The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter (30 page)

I asked a barrow boy, who said he had never heard of the place. Then a chestnut seller who scratched his head and said it might be south of the river, or perhaps north of it. But when I mentioned the colony of Jewish scientists, a kind of disgust spread across his face – which I took to be recognition. “That’d be east, then,” he said.

I set off as he had indicated and soon found others to confirm and refine the directions. Fleet Street gave way to Ludgate Hill. The Great West Door of St Paul’s Cathedral gradually emerged from the thin fog. Its towers and dome loomed as pale outlines in the grey sky. On another day I would have stopped to wonder at the grandeur of it. But so focussed was I on my goal that the cathedral was merely a way marker, as were the great banks of Threadneedle Street. Two miles of London’s cobbles and uneven paving should have left my feet sore, but with my goal seeming close I hardly noticed.

Having deposited my travelling case at the Bishopsgate Coach Station and received a chit in return, I began to pick my way through the final few streets. I had already passed several Jewish shops and businesses. As I finally turned onto Strype Street I saw an apothecary with its window display of giant flasks – blue, red and yellow. A painted sign on the building next door boasted of laboratory glassware at wholesale prices. The street was shorter than I had thought it would be – little more than fifty yards from end to end.

Suddenly, I remembered gripping my father’s hand. An image flashed into my mind of following close behind as he stepped through an entranceway sandwiched between two shops. Climbing a narrow flight of poorly lit stairs, we had come to a room of burners, stills and retorts. There we met a man with a beard so long that it rested on his round stomach. I sat on a high stool while they talked, my nose wrinkling against a strange smell – oily yet sweet. I kicked my feet as I watched a clear liquid heating over a spirit flame. Three glass marbles in the bottom of the flask jiggled and danced as it began to boil. When it was time to go, the bearded man told me I was a good girl and pinched my cheek. Then he took a jar of marbles like those I had been watching and tipped one into my hand.

The dislocation of exile had so separated me from my past that these memories, vivid and unexpected, felt like imposters in my head. It was as if they belonged to another person. Someone I loved, perhaps.

I had almost reached the end of the street now, and not found what I was looking for. Then I caught a scent in the air. I inhaled again, more deeply this time. It was sweet like over-ripe fruit yet somehow less wholesome. The same smell from all those years ago. I slowed, scanning the buildings to either side.

The entrance was like and yet unlike the one in my memory. There had been no door before. Now there was one, though it stood ajar. The position seemed the same, but the shops that abutted to either side had changed. In the memory I was safe, my father’s warm hand engulfing my own. Now I stood tensed. Steeled against shadows.

The sound of wooden shutters clattered me back to the present. A Jewish man dressed head to foot in black was closing up the herbalist wholesaler across the street. Glancing around, I saw a thin scatter of people hurrying about their business. One figure in the distance was staring in my direction. I had been standing for too long.

The laboratory smell strengthened as I stepped inside. I pushed the door closed behind me and began climbing the narrow staircase, feeling my way. As I approached the top, one of the stairs creaked loudly under my foot.

“I hear you!” shouted a male voice, crackling with irritation.

But stepping into the laboratory, I found it untenanted. Eerily, the years did not seem to have changed the room. A gas lamp on the wall hissed quietly, though it was not yet dark outside.

“Hello?” I called.

“Don’t touch!” The voice barked from a room beyond. “I’ll know if you steal!”

“I... I’m sorry to disturb you,” I said.

“Disturb! All day it’s the same!”

A crash followed – a chair falling, I thought. Then words in a language I did not recognise, though so clearly swearing as to need no translation.

“I’m trying to find someone,” I called. “I thought maybe...”

“Thought you’d disturb Daskal!”

“...maybe you’d be able to help?”

A series of thuds followed, metal on wood, getting closer. Then the man – Daskal I assumed – limped through the entrance on the far side of the laboratory, wearing a scowl that matched his words. As he thumped towards me, I saw that his left leg was not a leg at all, but a jointed metal strut. Thin cables ran taut from the place where a foot should have been, passing around wheels at the knee joint, and disappearing up under his trouser leg, which he wore short on that side.

