Page 16

J OEL HAD TO RETURN home eventually, much against his will. He wanted to be with Aaron, together, touching, giving each other strength; he also really didn’t fancy the walk. That was his hard luck, because the Tube and buses had long finished running, so he trudged along two and a half miles of dark, cold, empty streets, jumping at every shadow. He got stopped twice on the Euston Road by uniformed policemen commenting meaningfully that he was out late, and although he knew that Colthorne was CID, and was fairly sure he was outside G Division, it brought his heart into his mouth both times.

He replied pleasantly anyway, and had a bit of a chat with both constables. He might want witnesses that he was going home to spend the night in his own bed.

The cigarette-smoking watcher was outside his house again when he got back. Joel considered a smart remark, and decided against it. He just let himself inside, went to bed, and lay awake in the cold, trying to smell Aaron on himself and sweating ice about the next morning.

He’d been told to present himself at the Griffin public house in Clerkenwell at noon. He got there at ten to, and was conducted in by a couple of men who looked like boxers, to the saloon bar and a table where a broad-shouldered man sat.

You couldn’t call him pretentious. Darby Sabini, king of the racecourse gangs, wore a flat cap, a collarless shirt, a high-buttoned waistcoat, and a dark suit that had seem better days. He had a broken nose, and looked like a bricklayer in his Sunday best.

“Well, now, Mr. Wildsmith,” he said. “Sit down. You’re very prompt, I like that. Will you take a drink?”

He had a pint of stout in front of him. Joel wondered if this was some sort of trap. “If you think I’ll be staying that long, Mr. Sabini. I honestly don’t know why I’m here or what I can do for you.”

“We’ll find out. Pint, is it?”

“Just the half, please. I had a couple last night,” Joel tried, and saw no recognition in the shrewd eyes. Maybe Aaron’s place hadn’t been watched. That would be good.

Darby waved. A pint of bitter arrived. “Thank you,” Joel said, and took a polite sip, which unfortunately revealed that his hand was shaking. A dribble of beer ran down the tankard, and pooled on the sticky table.

“Right,” Darby said. “So, Mr. Wildsmith, what is it you do?”

“I’m a graphologist. I analyse handwriting. Tell you people’s characters.”

“You any good at it?”

“It’s a living. You know how it is, Mr. Sabini.” He lifted his truncated left arm. He’d decided against the prosthetic in case the hook was taken as an offensive weapon.

Darby nodded slowly. “I do know. And you didn’t answer me. You any good at it?”

Joel took a split second to weigh up the alternatives. “Pretty good, yes.”

“Let’s see, then.” He waved again, and a lean youth brought over a letter. “Why don’t you tell me about this?”

Joel took the paper with trepidation. He couldn’t get anything off the barely literate since the hand had to be second nature for the personality to express itself, and he feared that wouldn’t be the case given his surroundings. He also had panic lapping at his ankles, fogging his brain. He took a couple of deep breaths before he dared look.

It wasn’t wonderful. The hand wasn’t fluent, but maybe practised enough to let character come through. Hopefully. If Joel could just relax and let it happen. He was very aware of his thundering heartbeat, and the numerous eyes on him.

If you fuck this up, he won’t believe anything you say. Get it right. Get it right.

He wasn’t helping himself. He tried to think of Aaron saying something calm and soothing in his deep voice. Aaron probably faced down characters like Darby Sabini all the time. Imagine going back to him and saying, Sorry, but after all that big talk I broke down and couldn’t get a word out .

He’d been in a fucking war; he was not going to collapse in a Clerkenwell pub. He inhaled so hard his nostrils stung a little, and looked at the paper, taking his time, turning it over and back, thinking.

