‘Let’s go over and get a better look,’ he said. They crossed Farringdon Street, dodging and ducking between horse-drawn vehicles that showed no intention of stopping or slowing for them.
Closer, Liam watched the three men working quickly, furtively even, as they loaded the cart up. ‘Stay here,’ he said then made a show of looking casual, whistling tunelessly as he strolled past the wide-open oak doors. He paused. Ducked down on to one knee and made as if he had a bootlace that needed tying up, all the while craning his neck to see through the open doors, getting a glimpse of the receding maze of archways and alcoves inside.
‘Hoy!’
He turned to find one of the men standing over him.
‘Hoy there! You get enough of a look inside, did ya?’
‘I… was, I’m just…’ Liam stood up.
‘Pokin’ ya nose in where it’s likely to get broken!’ A thought suddenly occurred to the man and he grabbed Liam’s arm roughly. ‘You a snitch for them bluebottles? Is that it? For the bleedin’ coppers?’
The man was short and tubby, with owlish bug eyes that bulged beneath wiry brows. Liam found himself looking down at him. He suspected the little chap was actually tougher than he looked — that or he was all bluster.
‘What? No! I’m… just… I’m…’
‘Cos I’ll get me lad, Bertie, to shank you good if you — ’
‘Actually,’ replied Liam, ‘I’m looking for business premises.’
‘Business premises? Likely story!’
The stocky man turned to look at Rashim approaching to help Liam out. He did an almost comical double-take at Rashim’s dark skin. ‘Good God!’ he blurted. ‘You with this lad?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course I am.’
Rashim’s carefully enunciated, alien-sounding English seemed to impress, or perhaps intimidate, the stocky man. He cocked his head as if flexing a stiff neck. ‘Well, all right, then.’
The man released his grip on Liam’s arm. ‘He your boy?’
Rashim’s eyes met Liam’s and he struggled to stifle an amused smile. ‘No, not really.’
‘I’m not anyone’s boy,’ sniffed Liam indignantly. ‘We’re uh… we’re business partners, so we are.’
The stocky man pulled a face. ‘Business partners, is it?’
‘Uh… yes, he’s quite right,’ said Rashim.
‘We want to rent one of these… archway places.’ Liam glanced at the open doorway. The other two men had finished loading the last cask on to the cart and one of them climbed up on to the running board and coaxed the horses to life. Their hooves clattered on stone and the wagon pulled away.
‘You seem to have a lot of space inside there,’ said Liam. ‘Could we rent a bit?’
‘Well, what I got inside ain’t none of your beeswax, lad!’
Bob emerged out of the gloom. ‘Are you OK, Liam?’ he asked, striding towards the stocky man. His voice reverberated beneath the iron and stone viaduct. A deep boom that made heads on the other side of Farringdon Street turn their way. A lamb shank of a hand reached out and grabbed one of the man’s upper arms in a vice-like grip. The stocky man’s bulging eyes widened still further. He looked like a tree frog in a waistcoat.
‘Oh, I’m all right, Bob.’ Liam grinned at the man. ‘There’s no harm done.’
‘Bertie!’ the man gulped, alarmed at the giant looming over him. ‘ Bertie! Get over here and help me!’
His colleague, ‘Bertie’, took one look at Bob and then backed up several steps into the gloom.
‘Can we not just have a little talk?’ asked Liam. ‘If you’ve got a spare room somewhere in there? Or perhaps you know of anybody else who does? That’s all.’
‘We have money,’ added Rashim. ‘We could pay a very generous rent.’
The man gulped, looking more like a toad than a frog now. ‘Generous rent, eh?’
‘Aye,’ said Liam. ‘Bob? Why don’t you let this nice gentleman’s arm go before you crush it to a pulp?’
‘As you wish.’ Bob loosened his grip and the man snatched his arm free, flexed his neck again and straightened his ruffled waistcoat indignantly.
‘Well.’ His bug eyes remained warily on Bob. ‘I suppose a little talk won’t hurt no one.’
