The Incendiary's Trail (25 page)

‘What was said?’

‘I don’t know, General. I wasn’t there. Razor Bill has never seen you as far as I know. What could he say?’

‘Enough.’

‘What would you have me do?’

‘Find Bill – he will be in his usual place with a glass in his hand – and enquire what was said. Find out also where I can find this writer – I believe I have come across
him before. If Bill proves difficult, you know what to do.’

‘Yes, General.’

‘If he has said anything that compromises me to the slightest degree, make sure that he will never speak another word. And if you discover the writer himself, let him know in no uncertain
terms that his researches are to end immediately. In no uncertain terms, do you understand?’

‘Yes, General.’ Mr Hawkins rubbed his ossified fists absently. ‘Where can I contact you?’

‘I will contact you.’

Mr Hawkins left, and Lucius Boyle opened out the newspaper to see a rather dramatic sketch of himself brandishing a gun amid the execution crowds. The artist had exaggerated his height and given
him a vaguely skeletal appearance so as to maximize the sense of threat and terror. But there was his own face for all the city to see. Its hideous mark was a badge of terror that was now the
discussion of London.

We should not imagine, however, that he was cowed and beaten. The cornered rat is the most dangerous. It leaps for the throat.

And as darkness fell on that Tuesday night, there were others venturing out across the city streets. The pickpockets migrating from their daytime workplace of Oxford-street and
Regents-street to Haymarket’s pleasure-seeking crowd; the base bullies loitering in the shadows of Whitechapel and Rotherhithe; the street girls of various degrees walking out in the parks
and the evening shopping streets. And, of course, the beat constable whose uniform and rattle might protect him from, or lead him to, a brutal death.

Among all of these gaudy characters, one also found the wretched: the rag-and-bone finders with their forked sticks and perpetually bent backs, and the destitute beggars shuffling endlessly
about the city, never reaching any destination but the hoar embrace of an open grave.

Here is one of the latter now, bare head bowed and with his soles peeling away from fourth-hand boots. His ribs are occasionally visible through the rents in his greasy black topcoat and he
carries a long staff to support himself. He could be Death Himself, wrapped in the rotten lineaments of the grave. As he walks stolidly through the crowds of shoppers about Regents-circus, he is no
more notable than a horse or a dog. There are many of his ilk, filthy hands out for money and a guttural plea uttered so frequently that it has become an incantation. Should a man want to pass
unseen through the beating heart of London, he could do no better than to be one of these ‘scavagers’ – or to adopt the appearance of one.

For this derelict man was not as he seemed. The averted eyes of others magnified the effectiveness of his own gaze, since every face he saw was one turned away either in rejection or
embarrassment. The astute observer would have noticed, however, that, unlike the true beggar, he passed before the gaudily lit and steaming windows of coffee houses and the gas-flare illumination
of shops without pausing to gaze longingly at their wares.

Nor was he alone in his deception. Another followed his movements from twenty paces to the rear, observing with ease the movement of his target. This pursuer understood just as well that what is
invisible to the majority is highly conspicuous to the few.

Noah had ventured out from his own home at Manchester-square with the sole intention of locating Razor Bill, whose description Mr Askern had provided with sufficient clarity for Noah to
recognize him. On discovering the pickpocket, he would conduct a more efficacious cross-examination. There was also the very likely possibility that news of Mr Askern’s first interview had
already reached Boyle and that Noah would come across an associate of his conducting precisely the same task, albeit with greater fatality intended.

The gin shops of Oxford-street are of a different calibre to those in the East End. Here, vulgar meretriciousness is the
décor
of choice: gilt and crystal, gas
chandeliers
and polished mahogany bars give an impression of great luxury much appreciated by those who like to affect a certain sophistication as they slide into oblivion. The place where Mr Askern had seen
Razor Bill, the Rose and Crown wine-vaults at the corner of Gilbert-street, was just emerging from its renovation and was a glittering example of its kind.

Noah – for it was he who was the ‘beggar’ – pressed his nose against the large plate-glass window and looked inside. The gin ‘palace’ was indeed impressive,
with its Ionic columns, stucco fittings, rich burgundy carpets and large horseshoe bar. Colossal vats of spirits rose up two storeys to support a gallery of carousing spirit drinkers, while the
ground floor was populated with dozens of adults and children sipping with much self-conscious enjoyment at their brandies, their gins, rums and other divers liquors.

