“Feeling good?” Bartram asked.
“Like a new man.”
“Now, I’ve been thinking. The problem is what we do with you until Skay gets in touch, or else your brother comes out.”
“Donald would never come outside the Grade Enceinte—”
“He will. He came out here a month back and he went up to Brent Cross after the glories shelled the place. He’s a right man is your brother. It takes guts for a townie to come out here all alone. He would have fetched a pretty ransom from the ultras if they’d got him. Even our Skay was impressed, although she was too proud to admit it to his face.”
“Donald came here?” Lawrence just did not believe it. “Describe him.”
“Not your height, but still a well-built man. Very fit. He must do boxing or wrestling to stay like that. He had that calmness genuinely tough people have. Plus, he had two pistols on him. He’s a guy prepared to hold his own.” Bartram looked squarely at Lawrence’s face. “He’s like you, yet not all that like you.”
“What type of pistols?”
“One was a bloody great revolver best for knocking posts in the ground. The other was neater, a damned nice shooter. A Colt it was.”
It was true that Father’s pistol was a Colt. It was true Donald was a few inches the shorter and had pursued boxing after almost being expelled from school for fighting. Lawrence had been so fixated on his brother as a sycophant that he had forgotten there was a violent side.
“My brother must have changed since I knew him.”
“Well you should know him again. I never knew any good come to people who abandoned their roots. My partner, who owns that fantastic flying boat out there—” Bartram jabbed an arm down towards the main basin. “—which he devised and built all off his own brainpower, he came out of nothing at all in Bermondsey Asylum. He once took me over to meet his mum and dad. Their house would have fitted on one of our barges, yet he never for an instant gave me to think he was too good to know them. He’s a great man and we’re honoured to have him with the business. I can’t even begin to think what’s biting Skay to believe she’s too good for him, the silly bitch.”
Bartram paused, taking a greater interest in Lawrence’s complexion.
“You’re a pale man,” he said. “But you just went a shade paler. What’s up?”
“When’s he coming back?”
“Don’t know. Rosa! When’s Prentice coming back?”
“He never said. He just left me a hamper of goodies—you know what a dear he is, that’s where the nice tea came from—and went up to the compound to get his car. I suppose he must have gone behind the Enceinte to see his other customers.”
Bartram just shrugged.
“It’s anyone’s guess. You won’t know him, if that’s what you’re worried about. He’s nothing to do with the Night and Fog. He hates the ultras. He once told me the achievement he’s most proud of is, he’s never had anything to do with them. He reckons they’re no better than slavers and I suppose he’s got a point, except that I can’t afford to say so openly.”
“What does he look like?”
“He’s a big man, Big Knight my dad Jakub used to call him, from his last name Nightminster. Very distinguished looking. You would never guess he’s from an asylum, not even from his speech. He’s a bit like your brother—very fit and calm. Quite a superior sort of man.”
Lawrence struggled between rage and discombobulation at the ludicrousness of the coincidence. The words pounded around and around his mind: it can’t be a coincidence. When he saw the truth—and it was the plainest, simplest truth in the world—a long sigh flowed from him. No, it was not coincidence. It was the explanation. It had been personal. Lawrence had captured the heart Nightminster could never win, not even with all his self-made wealth.
The release from confusion left him so weak he almost fell sideways off the chair. Did it go all the way back to Oban? Had Nightminster’s prying attentions followed Sarah-Kelly’s life via whatever channels gold might open through the ultramarine network? Or it could have begun later, after Sarah-Kelly got back home and told her tale of lost love? It would have been no challenge for Nightminster to track down Lawrence at Chatham camp and fetch him out for a lifetime’s ‘adding value’.
“I sense there are great things going on inside that head,” Bartram said.
“It’s critical that Nightminster never learns I came here.”
Bartram did not bother to hide his complete disbelief.
Lawrence continued: “Not for me—I have the element of surprise, I can handle meeting him. The problem is that it would destroy everything your family has achieved here.”
“You need to make yourself clear.”
“Nightminster is an owner in the ultras—he’s a full member of the Ultramarine Guild. If he so much as caught a whiff I was here, the ultras would shun you. Without teams to haul your barges, you’d be finished—on the public drains.”
Bartram dabbed the nib of a fountain pen on a blotting pad, watching the ink flower, whilst he thought this over.
“I don’t believe what you’re saying, and I don’t know why you’re making these claims” he said. “But I’ll make sure everyone keeps their trap shut. As for you—”
“Forget about me. I’m gone.” As Lawrence stood to go, he looked down at Byron’s clothing. For the second time, he was going to have to give up borrowed clothes. “When will my own stuff be ready?”
Bartram did not answer. He appeared fazed absorbing what Lawrence had just told him. His initial disbelief seemed to be waning. Perhaps certain little observations over the years or occasional slips of phrase by Nightminster were returning to niggle?
Lawrence’s mind was dashing ahead. Fortune had tossed him a perfect opportunity to kill Nightminster
