Onyx City (The Lazarus Longman Chronicles Book 3) (4 page)

Damn me! he thought. There was no way he could beat this fellow or even escape, for that matter. He had to use his head—metaphorically speaking, of course. Why was this mad foreigner attacking him? To kill him? Or to merely knock him unconscious? Either way, the only method of surviving a potentially fatal beating was to cede to the man’s demands.
But it has to look real.

He dodged and weaved, waiting for the right moment. As the attacker brought his knee up in a violent head attack, Lazarus rolled with it, letting it connect with his cheekbone as softly as possible.

It was not nearly as soft as he would have liked. His skull felt like it had been split apart like a watermelon under a sledgehammer. It didn’t take much acting to fall back and collapse on the floor. The real act of deception came when the pain, searing and hot, throbbed through his face and brain as he lay still, feigning unconsciousness.

The oriental remained light on his feet, but peered over Lazarus’s prostrate form. Lazarus had closed his eyes so he did not see what sort of expression—pride, curiosity or stone cold professionalism—was passing over his victor’s face. Apparently satisfied, the man backed out of the room and shut the door behind him. A key turned in the lock.

Lazarus opened his eyes a crack and found that his left one was fast swelling shut. He could hear the sound of the man’s footsteps descending the stairs. This was a rum business. Why knock him unconscious only to lock him in an upstairs room? He could hear movement below as the foreigner clattered about. He waited until all was still before rising.

The room spun. His brain screamed and his tender prodding to check if his cheekbone was still in once piece brought tears to his eyes. It was not shattered, so that was something. He breathed deeply and tried to dispel the feeling of grogginess. There was a strange scent, like something burning. An effect of the trauma his head had received? He sniffed the air. Something was indeed burning, and he had a good idea that it was the house he was in.

So that was the plan! Lure him here to this deserted shithole, knock him unconscious and then burn the house down with him in it. A tragic accident, or so the police report would read. But why? Who had he so grievously offended that they should want him dead? The purchaser of the journal? He chided himself for speculating when he was in imminent danger, for the crackle of the blaze was audible now.

The door was locked. That left the window. He slid it open and peered out into the street below. The drop wouldn’t kill him. But it might break a leg, possibly two, and that was to be avoided if at all possible. He looked around the room. It was empty. No useful bed sheets that might be knotted together, no mattress to hurl out to cushion his landing. Smoke was creeping in under the door. If he could only get through it, he could make it to the rooms at the rear and see if there wasn’t something there that might be of aid to him.
But how?

Had he his gun he might have shot out the lock, but of course the cursed man had taken it with him. He booted the door. It was an old door and the wooden panel he had struck gave a little. He booted it again, as hard as he could. The paint cracked, hinting at a flexibility in the old wood. He kicked again and again, imagining it was the oriental’s face and this was payback for the beating he had just taken.

The wood cracked. Another blow allowed his foot out into the corridor, through a splintered hole that scraped his shin. He retrieved his leg gingerly and began working at the wood around the hole he had made. It came away in splinters and soon he was able to scramble out into the smoke-filled corridor.

He coughed and hacked. An orange glow illuminated the stairwell. Shielding his face, he crossed the landing, entered one of the other bedrooms and shoved open the window. He thrust his head out and gulped down fresh air. Within his reach was a drainpipe painted black. He clambered out of the window and grabbed hold of it, finding a foothold for one leg, then the other.

There was a grating sound as the fixtures protested at his weight. He began to descend and had barely managed a foot before the drainpipe loosened itself and began to drift away from the wall. His fists seized it in a death grip as he fell seemingly in slow motion. He just had time to turn his head to see what he might be landing on, before the bush was flattened beneath him and his shoulder struck the wooden fence. It gave a little and he came to rest on solid ground, spitting earth and clawing at the tangles of foliage in his eyes.

He got to his feet and watched the flames through the grimy windows as they ate away at the walls and ceiling, rising up to consume the top floor of the house.

Chapter Four

In which Limehouse offers several clues

The bureau had found them jobs in a warehouse that let directly onto Shadwell Basin. It was a proper contract that meant they avoided the casual ‘call-on’ which had prospective laborers herded up like cattle at a market to be picked for a day’s work by a foreman, only to be cast aside when they were no longer needed.

As Lazarus and Mr. Clumps sat down in the office of the manager, Lazarus realized that they must look like the worst couple of rogues. His left eye was still badly swollen and his lip was cut, courtesy of his mysterious Siamese gentleman. His companion looked like, well, a gorilla wearing a theatrical mask.

The manager looked at them over his broad desk, a certain expression of distaste curling his features. “What’s with the metal mug?”

“Phossy jaw,” Lazarus explained.

“Can he speak for himself?”

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Clumps in his soft tones. “Phossy jaw. From the navy factories.”

“You don’t want to see him with it off,” Lazarus advised.

