The Traitor And The Tunnel Part 17

"To my thinking, it saves a world of trouble. But we got our orders. He gets whatever muck we can force-feed, three times a day, ma'am. He ain't starving."

Only in the most literal sense of the word, thought Mary. How long could a man subsist on a few spoonfuls of gruel forced down his throat? That shuffling, almost whistling sound had continued as she questioned the gaoler, rising and then fal ing in cycles. "Wil you open the door, please?"

The man shrugged. "Suit yourself. Though he ain't like to talk to you. I ain't heard him say a word, these last two days." Stil , he unlocked the iron door and stepped back, with an elaborate gesture to Mary.

"Miss." He palmed the half-crown she offered him with a neat gesture and, with one more obsequious bow, took himself off to the far end of the antechamber, at the mouth of the stairwel .

Mary closed her eyes for a long moment, summoning an image of her father: Lang Jin Hai.

The last time she'd seen him, he'd been a handsome man in his thirties. Tal for a Chinese, with some resemblance to the Prince Consort something her mother had been proud of. But that had been twelve or thirteen years ago, and she'd been a young child. Memory was an unreliable guide. At least it always seemed to be, for her.

Enough. She opened her eyes and tried to see into the cel . It was windowless, and thus dark; al daylight came from a narrow window in the antechamber and it didn't penetrate far. As Mary's eyes adjusted, she began to see shapes, perceive depth. The cel was narrow and long, furnished only with a low cot pushed against one wal . There was nothing else in the room: no chair, no table, no washstand or water jug though judging from the fetid smel , there was a chamber pot beneath the bed that hadn't been thoroughly cleaned in recent memory.

And final y, the thing she most and least wanted to see: a smal figure, crumpled on the bed, shaking beneath a thin, wool en blanket. Mary's stomach turned over. So that was the cause of the shuffling sound: a sick man s.h.i.+vering to death, in the presence of a guard and a visitor. She wanted to charge from the cel , screaming for blankets and hot-water bottles and bowls of steaming broth. She stopped herself, with difficulty. This man had heard enough screaming and been the subject of orders too many times already.

She cleared her throat, not because it was necessary but to give him some warning. "Mr Lang?"

Stil no response, but she didn't expect one.

"My name is Mary Lawrence. I may be able to a.s.sist you." Lang remained mute but Mary thought his s.h.i.+vering lessened, somewhat as though he was concentrating on her words. "I have no connection either to the police or to the family of the dead man. But I am interested in the facts of what happened that night."

There was a slight pause in the s.h.i.+vering, as though it was being suppressed by force of wil . Very slowly, the lump under the blanket uncurled a little.

And although the shaking resumed, Lang's body continued to unfurl until, very slowly, a tousled head poked, turtle-like, from one end of the blanket. The skul was capped by a shock of greasy, thinning hair, yel owy-grey in colour. The skin was almost the same colour, a sal ow map of a sad country, with dark, bruised craters below the eyes. And the eyes themselves Mary repressed a shudder. They were defeat made human, a world of pain entire.

They were also her eyes.

Her lungs seized. Heart suddenly hammered against throat. Mouth went dry. It was out of the question. This old man, this drug-addicted, incarcerated old sailor her father? She'd prepared herself for the possibility, and yet now that it confronted her, found it impossible to believe.

And yet there were the eyes. They weren't hers in colour; hers had always been a changeable hazel.

But their shape was the same. And now they blinked at her, slowly, atop that stinking prison blanket.

Blinked to clear the film that covered his eyebal s, although the weight of the eyelids seemed more than he could bear. He looked decades older than forty.

He looked like death itself.

"Your name?" The voice was that of an elderly invalid raspy, faint. He seemed to be searching her face, looking for something to latch on to.

Mary looked him square in the eyes. "Are you Lang Jin Hai, formerly of Limehouse?"

And then the unthinkable happened: he closed his eyes, turned his head away and said, "No."

She frowned. "No to what?"

"Not of Limehouse."

