The Hourglass Factory (17 page)

Frankie stopped short when she saw the trio assembled in front of her. If she hadn’t known Jojo straightaway from the posters, she would have guessed him from the way he was standing,
proprietorial, his shoulders back, both hands in his trouser pockets. Every inch of him was covered with a fleecy golden mane, brushed to a shine over his face. An expensively cut suit of dark
green velvet followed the contours of his body, a pocket-watch chain dangled over his abdomen. Salome, the snake girl, the voice Frankie knew, was slouching on the left, wearing a loose silk robe
painted with blue and gold flowers. Despite her pose, she couldn’t disguise the darkness on her face, nor the sallow rings round her eyes. And in the centre, with his arms tied fast to the
chair he sat on, was the ginger-haired boy.

Primrose cleared his throat quietly as his team settled onto thinly upholstered chairs, arranged in a circle in one of the Scotland Yard meeting rooms. He was uncomfortable
without his desk in front of him. His lap felt exposed. On it he balanced a notepad with a fine sheaf of yellow lined paper, and tapped his pencil gently.

There were six of them drafted in to assist from the different threads of Special Branch. The speed and efficiency with which Stuttlegate had helped him assemble the group had unnerved Primrose
slightly. It was almost as if the Chief had them sitting on alert, waiting for the right moment.

When they had settled he spoke. ‘Do you know why you have been called here?’

The men nodded and shifted their eyes around, taking one another in. On the far left was Sergeant Mathers from Hammersmith, a cell breaker at the time of the Walsall anarchists. He was nearing
retirement age now and looked disgruntled to have been called to headquarters on a Saturday. Next to him sat a square military type with a neat blond moustache and wire spectacles, oddly dainty on
his huge pink face. That was Donaldson, the motorcyclist on loan from Westminster. Next was Bain, a photographer who specialised in prison yard surveillance. Sergeant Wilson sat directly opposite
Primrose, his grasshopper legs twined round each other. His head was slouched as if he might have a hangover. Completing the circle was a slender boy who could have passed for twenty, although
Primrose knew he was several years older. Robert Jenkins had been a precociously talented sapper, sent abroad with the military on various assignments before an ill-judged mine clearance landed in
him in hospital for almost a year. He had since decided that the police force was a safer bet, and Special Branch had made good use of his bomb knowledge on some of the anarchist intelligence
operations. He had a lean, slight physique and a delicate way of speaking.

The air in the room smelled of men who had been working since six that morning, some since the night before: cigarettes, weak coffee, shrimps scoffed from paper bags. Five sets of weary eyes
watched Primrose.

‘Good,’ Primrose went on. ‘Well, the uniforms have been doing a round of questions at the Coliseum today and by all accounts the trapeze Miss Diamond was using had been
tampered with. The early suspicions are cocaine solution on the mouth strap.’ He checked his notes. ‘If she had caught it, Miss Diamond would likely have fallen.’

‘So we’re looking for someone with knowledge of old Charlie. That should be easy. Did they check B Division?’ Bain, the photographer, smirked. There was a titter of
laughter.

Primrose coughed. ‘They are looking for someone who had knowledge of Miss Diamond’s act. And obviously access backstage.’

‘Would they have needed to climb the rig then, to fit the mouth strap?’ asked Mathers, leaning forwards.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘The strap was taken up by a stagehand just before the second act began, and passed to Miss Diamond midway through her performance.’

‘That doesn’t explain where she’s gone,’ Donaldson said.

Primrose nodded. ‘But I think it rules out an accident and cover-up by the theatre . . .’ He let the thread hang.

Wilson frowned. ‘Do you think she’s been kidnapped?’

‘That is one possibility. The other is that she twigged someone had tampered with her equipment and managed to escape herself.’

‘But how?’

Primrose opened his palms. ‘One of the performers has taken some notion that she stole his tiger suit. There was an incident that night with a tiger getting loose. How feasible that is . .
.’ There was general derision round the room.

Primrose swallowed. His palms felt clammy holding the yellow pad. He had rehearsed this last part with Stuttlegate at the Chief’s insistence. ‘But the more important question is
who
might be connected to this? Miss Diamond’s disappearance may be linked to one or more deaths that occurred over the past two days.’

There was silence.