“Determination,” he said after a moment. “That’s the strongest thing I get: this is a very determined person. I think it would be pretty hard to make him do anything he didn’t want to do, there’s a lot of willpower here. That’s impressive, but maybe, sometimes, a bit too much of a good thing? I wonder if he might stand in his own way now and again, by digging his heels in when he could afford to give a little.” There was a rustle from the silent watchers; Darby gestured and they shut up. Joel tensed his toes in his shoes, steeling himself. “That’s the main thing, but there’s also...there’s a real expansiveness here, you can see it in the broadening of the vowels. I think he’s likely to be a very generous man, there’s nothing small about him. A man you could turn to. Or at least, if he decides to help, he’ll do it properly. That’s part and parcel of the determination, of course: he decides what he thinks is best, or right, and he does it. He’ll make a judgement and then carry it out, whether that’s to help people or, you know, the opposite. That’s really what I’d say here: this is a good friend and a bad enemy. I wouldn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with him, myself.”

He held the paper out. Darby didn’t take it. “You got that off the handwriting.”

“Yes. It’s what I do.”

“Off a letter to my mother.”

“Yes, it—” Joel stopped short. “Uh. That was your hand?”

“That’s right.”

Joel opened his mouth, moved it soundlessly, then said, “Excuse me,” grabbed the glass of beer, and took a hefty gulp. The laugh exploded around him, and he was relieved to see Darby looked as amused as anyone.

He hoped to God he’d judged that right. It had been a reasonable punt that Darby had produced his own writing: for one, he probably wasn’t surrounded by literates, and for another, it was an aggressively pigheaded thing to do, and aggressive pigheadedness had been clear on the page. Joel had carefully skipped the other observations that came to mind, such as vicious and self-centred as a spinning top , in favour of what he knew about Darby Sabini from Clerkenwell gossip.

Broadening of the vowels indeed. Aaron would laugh, assuming Joel lived through this to tell him about it.

“A good friend and a bad enemy,” Darby mused. “Well, I’d like to think it. What do we reckon to this, boys?”

There was a chorus of mostly approbation from the watchers, but one man said, “So what’s the trick? How’d you know all that?”

“I don’t know anything,” Joel said. “Certainly not about Mr. Sabini. But the way a man writes tells you a lot, or it does me. I bet you can judge a man pretty well?” he appealed to Darby. “You look at his eyes, the way he holds himself, the way he talks back, and you know what you think, yes?” He waited for the nod he knew would be forthcoming; people rarely said, No, I’m a terrible judge of character . “Well, I do it off handwriting, not faces. That’s all.”

“Useful,” Darby said. “Sounds like something the coppers would like.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t stand up in court. I’ve been assured of that.”

“Have you, now. Let’s talk about that. All right, you lot, clear off.”

The hangers-on vanished, leaving them alone, although Joel didn’t feel any less threatened for it. “So,” Darby said. “Eddie Twigg told you what I want.”

“He said you wanted to talk to me about Detective Sergeant Fowler. May I ask why?”

“No. So I hear you and Mr. Fowler are pretty close, he takes you out to dinner, that sort of thing. Tell me about that. And I know what you did time for, Mr. Joel Wildsmith, so don’t mess me about.”

“Sorry, what?” Joel said blankly. “Are you implying— Oh, come on. He’s a policeman .”

Darby Sabini’s jaw hardened. “I know that. Now you tell me all about you and him.”

There was sweat sliding down Joel’s backbone; he had no idea how an empty saloon bar without a fire could be at once so cold and so stuffy. “Mr. Sabini, I’m sorry, but if you’re after dirt on Fowler, you’ll need to ask whoever he’s doing the dirty with, because it’s not me. I’m not tupping a copper! I’m not stupid and I’m not going back inside if I can help it, so—”

Darby slammed a hand on the table. Joel’s terrified yelp as he recoiled was entirely unfeigned. “Are you lying to me, you little pansy?”

“No!” Joel said, his pitch rising. “Who’s been saying this? Why’s anyone talking to you about me?”

“Nobody cares about you,” Darby said, with chilling unconcern. “I’m asking about Fowler.”

“I’ve no idea who he’s screwing! It’s not me, that’s all I know!”

“And when he took you out for a nice Indian meal—what about that?”

“That? Oh my God, is that what this is about?” Joel pantomimed relief with a hand on his chest. “For goodness sake. That wasn’t a candlelight meal for two, Mr. Sabini, it was work. He reckons he can get me to solve his cases.”

Darby’s eyes were cold pools you could drown in. “Are you taking the piss?”

