The Equivoque Principle (13 page)

Smaller and far more nimble than his employer, Butter crawled on his hands and knees in the midst of the battle, amazingly untouched, letting the thrashing men around him consume each other. Every now and again he would leap to his feet and kick out when someone came near him. Even though Quaint’s plan was working, the tide couldn’t flow in his direction for ever. Butter was suddenly grabbed by his anorak’s hood and dragged across the oily ground, as the pack of men split into two warring factions. This increased the overall area of the fighting space, and soon Butter was swallowed by the maelstrom of fists and feet.

Trying desperately to elbow his way over to his friend, Quaint clambered on men’s shoulders as clamouring hands groped and scratched at him. A bald-headed man dressed in grease-stained overalls got lucky, and grabbed a handful of Quaint’s grey-brown curls. The man yanked back with all his strength, and Quaint had no choice but to go with the flow, lest his hair be yanked from his scalp, and he kicked out with his heels against his aggressors as he was dragged onto the ground. As he felt an onset of feet kicking at him—striking his ribs, his legs, his chest—the metal pole was wrestled from Quaint’s grasp, but he grabbed hold of one of his attackers, and managed to hoist himself back up onto his feet. Like a sledgehammer to the guts, Quaint landed a satisfying punch on a nearby attacker.

However, his sense of victory was short-lived as he noticed a flash of his Inuit companion’s jet black hair, caught in a headlock by a huge grotesquery of a man. His immediate thought was to get
to Butter as fast as he could—a thought suddenly marred by the appearance of a limp-haired youth barring his way.

‘Come ’ere, you old bastard! You’re dead!’ he sneered, stabbing a dagger menacingly around him as he approached. ‘Let’s be ’avin’ you then!’

Quaint slapped the youth with the back of his hand, and brought his knee swiftly up into the lad’s groin. The young man collapsed onto the ground clutching his privates.

‘That’ll teach you to disrespect your elders,’ quipped Quaint.

Suddenly, Quaint’s blood ran cold as he heard an animalistic wail echo around the marketplace. With bizarre fascination, he watched as one by one, the men piled on top of Butter were thrown off as if grabbed by unseen hands, cast aside like toy soldiers. Men’s screams littered the air. Pure, horrific, unfettered screams, and in the centre of the thrall, he saw Butter, his tusk-handled knife in his hand. An expression of malice was etched upon his wizened face, making him almost unrecognisable to Quaint. Again and again, the little man sliced around him with his blade like a warrior bred for battle. Blood spots decorated his cheeks and hands, and he was gaining the upper hand. But just as the tide seemed to turn in his direction, it was all over so quickly. Butter lost his grip on the mêlée as if was suddenly fighting in quicksand. One of the men moved around behind him, and grabbed at his flailing arms, receiving a nasty gash to his arm for his efforts. With Butter promptly restrained, he was soon obscured by a mass of bodies. Unfortunately for him, Quaint was so preoccupied with the sight that he quite forgot his own predicament.

He was suddenly grabbed around the neck by a large pair of mitten-like hands, and wrenched backwards off his feet. Quaint clawed at the thick arm around his neck as a heavy black shroud began to descend upon him. He was finding it hard to stay conscious. His attacker released him, and Quaint sank to his knees, all
strength sapped from his body. He was surrounded instantly by at least four men, their blurred, elongated faces leering at him as if he were standing within his own circus’s Hall of Mirrors.

‘What…d-do you want from me?’ he mumbled, wiping blood-spittle from his lips with his white cotton cuff. ‘You…c-can’t interrogate me…if I’m dead.’

‘Who said we wanted to interrogate you?’ asked one foe.

‘You’re goin’ the same way as your mate over there,’ agreed another.

Two men brusquely pushed through the pack of men with an unconscious Butter in their arms. They cast the Inuit’s apparently lifeless body onto the cold, wet ground.

‘What have you…done to him?’ asked Quaint, staring at the sight disbelievingly.

Whether his assailants answered him or not, Quaint didn’t hear. Unconsciousness climbed up his body, coiling its icy clinch around him, and his battered frame hit the wet, cold concrete ground with a sickening thud.

W
ITH NO IDEA
how long he had been unconscious, Quaint was rudely awakened some time later by Butter slapping his cheeks, calling his name repeatedly. Immediately after the spark of life reignited Quaint’s hazy mind, a multitude of questions jostled each other in an undulating swarm, all vying to be answered first. Where am I? Why is it so dark? Who were those men? Am I dead? No, I can’t be…I’m in too much pain to be dead.

‘Boss, please wake!’ called Butter through the darkness.