He looked nothing like the father she remembered, but she couldn't be wrong about something this important. The eyes the name the fact that he'd asked her name... "If not Limehouse, where?"

No reply. Lang continued to s.h.i.+ver, to curl back into a bal , facing firmly away from her.

Mary waited a minute. Then two. Then three.

Final y, she said, "I don't believe you. You are Lang Jin Hai, formerly of Limehouse. You were married to Maire Quinn, a seamstress."

No reply, but that near-stil ness again a cessation of shaking that showed she'd struck deep.

"You had a daughter named Mary. She would be nineteen or twenty years old, now."

He remained almost motionless.

Shock and disbelief pa.s.sed slowly into anger.

"You went to sea in 1848 or 1849. On an important mission. You left your pregnant wife and your daughter. And a box of doc.u.ments in the care of a Mr Chen, to be opened in the event you did not return." Her voice was shaking now, but stil he refused to turn. To look at her. His only child. "Do you deny this, Lang Jin Hai?"

An excruciating pause. Then, so softly she scarcely heard the syl able: "Yes."

"You deny it?"

Silence.

"You unspeakable coward," said Mary, her voice low and trembling. "Have you anything more to lose by tel ing the truth?"

The man on the bed remained stil and mute.

Outside the cel , Mary heard the ravens screaming.

Perhaps they were being fed.

Time pa.s.sed. Her anger did not abate, but it was cold and corrosive rather than hot and fierce. She didn't want a reconciliation not with this lying shel of a man. But she did want answers. "Very wel ," she said at last, after a ful five minutes' silence. "You don't want to answer questions. But I can compel you to do so." She reached into her handbag, fingers closing round the slim, stoppered vial. The guard hadn't seemed to notice it when he peered into her reticule. Even if he had, a smal amount of laudanum required no explanation; half the ladies in London seemed to rely upon its restorative effects.

Deliberately, she let the gla.s.s clink softly against a flagstone.

The effect on Lang was instantaneous, transformative. He rol ed to face her with a swiftness that surprised even Mary, his expression intent, alert if not quite alive. "Give me that."

She whisked it out of range but let it dangle enticingly. "Answer my questions."

"I need it, you devil! I need it!" His voice crescendoed to a shriek, and Mary suddenly questioned her wisdom in forcing his hand like this.

But it was much too late to turn back. "Quiet," she said with authority. "If you scream, the guard wil come back and you certainly won't get any laudanum then."

He subsided, then, but his eyes remained fixed on the bottle. "Please..."

Mary's mouth twisted. "Are you that Lang Jin Hai?"

"Yes, yes." But he was too eager, now. He would agree to anything she asked, just for a taste of laudanum.

"Prove it. What else was in that box of doc.u.ments you left before your last voyage?"

His frantic gaze wandered to her face. Returned to the bottle. Came back to her, as he tried to marshal a modic.u.m of self-discipline. "So long ago..."

Mary waited, poised for flight, for combat, for any surprise she could imagine.

He swal owed hard. "A map."

"What else?"

"A letter to my daughter."

These were too generic; things anybody might guess. "Anything else?"

"A a pendant."

Her knees buckled, despite she told herself her lack of surprise. "What did it look like?"

"Jade. A gourd."

She frowned. "A what?" She'd always thought it a pear, or a stylized figure of eight.

He made an impatient gesture. "Why does it matter? A bottle gourd. Very symbolic. A vegetable."

She'd never heard of such a thing but also she was cut off from her Chinese heritage. Why mightn't the smal , seed-shaped object be a gourd? "Very wel ." She measured out a dropperful of laudanum and pa.s.sed it to Lang's eager, shaking hands.

He downed it greedily the first thing in days to wil ingly cross his lips and immediately said, "More."

She gave him a second dropperful.

"More." This was strong stuff, the most highly concentrated tincture of opium she could procure from an apothecary, yet it seemed he could swal ow the entire bottle without harm.

"I have more questions."