“That’s what I said to him! I said, I’m not magic! The only way I can tell you if someone’s committed a crime from looking at their handwriting is if they wrote a full confession!” Darby grunted at that, which was a relief. Joel did not want him worrying about his powers later on. “But he wouldn’t listen. He wants to get ahead, and he reckons I’m a secret weapon. You know how people want to believe things and you can’t tell them anything else? Well, he’s decided I’m about four times as good as I am. He offered me a retainer if I agree not to consult for any other police clients.”

Darby leaned back. “You got many of those?”

“None at all,” Joel said. “So I told him I had several and he’d need to double the offer.”

“Hah!” Darby gave a proper laugh this time. “And?”

“He’s thinking about it. Which— I’m not a nark, Mr. Sabini. I don’t want to consult for the Met. Well, it isn’t for the Met, it was ‘in a private capacity’, but it’s still working for the busies, isn’t it? But like you say, I’ve a record, and if a detective sergeant is telling me what I need to do for my own good, I don’t have much choice. The dinner was him being nice about it, and I don’t want him to be nasty, but...” He gestured helplessly. “I suppose you’ve called me here because you don’t want me to do it, and I understand that, I truly do, but I’m between a rock and a hard place. I can’t just tell CID to piss off.” He looked plaintively at the gang lord. “What should I do?”

“Maybe I can tell him to piss off for you,” Darby said. “If you give me the information I need.”

Joel perked up. “Could you? What do you need?”

“Enough to get rid of Mr. Fowler for good.”

“But I don’t have anything like that,” Joel said, and heard the very real crack of fear and frustration in his voice. “Honestly, if I could get rid of him, I would.”

“And what’s to stop you saying he made a pass? Who’s to know?”

Joel had been afraid of that. He grimaced. “Well, him? He’s bigger than me. Got more hands. And the last time a policeman made a pass at me, I ended up doing two months, so I don’t want anything to do with all that.”

“Then what have you got to offer me?”

“Nothing,” Joel said wretchedly. “I did say, Mr. Sabini, and I’m very sorry. Well, except that Mr. Fowler did say not to tell anyone? But—”

“Tell anyone what?”

“About me working for him. He said he’s shown me confidential documents so I need to keep my mouth shut about all of it, and that I couldn’t put it in my advertising—‘Consultant to the Metropolitan Police’, you know, which, if I have to do it you’d think I might at least get the benefit, but he said no. He said that my readings wouldn’t stand up in court, and a decent defence brief might even get a case chucked out just because he’d involved me, and then he, Mr. Fowler, would get in trouble. So I wasn’t to tell anyone he was consulting me, and especially not that I’d seen any documents.”

“What documents?”

“A couple of written statements and some letters,” Joel said earnestly. “He said they were evidence in an investigation, but he didn’t say what. He wanted me to tell him if someone had committed a crime. Which, as I said, I can’t do.”

“Well,” Darby said slowly. “Well, now.”

Joel gave him hopeful eyes. “Is that useful? Because I honestly don’t know anything else.”

“We’ll see. I expect you’d be willing to swear your affydavy to all that, would you?”

“Where?” Joel said, with panic he didn’t have to feign. “I’m not going back to court. Or crossing a copper, either. He’s a sergeant, Mr. Sabini!”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Darby said. “I don’t reckon it’ll get as far as court. I reckon I bring this to certain people and your problem goes away like that.” He clicked his fight-thickened fingers.

“You can do that? Really?”

“Fowler’s only a sergeant. Some of us have friends in high places, sonny.”

“Yes, but I don’t, and you’re talking about me swearing to things and getting on the wrong side of CID, and now I don’t know what’s going on! Mr. Sabini, please.” Joel let his voice wobble. It didn’t take much acting. “Could you just tell me? Because I don’t want any of this, and if I do have to do something I’d rather not get it wrong, and I don’t understand . Please?”

Darby clicked his tongue, with almost fatherly patience. “Here’s how it works, son. You want rid of Fowler, right? Well, say there’s a certain other person of the same mind, in a position to do something about it. I pass on what you just said to him. If it’s enough for him to see Fowler off, well, that fixes my pal’s problem, and it fixes your problem too. Simple as that. See?”

