Kitty Peck and the Child of Ill-Fortune (27 page)

Then there came a deep rumbling sound. Moments later a torrent of water hurtled round the turn of the passage twenty foot back, slapping up against the wall in a great foaming wave.

I grabbed Della and pulled her up onto a ledge skirting the passage wall. We watched as the stinking scum-laced water gushed past us, tumbling like a river in spate down into the mouth of the right-hand tunnel. It kept on coming. I guessed that somewhere a sluice had been opened.

I pushed a matt of sodden hair back from my eyes. ‘Looks like we’ll be going left, then.’

I didn’t give her time to answer. I raised the lamp and waded into the entrance of the left-hand tunnel. Moments later I heard Della splash after me.

We walked in silence for a couple of minutes and I was glad to see the way the passage began to slope more keenly. The yellow water running down the centre seemed to take on a tumbling urgency that suggested it might know where it was going.

I turned to Della to remark on it, but she had stopped to look back the way we’d come. Robbie watched me over her shoulder. I heard the skittering noise again and thought of those pallid bony feet scratching their way through the muck.

‘There are rats everywhere down here. I’m not going back if that’s what you’re thinking, Della Lennox. This is the right way. I can feel it.’

I swung the lamp round and splashed on, my skirt weighed like plaster around my legs. The passage veered left. I put one hand on the wall to steady myself as I took the turn and slipped again on something greasy underfoot. I stopped dead.

The lamp showed up a circular space ahead with three passages running off it. But we couldn’t get to them. A wide ribbon of shadow cut across the chamber floor. The sound of water falling from a height echoed from the bricks. I kicked forward to the lip of the ribbon and raised the lamp. The drain discharged over the edge of a brick precipice and fell thirty, perhaps forty, foot down to a frothing channel. The lamp showed up the jagged water-slicked edges of old masonry work and glinting black water below.

‘Shit!’ I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I swallowed down another lungful before turning back to Della. That was when I noticed the air tasted different here – cleaner, almost fresh. I opened my eyes and looked again. The chamber was washed over in a thin grey light that had nothing to do with the lamp. The light came from above.

I tipped my head back and there it was – another grille twenty foot up, only I could see stars and a tatty rag of cloud caught between the broken bars. The grille sat at the top of a brick-lined cone like a brewery chimney built underground. It was old, I could see patches where the masonry had crumbled away and where loose bricks jutted out from the wall, but there was a sort of ladder up there too, the rungs curved out from the wall and climbed up to that dish of faint grey light. I took another gulp of good air.

‘I reckon we can get out here, Della. We made the right choice back there after all.’

‘I would say you have made the wrong choice, Kitty. And not only tonight.’

The soft, sibilant words seemed to slice through the air. It wasn’t Della’s voice.

I span around and felt the damp, freezing material of my dress press hard against my flesh.

It was like I’d been drawn across a whetstone and opened out. Every sense was keen and raw as a January wind off the Thames. From the oyster cuts on my hands, to the tannery splashes that burned on my cheeks I was suddenly aware of every shrieking part of my body. I heard the smallest drop of water sliding off the walls, I saw the rainbow iridescence in the oily film of the tiniest bubbles of scum that tumbled past me in the drainage channel, and above the stench of sewer filth I smelt lemon cut with incense.

The cloaked figure threw back a hood. White blond hair caught the lamplight and shone like the moon against the slick black bricks of the passage.

‘You?’ My tongue was like a lead weight in my mouth.

Misha Raskalov’s clever, fox muzzle split into a smile so broad that it looked like a wound running across his face. He held the bundle in his arms a little higher so that I could see it clear. Robbie fretted and wriggled. One hand flailed free from the blanket, clenching uselessly at the air. He screwed up his nutshell face and began to cry, although the sound came as feeble ragged gulps.

Behind them in the tunnel a mound of grey lay motionless in the water huddled against the blackened bricks. Della.

Misha stepped into the circle of light cast by the lamp. His cloak was ripped and covered in dust. He nodded at the precipice.

‘You cannot go any further, Kitty. It is . . .
Schicksal
,
suerte
,
sort
,
destino.
I can say it in many languages. In my own tongue it is
sud’ba.
I believe you would say fate?’ He paused. ‘The other word you will learn today is
smert
– death.’

The skin of his hand was blotched and livid. The cloak seemed to be welded to his flesh. He saw my eyes flick to the burns and he shrugged. ‘It is nothing – it will heal.’ He licked his wide pink lips. I tried to force the thought of him and Lucca together from my mind.

Lucca?
My heart shrivelled beneath my bodice as Misha’s eyes narrowed.

‘In the Okhrana we are trained not to feel pain.’

He took a step towards me and held Robbie in front of him at arm’s length. I knew without a doubt that he intended to drop him over the precipice and into the drain forty foot below. Robbie wailed louder and twisted his head about, trying to catch sight of his mother.

As Misha came closer his broad shoulders and trailing cloak blocked my view of the passage where Della lay. He was over six foot tall. I brandished the lamp between us. It was all I had.

