The Aquila Project Page 4

  ‘You’d best be on your way, Arnold,’ said Toby Box. ‘I’ll just smoke a pipe, and then I’ll take a nap.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Pa?’

  ‘What? Of course I’m all right. Off with you, now, boy. Duty calls!’

  Box left his father to fill his long clay pipe with strong tobacco, and returned to the shop, where Sam had resumed his station behind the counter. The busy clashing of scissors came to Box’s ears from behind the beaded curtain separating the tobacco shop from the haircutting rooms. He parted the curtain with his hand, and saw that the two barbers were preoccupied with hirsute customers, draped anonymously in white sheets, like pieces of stored furniture. In one corner, hemmed in by a floor brush, Box saw a pile of blond hair, the relic of a previous customer. He suddenly remembered his Viking.

  ‘Sam,’ he asked, ‘did you have a big blond fellow in here just now, a sort of Viking, with a mane of fair hair and a big golden beard?’

  ‘Why, yes, Mr Box. How did you know that? He was a very striking gentleman, very tall and commanding. A well-dressed man with a rose in his buttonhole. He came in a very fancy carriage, with a man up on the box. A landau, it was. You must have just missed him.’

  The beaded curtain parted, and a customer emerged into the hair-cutting saloon, dabbing his neck with a handkerchief. He nodded briefly to the two men, and left the shop, setting the little bell behind the door jingling. One of the two barbers came into the space behind the counter, drying his hands on a towel.

  ‘Frank,’ asked Sam, ‘was it you who cut that big blond gentleman’s hair? Inspector Box has been asking about him.’

  ‘Yes, I saw to him,’ said Frank. ‘“Give me a good trim, my man”, he said, “but don’t scalp me. And you can trim the beard to make it more spade-like”. So I did. He seemed very satisfied. Gave me a shilling, which was very handsome, considering it’s only fourpence for a trim.’

  ‘What kind of a man was he, Frank?’ asked Box. ‘I’m asking because I fancy I saw him near the new bridge this morning. He was watching the proceedings through a telescope.’

  ‘Well, Mr Box, he was a big, jolly kind of man, who spoke with what I’d call a laughing voice. He wore a monocle in his right eye, and had the sense to stow it away in a pocket before I threw the sheet over him. And he had been near the new bridge, because he told me about it. Quite chatty, he was. He described all the flags waving, and the people cheering. He was a foreigner.’

  ‘Was he, now? What kind of a foreigner?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, Mr Box. He was just a foreigner. He spoke perfect English, though. And now I come to think of it, he did say something about being foreign. Leastways, he mentioned a foreign town. Now, what was it?’

  ‘Paris? Berlin? Come on, Frank – think!’

  ‘It was – yes, Warsaw. “We’ve some fine bridges in Warsaw, my man”. That’s what he said. Warsaw’s in Poland, isn’t it? So I suppose he must be a Pole.’

  A Pole…. That man Grunwalski was a Pole. How did he know that? Because Grunwalski was a Polish name. And, if Frank was right, the Viking with the telescope was also a Pole. The general feeling back at the Rents was that Grunwalski was acting alone, perhaps at the urging of some festering grievance to do with his native land. If that was so, then the business of Grunwalski was a divisional affair, something that had come to light in Bethnal Green, which was Mr Keating’s patch, and would be terminated across the river with ‘M’ Division in Southwark.

  But what if those two men were part of a conspiracy? Had the Viking been there to witness Grunwalski’s success or failure, and then to report to someone else? It was certainly possible. Meanwhile, it has surely been a quirk of fate that the Viking had stopped for a haircut at Box’s Cigar Divan and Hair-Cutting Rooms.

  3

  Outrage in Weavers’ Lane

  ‘SO WHAT DO you think, Jack? About this Anders Grunwalski, I mean. Was he acting alone, or is he part of something bigger, and more sinister?’

  It was just after four o’clock. Box and Knollys were sitting at the long cluttered table in Box’s office at 2 King James’s Rents.

  ‘I’m not sure, sir,’ Jack Knollys replied. ‘He seemed quite desperate when we finally got the darbies on him. It may have been that he was frantic at letting down some confederates – so yes, he could well be part of a gang. He refused to speak at all, or to answer any of the charges made against him. He was in very good shape physically, as though he’d been in training for the escapade. Lithe and strong, he is, with a steady, cool eye.’