“So this other person says ‘You’ve been a bad boy, consulting graphologists when you’re not allowed,’ and that makes Mr. Fowler back off me?”

“That’s right. So I’ve done you both a favour. And...?” He gave Joel a meaningful look.

“And now me and your important pal both owe you a favour?”

“You’re a bright boy,” Darby Sabini said. “All right, you can pop off now. Make sure you’re ready for a chat when I tell you, and don’t you worry, I’ll sort it out. We’ll talk more about that favour you owe me in a while. I could use a man of your talents.”

“Of course, Mr. Sabini,” Joel said faintly. “Whenever you like.”

***

J OEL WOULD HAVE LIKED nothing more than to fling himself into Aaron’s arms, blurt out the whole horrible conversation, and be reassured that he’d done the right thing and wasn’t going to find himself in permanent hock to a gang lord. Or worse. He and Aaron had agreed the lie he’d tell Sabini, but now his mind was filled with the awful prospect of being asked to testify, of his words being used against Aaron.

He’d had to give Sabini something, though, and he’d got at least circumstantial confirmation of their suspicions. A high-up in the Met gunning for Aaron, getting Darby Sabini to lean on Joel, owing a gang lord favours.

Joel wasn’t the stuff of which righteous avengers were made. He’d never felt he had the time and resources to look after anyone much beyond himself. But he was properly outraged now, not just for Aaron—honest, dedicated Aaron who cared about doing the right thing—but as a matter of principle. This was wrong , and he was angry in the sick deep-down way he’d been angry about his trial and conviction, with the impotent rage that came from watching powerful people wreck lives for advantage or profit or fun.

He fretted the rest of the day away, and was grateful for a couple of clients to distract him. He used the rest of his time putting his things in order and packing a bag so that, if need be, he could run.

He wasn’t to contact Aaron unless it was an emergency. He didn’t expect to hear from him that day, and duly didn’t; he did hope for something the following afternoon, say. Or evening, or night, but the clock ticked remorselessly on and no word came.

By the third morning Joel had chewed off all the fingernails he had available and was cursing the Germans for depriving him of the other five. Ought he try to get in touch with Aaron? Why wasn’t he saying what was going on? Had he found anything? Was he keeping Joel out of it to protect him, and how hard would Joel need to kick him?

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be protected; he absolutely did. But he wanted even more to be useful. He wanted to be Aaron’s partner in this, and he wanted to know what was going on, because Aaron ought not to be facing this alone.

When the knock came, he ran for the door. Whether it was a telegram from Aaron, or Eddie Twigg, or Darby Sabini himself, he needed to see something was moving.

It was none of those. It was a young woman in a long sensible serge skirt.

“Mr. Wildsmith? I’m Detective Constable Helen Challice. May I come in?”

Joel stepped back. Miss, or Constable, Challice entered, shut the door, looked around with every evidence of disapproval, and said, “I need to talk to you, Mr. Wildsmith. DS Fowler sent me.”

“Is that right,” Joel said. This was the woman copper Aaron had said he’d talk to, that he felt he could trust, but Joel wasn’t inclined to extend the benefit of the doubt to anyone right now.

She was eyeing him up shrewdly. “I expect you want to know if I’m telling the truth.”

“Er—?”

“About DS Fowler,” she clarified, as though Joel were slightly slow. “He said you probably wouldn’t take my word that I was here on his behalf. He told me to say—let me get this right—‘dolce Torino’. I suppose that’s Italian for something? Anyway, he said that would prove I was from him, a sort of password. It’s all terribly cloak and dagger.”

That was the chocolate sweet Aaron had watched Joel eat with an expression of such naked longing that Joel had all but thrown himself on the table there and then. “Yes, I see,” he said carefully. “Why did he give you a password? I mean, why are you here, and not him?”

“Because he’s in rather a lot of trouble,” Constable Challice said. “May I sit down?”

“Of course, sorry. Tea?” he added automatically.

“He said you’d thrust tea on me,” Challice remarked. “He said you wouldn’t be able to help yourself. If the house was burning around your ears, he says you’d put a kettle on the flames.”