‘On Friday, Olivier Smythe, corset maker by appointment to Queen Alexandra and also to Ebony Diamond, was found dead on his shop floor, wearing one of his own designs. It was not unusual
for him to go corseted, but this one was laced so tight it had suffocated him.’

A few of the men swallowed loudly. Donaldson, the motorcyclist, looked at his muddy boots.

Primrose went on, ‘The same night, just off Tottenham Court Road, a woman was killed. We don’t know who she is yet but she was wearing items of Ebony Diamond’s
clothing.’

‘So they knew each other?’ Jenkins asked.

There were a few seconds of silence. Primrose continued. ‘She was attacked from behind. The killer cut her throat. There was no –’ he hesitated, ‘follow-up. Not like the
Ripper victims.’ He sighed and rubbed his brow, then fished into his pocket and held out the small portcullis badge Stuttlegate had given him. ‘This was found on the body.’

‘Let me see that,’ Donaldson leant forward. ‘Holloway Gaol badge of honour? The one they get given if they’ve done a stint inside for the WSPU.’

Primrose nodded.

‘So the murdered girl was a suffragette?’

‘It would certainly look that way. Possibly one known to the authorities.’

Bain, who had been very still up to that moment, shifted his weight and eyed the camera bag at his feet, with its telecentric lens poking out. ‘The authorities? Which authorities? Do you
mean to suggest that the government might be bumping off members of the WS—’

‘I mean to suggest nothing. You have images of Miss Diamond?’

Bain nodded. ‘I looked them out.’

‘What about the people she was acquainted with? Anyone in prison at the same time as her, anyone you saw her speak to in the exercise yard?’

‘Anything we did take will be in the archives.’

‘So we can start from there.’

Wilson stifled a yawn.

‘I need someone to look into her other contacts: the club, the circus, the landlady. Wilson, perhaps you can take charge of that this afternoon? You look good and lively.’
Wilson’s face turned sour but he said nothing. Primrose turned back to Bain. ‘How long is the range on that camera?’

‘About thirty feet. Any more than that and you lose detail in the developing.’

‘And did you do the mug shots or just the yard surveillance?’

‘Yard surveillance.’

‘Good, so hopefully no one will recognise you. Now, rumour has it that Christabel Pankhurst was in town on Thursday night. Mathers, can you make contact with the arresting officers in the
Pankhurst conspiracy trial? It was April this year when Miss Christabel disappeared. She’s hiding out in Paris. Keep as close an eye as possible on any movements. I assume you have contacts
in Paris?’

Mathers fixed him with a contemptuous look. ‘Of course.’

‘Keep an eye on the paper as well:
Votes for Women
. They’ve just launched another one,
The Suffragette
. Find out where Miss Christabel’s filing her articles
from.’

Primrose turned his attention to the younger officer, who was looking slightly anxious that he hadn’t yet been dished a task. ‘Robert Jenkins, I have a very special job for
you.’ Jenkins’s cheeks had a rosy flush at the best of times. But what Primrose said next turned the young man’s face the colour of beet.

Frankie stared at Jojo, the snake woman and the copper-haired boy for some time before any of them made a move. Finally Jojo gestured to her to take a seat. She scraped one of
the chairs from the cabaret tables towards her and hesitated until Jojo sat down.

The snake woman continued to lean on the chair of the tied boy. ‘Do you know why I let you in?’ She turned her cool eyes on Frankie.

Frankie shook her head.

‘First I think we’d both like to know who she is,’ Jojo said. His voice had an indefinable gruff circus timbre, with notes of Lancashire, Birmingham, London.

‘She came looking for Ebony.’ The snake woman slid a hand into her silk pocket and pulled out a scrap which she tossed at Frankie. Frankie caught it, recognising her own calling
card.

‘How did you . . . ?’ Frankie looked at the tied boy. ‘You were in her dressing room.’

The boy kept his lips tightly shut.

‘Is she here?’ Frankie watched them each in turn, their faces ruined in the harsh light. The snake woman’s make-up was fierce and thick. The boy had soft young cheeks but
pointed features, halfway between cherub and rat. Up close his hair had lost its shocking flame and looked greasy and festering, his forehead was puckered as if he had all manner of things on the
tip of his tongue he dared not say. The glare picked out patches of skin where Jojo’s fur had thinned and flecked with grey. He looked keenly back at Frankie, then his brow knotted into a
frown.

‘No, she’s not here. I think Millicent thought
you
might be able to tell
us
where she is.’