“Stop gawping,” he said. “Come here and give me a hand.”

He placed himself on a high stool, which could have been the very one I had perched on as a child. I stepped towards him and accepted the curved metal object which he held out. It seemed like a length of stiff spring with a socket on one end.

He lifted the metal leg towards me. “Haven’t you seen a foot before?”

I turned the object in my hand. The gas light reflected from its polished surfaces. Lining up the socket with a pin on the end of the leg, I slotted it home. Two clips snapped shut, gripping it in place. Daskal stood, stamped the metal spring down as if testing the fit of a new shoe. Then he strode back out of the laboratory the way he had entered, quiet and smooth as if all his limbs had been flesh and bone.

“Don’t touch anything,” he shouted.

When, after a moment, he hadn’t returned, I parked myself on the high stool. My feet rested flat on the planks of the floor, whereas years before they had dangled.

“I’m looking for someone,” I said, speaking as loud as my male voice would allow. “A young gentleman. An aristocrat, though perhaps not dressed as one. He came to Spitalfields looking for help in... in perfecting a process. A month ago or less.”

Daskal stepped back into the room, carrying a wicker-encased demijohn, which he placed gently on one of the workbenches. “I trade chemicals not secrets,” he said, though with less bite than before.

“My hope is to help him.”

“Feh!”

“For which I will be paid – that’s true. But it’ll be for his benefit as well.”

“See this?” he said, patting the demijohn, which I now saw contained a clear liquid. “Would you drink from it?”

I shook my head.

“Even if I said it was water?”

“You’d not carry water with such care.”

He nodded, satisfied, as if I had proved his argument. “It’s vitriol. Would’ve burned through your throat before you’d swallowed. So you’re not a fool. And it saved your life. You say the man you’re looking for is an aristocrat?”

“Yes.”

“But not dressed as one? So he’s no fool either. He doesn’t want to be found. We’re not spies here. No one’s going to help you.”

Daskal’s expression was set firm. It suggested no compromise.

I stood. “Sorry to have wasted your time.”

“How did you know where to find me?” he asked, as I turned to go.

“I didn’t. That is, I was looking for a scientist. Not you in particular.”

“But there’s no sign on the door. How did you know what you’d find at the top of the stairs?”

“I came here once. Years ago. There was a man with a long beard.”

Daskal nodded. “Old man Bulmer. That’s the first thing you’ve said that’s made any sense.”

“He gave me a glass marble,” I said.

“That’s him.”

An awkward silence followed, as if I had made some embarrassing confession. Then Daskal adjusted the lamp on the wall. The hissing of the gas stopped and the light went out.

“We’ve had strangers all over us for days,” he said. “Watching. Asking questions.”

“How many days?”

“Three. Four. Did you know you were followed here?” He nodded at the window.

I edged towards it until I could see the street outside. Dusk had fallen and there were fewer people than before. But one man stood leaning against the wall opposite, his arms folded across his chest, the glowing tip of a cigarette just visible. Though half his face was hidden below the brim of a dented bowler hat, I knew it was Yan the Dutchman, proud member of Harry Timpson’s troop.

Daskal waved me through the back room to a second set of stairs, even narrower than the ones at the front. “I’ll not come down,” he said, patting the top of his metal leg.

There being no light and no rail, I kept my hands on the two walls as I descended. Feeling blind, I found the handle of a rear door and let myself out into the cold. A passageway between high walls led me behind the buildings, then turned, bringing me back towards the street.

The shadows at the end of the passageway were deep enough for my safety, though I could see Yan clearly enough. As I watched, he sucked the last life out of his cigarette and cast the dog end to the ground.

Thinking back, it seemed likely that he was the person who had been staring at me in the moments before I stepped through Daskal’s doorway. He would not have recognised me through my disguise. But caught in my memories, I must have seemed out of place. And since Orville was his target, he would have been keeping special watch for a young man who did not fit in.

Questioning the locals would not have yielded any clues – if Daskal was to be believed. Therefore, Timpson’s troop would have scattered through the streets, watching and waiting. Perhaps Orville was holed up in a room somewhere with his machine, gradually starving. He could not stay put forever.