He started to laugh. ‘You are well named, Kitty Peck. Lucca told me you spit like a little cat.’

I felt something spit all right, something like a limelight flare spurted deep inside. I clenched my free hand into a ball so tight the nails dug crescents into the palm. I had to keep control of my fury. I had to use it.

I needed time to think.

‘Where’s Joey? What have you done with him?’ My voice could have scraped the slime off the walls.

Misha shrugged again.

Blood pounded in my temples. If he hadn’t been holding on to Robbie I would have swung the lamp at him. ‘If you’re going to kill me I might as well know what you’ve done with my brother. You won’t have anything to lose. Where is he – and Lucca?’

Misha snorted. ‘I have no idea where Josette is, Kitty. My only interest in your brother is that he told his beloved Ilya about this child and its mother. That’s why Ilya Vershinin has to die, as will your brother in good time. I’ll deal with them both when I return to Paris.’

‘Paris? You mean, he, Ilya, went back?’

‘Of course not.’ Misha’s over-ripe mouth twisted into a sneer. ‘I mean he was never here. As to your friend Lucca – he is waiting for me in his daubing room by the river. I’ve no doubt he is wondering where I am, aching for me to return. He was so eager to believe, so useful. He made everything so very much easier. London is a great capital but it is still a small world – your friend Mr Collins? What a fortunate coincidence that was.’

I nodded slowly, it was falling into place. Sam had got the measure of Misha Raskalov, hadn’t he? He didn’t think him a murderer, but he didn’t trust him. And Joey hadn’t given Della and Robbie away neither – he’d been beating himself up for nothing. But Lucca, my poor Lucca. He was so sure that Misha cared for him.

A blind fool!
Della’s words trickled through my mind again.

I swallowed. ‘I still don’t understand. Why didn’t you go to Lucca as soon as you came to London?’

Misha raised a brow so pale that it was almost invisible against his milky skin.

‘Because it would have been too obvious.
Chem dal’she, tem dorozhe
. I think you have a similar saying – absence makes the heart grow fonder? I wanted to be sure that Mr Fratelli would be . . . receptive when we finally met again. I was waiting to meet him seemingly by accident, but your journalist friend did the work for me.’

‘What . . . what will you do to Lucca?’

‘Kill him. What else?’ There wasn’t a trace of emotion in Misha’s perfect English. His heart was as cold as his eyes.

‘From the moment Lucca found me everything slotted into place. It all became so easy. I knew your brother and Della had concocted something. When I saw her leave Josette’s house on the night of the gathering in Paris I knew they were making plans and I suspected they involved you.

‘I . . . entertained your friend that evening to gain his trust. But it was you I was watching, Kitty. I moved too fast at the station, that was a mistake, but when I saw them with the trunk I knew I was right.’

And I knew right then it was Misha Raskalov I’d seen watching the train from the end of the platform as we left Paris.

‘You followed us to Limehouse?’

‘As soon as I could without arousing suspicion. There had to be a reason for my visit – but the trail was cold when I arrived. I knew you had him here somewhere, but I had to be sure.’ His nostrils flared. ‘There are so many . . .
chernomazy
in London.’

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but I had an idea.

‘You came here to kill him – you were searching for little ones like Robbie?’

‘Of course – and I found some, but I had to be certain. I confess I was confused when your friend – Peggy, is it? – told me in the churchyard the black child was hers. But once Lucca came to me, I knew exactly where to find Robbie Lennox and what to do. It was simply a matter of watching. The woman would come for him sooner or later.’

He grinned. ‘And she came tonight to the theatre where you were waiting with the child. It is a matter of some importance that this . . .
obez’yana
,’ he spat out the word and shook the bundle in his hands, ‘and its mother do not trouble my masters further. Now stand aside.’

I shook my head. One thing was clear, Misha Raskalov liked to talk about himself.
Humility is a virtue in London, but not, it seems, in Moscow
.
Wasn’t that what Sam had said? I could use his vanity to buy myself time.

Think, girl, think.

‘That was you on the stage – you started the fire?’

He shrugged. ‘I know how to control the gaslights in a theatre. Your system, however, is primitive. I did not expect—’

‘To die with us? Is that it? You thought you’d bring the building down on our heads and get away.’

‘Something of that nature. I was overcome briefly by the smoke and by this . . .’ Misha swung Robbie around abruptly and I thought he was going to drop him, but instead he brought his burned arm level with my eyes. ‘I saw you go to the office and I knew you must be trying to escape. So I followed.

‘In your . . .
theatres
,’ he made the word sound like a sneer, ‘you have magicians who make people disappear, do you not?’ I didn’t answer as he carried on. ‘Phwoof! And the girl is gone in a shower of sparks. I wondered where you had gone, Kitty, until I found the door in the boards.’

He took another step forward, forcing me back with his bent arm. I knew the drop was less than two foot behind me now. I could hear the water rushing far below.

‘You have to disappear tonight, Kitty Peck, along with the child and his mother. I must thank you for everything you have done. Those letters! My masters will be fascinated by their existence. They will find a way to obtain them . . . after your death.’

