“I am indeed,” the shopkeeper said, for to deny it would merely arouse suspicion at a later time. He wondered if he was about to be arrested on the spot. His heart beat fiercely.
“You have a fine shop here.” The inspector was attempting to be amiable but Goodcastle detected the coldness of an inquisitor in the eyes.
“Thank you, sir. I should be most glad to assist you.” His palms began to sweat and he felt ill within the belly.
“No, thank you. In fact, I must be going.”
“Good day. Do return.”
“I shall,” he said and walked outside into the brisk spring air.
Goodcastle stepped back into the shadows between two armoires and looked out.
No!
His worst fears were realized. The man had started across the street, glanced back into the store and, not seeing the proprietor, knelt, presumably to tie his shoelace. But the lace was perfectly secured already; the point of this gesture was to pinch up some of the brick dust from the construction currently being undertaken — to match against similar dust Goodcastle had left on the rungs of the ladder or inside the apartment in Charing Cross, he thought in agony. The policeman deposited the dust in a small envelope and then continued on his way, with the jaunty step of a man who has just found a wad of banknotes on the street.
Panic fluttered within Goodcastle. He understood his arrest was imminent. So, it’s to be a race to escape the clutch of the law. Every second counted.
He strode to the back door of the shop and opened it. “Markham,” he called into the back room, where the round, bearded craftsman was putting a coat of lacquer on a Chinese-style bureau. “Mind the shop for an hour or two. I have an urgent errand. “
Bill Sloat was hunched over his cluttered, ale-stained table at the Green Man Pub, surrounded by a half dozen of his cronies, all of them dirty and dim, half-baked Falstaffs, their only earthly reason for being here that they did Sloat’s bidding as quickly and as ruthlessly as he ordered.
The gang-man, dressed in an unwashed old sack suit, looked up as Peter Goodcastle approached and pierced a bit of apple with his sharp toad-sticker, eating the mealy fruit slowly. He didn’t know much about Goodcastle except that he was one of the few merchants on Great Portland Street who coughed up his weekly ten quid — which he called a “business fee” — and didn’t need a good kick in the arse or slash with a razor to be reminded of it.
The shopkeeper stopped at the table and nodded at the fat man, who muttered, “What’s brought you ’ere, m’lord?”
The title was ironic, of course. Goodcastle didn’t have a drop of noble blood in his limp veins. But in a city where class was the main yardstick by which to measure a man, more so even than money, Goodcastle swam in a very different stream than Sloat. The gang-man’s East End upbringing had been grim and he’d never gotten a lick of boost, unlike Goodcastle, whose parents had come from a pleasant part of Surrey. Which was reason enough for Sloat to dislike him, despite the fact he coughed up his quid on time.
“I need to speak to you.”
“Do you now? Speak away, mate. Me ear’s yours.”
“Alone.”
Sloat harpooned another piece of apple and chewed it down then muttered, “Leave us, boys.” He grunted toward the ruffians around the table, and, snickering or grumbling, they moved away with their pints.
He looked Goodcastle over carefully. The man was trying his hardest to be a carefree bloke but the man clearly had a desperate air about him. Ah, this was tidy! Desperation and its cousin fear were far better motivators than greed for getting men to do what you wanted. Sloat pointed toward Goodcastle with a blunt finger that ended in a nail darkened from the soot that fell in this part of town like black snow. “You’ll come a cropper if you’re ’ere to say you don’t ’ave me crust this week.”
“No, no, no. I’ll have your money. It’s not that.” A whisper: “Hear me out, Sloat. I’m in trouble. I need to get out of the country quickly, without anybody knowing. I’ll pay you handsomely if you can arrange it.”
“Oh, me dear friend,
“I can’t tell you.”
“Ey, too shy to share the story with your friend Bill? You cuckold some poor bloke? You owe a sack of lolly to a gambler?…” Then Sloat squinted and laughed harshly. “But no, m’lord. You’re too bald and too skinny to get a married bird to shag. And your cobblers ain’t big enough for you to go wagering more’n a farthing. So, who’s after you, mate?”
“I can’t say,” he whispered.
Sloat sipped more of his bitters. “No matter. Get on with it. It’s me dinnertime and I ’ave a ’unger.”
Goodcastle looked around and his voice lowered even further. “I need to get into France. Nobody can know. And I need to leave tonight.”
“Tonight?” The ruffian shook his head. “Lord love me.”
“I heard you have connections all over the docks.”
“Bill’s got ’is connections. That ’e does.”
“Can you get me onto a cargo ship bound for Marseille?”
“That’s a bleedin’ tall order, mate.”
“I don’t have any choice.”
“Well, now, I might be able to.” He thought for a moment. “It’ll cost you a thousand quid.”
“
“It’s bloody noon, mate. Look at the clock. It ain’t easy, what you’re asking, you know. I’ll ’ave to run around all day like a chicken without its ’ead. Blimey. Not to mention the risk. The docks’re lousy with guards, customs agents, sergeants at arms — thick as fleas they are…. So there you ’ave it, guv’nor. A thousand.” He skewered another brown apple wedge and chewed it down.
“All right,” Goodcastle said, scowling. The men shook hands.
“I need something up front. ’Ave to paint some palms, understand.”
Goodcastle pulled out his money purse and counted out some coin.
“Crikey, guv’nor.” Bill laughed. The massive hand reached out and snatched the whole purse. “Thank’ee much…. Now, whendo I get the rest?”
Goodcastle glanced at his pocket watch. “I can have it by four. Can you make the arrangements by then?”
“Rest assured I can,” Sloat said, waving for the barmaid.
“Come by the shop.”
Sloat squinted and looked the man over warily. “Maybe you won’t own up to what you done, but tell me, mate, just ’ow safe is it to be meetin’ you?”
The shopkeeper gave a grim laugh. “You’ve heard the expression ‘giving somebody a taste of their own medicine’?”
“I ’ave, sure.”
“Well, that’s what I’m going to do. Don’t worry. I know how to make sure we’re alone.”
Goodcastle sighed once more and then left the Green Man.
Sloat watched him leave, thinking, A thousand quid for a few hours’ work.
Desperation, he thought, is just plain bloody beautiful.
At five minutes to four that afternoon, Peter Goodcastle was uneasily awaiting Bill Sloat’s arrival.
While he’d made his arrangements to evade the law, Goodcastle had kept up the appearance of going through his business as usual. But he’d continued to observe the street outside. Sure enough, he’d noted several plain-clothed detectives standing well back in the shadows. They pretended to be watching the construction work on the street but in fact it was obvious that their attention was mostly on Goodcastle and the store.
The shopkeeper now put his plan into action. He summoned the craftsman, Markham, and one of the men he regularly used for transporting furniture to and from clients’ houses. Purposely acting suspicious, like an actor in a