It was another five minutes before Yan hefted himself lazily off the wall. I watched as he brushed down his long coat and set off along the street.

I could have chosen that moment to escape. But the thought never occurred to me. As soon as Yan turned the corner, I was out of my hiding place and running in pursuit. If I could find out which streets Timpson’s men patrolled, I would have narrowed my own search.

At the end of Strype Street, I slowed to a walk and an imitation of casual relaxation. Turning the corner, I saw Yan striding out some thirty yards ahead. Too close. Slowing further, I let the distance increase. A sign on the house opposite read “Leyden Street”. I fixed the name in my memory. On the other side of the road, a scarf-wrapped figure hurried past. In the distance I could hear the rattle of carriage wheels. If only there were more people out and about, my task would have been easier.

By the next junction, Yan’s lead had grown to fifty yards. As he turned left, I saw him nod towards a doorway – an acknowledgement of someone standing in the shadow. To turn back now would be to reveal myself. And if they recognised me, a blade would surely be slipped under my ribs. They would drag me into a side passage and leave me to bleed out, unseen.

My pulse pounding in my ears, I turned left, following Yan.

“Evening,” came a voice from the shadowed doorway.

I touched the brim of my hat and walked on without breaking step. Surely he must have seen my limbs trembling. But there was no sound of following footsteps. Realising I had been holding my breath, I exhaled through clenched teeth. I glanced at the sign on the wall: Cobb Street. How wide had they thrown their net?

A steamcar rumbled past, filling the air with noise and smoke. Fresh manure lay on the cobbles here, as if a drover had only recently passed through the street with his herd.

The next junction was with Bell Lane. Yan made no new gesture as he turned right. The colony of Jewish scientists had thinned to almost nothing. A row of food shops lay ahead – a haberdasher and a barber had the ground floor of a terrace of tenement buildings. Lamplight shone dimly in some of the upper storey windows.

I turned the corner to follow. Too late, I saw Lara standing in the doorway directly ahead. She jumped in front of me, palm upturned.

“Spare a copper, sir?”

I side-stepped but she followed my movement. So I grabbed her shoulder and shoved her out of the way. Behind me she swore – too loud and deliberate to be a natural reaction. A warning, I thought, alerting another watcher who would be waiting ahead. The panic was rising in me again. The street too empty. If I ran, they would catch me. I could hear the din of an approaching carriage behind. The wheel rims clattering on the cobbles, getting louder.

Down the road, Yan had turned to face me. A shadow shifted from the wall to join him. I knew it was Silvan even before I saw his face.

I jinked into the road, stepping into the path of the carriage. The driver shouted a warning. I could hear the horses’ hooves sliding on the cobbles as he reined back. But I was across the road. I felt the whip of the air as the lead horse passed a few inches behind my shoulder. Then I was sprinting after it, using all the freedom of my male clothes. The horses had passed me and I was level with the carriage, accelerating as I ran, trying to keep it between me and my pursuers. Pelting down the road until my lungs were burning and the horses began to pull away.

Still running, I snatched a look behind me. No one had followed. I slowed to a stop, gasping for breath, bracing my hands against my knees.

Seconds passed before I realised that I was not alone on the street. A man in a battered hat had set off, walking away from me, away from Spitalfields. He wore a long coat, frayed at the hem. Afterwards, I realised it was his gentlemanly gait that marked him out. It was a subtle thing, only of note because it mismatched his clothing. I would have missed it had my senses not been tightly strung.

I took a glance to check that the street behind us was still empty, then called out, “Excuse me, sir.”

The man turned up his collar and quickened his pace.

I sprang into a light-footed run, catching up before he realised what I was doing.

“Leave me alone!”

But I was in front of him already and had looked into his eyes before he managed to turn away. Clean-shaven cheeks emphasised every angle of a face that might have been carved from marble. In this low light I could not see the colour of his eyes, but knew them already to be sapphire blue. I’d never met the Duchess’s brother, but he could not be mistaken.