“Yes, all right, you’re definitely from him,” Joel muttered. “What trouble? Is he all right? How do you take it?”

“No tea. Sit down.” The instruction came in the sort of voice that took a man right back to school, and Joel dropped into the nearest chair as though she’d cut his hamstrings. Challice took the other seat and folded her hands neatly in her lap.

“Well,” she said briskly. “First of all, DS Fowler has given me a series of quite remarkable allegations about DDI Colthorne. I understand you know that.”

“Yes.”

“DS Fowler believes that the DDI was behind the murder of Gerald Marks, because he feared Marks had something on him. Was perhaps even blackmailing him.”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe that?”

“DS Fowler believes it, which is what matters,” Joel said. “He’s the copper, he knows about the case, and he thinks it’s what’s going on.”

“And what do you think?” she said implacably.

“I think he’s an honest man. I know that someone is leaning on me to get at him. And I understand this started after the Marks murder, which Colthorne told DS Fowler to stop investigating. So yes, I believe it.”

She nodded slowly. “Interesting. Because the thing is, DDI Colthorne has accused DS Fowler of gross misconduct, on both personal and professional levels. He’s offered to let Mr. Fowler resign quietly for the good of the Met, if he signs a full statement admitting to disgracing his office. If he doesn’t resign, the DDI will take it to a formal disciplinary.”

“He’s trying to shut him up. Isn’t that obvious?”

“Unless DS Fowler knew he was going to be accused, and trumped up this story against the DDI first in an effort at self-protection.”

“But he didn’t,” Joel said. “And it would be quite a rubbish effort, wouldn’t it, if he couldn’t provide any proof. Who do you believe?”

Challice regarded him levelly. “Well, that’s the thing. You see, DS Fowler tells me that the charges against him are all based on your testimony.”

“Mine?”

“DDI Colthorne says that you have accused DS Fowler of sharing confidential evidence relating to active investigations—”

“Did he, by God,” Joel said. “ Did he. We’ve got the swine.”

She raised a questioning brow. Joel said, “The people leaning on me? One of them was Darby Sabini. He called me in to demand dirt on DS Fowler, so Fowler told me to say that he’d given me confidential evidence relating to active investigations. Only, he never did that, and I haven’t claimed he did to anyone except Darby Sabini. So how come your DDI Colthorne is accusing him of exactly that?”

Challice took that in. Then she said, “The DDI also said you accused the DS of indecent behaviour.”

“I did not! Sabini wanted me to—told me to, even—but I didn’t, so that’s a sodding lie. Excuse my French.”

Challice considered him. For a fresh-faced young woman, she had the eye of an inquisitor. “So you think the Divisional Detective Inspector is corrupt, and he’s making Mr. Fowler a scapegoat to avoid exposure.”

“Yes!”

She let out a breath that sounded long-held. “So do I. That man gives me the screaming ab-dabs.”

The knuckles and joints of her interlaced fingers were white, Joel saw belatedly. God knew what guts it must have taken for a young woman to join CID, how precarious that particular experiment was, how much she might feel riding on her success or failure. How unpleasant a lot of people probably made her life.

“Do you want to be involved in this?” he found himself asking.

“I don’t imagine any of us do,” she said. “If you haven’t made personal accusations against Mr. Fowler—”

“I have not! Can you please tell him, I have not .”

“He asked me to tell you he doesn’t believe it for a second.”

That was a punch to the heart. “Really?” Joel asked like a fool. “That is—did he mean it?”

“I suppose so, since he said it. But the DDI presumably expects you to back up his story if it comes to the crunch.”

“I won’t.”

“DS Fowler says, either you’ll be forced into it or you won’t be in a position to speak at all.”

“What does that mean?”

“He thinks you should get out while you still can. He said to tell you, ‘We tried’.”

“We have not tried,” Joel said, suddenly furious. “We certainly haven’t tried everything, and now I’ve got proof your precious Divisional Detective Inspector is getting information from Sabini, so I am not running away and letting him win!”

“Good. What do we do about it?”

“We, you and Mr. Fowler?”