‘I’m here, Butter…I’m…awake,’ said Quaint hoarsely, his eyes slowly opening.

‘I am so pleased you are alive!’ said Butter elatedly.

‘As am I, my friend.’

Butter squeezed his hand tighter. ‘How are you?’

‘I’ve been better.’

‘I am so sorry, boss; there were too many in number. They were victorious.’

‘Yes,’ said Quaint, rubbing at his ribs. ‘I noticed that part.’

‘I only woke myself a short while ago.’

‘Where the hell are we?’

‘I…I am unsure, boss. It is so dark.’

‘And cold…it’s blood-chillingly
cold
!’ snapped Quaint, sitting up sharply. Immediately, he felt his body scream at him, and he clutched at his ribs. ‘Guess…I shouldn’t have got up so quick…Head’s swishing around like a fish in a bowl…and speaking of fish! From the stench of it, I’d presume we’re still in the market…in that large metal container we saw earlier. From the sound of the machinery, my guess was spot on. It’s an industrial ice box…to freeze the fish solid, ready for transportation,’ Quaint said weakly, rubbing at his bruised jaw, and trying to click his arm back into its socket. ‘And us too, if we don’t find a way to get out of here pretty damn quick. If those bastards out there didn’t finish me off, there’s no way I’m going to let a bloody ice box do it!’

In the pitch darkness, Quaint struggled to his feet, with Butter helping to support his weight. He limped over to the wall and traced his hands across it tentatively, searching the cold, glassy wet walls for the door. His fingers brushed against a stack of wooden crates, and his nose told him they contained a consignment of fish.

‘If this ice box is used to keep the fish frozen, we don’t have long until it starts to chill us too. An hour at the most, I’d guess…but then again, who knows how much air is in here. We might have been out of it for hours; we might only get twenty minutes. After the pasting I just received…I’m not exactly at my peak.’ Quaint tousled his curls madly with both hands. ‘Think, Cornelius! This is a machine. All machines work on the same principle—power in, function out. There must be an external cooling mechanism inlet somewhere, pumping in the vapours. If we can isolate
that
…maybe we can shut it down before we freeze to death. Then the hard part is getting out before we asphyxiate, because these industrial ice boxes are designed to be completely airtight -double-reinforced metal doors with rubber seals—which only serves to increase our peril.’

‘A machine, boss? To make ice?’ questioned Butter. ‘How silly!’

‘We British can’t just step outside the front door and pick up a handful of snow to keep our food fresh, you know,’ explained Quaint, flapping his arms about him, trying to keep warm. ‘We have to improvise artificially…
mechanically.
’

‘Do you think we can make breakdown of this ice machine?’

‘If we don’t, my friend, we shall almost certainly freeze to death,’ said Quaint, trying to search in the pitch blackness for the gas inlet pipe. ‘Unless we get lucky and suffocate first, of course -but either way we’re in big trouble.’

‘If only we had light,’ said Butter, scratching at his thick, black, matted fringe.

‘Hang on, we do! My tinder-box is right here in my coat pocket,’ Quaint said, fumbling down his body. He slapped his forehead with his palm. ‘Blast! The coat that happens to be outside.’

‘I have no Plan B, boss.’

‘Join the club.’

‘Then…I am useless.’

‘Far from it, Butter, you’re my sounding board—added to that, you prevent me talking to myself like a madman, and that’s a
very
important job!’ said Quaint, with a wince as he lifted his arm. The pain from where the dog had sunk its teeth into him earlier was now pulsating in sympathy with the rest of his battered body. ‘Come on, Cornelius, you’re a bloody conjuror. You’ve gotten out of far worse scrapes than this. There must be something we can use to try and lever our way out.’

Butter moved over to the heavy metal door and began slamming his weight against it, but it was pointless. The locking mechanism was designed to keep the door completely airtight, and true to its design, it didn’t budge so much as an inch. His diminutive frame had all the effect of a rotten tomato against a brick wall. Quaint meanwhile, had gone decidedly quiet, unnoticed under the
noise that the Inuit was making. He rubbed furiously at his arms and upper body, in an attempt to get his blood flowing, but it almost seemed an impossible task.

‘Must…sit down for a little bit,’ said Quaint. Each word was a strain to speak, each breath a struggle to take as the coolant vapour burned his lungs. ‘Yes…that’s it. I just need…five minutes’…rest.’ He curled his body into a tight foetal position on the ice box’s freezing cold floor, desperate to keep warm, his teeth rattling in his gums.

Meanwhile, Butter continued his relentless assault upon the door’s frame with his hammering fists—oblivious to the slumped figure of an unmoving and unspeaking Cornelius Quaint, drifting a hair’s breadth from death’s embrace.