  ‘Hm…. Did they find anything in his pockets? Or needn’t I ask?’

  ‘There was nothing at all in his pockets, sir, and no labels in his clothes. There was nothing there to interest us. The only item he was carrying in a pocket was that pistol.’

  Arnold Box lit a thin cheroot, and threw the spent wax vesta into the fireplace. He sighed, and shook his head in dissatisfaction.

  ‘I don’t like the smell of it, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘That pistol…. I saw him produce it myself from my perch on the roof of Carmody’s warehouse. What was he supposed to be? A bomber, or an assassin? And what about my Viking?’

  ‘Your Viking, sir? I didn’t know you had a Viking.’

  Box told his sergeant about the mysterious man in the landau.

  ‘I had a strong impression, Sergeant, that he was watching to see what was happening at the entrance to that boiler room. He was in the wrong location to see the ceremonies. In fact, from where he was positioned, I don’t think he could see the carriageway of the bridge at all—’

  Box broke off as a constable came through the swing doors.

  ‘A note for you, sir,’ he said, ‘brought by messenger from the Home Office.’

  ‘It’s from Mr Mack,’ said Box, when he had torn open the small buff envelope. ‘He wants us to go and see him any time after five o’clock. He says he’s puzzled. Come on, Jack, let’s take a walk up Whitehall, and hear what Mr Mack’s got to tell us.’

  Box and Knollys had not visited Mr Mack’s spacious domain in the Home Office since the affair of the Hansa Protocol. Nothing had changed. The premises still resembled a kind of roofed scrapyard. The twisted, fire-damaged remains of an iron spiral staircase had been bolted into the wall and part of the ceiling, awaiting expert examination. A number of burnt and shattered strong-room doors, their smart paint charred and peeling, were propped against the far wall.

  Mr Mack, his pale eyes watering, shuffled out of an adjoining room which had been fitted up as a workshop.

  ‘Come in, Inspector,’ he said, ‘and you, Sergeant Knollys. Sit down there, by the lathe, while I tell you what I’ve discovered.’

  The old Home Office expert lit a short clay pipe, and sank into a chair behind his desk. In front of him lay the component parts of the fiendish device that he had seized and rendered harmless earlier that day. Mr Mack waved his pipe vaguely at it and then launched into speech.

  ‘This is a very interesting piece of mechanism, gents,’ he said, ‘and a very curious one, as well. The detonator – that green iron box, there – consisted of a little charge of fulminate of mercury packed into a copper cylinder. An ingenious mechanism, controlled by the time-clock that you, Sergeant Knollys, saw me smash with my hammer. It shoots a percussive bolt into the end of the cylinder, thus exploding the fulminate charge.’

  ‘And that would have blown up the boiler?’ asked Box. The old expert sighed, and then laughed throatily.

  ‘Well, hardly that, Mr Box. If you’d let me finish what I was saying, all will be revealed. The point about sensitive explosives like fulminate of mercury, or lead azide, is that they can communicate detonation to any high explosive in the vicinity. In this case, the high explosive was dynamite, which you can see there, on the table. There were eight sticks, all enclosed in the usual parchment cases, but I’ve opened them all, and extracted the contents.’

  ‘It’s nitroglycerine, isn’t it? Dynamite, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, it
is, but it’s absorbed in a stuff called kieselguhr, for safety reasons. That bomb would have blown the boiler to smithereens, and would have killed anyone within five yards of the explosion. But it would have had no visible effect on Tower Bridge itself.’

  ‘So even if we had known nothing about the affair, our terrorist – this man Grunwalski – would have failed in his mission?’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that, Mr Box.’

  Mr Mack felt in the pockets of his rusty old jacket and produced a hand lens.

  ‘Look at the smashed time-clock,’ he said, ‘and tell me what you see.’

  Box peered through the lens at the shattered clock face still visible beyond the splintered glass of the dial. He gave an exclamation of surprise.