“We, you and me, Mr. Wildsmith,” Challice said crisply. “Mr. Fowler is in deep trouble and it would be a very bad idea for him to embroil himself further in the Marks case, speak to Darby Sabini, or contact you. That leaves us. Given you seem to be in this to your eyebrows, I was rather hoping you’d be able to give me some ideas.”

“Me? You’re the police!”

“Yes, and look how well we’ve done,” Challice said. “Mr. Fowler’s the most honest and decent man I’ve met in—well, in the Met—and the DDI intends to ruin him. I don’t want that to happen but I’m dratted if I know how to avoid it. I asked DS Fowler and he told me not to get involved for my own sake.”

“He would,” Joel said. “Stupid pri—uh, prig.”

“Quite. Talk to me, Mr. Wildsmith. I didn’t have long with the DS, so you’ll need to fill me in.”

Joel did his best. Challice was a sharply intelligent listener, and swiftly grasped the situation as he presented it. He didn’t know if she’d also grasped the parts he wasn’t admitting.

“So Sabini wanted to you make indecency allegations, and you refused,” she mused. “But the DDI nevertheless said you’d made them. That’s quite a bluff.”

“Is the DDI saying it because he thinks he can scare Aaron—Mr. Fowler—with the mere accusation, or because he thinks he can make me say it?” Joel asked. “Because if it was the latter, I’d have thought Darby Sabini might have had another word with me already, to let me know what I was obliged to do.”

“And he hasn’t?”

“No,” Joel said thoughtfully. “This Colthorne chap: nice as pie until he doesn’t get what he wants, and then the temper comes out?”

“Very much so. Where are you going with this?”

Joel thought back on the conversation with Sabini, the various hands he’d read. “Sabini likes to be a man who does favours. Once I started appealing to him for help, he was generosity itself. But he doesn’t like taking orders. I’m just wondering, if Colthorne told him to get an accusation of indecency out of me, and all Sabini brought him was an accusation of inappropriate graphology, would that have gone down badly? Would Colthorne maybe say Go back and do it properly , sort of thing? They both need to be the big man in the room, can’t be challenged—”

“Have you met DDI Colthorne?” she demanded.

“I read his hand.”

“Hmm. DS Fowler told me about that. It sounds plausible knowing the DDI, but does it get us anywhere?”

“Only that if Sabini took the hump, Colthorne might have done himself out of an ally,” Joel suggested. “Temporarily, at least. So perhaps he decided to bluff his way through, and hope Mr. Fowler wouldn’t care to fight a whole barrage of accusations.” Especially if Paul Napier-Fox had blabbed about Aaron’s school indiscretion. Joel didn’t propose to bring that up. “You wouldn’t do that if you felt certain you could frame someone up properly. But you might do it if you were on shaky ground and didn’t want to give them leisure to counter-attack.”

She nodded slowly. “So we should do that, then. DS Fowler still thinks the answer is in Marks’s notebooks.”

“Or papers. Colthorne mentioned papers. And I told Sabini that DS Fowler had showed me letters from an ongoing investigation—”

“Whereupon Colthorne launched the attack. Hmm.” She drummed her fingers on her knee. “We searched Marks’s office and rooms very thoroughly. I can’t think he had another place; he was barely able to afford the life we saw. If he stashed them somewhere, we haven’t found it.”

“If he was afraid enough to move his files, he surely would have wanted to put them somewhere they’d be found if anything happened to him,” Joel said. “Or, perhaps, with someone who’d act if he turned up dead?”

“Nobody has contacted us to my knowledge. He wasn’t married, no family.” She frowned. “I might visit his landlady again. She clearly cared about him; I wonder if he’d have confided in her. She didn’t want to talk to me, though, and was very distrustful of the police. I wonder—”

“If Marks told her not to trust the fuzz,” Joel said breathlessly. “With Colthorne involved, wouldn’t that be something Marks would say?”

“Yes, it might. Which creates a problem for me, of course.”

Their eyes met. Joel swallowed. “Suppose—not that I want to tread on your toes or insert myself into official business or any such—but suppose I talk to her?”

Challice considered that for what felt like a very long time, then said, “Yes. Suppose you do.”