S
EVERAL MILES AWAY
, the moon reflected the slumbering sun’s glow like a golden teardrop suspended lazily in the starry sky. An off-kilter spire breached the diamond-speckled night, casting a long, crooked shadow across the muddy graveyard.

‘So this is Crawditch abbey, eh?’ said Mr Reynolds.

‘What’s left of it, yes,’ answered Bishop Courtney as he stood with his hands on his hips examining the church. ‘It’s hardly a functioning place of worship any longer, Mr Reynolds, not since the larger building was built over in Lambeth.’

Reynolds sucked on his cigar, and exhaled smoke rings into the sky. ‘I suppose the locals only use this place for weddings and funerals nowadays, Bishop, and there are precious few of both around here.’

The Bishop clutched a small carpetbag under one arm, and a lantern in the other, and he called over his shoulder to his coach driver, sitting high at the front of the carriage like a pensive vulture. ‘Melchin, old chap, keep an eye out for Mr Hawkspear, will you? Tell him we have pressed on ahead.’ Melchin puffed on his pipe, and grunted a reply. ‘Come, Mr Reynolds, the crypt is this way,’ and he led Reynolds to an arched wooden door set into the side of the church wall. He shone his lantern down the haphazard
stone steps into the darkness below. ‘There is something of interest down here that I wish to show you.’

At the bottom of the steps the two men reached a wrought-iron gate. The Bishop pulled a small bronze key from a pouch affixed to his belt, and unlocked the gate with a jolting snap. Once through, the crypt opened up a little more, and Bishop Courtney used the lantern to light a wall-mounted torch. It sprang into life immediately, bathing the enclosed space in yellowish-brown light. Reynolds’s eyes adjusted to the light, and he scoured every inch of the crypt like an automaton. It was difficult to see what could possibly be of interest to him in a chokingly dry cellar bereft of anything of value.

‘I take it there’s nothing left in this crypt worth stealing then?’ Reynolds asked, with a sardonic grin. ‘Otherwise, maybe I would’ve been here before, eh?’

‘Yes, well, that’s the trick isn’t it, Mr Reynolds, keeping the thieves out—or at the very least, dissuading them.’ Bishop Courtney swung his arm in an arc around the bare room. ‘Most common thieves presume this place was robbed of all its riches years ago. This is due largely to a rumour propagated by none other than the Anglican Church itself.’

‘They went to an awful lot of trouble for some poky old crypt, didn’t they? That infers that there
is
something to find here.’

‘Astute as always, Mr Reynolds.’

‘Right…so what’s here then? Treasure?’ asked Reynolds.

‘Of a sort,’ answered the Bishop, his eyes sparkling with something akin to gleeful pride. ‘But it isn’t gold, silver or jewels, my lad…it is of far, far greater value than that. Allow me to explain; buried in that cemetery out there is—’

The Bishop suddenly broke off mid-sentence as he heard several scuffling footsteps approaching down the stone steps towards them. The lithe form of a man in his early thirties appeared at the
foot of the steps, pushing a second man in front of him, and the torchlight flickered in the breeze as he entered the crypt.

‘Ah, Mr Hawkspear,’ greeted the Bishop. ‘So glad you could join us…and you have brought company, I see.’

Hawkspear was a bedraggled young man with pinched features and eyes like azure pools of water. Beneath tendrils of greasy black hair was a low brow and thick, bushy eyebrows that gave him a constant scowl. Hawkspear pushed the bound, gagged and bloodied landlord of The Black Sheep tavern in front of him, and the man stumbled awkwardly on the uneven ground. Hawkspear shoved Peach roughly to his knees in front of Bishop Courtney’s portly frame.

‘Aye, this is the landlord as you ordered, Bishop,’ said Hawkspear, with a thick, Irish drawl. ‘Arthur Peach, his name is.’

A spidery grin crept across Courtney’s fat face like a cracked window. ‘Splendid, Mr Hawkspear, simply splendid!’ The Bishop grasped Peach’s head, twisting it from side to side. His eyes noticed the assortment of fresh bruises littering the landlord’s face. ‘I see you had a little entertainment
en route.’

Hawkspear bowed. ‘Sorry, Bishop…he tried t’run. I had to
convince
him that it wasn’t a good idea. In me own special way, like.’

The Bishop smiled—a full, blossoming smile this time—with eyes alight like burning coals in a fireplace. ‘Well, you had better hope he isn’t too badly damaged. I want him alive…before I kill him.’