The manager frowned. “You’ve both been recommended to me by a mutual friend,” he said. “I run a tight operation here. Goods come in, we unpack ’em, store ’em, re-pack ’em and ship ’em out. That’s more or less the gist of it. I want hard work from my employees and no slacking. You lads look like strong fellas but have you got ethics, that’s what I’m wondering.”

“Oh, yes,” Lazarus answered. “Ethics by the barrel load. You’ll have nothing from us but good honest work.”

“Glad to hear it. Go with Tappy here, he’ll show you what’s what.”

Tappy was a skinny man in a flat cap that stood loitering by the doorway with a small dog-end hanging off his bottom lip. “Got a shipment lined up for you already,” he said and led them out onto the docks where a vessel from Ceylon was moored.

They were put to work with another couple of workers, shifting crates of tea from the ship’s derrick. The work was hard and fast and Lazarus soon felt the need to remove his cap and roll his shirtsleeves up. He was sticky with sweat and within two hours had developed a new sense of respect for the stamina of dockworkers. Mr. Clumps carried on, taking crate after crate on his own, without breaking his stride or even removing his coat, much to the admiration of their new colleagues. Lazarus decided he would have to have a word with him about appearances.

“Your mate’s a quiet one,” Tappy said during a quick tea break. They were sitting on some empty crates in the sun. Mr. Clumps had his back to them as he looked out over Shadwell Basin. “Strong, though. I can’t complain.”

“Shy, honest sort,” Lazarus replied, wiping the sweat from his brow with his cap. “Known him a couple of months and he hasn’t said much else to me but ‘good morning’. Still, I never could stand a chatterbox.”

He watched Mr. Clumps staring at the flat body of water, his massive cigar slowly glowing away while he puffed out clouds of scented steam. He still had on his coat. Lazarus gulped down the lukewarm tea. How they were going to get away with all this was beyond his comprehension.

The days trickled by. Lazarus grew immensely frustrated at the time it was taking to find anything out. His colleagues were likeable enough, if a little rough. Many were foreigners; Poles, Germans, Irish. They had a coarse humor and several of them were clearly heavy drinkers. One or two petty crooks. But none were the hardened revolutionists wanting to overthrow the social order that he was looking for. Most of them could barely read, and he imagined that they wouldn’t know Karl Marx from Lottie Collins.

On top of it all he was so tired from lifting, carrying and hauling things about that his very bones ached. He had hacked his way through jungles, trailed across the blazing desert with an empty canteen and fought the Ashanti warriors tooth and nail on strict rations, but even he found the daily grind of a dockside worker almost too much. Every night he would crash down on the cot in their lodgings in Limehouse and sleep like an old drunk, snoring away while Mr. Clumps sat in the only chair in the room, his mechanite furnace slowly ticking over and the glowing end of his cigar going up and down as he exhaled through the night—not sleeping, but watching and waiting.

Lazarus was responsible for keeping Mr. Clumps up and running. The bureau had supplied him with a quantity of mechanite which he kept wrapped in an oilskin beneath a loose floorboard in their room. It seemed absurd to keep such a valuable trove in such an unassuming and seedy location with only a flimsy wooden door and his own British Bulldog pocket revolver to defend it. But nobody was looking for it, and even if some lowlife managed to prize it from his possession they likely wouldn’t know it from a few chunks of schist.

Lazarus had not given up his private concerns, and in the slow wait for information on the socialist groups that may or may not have infested the warehouses of Shadwell Docks, he had time to pursue them, even if he was dog tired. One Sunday afternoon he decided that it was time to pay the old lime oast Mansfield had mentioned a visit.

Rows upon rows of tiny worker’s cottages lined the canals of one of London’s worst slums. Dilapidated barges rested upon the mud, awaiting the evening tide. Public houses and opium dens were common, and shabby-looking children played with mangy dogs in the streets. Rising up above all of this were the conical lime oasts that lent the district its name. Several were still in use, but a great many were empty shells with broken windows and crumbling chimneys, their fires long left untended.

Lazarus had come alone. Mr. Clumps had expressed a surprising degree of trepidation at allowing his superior to wander off alone on this overcast Sunday afternoon, but Lazarus had insisted. He was a private man, and when they were not pursuing their mission’s goals he must be allowed some private time. Perhaps he had family he wanted to visit, or a lady friend who missed him. These were things that the steam-man could never understand, Lazarus explained, and Mr. Clumps did an alarming impression of a man sulking when he had left him sitting on his chair in their lodgings.

As Lazarus made his way across the weed-ravaged yard towards the address Mansfield had given him, his footsteps echoed across the cracked concrete, reverberating off the red brickwork of the surrounding buildings. He looked up at the lime oast with its dark eye-like windows of broken glass and conical kiln looming over him. He patted his coat pocket instinctively, feeling the shape of the Bulldog revolver. The smallness of it made him feel uneasy. He missed the reassuring bulge of his Enfield and especially the heavy weight of his Starblazer.

The main door was secured with heavy, rusted chains, so he followed the building around to the left, looking for another entrance. He came across a small wooden door that was barely hanging from its hinges. He pushed it aside and he stepped in.

