the gas lamps.
‘And that is the Holborn Viaduct.’
‘Those lights…?’ Liam nodded at them.
‘Affirmative,’ replied Bob. ‘They are electric lights.’
The three of them picked their way up the broad pavement on the left-hand side of Farringdon Street. It was busy with pedestrians, a mixture of smartly dressed gentlemen and ladies taking the air after a show, and costermongers and hucksters of various goods packing up and making their way home for the night.
‘Come on! Make way there, lads!’ barked a thick-shouldered man with a handcart laden with pigs’ heads and trotters as he pushed his way past them.
An elegantly dressed woman walking with a whippet-thin man in a top hat curled her lips in disapproval as the cart wheeled past her. ‘Oh really!’ she muttered.
Liam and Rashim shared a grin. The noises, the smells — the acrid smell of burning coke, horse manure, the sight of such churning, shoulder-to-shoulder life — seemed reassuring, life-affirming. After all that time alone in the abandoned school it felt good to be back among so many people.
Liam caught the faintest whiff of it first: the smell of coffee beans roasting in a skillet. Parked up in the dirt at the side of the road was a large four-wheeled cart. Wooden steps unfolded down on to the pavement invited them up to a wooden deck where several tables and stools were occupied by gentlemen and ladies taking coffee and a slice of cake. At one end of the cart a woman and a man in aprons were serving cups of freshly roasted coffee from large tin urns that steamed over small skillets. Candles lit the small tables. Mini oil lamps were strung across the top, like Christmas lights.
‘Just wait till Maddy sees that,’ Liam laughed. ‘A horse-drawn Starbucks!’
A few minutes later they were standing beneath the viaduct, looking up at the thick ribs of glossy green- painted iron arching across the broad street. Overhead, alongside the road that crossed over the viaduct, the orbs of electric light at the top of tall iron lampstands bloomed proudly.
‘London’s first public, electric-powered street lights.’ Liam nodded approvingly. ‘Not bad.’
‘We have used half an hour of our allotted time,’ said Bob.
Liam stopped gawking at the lights and turned his attention to life beneath the viaduct. The underbelly was a row of hexagonal stone columns on either side of the street from which the arches of iron branched out to meet each other. On both sides of Farringdon Street there were pedestrian walkways lit by yet more electric globes. The walkways were flanked by stone columns on one side and rows of brickwork archways on the other, each archway seemingly occupied by one sort of business or other.
As they watched, on the far side of the busy street the thick oak doors of one of the archways swung open and several men worked together, rolling casks of beer out, across the pavement and on to a flat-backed cart.
Liam craned his neck to get a better look through the open doors to the interior beyond. He could see archways and alcoves, all seemingly stuffed with barrels, crates and boxes of all different sizes.
‘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
