Prince of Secrets (16 page)

‘No, and yes,' he said, the grin on his face transforming it, so that a younger, wilder man looked at Walker, sending a shiver down his spine. ‘Where and when do you want me?'

‘Docklands. Tonight,' and Walker began to pour out lucid directions, ending, ‘And come as Mr Dilley, not as swell Jacobus Grant—you'd stick out like a sore thumb if you wandered round the East End dressed as you are.'

‘Understood, Inspector,' and then slyly, ‘You're sure you trust me?'

‘Trust you, Mr Dilley? Of course I don't trust you. I never trust magicians who happen to be villains as well. What I do trust is that you want that bastard Heneage as badly as I do. If we get what we want tonight, we might even succeed in arresting him before this action of yours starts. That
would save you all a great deal of trouble—particularly, I understand, the Prince of Wales. Does he know what a villain you are, Mr Dilley?'

Cobie began to laugh. He remembered the Prince's oblique remarks to him at Markendale which betrayed that he knew very well who had stolen his letters back—and who must, therefore, have stolen the Heneage diamonds. ‘Oh, I think that he does, Inspector—a little perhaps.'

‘Then that's that,' said Walker energetically. ‘Be sure you turn up. Don't let me down, mind.'

‘Oh, I won't do that,' Cobie returned gaily. ‘I never miss any fun when it's offered me. Not my way.'

‘Oh, aye, I can see that.' Walker was dry. ‘Only perhaps it won't be fun. Might be dangerous. Ready for danger, Mr Dilley?'

‘Always,' said Cobie before he showed him to the door.

He thought of what Walker had said to him when he stood in the shadow of the Tower of London waiting for the older man to arrive. He was dressed, as instructed, in Mr Dilley's seedy masher's outfit.

Walker, when he came round the corner, was dressed as badly as he was. He nodded approvingly when he saw Cobie.

‘To the manner born,' he said drily. ‘Our man is in the pub round the corner, the Traveller's Rest. I have arranged to meet him there. I'll go in first. I want you to follow me, and keep an eye on us. I don't trust him an inch. If we leave, then follow us without being seen. If you've never done this sort of work before, I'm sure that you can bring your magic skills to bear successfully. You're not exactly called upon to disappear! If I need you, I'll shout for you. You'll remember to answer to Dilley, I hope.'

‘You don't fear an ambush?'

‘No. I don't think that our man will involve anyone else in this if he really means to turn Queen's evidence. Too risky. On the other hand, this could be a trick. But why? Perhaps I've brought you here for nothing.'

On the other hand, perhaps not, thought Cobie, drinking disgustingly warm beer, and watching Walker and a man whom he had last seen at Madame Louise's, hovering behind Hoskyns's shoulder. Walker had said that that was why he was wanted. The other business of shadowing him was simply a precaution.

Walker and his nark, Linfield presumably, were talking urgently over their beer. Walker shook his head, and the man continued to argue. Finally Walker appeared to agree to what was being said to him, and both men rose and walked to the door. After a moment Cobie followed them.

They turned into a side alley, and Cobie tracked them in the shadows of it. The alley led into a path running parallel with the river. Coils of tarred rope, bits of old engines, and a rusting boiler were scattered along it.

Suddenly, Cobie lost them. One moment they were there, and then they weren't.

He ran silently along, to come to a door in a high fence. What to do? To continue onwards, or go through the door? If it were not locked, that is. Walker and his informer had disappeared so quickly that the door seemed the better bet. Pushing through it he found himself on a kind of a quay, beside a small basin where a few boats had been moored.

At the far end was another alley. Cobie ran towards it, thinking that by now secrecy on his part was not perhaps the best bet. He wondered where Walker was and what he was doing.

Walker was being garrotted in the lee of a warehouse in the alley. He had been led there on the pretence that he was being taken to a night house, which had replaced the one
which Hoskyns had been running, in order to meet another nark.

Once they had reached their supposed destination Linfield had suddenly turned on him, thrown a scarf around his neck, and pulled on it after the fashion of the thugs who had plagued London for the last ten years.