  ‘It was set to go off at one o’clock!’ he cried. ‘Long after the Royal party had returned to Marlborough House. I don’t understand—’

  ‘And here’s something else that will interest you,’ Mr Mack continued. ‘All that dynamite was damp. I don’t mean damp through bad storage: it had been deliberately soaked with water. My view, for what it’s worth, was that your man Grunwalski never intended his bomb to work. And that makes me ask, why not? Somebody told me he drew a pistol, and began to run up the slope towards the bridge. Maybe the bomb was a diversion, and he was in reality an assassin. I don’t know, but I’m sure you’ll give the matter some thought.’

  Box was silent for a moment. There was something here that he didn’t understand, something of monumental importance that he was simply unable to grasp.

  ‘Sergeant,’ he said, ‘as soon as we leave here, go back to Weavers’ Lane Police Station, and ask Inspector Hare to show you that pistol – the one that Grunwalski produced as he ran up to the bridge. Then come straight back to the Rents.’

  He turned to look at the old explosives expert, who was still puffing away at his pipe. The air of the little workshop was thick with smoke.

  ‘You’ve given us both food for thought, Mr Mack,’ said Box. ‘You’re a shining ornament, if I may say so. Is there anything else?’

  ‘Well, not really, Mr Box. The clock mechanism in the detonator was manufactured by Larousse & Cie of Toulouse, and the detonator itself, by which I mean the copper cylinder and its contents, come from the Minnesota Mining Company. You can buy them readily in England, and I can give you a list of all the suppliers in the United Kingdom, if you want it. The dynamite was produced by the Dunfermline Powder Works. It’s the ordinary kind of stuff, used for blasting in mines and quarries.’

  Arnold Box looked at old Mr Mack in awe. ‘A shining ornament,’ he repeated, half to himself. The old expert smiled beneath his straggly moustache.

  When Box returned to King James’s Rents, the duty sergeant in the front reception room stepped out into the vestibule. Sergeant Driscoll was an elderly, heavily bearded man who walked with a limp. He regarded Box through little round wire-framed spectacles.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘Inspector Fitzgerald from Bethnal Green’s waiting to see you. He wanted to stay with me at the door, but I settled him in your office.’

  ‘Thanks, Pat. Is Mr Mackharness back yet?’

  ‘No, sir. I think he’s out junketing somewhere with Lord Maurice Vale Rose, celebrating the opening of the new bridge. I don’t think we’ll see him till Monday morning.’

  Sergeant Driscoll returned to his cramped room leading off the vestibule, and Box pushed open the swing doors of his office.

  Inspector Fitzgerald of ‘J’ Division was standing near the fireplace, reading an early evening copy of the Globe. He held the newspaper wide open, using its rustling pages as a kind of shield for his body. A tall man in his fifties, with sharp blue eyes peering out from beneath riotous eyebrows, he held a cigarette steady in the dead centre of his mouth, occasionally sending strong streams of smoke down his nostrils. The front of his dark-brown suit was covered in fallen ash.

  ‘Hello, Mr Fitz,’ said Box, sitting down in his favourite chair at the long table. ‘We don’t often see you here at the Rents. What can I do for you?’

  ‘It’s more a case of what I can do for you, isn’t it?’ said Mr Fitz. He spoke with a pleasant London voice, with a hint of mockery behind the simplest words.

  ‘You were down there at Tower Bridge today, and saw what happened to Anders Grunwalski. Well, I’ve come out all this way to Whitehall to tell you all about him. I think you should know.’

  The Bethnal Green detective screwed his newspaper into a ball, threw it into the hearth, and sat down opposite Box. The cigarette still stayed where it had been put in the centre of his lips. He had long ago mastered the skill of talking round it.

  ‘This Grunwalski first appeared on our patch just over a month ago. He’s a sober-looking kind of a man with dangerous eyes, the type of man who looks mad, but in fact is coldly sane. For the most part he kept himself to himself, but he liked the drink, and when he had had a few whiskies his flaming temper welled up from somewhere, and he’d be looking for fights. That unlovely quality got him into trouble with the law more than once. Are you getting the picture?’

  ‘I am. A surly cur of a man with a grudge against everyone and everything. Quite a nice addition to your rogues’ gallery up in Bethnal Green Road.’

  Inspector Fitzgerald threw the stub of his cigarette into the fire. He permitted himself a rather amused smile.