Peach moaned a mournful, sorrowful cry, and sniffed back petrified tears. His eyes bore into the Bishop, appealing for help.

He would find none.

The Bishop clenched his fist. ‘Stand him up! Now, you’re probably wondering why I dragged your carcass all the way across town, Mr Peach.’ The Bishop didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I have
been given some disturbing news, you see. It seems that you had a visit from a man named Cornelius Quaint the other night, and like the gutless worm you are, you talked!’

Peach whimpered again through his gagged mouth.

‘You informed him about Mr Hawkspear here,’ continued the Bishop. ‘A fact that led the man straight to the police. Luckily we have a man on the inside, and were able to contain that, but it has upset some carefully laid plans. Because of your slippage, I had to act quickly to secure the circus strongman’s release from his cell before he could be questioned fully. My thanks to Mr Hawkspear for a wonderful job with the acid…I hear it had the perfect effect.’

‘Indeed it did, Bishop. Aiden Miller is still at large, last I heard,’ said Hawkspear. ‘Crawditch police are chasin’ their tails as always.’

‘Splendid…the fool’s doing a wonderful job of spreading the fear for me,’ said the Bishop. ‘I almost wish I could employ him myself!’ Courtney suddenly bent closer to the landlord’s face. ‘I happen to be in the middle of a very
sensitive
project here, Mr Peach, and cannot allow anyone to bring trouble to my door. Because of your loose tongue the police now know that an Irishman named Hawkspear paid you to supply one of Quaint’s employees with a bottle of drugged whisky. You can understand why I’m a little
upset
, surely
.
And you—’ he said, jabbing the Irishman in the chest. ‘Next time use a bloody alias! Did they teach you
nothing
in prison?’

Hawkspear lowered his clear blue eyes and stared down at his feet like an insolent child. ‘M’sorry, Bishop—I just wanted t’get it done, and get out. I didn’t know that Quaint bloke would be sniffin’ around.’

Reynolds stepped forwards from the shadows. ‘Maybe we should remove the landlord’s gag, Bishop? You did say you
wanted him alive, right?’ he offered, eying the landlord’s pale, sweaty face. ‘Look at him. He’s on the verge of collapse. It’s not like he’s going anywhere, is it?’

‘If you must,’ said the Bishop. ‘You’re right, Mr Reynolds, I don’t want the bastard passing out yet.’

Reynolds grabbed the ragged gag, and pulled it free from Peach’s mouth. The landlord wheezed oxygen into his lungs, tasting the fresh air as if for the first time.

The Bishop cleared his throat. ‘Mr Reynolds, would you be kind enough to hand me my bag?’

Reynolds looked around, and spied the cloth carpetbag on the crypt’s stone floor. The Bishop snatched it from him and rummaged inside, pulling from it a pair of long-handled brass tongs and some squat, stub-bladed shears.

‘I found these items in Westminster Abbey’s archive room, Mr Peach. They’re from an age when peasants like you would be slaughtered for not obeying the word of the Lord. The Good Old Days, as I like to refer to them. Too bad it all had to end, eh?’ said an almost nostalgic Bishop Courtney. ‘This instrument was designed to purge the Devil from a man’s soul.’ He held the shears up for Peach to see them more clearly, taking pleasure from opening and closing the sharp, metal blades. ‘Shall we put them to the test?’ He held the tongs closer to Peach’s face, and a brief flicker of torchlight danced off the brassy metal of the tools.

The landlord’s eyes glassed over with tears as he realised his fate. His hands bound behind his back, he begged for the Bishop’s mercy.

‘You don’t have much breath left, Mr Peach. I wouldn’t waste it if I were you.’

‘But…please! I had no choice!’ protested Peach.

‘You have a loose tongue, sir—and what do we do to people with loose tongues, Mr Hawkspear?’ asked the Bishop.

Hawkspear cackled like an old crone. ‘We cut ’em off, my Lord.’

‘Indeed we do, Mr Hawkspear! Indeed we do,’ Bishop Courtney confirmed.

Reynolds placed his hand on the Courtney’s shoulder, and the Bishop spun around, as if disturbed from a hypnotic trance.

‘Is this really necessary, Bishop? You have the man bound,’ he whispered.

Courtney’s eyes flared.
‘Mister
Reynolds, if you please!’ he seethed, as droplets of spittle formed on his bottom lip. ‘I will thank you to remember your place.’

This had the desired affect on Reynolds, and he removed his hand quickly as ordered. ‘I apologise, Bishop, I didn’t mean to question you.’

‘This man must pay penance!’ squawked the Bishop.