His eyes flicked between her and the vial, brightening slightly as the drug took effect. "Ask."

Heavy footsteps towards the cel . Mary whisked the vial back into her handbag, looked innocent as the gaoler's head appeared in the doorway. He was visibly surprised to see Lang sitting up in bed, acknowledging her presence, and gaped for a moment.

"Is something the matter?" asked Mary, looking down her nose at the man.

"Beg your pardon, miss; I'd have fetched you a chair only I never thought you'd stay this long."

"It's of no concern," said Mary, as patiently as she could manage. "I prefer to stand."

"I'm to give you ten minutes' warning, miss."

"Please a quarter of an hour?"

He glanced about, as though searching the air for permission. "Quarter of an hour, but no more.

Regulations, I'm afraid."

"Thank you kindly." She waited until the footsteps had receded into silence, then looked once more at her unacknowledged, unacknowledging father. Their personal history would have to wait. "What happened in the opium den on Sat.u.r.day night?"

He blinked at the change in subject. "With the toffs, you mean?"

"What else?"

He focused pleading eyes on the laudanum bottle.

"I need more. You don't understand it's like tiny drops of water to a man in the desert. Give me the bottle, and I'l tel you anything you ask."

Mary looked at him. She knew better than to believe a drug addict, of course. He was lying.

Saying whatever was necessary to feed the demon.

And yet. And yet.

She held the bottle towards him and he s.n.a.t.c.hed it with eager fingers, pouring the liquid down his throat with such frantic haste that he nearly swal owed the vial, too. Coughing, spluttering, panting. He looked up at her with bloodshot eyes that were, nevertheless, alive in a way they'd not been before. Eyes that were half-way human. "Thank you."

Mary was touched, despite herself, and then angry again. How pathetic he was and she in turn, for giving in to him. "Sat.u.r.day night."

He nodded. Wiped his lips. Licked round the mouth of the vial with hope and regret. "I don't remember the start I'd been smoking. But there wasn't enough in my hookah to keep me away, properly. I heard shouting a drunken lad's voice.

Screaming and swearing. Filth. You know. The lad was fal ing-down drunk, but it didn't stop him from trying to kick over the hookahs and the men lying beside them. And Sayed tried to see him off nicely."

"That's the proprietor?"

Lang nodded. "Didn't see why, at the time. First sign of trouble, Sayed's vicious at turning them out.

Then I saw their clothes: toffs. And then the main one sees me, and comes staggering at me, and swipes at my hookah." Lang's breathing became louder, faster. Mary noticed that his s.h.i.+vering had al but subsided. He looked at her steadily. "Don't suppose you'd believe it, an old bag of skin and bones like me fighting a young man."

She met his gaze. "I suppose it depends on your level of skil . And his intoxication."

He nodded. "And the drugs. They fil you, somehow; make you theirs. You might be floating on a cloud, warm as blood, blind and deaf to al around you. This time, I was-" He stopped to consider. "I wanted him to vanish. To make him into nothing."

Mary's stomach churned. "To make him leave?"

"No. To destroy him." He looked at her again, his eyes cold but without malice. "Not what you wanted to hear? You should know better than to ask, then."

"I want the truth." And she meant it.

"You understand, I couldn't think. Felt no pain. I was in a rage but I was numb, too."

"You couldn't reason, then." Or understand the consequences of his actions.

He seemed almost amused by the question. "In an opium dream, there is no reason."

She drew a deep breath. "So you attacked the young man. Do you remember how?"

He looked surprised. "With my hands." He held out a pair of age-spotted claws: fingers twisted, knuckles pulpy, the nails ragged and filthy. They were purple with cold, although he seemed not to mind. "The opium, again. It takes strength, then gives. There were two men. A foolish one, who stood in my way but I didn't want him. I wanted the real swine. I flew at him, knocked him down. I choked him, there on the floor." He looked down almost reminiscently, as though Beaulieu-Buckworth's supine body was there on the cel floor. "He was so weak, for such a large body."