Some pigeons, startled by his entrance, burst upwards in a flurry of feathers and out through a gaping hole in the roof. The place was dim. All about were scattered the remnants of the kiln’s former life. Worker’s tools, rusted and filthy, lay strewn on ancient benches and a thick layer of dust and grime coated everything. At the far end of the building, the floor dropped away to a set of slime-encrusted steps leading to the water. It had once been used as a small dock and now a thick layer of scum sat on the water, obscuring its depths.

He poked around a little more, but to no avail. If anything had been amiss here, then someone had since removed all trace. It didn’t look like it had been used for anything since its fires cooled, many years ago. Disappointed, he left the building and made his way back across the yard.

Some children were playing on an old heap of broken masonry and looked a little startled to see him emerge from the lime oast. There were four in all, three boys and a girl, all dressed in shabby jackets and caps.

“Oi, mister!” shouted one. “Are you a copper?”

“Nope,” Lazarus replied, walking past them.

“I’ll bet you are. I’ll bet you’re investigating ghosts,” the lad said.

“Why would a copper care two pennies about ghosts?” Lazarus asked. “Not that I am a copper. And what’s all this about ghosts, anyway?”

“Cos a ghost lives in there,” the boy replied. “I seen it.”

“What did you see?” Lazarus asked.

The boy wiped the back of his hand across his nose and sniffed. “Well, it weren’t really me,” he admitted. “It was me brother Ben. He saw it late at night, a real ghost it was. It was all dressed in black and floated over the ground.”

“Your brother’s been on the gin,” said the girl. “Seein’ things.”

“S’all a load of cobblers anyway!” exclaimed another of their companions. “It ain’t no ghost. My dad saw him in daylight and he weren’t floating. My dad reckons its Todd.”

“Todd?” Lazarus enquired. “Who’s he?”

“Everyone’s heard of old Sweeney Todd,” exclaimed the second boy incredulously. “He’s the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. He invites people into his shop for a shave and then he cuts their throat with his razor. Then he sells their bodies to a woman what makes ‘em into meat pies!”

“Good grief, child!” Lazarus said. “Where do you hear such things?”

“Everyone’s heard of ol’ Todd,” he repeated. “Ask anyone. That’s his lair where he hides from the coppers.”

Lazarus had heard enough. He left the children to their playing and headed towards his lodgings. On the way back he thought long and hard about his encounter with the street urchins. Apparently someone had been going in and out of the old lime oast, that much was certain.

During those dull, exhausting days, Lazarus also found time to enquire of Limehouse’s Asian population if anybody knew of the recent arrival of a man from Siam. Limehouse had its share of Buddhist temples and he surmised that his attacker, if he were a true Siamese, would likely be a Buddhist, and if so would undoubtedly visit some temple in the area for his devotions.

The Chinese population of Limehouse had grown in recent years. Tea and opium merchants from Shanghai and Tianjin sought homes and business opportunities amidst the chandlers and rope makers. Cantonese sailors, marooned by shipping lines that offered no return journeys to their deckhands, were left to build new lives for themselves in London’s dockside communities. Stalls and shops had sprung up to cater to the new settlers, selling dried foods, herbs and medicinal remedies while gambling dens and oriental restaurants clustered together in the narrow streets.

It took several days of asking around before he was told by one Chinese man that yes, a number of tough Siamese men had been seen frequenting a temple on Pennyfields. It surprised Lazarus and unnerved him to think that his would-be assassin was not alone. He had already surmised that the man must be working for somebody higher up who held a grudge against him. It then stood to reason that this individual had several Siamese fighters in his employ. And to find the snake’s head, they say, one must follow its tail.

He watched the temple on Pennyfields for several evenings, and finally spotted his man emerging from the unremarkable building of plum-colored brick. It was most definitely the same man; those loose-fitting clothes that suggested a previous trade at sea and the smooth, nut-brown face unadorned with beard or moustache. He grabbed a nearby street urchin of his own race and pointed the oriental out.

“See that man?” he asked the child who blinked up at him, unsure if he was going to be given a farthing or a thick ear. “How would you like to earn half a crown?”

The boy’s eyes goggled at the prospect.

“I want you to follow that man, not now, he’s too far gone, but he’ll be back. I want to know where he goes and who he sees. If he stops at a house I want the address. I don’t care if he trails you all over London. If he takes a cab, I want you to keep on it. I’ve seen you lads do that, right?”

“Right!” nodded the boy, his peaked cap wagging up and down.

“Half a crown. Here’s sixpence for the time being. I’ll be back on Sunday for your news.”

Still nodding vigorously, the child went on his way, giddy with his new employment. Lazarus hadn’t the time to spend any more evenings and weekends waiting and watching but London’s hordes of unwashed, illiterate and abandoned urchins was a more effective grapevine than anything the metropolitan or municipal police forces could muster between them. His lad would turn up the goods, he had no doubt about that.