Light Brigade sprang to mind: ‘
Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or
die
.’

His cart clattered over the rails towards where
the tall, spired buildings of Belle Isle appeared like a smudge of dirt on the horizon. Already
he could smell the foul stench of the horse slaughterers, the bone boilers, fat-melters,
chemical works, firework makers and the lucifer-match factories.

To his left some poor deluded idiot had made a
valiant attempt to grow a kitchen garden but it was overrun with sickly weeds that climbed the
iron fences sprouting on either side of him. Dirty, barely clothed children were running in the
wasteland on either side, lobbing old tin cans at one another, scurrying in the street outside
the cottages. Inside each home were rooms and wash houses, and at night the householders and
their tenants would cram inside, just as they would at the Rookery.

His cart came past the horse slaughterers. Under
the arch went living horses, whose sense of smell and instinct must surely have warned them what
lay ahead, and in the factory they would be put to death, then the flesh boiled in copper vats
for cat food.

Outside in the yards men stripped to the waist
used sledgehammers to break up bones, watched by ever-present groups of children clad in filthy
rags tinged yellow from the sulphur in the air.

Abberline saw a group who had
obviously tired of watching – after all, it wasn’t an activity with an awful lot of
variety – and set up a game of cricket instead. Without the usual equipment they’d
improvised with part of an old bedstead for a bat, while the ball was … Abberline winced.
Oh God. They were using the decapitated head of a kitten.

He was about to shout across to them, to urge
them for pity’s sake to use something else for a ball, when he became aware of a child who
had wandered in front of the cart, forcing him to pull up.

‘Oi,’ he called, waving an irate hand
at the young ruffian, ‘police business. Get out of the bleedin’ way.’

But the scruffy urchin didn’t move.
‘Where are you off to, sir?’ he asked, taking the head of the horse in both hands,
stroking it. The sight softened Abberline’s heart a little, and he forgot his irritation
as the boy rubbed his fingertips over the animal’s ears, enjoying the rare intimacy of the
moment: boy and horse.

‘Where are you off to, sir?’ the boy
repeated, tearing his eyes off the horse and turning his urchin gaze on Abberline. ‘Not to
the knacker’s yard with this one, I hope. Say it ain’t so.’

In his peripheral vision Abberline sensed a
movement and turned to see three other young scallywags climb beneath the fence and come on to
the road behind him.
Let them
, he thought.
Nothing of value back there
. Not
unless you counted a soggy corpse and the tarpaulin.

‘No, don’t worry yourself, son,
I’m off to the mortuary with a body on the back.’

‘A body, is it?’
This came from the rear. One of the new arrivals.

A couple more children had arrived by now. A
little crowd of them milling around.

‘Oi, you, get out of it,’ warned
Abberline. ‘Nothing back there to interest you.’

‘Can we have a look, sir?’

‘No you bloody well can’t,’ he
called over his shoulder. ‘Now get out of it before you feel the business end of my
truncheon.’

The first boy stood petting the horse still,
raising his face to speak to Abberline again. ‘Why is the police involved, sir? Did this
one meet a sticky end?’

‘You might say that,’ replied
Abberline, impatient now. ‘Stand aside, son, and let me past.’

The cart bounced and jerked and he was about to
turn to admonish the kids who were obviously trying to peek beneath the tarpaulin, ghoulish
little sods, when it bounced again and this time Abberline, irritated and wanting to get the
hell out of Belle Isle, shook the reins decisively.

‘Walk on,’ he commanded. If the kid
stood in the way, well, that was his lookout.

He drew forward and the child was forced to step
aside. As he passed, Abberline looked down to see the young urchin smiling inscrutably up at
him. ‘Good luck with your body, sir,’ he said, touching his knuckle to his forelock
in a derisive way that Abberline didn’t care for. In return he merely grunted and shook
the reins again, setting his face forward. He went past the rest of the houses to the mortuary
gate, where he coughed loudly to rouse a
worker who’d been dozing on a
wooden chair and who tipped his hat and let him through into the yard.

‘What have we got here?’ said a
second mortuary worker as he emerged from a side door.

Abberline had clambered down from the cart. At
the entrance, sleepyhead closed the gates, behind him the Belle Isle slum like a sooty
thumbprint on a window. ‘Body I need keeping cold for the coroner,’ replied
Abberline, securing the reins as the attendant went to the rear of the wagon, lifted the tarp,
peered beneath, then dropped it again.

‘You want the knacker’s yard,’
he said simply.

‘Come again?’ said Abberline.

The attendant sighed and wiped his hands on his
apron. ‘Unless this is your idea of a joke you want the bleedin’ knacker’s
yard is what I said.’

Abberline paled, already thinking of his
encounter with the slum children and the way his cart had shook, remembering how his attention
had been arrested, cleverly, perhaps, by the kid nuzzling the neck of his horse.

And sure enough, when he skidded to the back of
the cart and swept back the tarpaulin, it was to see that the body from the trench had gone; in
its place a dead pony.