Frankie stared at the snake woman, trying to picture her with the name Millicent. Millicent stared back, then raised both of her eyebrows rudely in defiance.

‘She was backstage last night,’ the boy murmured, gesturing with his chin towards Frankie. He had a Northern Irish accent, Belfast perhaps. ‘I saw her.’

Millicent grabbed him by the chin and forced his gaze into hers. ‘You’ll speak when you’re spoken to. You’ve done enough damage.’

His green eyes blazed. ‘Do you think it’s my fault she got away?’

Jojo put his hand on the boy’s knee. ‘No one is blaming you.’

‘Then why have you fucking tied me up?’

‘Don’t curse in front of our guest,’ he said softly. ‘She’ll think we’re savages.’

‘I watched that sulky bitch for five days. I didn’t take my eyes off her. Ask her.’

Frankie nodded. ‘I saw him at the corset shop.’

‘And in the street. And at the theatre,’ the boy protested.

‘What were you doing at the corsetier’s?’ Jojo asked Frankie.

‘Interviewing Ebony. For an article.’

‘So you’re a journalist?’ She saw him glance briefly around his chamber, the tatty curtains and the flaking paint. ‘And you were at the Coliseum?’

Frankie nodded. ‘When Ebony vanished. She was there too.’

The snake girl shifted on her feet. ‘I knew the second I saw that so-called tiger that it was Ebony.’ She looked down at the boy who was starting to squirm in his binding, then with
a sigh reached down and loosened his cords. He shook his hands free and rubbed his wrists. As he leant forward Frankie heard his neck crack.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

‘Liam.’ His neck crunched again and he sat back.

‘How do you do?’ she muttered. The boy repeated the phrase without feeling. Frankie looked back at Millicent. ‘How did you know it was her? She done that before?’

‘Lots of times. She used to do it for the Stork brothers.’

‘He stole it from her,’ said Jojo. ‘That . . . whatever he’s calling himself. Great Foucaud. Billy Grayson. He used to travel with The Storks as a labourer. Tent peg boy.
Now look at him.’

‘You could see though,’ the snake girl took over; ‘she hasn’t quite got the hindquarter movements right. Her back is crippled from the trapeze. She’s been pushed
too hard.’ She flashed a glance at Jojo.

‘Is that how you know her?’ Frankie looked at Jojo. ‘From the circus?’

He coughed, as if a memory had caught him off-guard, and nodded. ‘Seven years ago. We made a pact to leave together. We weren’t very happy with the contracts we had been given, so a
number of us broke them, ran away, set up shop in London.’ He suddenly looked self-consciously at the fur on the back of his hands and murmured, ‘Most people run away with the circus.
We ran from it.’

‘They’re not nice places for people like him.’ Liam sat forward with an accusatory stare, as if Frankie herself might have been a purveyor of freak shows. Jojo caught his eye
and he shrank back.

‘No one from that world likes to see someone who looks like me in charge of his own business,’ he said softly. ‘That was why Ebony was different. She could have charged the
Storks triple if she’d kept doing that tiger act. Imagine, a woman tiger-tamer, who can double as aerialiste. She was prized. Almost as good an earner as a dog-faced man.’

His hairy brow suddenly turned fully towards Frankie and she found herself flicking her eyes away, embarrassed. The cogs in her brain were starting to turn. She thought back to Ebony’s
words yesterday: ‘I want folk to know I’m on the right side’. Could it be that something from her circus past had caught up with her? A big-top impresario, unhappy that an
aerialiste and a sideshow exhibit had teamed up to escape? A woman unhappy with a decision she had made seven years ago?

Jojo’s sharp eyes picked up on her expression. ‘If you’re thinking I might have somehow cajoled her into leaving with me, you’re mistaken. Ebony believed in people rather
than money. She made herself my star act. She was very happy here.’ He held her gaze coldly. ‘Make no mistake. I will find her.’

‘And then what?’ asked Frankie.

‘And then I’ll know she’s safe.’ His shoulders sagged, he shook his head and his hands fell into his lap.

No one spoke for a couple of minutes. The club’s damp air was making Frankie uncomfortable. She rummaged in her jacket pocket and brought out the newspaper that had lain crumpled there
since the day before when Ebony had thrust it at her. ‘Do you know this girl? She was a friend of Ebony’s.’ Frankie leant across and handed him the grey pages.