Walker had been walking warily along but the attack had taken him by surprise. For one moment he knew that he was dying, before knowledge began to disappear in pain. Stars were bursting in front of his eyes, he was suffocating, and his last conscious thought was that if Grant had lost them or was willing to stand by and see him killed—one less witness to his villainy—he was going to die here and be thrown into the Thames. To surface, bloated and unrecognisable, only to be grieved for by his wife and Bates—if even by them.

And then, the pressure was gone. He was lying gasping on the ground, consciousness slowly returning. He could smell the river and the tainted soil beneath him, and someone was saying fiercely, ‘Breathe, man, breathe. I don't want another death on my conscience.'

It was Grant's voice he was hearing, and it was Grant who was trying to revive him. His back-up had saved him.

Revive he did, and presently was sitting up, coughing and gasping, his lungs and throat on fire, and stars still bursting before his eyes. He felt that he would never breathe properly again. He did, of course. He was propped up against Grant's strong arm until he recovered himself enough for Grant to help him to his feet and lead him to one of the bollards which ran along the edge of the basin, where he sat, still gasping.

He looked about him for his assailant—to see a body lying in the lee of the wall, motionless, its head at an angle, and one arm flung out. Walker stared at Mr Dilley, no, Mr
Jacobus Grant, who was now leaning against a wall, his face bruised and bleeding, his clothing torn, but still as enigmatic as ever, watching him.

‘You saved my life,' he gasped at last; it hurt him to speak.

Cobie watched him, saying nothing.

‘You had to kill that man to do so.' He pointed at the corpse lying against the wall.

‘True,' said Cobie negligently, as though killing one man to save another was an everyday occurrence. ‘I had no alternative. He was on the point of killing you when I attacked him. I had to finish him off to save myself.'

‘You needn't have saved me. You could have let him kill me, then killed him, and no one the wiser. You would have had me off your back for good. I told no one where I was going tonight.'

‘True again,' agreed Cobie. ‘Although I was sorry to kill him. He could have been a useful witness. But I didn't think that you wanted us both dead. When he had finished me off, he would have started again on you—to make sure he'd done for you.'

Walker nodded. ‘Ruthless bastard, aren't you?'

‘To your advantage, Inspector. To your advantage.'

Walker found himself able to speak more easily. ‘A nice progression, isn't it, for a magician? First you paid me…us…to raid Madame's night house.'

Cobie, his eyes still watchful, nodded and said, ‘True—yet again.'

‘Next you burned down Hoskyns's night house, and disposed of him as well. After that you stole Sir Ratcliffe's necklace. Now you've killed a man to save me. What a busy magician you've been, Mr Dilley.'

Cobie thought for a moment. Walker wasn't mocking him. He decided on perfect frankness, and if that meant
more tightrope walking, more flying near the sun, then so be it.

He threw his hands up, saying lightly, ‘Guilty as charged, Inspector, except for Hoskyn's death, of which I am innocent, and of course, there's more. You might as well add to that down there,' and he pointed at the silent body, ‘several others whom I have disposed of for different, and necessary, reasons in Arizona Territory, New Mexico and elsewhere.

‘Satisfied? Or would you rather have had me allow our friend here to dispose of
you
? I'm not so careless of human life as that, although I own that I was careless to antagonise you so badly when we first met. I apologise for that—but not for anything else I may have done.'

Walker said numbly. ‘Is that an official confession—or magician's flim flam and chit-chat?'

‘Flim flam, chit-chat—and the truth. From one ruthless swine to another—I would have said bastard, but I believe that you, at least, are legitimate.'

‘And you aren't, I know.'

Cobie nodded again. ‘Well, Inspector, what are you going to do now? You've tracked me on and off for months, you and that bucolic sergeant of yours. Hand me over to the various authorities who would love to get their hands on me? You could, you know. Your choice, always your choice. Put the cuffs on me, and charge me with murder, Inspector, if that's what you want. Be sure that one way or another, I'll take Sir Ratcliffe Heneage down with me as well before I swing.'

