decaying blood lingered like a bad spirit. Inspecting the room carefully, he found only shards of glass which he wanted to call a Petri dish, but it was impossible to be sure.
‘What did he use, Miss Dilger?’ he asked her at the kitchen table. ‘An animal of some sort — blood?’
She didn’t reply. She couldn’t look him in the eye but kept twisting, twisting her lace handkerchief tighter.
‘Whatever it was — it smelt awful,’ he explained to Thwaites. ‘Here in this basement.’
‘Culturing disease in the house?’ Thwaites exclaimed, incredulous. ‘You must have known,’ Wolff said to her. ‘What about your neighbours — did you think of their safety?’
She began to rise — ‘Leave my house.’ Her lower lip was quivering, the first tear on her cheek — ‘Leave, leave, leave’ — then she bolted for the door.
Wolff held Thwaites’ arm — ‘No, let her’– and flinging it open she ran out into the rain.
‘Don’t you feel sorry for her?’ he asked.
Thwaites scoffed. ‘No, I damn well don’t.’
‘Don’t you see? She’s been betrayed by someone she loves.’
‘Left her things,’ Thwaites joked, lifting her coat from the back of a chair. Her clasp bag was on the table, just large enough for powder, a handkerchief, some money.
‘Rummage through the coat, would you?’ Wolff reached for the bag and emptied it on to the table. Just a respectable middle-aged lady’s essentials, although he was surprised to find a Levy lipstick. He opened her pocketbook and thumbed through the pages.
‘Nothing,’ Thwaites declared, dropping her coat back. ‘Bills from a grocery store and her key.’
Wolff looked up at him blankly, her pocketbook still open in his hands.
‘Come on — what is it?’ Thwaites prompted him.
‘Notes, some telephone numbers — just…’ he hesitated, swallowing hard, ‘…numbers — probably family,’ then closed it deliberately and slipped it into his breast pocket. ‘Let’s go.’
They pulled the back door to behind them and scuttled across the street. The motor car had sprung some more leaks. Thwaites uttered a profanity and ran his sleeve over the driver’s seat. ‘We’re sinking.’
‘There’s something I have to do,’ Wolff said, sliding on to the passenger seat. ‘I’ll need your revolver. Can you drop me at Union Station?’
Thwaites stared at him intently. ‘This thing you have to do…?’ He paused, waiting for Wolff to accept his invitation to explain. But Wolff just looked away. ‘Look, whatever it is, you should tell me, it might be—’
‘It isn’t — not to you or Wiseman.’
Silence but for the rain beating on the canopy. A motor car sploshed by with its lamps blazing. Wolff was gazing impassively at the windscreen, misted with their breath. ‘Is it her?’ Thwaites whistled softly. ‘It is.’ He slapped his palm on the steering column in frustration. ‘Remember C’s rules, I said.’
‘Yes, you did.’ Wolff dipped into his jacket for the pocketbook. ‘Last entry.’
Thwaites flicked through to the page. ‘This number?’
‘Zero, three, six, five, six. It’s Miss McDonnell’s.’
‘And you think…’
‘I don’t know. I’m going to find out.’
33. To the Edge
WOLFF TOOK UP his post before dawn, loitering in doorways as New York began to rise. A clear cold city day in March, a day for thick socks, gloves and a muffler, walking at a brisk pace, and coffee and eggs in a smoky cafe. But Laura’s apartment wasn’t on that sort of street. He tried to keep on the move, shifting his position, drifting between blocks, brushing shoulders and smiling at businessmen fixing their hats on the doorstep or striding the sidewalk to the subway. He was exchanging short words with a man who had charged him with malicious intent when a motor car came to a stop close by and flashed its lamps once. A moment later Masek’s pinched face appeared at the driver’s window.
‘Have breakfast,’ he said, as Wolff climbed in beside him. ‘I watch apartment. Cafe three blocks,’ and he pointed over his shoulder with his thumb.
Wiseman had sent Masek in a Consulate car. ‘She not know Masek,’ he explained. ‘I follow — no trouble.’ There was no denying it would be simpler. Slight of frame, penetrating gaze, Masek had the air of a poor scholar at a provincial university, threadbare but respectable, fingers stained yellow by tobacco, the sort of man you might pass on a New York street without a second glance. They didn’t say much because it was business, but shared cigarettes and took it in turns to doze. Then, at nine o’clock, Laura appeared at the door, sifting through the morning mail, placing it in a portfolio she was carrying, adjusting her hat and tidying strands of hair. As Wolff watched her pass he felt a desperate urge to leap out of the motor car and ask her outright: ‘Have you seen Dilger? Do you know what he does?’
Masek glanced across. ‘Don’t worry. I look after her.’ He reached for the door handle.
Wolff nodded. ‘Leave me the car keys.’
He didn’t see them again for six hours. Only once did he risk leaving the motor car to stretch his legs. At one o’clock he moved the Ford to a small lot further from her apartment but with a view of its third-floor windows. There was a lamp on in the drawing room where they’d danced and he thought he saw a figure fleetingly at the curtains, although he couldn’t be sure. He wondered if it was Laura’s aunt until a taxicab dropped her at the door a short time later. Then Laura appeared, head bent, a frown on her brow as if she were pondering the shape of her next suffrage speech or the rising in Ireland or just the sound of her footfall on the sidewalk. ‘She caught train to Chambers Street, number 51,’ Masek said, settling in the seat beside Wolff. ‘A bank — something to do with church — took lift to tenth floor. She was there a long time. Masek very bored, tired, hungry, think British should pay him more.’
‘Mention it to Captain Gaunt, why don’t you?’ Wolff remarked.
Masek smiled wryly. ‘She come down at last — speaking to an old man, grey beard, bushy like this,’ he held his hands beneath his chin, ‘brown jacket — patches here and here,’ and he touched his elbows.
‘Devoy,’ said Wolff; ‘one of the Irish leaders. Clan na Gael meets in a judge’s office above the bank.’ It was where he’d met Laura for the first time.
‘She talk to the old man few minutes then go. Think she heard bad news. Looked sad. She cry a little on train.’
Wolff felt a pang. ‘Something the old man said to her?’
Masek shrugged.
They took turns to stretch their legs and grab something to eat. Masek returned with a bottle of liquor and five packets of cigarettes. ‘We find men to help us?’ he suggested.
‘Tomorrow — if we need to.’
But the little Czech didn’t have time to remove the top from his bottle before a taxicab drew up to the kerb. Laura appeared at the window, glancing up and down the street. Without a word, Masek pushed the starter and slipped the Cadillac into gear.
After a couple of minutes the door of the apartment block opened and Laura stepped out to speak to the cab driver. She looked anxious, her right hand to her temple. Turning most of a circle, she checked the street again, then walked back to the door.
‘Not a good spy,’ Masek observed laconically.
‘I think she’d take that as a… hello.’ Dilger was scuttling across the sidewalk, his hat pulled down over his face. Swinging at his side was the brown leather doctor’s bag he’d given to Hinsch in the parking lot at Laurel.
‘Is it him?’ Masek enquired.
‘Yes, it’s him.’ His bloody bag had been sitting in Laura’s apartment. Now it was in the back of the cab between them.
Masek swung the Cadillac out of the lot.
