'I always am.'
'I feel so sorry for Sergeant Leeming.'
'His time as a navvy was not wasted, Madeleine. He unearthed a lot of useful intelligence. It's a pity that it had to end this way.'
'I hope that you are not thinking of taking his place.'
'If only I could,' said Colbeck, wryly, 'but it's impossible. With a face like mine, I could never pass as a navvy. Victor could. He looked the part – though he could never have lived that sort of life.'
'Was the work too hard?'
'I think it was the sleeping arrangements that upset him.'
'His wife must have been shocked by what happened.'
'That's why I went into the house first,' said Colbeck. 'I felt that it would be considerate to prepare Estelle beforehand. In fact, she took it very well. She went straight to the cab and helped Victor out. She's been a policeman's wife for years now. It's toughened her.'
'Will the sergeant be replaced?' asked Madeleine
'Not from the Detective Department.'
'Who else would you take to France?'
'Someone who will fit more easily into the scene than Victor,' he told her. 'The last I heard of him, he was working as a dock labourer so I fancy that a trip to France might appeal to him.'
'Who is he, Robert?'
'The genuine article.'
Nature seemed to have destined Aubrey Filton to be the bearer of bad news. He had a face that could transform itself instantly into a mask of horror and a voice that rose by two octaves when he was really disturbed. His arms semaphored wildly.
'It's happened again, Mr Brassey!' he cried.
'Calm down, Aubrey.'
'We must have lost thousands of bricks.'
'How?'
'Somebody carried them to one of the ventilation shafts and dropped them down into the tunnel,' said Filton. 'The bricks were smashed beyond repair and the line has been blocked.'
'When did this happen?' asked Thomas Brassey.
'In the night, sir. They chose a shaft that was furthest away from the camp so that nobody heard the noise. When they'd unloaded the wagon that carried the bricks, they smashed it to pieces. There's no sign of the horse that pulled it.'
Brassey did his best to remain calm, but exasperation showed in his eyes. He was in his office with Filton. On its walls were the maps and charts drawn as a result of various surveys. Had work proceeded at the stipulated pace, they would have been ahead of schedule and Brassey could have marked their progress on one of the charts. Instead, they were hamstrung by the sequence of interruptions. The latest of them was particularly irksome.
'We needed those bricks for today,' said Brassey.
'I've sent word to the brickyard to increase production.'
'It's security that we need to increase, Aubrey. How was anybody able to steal so many bricks without being seen?'
'I wish I knew, sir,' answered Filton, trembling all over. 'How were they able to light that fire, or damage the track in the tunnel, or steal that gunpowder or blow up the wagons? We're dealing with phantoms here, Mr Brassey.'
'No,' affirmed the other. 'Inspector Colbeck correctly identified our enemy. We're dealing with navvies. Nobody else would have had the strength to drop all those bricks down a ventilation shaft. It would take me all night to do such a thing.'
'It would take me a week.'
'What they probably did was to unload a fair number by hand then undo the harness on the horse so that they could tip the whole cart over.'
'I suppose that the horrible truth is that we'll never know.'
'Not until the inspector returns, anyway.'
'Do you really think that he can catch these men?' said Filton, sceptically. 'He hasn't managed to do so thus far and we both saw what happened to Sergeant Leeming.'
'That incident will only make Inspector Colbeck redouble his efforts. Introducing a man into the Irish camp did have advantages. He was able to warn us about that planned attack on the French.'
'What if there's another?'
'That's very unlikely,' said Brassey. 'I think we scared the Irish by telling them that they'd lose their jobs. Work is scarce back in England. They all know that.'
'It didn't stop some of them from stealing those bricks last night and there'll be more outrages to come. I feel it in my bones.'
'Don't be so pessimistic, Aubrey.'
'There's a curse on this railway.'
'Balderdash!'
'There is, Mr Brassey. I begin to think that it's doomed.'
'Then you must change that attitude immediately,' scolded the other. 'We must show no hint of weakness. The villains are bound to slip up sooner or later. We need another spy in their camp.'
'We already have one, sir.'
'Do we?'
'Of course,' said Filton. 'Father Slattery. He knows everything that goes on in the Irish community. It's his duty to assist us.'
'His main duty is a pastoral one and nothing must interfere with that. If we asked Father Slattery to act as an informer, he'd lose all credibility. What use would he be then? Besides,' he continued, 'he obviously has no idea who the miscreants are or he'd tackle them himself. A priest would never condone what's been going on.'
'So what do we do?'
'Wait until the inspector gets back with this new man.'
'New man?'
'Yes, Aubrey. I'm assured that he will be ideal for the job.'
'Ah,' said Brendan Mulryne, swallowing his brandy in a gulp as if it was his last drink on earth, 'this is the life, Inspector. And to think I might be heaving cargo at the docks all day long.'
'You were working in the Devil's Acre last time we met.'
'I had to leave The Black Dog.'
'Why?' asked Colbeck.
'Because I had a disagreement with the landlord. He had the gall to hit me when I wasn't looking and I take violence from no man. Apart from anything else, he did it at the most inconvenient time.'
'What do you mean?'
'I was teaching his darling wife a few tricks in bed.'
Brendan Mulryne roared with laughter. He was an affable giant with a massive frame and a face that seemed to have been hewn out of solid teak by a blind man with a blunt axe. Though he was roughly the same age as Colbeck, he looked years older. There was an irrepressible twinkle in his eye and he had a ready grin that revealed a number of missing teeth. Mulryne had once been a constable in the Metropolitan Police Force but his over-enthusiasm during arrests led to his expulsion. Having caught a criminal, he had somehow seen it as a duty to pound him into unconsciousness before hauling him off to the police station. He had always been grateful to Colbeck for trying to save him from being discharged.
Since his dismissal, Mulryne had drifted into a succession of jobs, some of them firmly on the wrong side of the law but none that offended the Irishman's strange code of ethics. He would only steal from a thief or commit