Walker swallowed. His throat pained him, his whole body pained him. He had hated the man before him with a burning hate. The other had mocked him, demeaned him, trampled on him from the beginning—and now he owed him his life. It was not that which was destroying his desire for
vengeance, but something else. The knowledge that he and Grant, Dilley, were two of a kind.

Cobie read the face before him correctly.

‘Too alike, aren't we, Inspector? I've seen you with Bates, seen you with me—and seen myself. Two sides of the same coin. Have you ever read
King Lear
, Inspector?'

He began to quote, his voice derisive, but beautiful still. ‘How does it go? “See how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark in thine ear: change places; and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?”'

It was what Will Walker had so often thought. He saw the Commissioner in his office accepting the bribe, saw—a thousand scenes—all of which bore out what he was hearing, and what he already knew.

Cobie saw him struggle with himself, but would offer him no help. If this was the end, if he had over-reached himself at last, then so be it. If not, another time would come he was sure.

“‘Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges,'” he said idly, quoting again.

Oh, yes, chance might desert him yet—and then he might have to pay for all that he had done of good or ill. But not this time. Walker looked up at him, and Cobie saw that he was now a friend and not an enemy.

‘Give me a hand, Cobie Grant,' Walker said, using his name in friendship for the first time. ‘There is rubbish here for us to dispose of.'

After Cobie had helped him to rise, he bent down to take the dead man by the feet. ‘The Thames might as well have him—temporarily, at least.'

Cobie bent down, too, and took Linfield's body by the shoulders. Together thief and thief-taker swung him and hurled him into the greasy water—to rise again after many days, transfigured.

‘I never thought that I would say this…' and Walker's speech was thick and slow ‘…but I was pursuing my vendetta against you without my superiors' knowledge, and against their orders. All the time it was my other half that I was pursuing. Others may take you to be judged, but I never shall.

‘And not because you saved me—though that weighs heavy in the balance.' He held out his hand. ‘I thank you for my life—and for making sense of it.'

Cobie took the proffered hand and shook it.

‘We ought to part now,' he said. ‘We must not be seen together here, for both our sakes, lest when our friend rises again, someone remarks upon us.'

Walker nodded. ‘I will follow up the other name you gave me, for I am more sure than ever after this night's work that Sir Ratcliffe is my man, and I shall see that he swings for what he has done.'

Running silently away, leaving his other half behind him, Will Walker heard Mr Dilley's voice echoing in his ears again and again, “‘Handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?'”

Finally saying to himself, ‘For the life of me, I don't know.'

Dinah was having difficulty in sleeping. Cobie had told her that morning that he was likely to be late home—giving her, as usual, no excuse for his lateness. After dinner she had done some tapestry work, read, and then gone to bed. She had dismissed Hortense before she climbed into her big four-poster. It always seemed bigger than ever when
he
was not in it.

She had deliberately not told him that she had at last made an appointment with their doctor on the following morning. Cobie had been so preoccupied lately, she thought with a
little sadness, that it had not occurred to him that their lovemaking had not been interrupted by her courses!

More, he had not appeared to notice—he whom she often thought noticed everything—that she had not been in her usual state of health since she had returned from Oxford where her malaise had begun. Her reasons for not telling him were her usual ones: that she did not wish to distract him from whatever it was he was engaged in.

Before she had left Oxford, her mother had asked her if she were perfectly well, and had smiled knowingly when Dinah had told her that she thought that she had contracted a slight grippe which was causing her sickness, usually in the morning.

‘That sort of grippe is commonly known as expecting a child, my love,' she had said. ‘You should see a doctor when you return to London.'

Of all things she hadn't expected that, but common sense told her that when a man and a woman made love as often and as fervently as she and Cobie had been doing, the likelihood of a child must be strong. She wondered with a little sad amusement how he would react to learning that he was to be a father.

Sleep was long in coming. At last she sat up, found the book she had been reading, and tried to become interested in Mr Henry James's latest difficult offering. Perhaps, she thought, stifling a yawn, her copy of the
Strand Magazine
, with an adventure of Mr Sherlock Holmes in it, might prove more amusing—but she had left it downstairs, on the table by her armchair in the drawing room.