  ‘You know what it’s like on our patch, Arnold. We’ve got street vendors, vagrants, dog fanciers and dog stealers; there are pick-pockets, card sharpers, shoplifters – and now, for our sins, a full-blown anarchist with a bomb in his pocket. He’s been up for street brawling and smashing windows in pubs, so, as you say, he fits in well on our patch.’

  ‘Where did he come from?’

  ‘Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Usually, whenever a new villain moves into our parish, he’s got a kind of crooked pedigree. He’s someone’s friend or relative, or he’s worked on cracking a crib with one of our resident beauties. But this Grunwalski just appeared from nowhere a month ago, primed with a set of stories. It makes you think. It certainly made me think. He’s not a Fenian, that’s for sure. I don’t know what he’s supposed to be.’

  ‘Where does this Anders Grunwalski live?’

  ‘He holes up in one of the blind courts off Half Nichol Street. When he’s not there, he’s in the Woodville Arms in Navarre Passage. I chose a few occasions when Grunwalski was in the Woodville Arms to send one or two of my light fantastic boys into his den to turn the place over. It was they who found his written arrangements for doing today’s bridge job – notes, maps, diagrams. There was even a pencil drawing of his bomb!’

  ‘And that’s how Mr Mackharness, and everybody in that posse from Bermondsey, knew what was going to happen?’

  ‘It was, Arnold. I was able to hand your guvnor the whole operation on a plate – if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor.’

  The two men eyed each other in silence for a moment. It was growing dark, and the light from the hissing gas mantle was beginning to exert itself in the dim office. A coal settled in the grate. It was time for Box to make his thoughts known.

  ‘Those “light fantastic boys” of yours will get you into serious trouble one of these days, Mr Fitz. Everybody knows about them. They’re sneak-thieves and so-called reformed characters out to make a few shillings by breaking the law for you. Those searches of private premises that you tell them to make are incidents of breaking and entering.’

  Much to Box’s relief, Inspector Fitzgerald seemed to take no offence at his frank remarks.

  ‘I take your point, Arnold, and, of course, you’re right from the law’s point of view. But I’ve always hated villains, ever since my father was beaten senseless and his barrow stolen in Crooked Billet Yard in ’52. I was only twelve then, but I never forgot it. He lost his barrow, his stock, and seven shillings and fourpence, his takings for a whole day – oh, why am I telling you all this? Let’s get back to the matter in hand.’

  Inspector Fitzgera
ld stooped down, and retrieved a Gladstone bag from under the table. He opened it, and pulled out a bundle of papers and a sealed brown envelope, which he laid before Box.

  ‘As soon as I heard that Grunwalski had been arrested this morning,’ he said, ‘I went to his lodgings off Half Nichol Street, and brought these things away for you to see. And yes, I went armed with a search warrant this time. I’ve seen all those things before – my light fantastic boys brought them out to me one night, and I read them by the light of a dark lantern in a hansom cab. Then they put them all back where they’d found them. Very nifty fellows, my boys. I’d hoped that Grunwalski had received some letters that might have told us more about him, but we were disappointed. Any letters he might have received he burned, and to my knowledge he never posted any.’

  ‘You don’t much care about the rule book when it comes to catching villains, do you, Mr Fitz?’

  ‘I don’t. I’ve only two years to go before retirement, and I’m getting too old to bother about the book. I hate villains, Arnold, and I hate all enemies of our Queen and Country. It’s because of me, and my peculiar way of looking at things, that Tower Bridge is still standing this evening.’

  Inspector Fitzgerald stretched himself, and got up from his chair.

  ‘I’ll take a cab back to Bethnal Green, Arnold. You can keep all those things if you like. There’s something very odd about that man Grunwalski, as I think you’ll realize when you’ve looked through those papers.’

  ‘Thanks very much, Mr Fitz. It was very good of you to come all this way out. I was very sorry to hear that tale about your poor father. Did he get a new barrow?’

  ‘He didn’t. He died of bleeding of the brain three days after the attack. There was only me left to look after Mother. I’m still looking after her, at my lodgings in Bethnal Green Road. Good night, Arnold.’

  As soon as Inspector Fitzgerald had left the room, Box spread out the contents of the bundle of papers that had been retrieved from Anders Grunwalski’s lodgings.