‘Bastard!’ I hissed the word through gritted teeth.

Misha shook his head. ‘I think we both know that this is the bastard.’ He raised the cloth bundle to eye level. I saw Robbie’s feet kick under the blanket. Now, at last, he began to cry out loud. The desperate mewling echoed from the walls of the chamber. It was a sound to wake the dead.

I stood my ground, willing myself not to turn away as Misha lowered his moon-pale head. He brought his fleshy lips to my ear. ‘You first, I think, and then the bastard.’ He jostled my shoulder, forcing me to take a single step back.

I stared up at his pointed face. The guttering light from the oil lamp smudged deep shadows beneath his brows and under his jutting cheekbones. For a moment I was minded of Mr Punch hanging out over the edge of his little striped tent. He was a murderer too, wasn’t he?

Beyond Misha’s shoulder something grey moved in the dim light of the lamp. My heart started up so violent I thought he could catch the drumming of it. I kept my eyes latched on his. Keep him talking, girl, I thought, keep his attention fixed on you.

He shifted Robbie higher.

‘It squeals like a piglet. My masters will be pleased to know this episode is concluded.’

I needed to make him concentrate on me now, me and nothing else. I lifted the lamp trying not to notice the way it shook in my hands.

‘Episode! Is that all it is to you? You’ve been paid to murder children and that’s a natural day’s work, is it? I don’t know how you can live with yourself. You disgust me, Misha Raskalov. Look at him. He’s just a baby, a sick little boy who’s not likely to live much beyond a decade. And it’s not just him – those little ones here in Limehouse. And Della and what you did to Old Peter just because I showed him the Monseigneur’s note . . .’

I faltered, confused by the sudden light of genuine interest that sparked in those cool slanting eyes.

‘Useful to the end, Kitty. I thank you again. I suspected the Monseigneur knew about my . . . responsibilities for some time and you have just confirmed it, but this other – Peter, you say? If he too knows something of this matter . . . Tell me, where can I find him?’

The smell of lemon and incense made my stomach clench up tight as a limpet. To my mind it was a hundred times worse than the stench of the shit, piss and God knows what else we was standing in. But as I breathed in the stink of Misha Raskalov’s putrid soul, something came to me, something important.

I tried to net it before it slipped away, but he swung Robbie above his head, shaking him so hard the blanket slipped down to the gulley, racing past me in the foaming water and over the lip of the precipice.

‘I am willing to dash the piglet’s brains out on the wall here and smear your face with its blood. Must I repeat myself? Where can I find this Peter?’

‘Mile End – in the Bancroft Road Jewish cemetery where you put him!’

The moment I said it, I knew it was wrong. It wasn’t Misha who killed Old Peter, but I didn’t have time to unravel it in my head because at the same moment I caught the flash of something silver in the air beside Misha’s ear.

Della plunged the steel hatpin swiftly and viciously into the side of his neck.

His eyes widened in surprise. He hunched forward, but she pulled the long pin free and drove it again into the soft white skin just beneath his lobe, pushing it deep and grinding it about with her fist. Blood spurted up from the first incision spattering her hand and her sleeve. The little fountain stained Misha’s trailing hair a pink that quickly turned to crimson. He tried to say something, but a gurgling sound came from his throat like something was catching his words in a strainer.

Dark glistening liquid bubbled over his lips. He turned to look at her – disbelief spreading across his pointed features as she wound a black hand into the overlong hair that fell over his shoulders. She pulled tight, yanking his head back to expose more of his throat. His back arched and he pulled Robbie down to his breast like a shield.

Misha’s lips moved but his drowning voice couldn’t sound the words.

Della tightened her grip on the back of his head. Her green eyes burned with hate as she raised the pin again. I said she put me in mind of a wild creature, but the strength in her now was something more than savage.

That was when I moved. I dropped the lamp into the water at our feet, hearing the glass shatter against the stones beneath the slime. As the light died on the instant, I wrenched Robbie from Misha’s arms and darted past them both.

I held Robbie close and nestled his head into my damp bodice. Five foot away, two figures were silhouetted in the dim light spilling down from the grille. Misha’s empty arms flailed at his sides now, clenching and unclenching like he was trying to catch hold of his life.

I cupped the crown of Robbie’s head, folding my hand over his soft curled ear. For all that he was not yet eight months, he shouldn’t see any of this nor hear it, neither. No matter how long he had left, Robbie Lennox should never know what his mother had done for him.

I watched as Della swung back her arm and hacked again, forcing the pin into the cleft beneath Misha’s Adam’s apple. He tried to scrabble the weapon from her hand, a feeble gesture that turned to a desperate effort to fend her off as the steel plunged – in out, in out. The terrible rhythm of it was almost mechanical.

Misha sank to his knees, his bloody hands pulling at the folds of Della’s sodden coat. A sound somewhere between a choke and a wail came rattling from him as a gush of thick black stuff vomited from his mouth into the water. He crouched forward, gaping and rasping for air that would never reach his lungs.

Della took a step back like she didn’t want him staining her gear. And then she kicked him over the edge.