There among them was Razor Bill, just as Mr Askern had described him: a rather rodent-faced man of slight build and with one of the tricorn hats favoured by carriage drivers. Were it not for the
hat, Bill might not have spent so much time in gaol. As it was, the constables never had any trouble locating him when his description was passed on by a victim. The man’s face was flushed
with heat and intoxication – and about his shoulders was the beefy arm of Henry Hawkins, who looked sober and lethal of intent.

Noah glared at the boxer. Now he knew that the hand of Boyle was at work, just as it had been with Mr Bradford, and that the incendiary was still in London manipulating events. His first urge
was to enter the gin shop and deal with Mr Hawkins immediately, but his cool head triumphed.

Entering in the garb of a beggar would draw all eyes upon him, whereas outside he maintained his advantage – just another worthless, nameless, faceless member of the bustling crowd. Mr
Hawkins would not attempt anything rash on the premises. So the ‘beggar’ turned his back on the bacchanalia within to face the night-time street, his grubby hand out and a sub-audible
mumbled plea for alms falling from his lips.

Waiting there, he watched the carriages rattle past and people visiting shops brilliant with light. He wondered, as he had many times, at the idea of the city going about its business in this
way during his many years of absence. Shops had changed hands, fortunes had been made and lost, new buildings had appeared – and the show had been played out countless hundreds of times,
oblivious to the torturous journey and travails of one of its sons. A man on these streets was nothing but a mote of dust to be ground under the wheels of time, and the span of a single life was
but another year’s layer of verdigris or lichen on the city’s immortal fabric.

As Noah stood there lost in inward vision and absently muttering his counterfeit penury, a heavy coin dropped into his gloved hand and drew him back from his thoughts. It was a sovereign –
a highly unlikely donation to a street beggar. He had not even noticed which direction his ‘benefactor’ had been walking. He looked quickly to each side, hoping to see a smiling face,
but saw only retreating backs and averted eyes.

The coin seemed newly minted and flashed brilliantly against the dirty leather. And he felt the first twinges that something was amiss. Until that moment, he had been an inanimate feature of the
busy street – then someone had seen him and made that fact known to him. It was too unlikely that the charity was genuine. Such virtuous gentlemen or ladies liked their
‘unfortunates’ to speak for their alms, spinning shocking tales of destitution and illness. No – he had been, or was being observed. He could feel it. And the observer was playing
with him.

At that moment, the door to the gin palace opened with a billow of pipe smoke and sweet spirit fumes, and Mr Hawkins emerged with his arm around an unsteady Razor Bill. Heedless of Noah, they
weaved off towards Regents-circus, knocking against top-hatted gentlemen and bonneted ladies as they went.

Noah looked around once more to see if anyone was watching. Shoppers and early pleasure seekers flowed unseeing around him. He set off in pursuit of Razor Bill, easily following the havoc they
caused as they wobbled drunkenly through the ceaseless flow. Surely at any moment, they would cut left or right where a lull in the traffic and an opportune shadow would allow Bill’s neck to
be snapped like a twig in Hawkins’s grasp.

But something else arrested Noah’s pursuit and turned him around – something that seemed somehow inevitable, as if everything thus far that evening had been a prelude to it. With a
horripilating chill, he knew suddenly where the coin had come from. A screech went up in the vicinity of the gin shop he had just left.

‘
Fire!
’

He paused in momentary indecision, knowing that he was certain to lose both Razor Bill and Hawkins if he turned back. The incendiary was as palpably present as if he had been resting his hand on
the nape of Noah’s neck. He dropped his staff and began to run back towards the Rose and Crown, all pretence of indigence now vanished.

People were flooding from the smoke-filled rooms when he arrived. There were screams and coarse words as they poured through the too narrow doorway into the street, gin glasses still in their
hands and sprits splashed to the ground in the
mêlée
. Passers-by paused to watch, increasing the congestion so that people spilled on the road and even the traffic was forced to
pause. Those on the opposite side of the road also stopped to observe, and shoppers emerged for a better view. More voices joined the cry.