With Hawkspear holding his captive’s face firmly between his dirty, blood-stained fingers, the Bishop pushed the tongs towards his mouth, snapping the handles together. Peach tried to twist his face from the Irishman’s grasp; writhing like a fox caught in a trap, but Hawkspear was far too strong. The landlord was weeping freely now, begging for forgiveness, for release—but none came. Peach clamped his mouth shut, tears streaming down his sweaty face. The Bishop advanced with the snapping tongs.

Again the Bishop pushed the tongs further into the man’s mouth, trying to force it open, scraping teeth and tearing gums as it went. A sickening crack suddenly echoed around the confines of the crypt. Several of Arthur Peach’s teeth snapped in half. The man himself was too stunned now to cry out, the pain too intense, as Courtney thrust the tools in further. The Bishop snapped with the tongs…and then slowly removed them from Arthur Peach’s terrified mouth, revealing the landlord’s tongue ensnared sharply between the brass pincers.

‘Now, Mr Peach,’ breathed the Bishop hoarsely, ‘we shall hear how you plead for mercy without a tongue. Mr Hawkspear…take these, and show him what I mean,’ he said, and handed Hawkspear the small, stub-bladed shears. The Irishman gladly held them tightly against the wrestling Peach’s cheek—and with one sharp snip—he severed the tip of the man’s tongue clean off. It fell to the floor with a wet thud.

The sustained shock was too much for Peach, and he collapsed onto his knees, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. A spurt of dark red blood spilled from his mouth, coating his broken teeth and torn gums. The man coughed, tasting the blood that gushed down his throat. Suddenly, Peach began convulsing wildly on the crypt’s floor, his blood-stained hands flailing as if trying to snatch something in the air. He collapsed, shaking spasmodically, and spat a flurry of blood from his mouth, daubing his face in a crimson mask.

Reynolds pushed past Hawkspear and bent down to investigate. ‘He’s choking, damn it!’ He searched Peach’s eyes for some sign of life, but it was too late…the man was balancing one step closer to death than he was to life, and the scales were tipped in death’s favour.

The Bishop and Hawkspear watched in fascination at the macabre scene playing out before them and, with a final twitch of his body, Peach arched his back, stiffened his fingers and then suddenly relaxed. The landlord’s lungs exhaled like a bicycle with a slow, hissing puncture. The Bishop peered a little closer, rocking forward on the balls of his feet, risking a look into the dead man’s eyes.

‘The shock of it all was too much for him,’ said Reynolds, staring at the body.

‘The Bishop did what had t’be done, so he did,’ snapped Hawkspear protectively.

‘Mr Hawkspear, take the landlord’s body up to the cemetery. Place it in the usual spot for the body-snatchers, as per our arrangement,’ said Courtney, wiping his bloodied hands on his robes.

Hawkspear did as he was instructed. He bundled Peach’s body up over his shoulder, and carried it slowly up the stone steps to the outside night.

‘Arrangement?’ quizzed Reynolds. ‘You’ve got an
arrangement
with the body-snatchers now?’

‘That is correct, Mr Reynolds,’ Courtney said. ‘As long as Mr Hawkspear provides them with a regular supply of fresh bodies, they have agreed to leave the cemetery untouched. I can’t have those dreadful ghouls digging up the place looking for corpses now, can I?’

‘And…why is that then? What do
you
care if they dig the graveyard up?’

‘I was trying to tell you earlier, man, before we were rudely interrupted. It’s far too late now. Don’t worry, I’ll reveal all in time. Now, I must retire to Westminster…you should go back to Crawditch, keep an eye on things,’ the Bishop said, as he slapped Reynolds on the back like an old school chum. ‘The plan nears its fruition, my friend. Sooner than he thought, the residents will find the prospect of staying in that place extremely unappealing, and we can conclude our business. I told you all it would take would be a few dead bodies turning up.’

‘Yeah, but they’re not turning up, are they? Not if you’re selling them to the snatchers, at any rate. The folk of Crawditch are cowards, but all they’re doing is
talking
right now,’ said Reynolds. ‘Talking about curfews, talking about businesses shutting up, and that’s all. It’s not enough. If you want this place ready in time for the Queen’s orders, then we need to make a statement, Bishop! Something big.’

The Bishop picked at his bottom teeth with his fingernail. ‘Now
that’s
what I admired about you in the first place, Mr Reynolds -you’ve got vision, and that is
so
hard to come by these days.’

Reynolds slicked back a stray tail of hair from his forehead, and his penetrating eyes seemed to grow slightly darker, accentuating the thin scar that bisected his left cheek. ‘We need a big name, my Lord…we need to kill someone in whom the locals hold a great deal of faith, someone they look up to.’