Chapter 45
1 December 1888, Holborn Viaduct, London
They stepped inside, through the double oak doors, and the tall young man called Bertie pulled them closed. He was wiry-thin with short dark hair parted on the side, long sideburns and a pitifully wispy attempt at a walrus moustache.
There was a glare on the face of his short, frog-like boss: a stern look at his young assistant very much along the lines of we’re going to have a little talk later on, you and I.
Liam looked around. In one way it was very much like the home they’d left behind in Brooklyn: an arched ceiling of dark red bricks. But this archway was stuffed with stacks of wooden packing crates and casks of whisky and liquors, barrels of beer, bottles of wine, sacks of mysterious goods, even a rack of army-surplus rifles and small foil-sealed boxes of ammunition.
Off this main archway, through walkways between mountains of boxes, he could see other archways and alcoves receding into the gloom. It looked almost labyrinthine. An Aladdin’s cave.
The rotund little man sat down at a small round table in the middle of his ‘warehouse’. A gas lamp glowed in the middle of it. He cut a small wedge of cheese from a block the size of a shoebox.
‘So you mentioned a generous rent, eh?’
Liam sat down opposite him. ‘If you’ve got an archway spare somewhere among all this,’ he said, gesturing at the receding gloom. ‘Then, yes, we can pay.’
‘Oh, there’s plenty more of this maze beneath the viaduct available for tenants.’ He chewed energetically on his cheese, looking casually up at the low ceiling. ‘If you know the right bloke to talk to.’
‘And you’re that right bloke, I suppose.’
He shrugged. ‘That’s what they say around this manor.’
Liam offered his hand across the table. ‘The name’s Liam O’Connor.’
The man eyed it warily for the moment, finishing his mouthful of cheese, then wiped his hand on his sleeve and shook with Liam. ‘Delbert Hook. Imports and exports is m’business.’
Liam looked around him and wondered how much of the stuff in here was strictly legitimate business. And how much of it had ‘fallen off the back of a wagon’. There’d been a somewhat suspicious haste in the way Mr Hook and his assistant had been loading up the wagon.
‘The lanky drip standing over there by the door is my assistant, Bertie.’
The young man stepped forward. Offered his hand tentatively to Liam. ‘It’s Herbert actually. Pleased to meet you.’
‘Bertie’s what I calls him,’ said Delbert. ‘He’s brighter than he looks.’
‘Actually, I have a part-time job teaching mathematics,’ replied Herbert. ‘I do Del’s accounts for him on weekdays and — ’
‘ Mr Hook to you, lad!’ He glared. Although his expression quickly softened. ‘Or Hooky. Or, if I’m very, very drunk… then, and only then, you can call me Del.’
Liam suspected there was something of a bond between the two men, despite the mutual glaring.
‘And these other two?’ Delbert’s gaze rested on Bob. ‘Who’s this giant?’
‘That’s Bob, and this fella’s my good friend Dr Rashim Anwar.’
Delbert pursed his lips appreciatively at Rashim. ‘Doctor? A physician is it, eh?’
‘Not that kind of a doctor, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh?’ Delbert sounded disappointed. ‘Anyway.’ He cut another hunk of cheese. Liam noticed he wasn’t offering any around. ‘For the right price and so long as you can convince me you ain’t snipes working for the police… I might be able to find you your very own archway.’
‘We need privacy,’ said Rashim.
Delbert looked at him. ‘Well, of course. What decent businessman don’t?’
‘There’s a power generator located somewhere under this viaduct,’ said Rashim. ‘Isn’t there?’
Delbert nodded at Rashim. ‘Oh, you mean the Bell Electrical Voltaic Generation Machine! Yes, indeed. The first of its size in the world, so they says. There was a big parade and marching bands an’ the like here five or six years ago when they switched the ruddy thing on. Damn noisy it is too! Sounds like a bloomin’ locomotive comin’ through the walls. You might want one of the archways well away from the ruddy thing if you don’t want to listen to it boomin’ away all day an’ all night!’