‘
Fire! Fire! Call the engines!
’

The first flames began to flash at the widows of a room adjoining the gin palace, where the fire had evidently started. Smoke was now curling out into the street.

Noah looked at the faces surrounding the stricken building, hoping to see the be-scarfed face of Lucius Boyle. Scores of people were now gathering, swelling out into the road, where cab drivers
shouted profane threats and horses snorted into their reins. Frenziedly, Noah pushed among the crowds to see every face. Then he turned to gaze up into the lit windows in case Boyle had sought a
higher vantage point. But there seemed no sign of him.

A colossal crash emerged from inside the gin palace and a dividing wall toppled down with an explosion of flame and sparks. The plate-glass window juddered, rippling light across its surface,
and the gathering throngs scrambled still further back so that a large semicircle now formed around the windows. Distant shouts heralded the approach of the engines.

‘The barrels! The spirits will catch alight!’ yelled a voice.

This sent a shiver through the massed observers, for it was true that the immense barrels were full of volatile spirits and might rupture if damaged by the fire . . . which was even now flaring
at the small pools of gin or brandy spilled on the floor, and at the carpets and curtains, which burned with thick billows of smoke.

To Lucius Boyle, it was a beautiful vision. The large window of the Rose and Crown was as a brilliant picture frame in which the conflagration danced and sang in vivid orange
flames. He almost had to restrain himself from applauding. The smoke was a fine
bouquet
to him, carrying with it charred hints of juniper and grape, velvet and mahogany – the aromas of
sweet destruction.

And there – as an extra character in the piece – was Noah himself, dressed ludicrously as a beggar and searching phrenziedly about him for the incendiary who had outrageously dropped
a sovereign into his hands just moments earlier.

A piercing scream came from one of the floors above the bar and a window swung open to reveal an unbonneted young lady wreathed in smoke.

‘I am trapped!’ she shrieked. ‘A ladder! Fetch a ladder!’

By now the engines were arriving. First the St Marylebone engine, then the King-street brigade, then that of Well-street and Baker-street – seven engines in all – disgorging their
hoses and preparing to enter. The barrels within were now alight and burning like individual torches.

‘We should break the window!’ shouted one of the fire officers, but at that moment the structure seemed to shift on its foundations with a masonry roar and the large pane began to
wobble in its frame. A flare of heat erupted inside, and the thick sheet of glass shuddered once more before toppling silently out of its frame to hit the street as a vitreous hail. A blistering
wave of heat and smoke emerged and scattered the crowds in fear. Lucius Boyle felt the scorching breath upon his upper face and squinted against it; his smile was concealed.

Again, Noah gazed over the faces illuminated by the flickering inferno, each one a dancing orange mask of fear and fascination. None of them was covered or concealed in any
way. Their top hats and bonnets were all quite normal. Indeed, only some of the engine operators had their mouths covered with dampened cloth to prevent them from inhaling the smoke. All of them
were busy working the engines . . . all except one who seemed to be standing inert, mesmerized by the light of the conflagration – a man with smoke-grey eyes widening in recognition. This
time there would be no escape.

But as Noah made his first step, there was a terrific gasp from the observers and a vast barrel toppled slowly to the ground inside the gin palace, spilling its super-heated spirit to the
ground, where it became a molten flood pouring hundreds of gallons of liquid fire out into the street.

A fire engineer stooping to position a hose was caught in the inundation and thrashed ecstatically as the flames consumed him. Burning gin rushed into the gutters and leaped at the legs of
fleeing shoppers. The entire street was illuminated by flowing fire and the burning spirit filled the air. Boyle was already ahead of the running people as Noah felt his beggar’s boots wetted
with flaming liquid and the flashing pain of burning. He jumped clear of the flames and shrugged off his coat, wrapping it hastily about his lower legs and cursing while trying to keep Boyle in
view. Tears filled his eyes from the acrid smoke, though they might as well have been tears of frustration. The space between himself and the receding Boyle was now an uncrossable lake of
shimmering flame, its heat warping all shapes into indistinct chimerae.