By the second morning Inspector Harold Cartwright had stopped expecting the warehouse to explain itself merely because enough policemen had spent enough hours inside it. The flames had been dead since sometime before dawn, but the ruin still seemed reluctant to admit the fact; smoke escaped in thin, reluctant threads whenever wind pushed through the broken roof, water continued dropping from rafters onto the floors below, and now and then a charred beam settled with a low wooden complaint that caused every man nearby to look upward. The fire brigade had withdrawn most of its engines, leaving a smaller crew to assist where heat had weakened the structure, while constables moved through the wet black interior with notebooks in their pockets and evidence sacks looped over their wrists. What had been violent and incomprehensible by firelight had become quieter in daylight, and Cartwright had discovered that quiet did the place no favours. It allowed a man time to notice what remained, and worse, what did not.
The drains had been opened until the men sent down to inspect them came back smelling strongly enough that one threatened to resign if Cartwright asked him to examine another. Floorboards had been raised wherever blood disappeared beneath them, an operation that produced old dirt, rats' nests, corroded pipe and precisely none of the bodies that ought to have accounted for the stains above. Municipal plans had been brought over and spread across a surviving table beneath pieces of iron while Ellis and two fire officers compared lines drawn decades earlier against scorched masonry. An old doorway between the warehouse and an adjoining property caused half an hour of excitement until enough plaster came down to reveal bricks that had plainly not moved since before the war, and the little cellar was emptied so thoroughly that the last constable to come up brought a dead rat by the tail and asked whether the inspector wanted it questioned.
"If it has anything useful to say, promote it," Cartwright had replied, standing near the cellar stairs while the constable grinned despite his exhaustion. He waited until the man had gone before looking once more across the gutted ground floor, where square shadows marked the former positions of furniture that had somehow travelled several feet during the fighting and dark blood had settled between the boards in places where no body remained. "It'll already have done more for us than half the witnesses outside," he added more quietly, and Ellis, who had come up beside him with his swollen rain-damaged notebook, did not laugh.
"If there's another secret passage in this place, I vote we leave it secret out of professional courtesy," Ellis said, closing the notebook with difficulty as water dripped somewhere behind them in a slow, infuriating rhythm. His collar was undone, soot remained in the crease beside his nose despite whatever washing he had managed during the night, and he looked at the newly exposed brickwork with the resignation of a man who had expected exactly what they found. "We've opened drains, walls and most of the bloody floor. If the missing lads are still in here, they've become very thin."
"Next fellow who tells me there must be a tunnel because otherwise the numbers don't make sense can dig until he reaches France," Cartwright replied, easing one hand into his coat pocket while his attention returned to a broad bloodstain beside the central pillar. Llewellyn had already told him what he thought of that one, and remembering the doctor's expression bothered him more than the stain itself. "Keep the guard here and let the brigade tell us if anything appears when they clear what's still unsafe. I'm done dismantling a building because I dislike the answer it gives me."
Ellis glanced toward him as they began making their way carefully across the floor. "So where do we look instead?" he asked, stepping around one of the gaps where boards had been lifted and pausing long enough to let two firemen carry a blackened length of timber past them.
"People," Cartwright said, and there was almost relief in the word. People had habits, debts, wives, enemies and bad tempers; people lied in recognisable ways, spent money they were not supposed to possess and told the wrong person something after too much drink. Even a careful murderer generally remained human enough to inconvenience himself eventually. The warehouse, by comparison, had spent two days offering broken masonry, fired cartridges and arithmetic that seemed to regard him personally with contempt.
The council had surrendered two rooms several streets away for the investigation, though by that morning "surrendered" described it better than "loaned." The clerk responsible for them had objected first to muddy boots, then to cigarette ash, and finally to evidence sacks being placed too near one of his radiators, until Cartwright invited him to choose between tolerating policemen or allowing the temporary mortuary to use the premises instead. The clerk had discovered urgent business elsewhere, and by half past nine the larger room had acquired the settled disorder of a place men were actually using rather than preserving for somebody else's convenience.
Three tables had been pushed together beneath a large street map of Birmingham. Smaller plans surrounded it: the warehouse, the streets around Walter Price's house, several bookmakers' premises and the approaches to Summer Lane. Witness statements were tied in bundles according to when they had been taken because Cartwright had become increasingly distrustful of recollections that improved only after their owners spent an evening reading newspapers and discussing the fire in public houses. Damp coats hung from chair backs and brass hooks along the wall, half-burned matches accumulated in saucers, and tea repeatedly went cold beside men too busy to notice until they tried drinking it.
Ellis had removed his jacket again and rolled his sleeves above his elbows. By the time Cartwright came in from the warehouse, he had already filled a page and a half with men who possessed reasons to dislike Charlie Briggs, and he pushed the first sheet across before the inspector had fully removed his coat.
"Briggs had enemies enough to refill the warehouse," Ellis said, watching Cartwright lower himself into the chair while reaching for a cigarette case that proved nearly empty. He pushed his own packet across and struck a match, holding the flame while the inspector leaned toward it. "Two publicans threatened in the last year, three bookmakers beaten badly enough to make complaints and then recover a miraculous confidence in Kimber's good intentions, one fellow in Aston whose younger brother Briggs put in hospital, four men pushed off pitches after arguments, and more debtors than I care to write down unless somebody promises to buy me another notebook."
"Those are men who might wait outside a public house with a revolver," Cartwright replied, drawing smoke before lowering the cigarette to the ashtray. He read several names and found nothing immediately better than the previous day had offered. "Or pay someone else to wait there because revenge tends to become less attractive once the revolver points both ways. Find me one who looked at thirty armed Birmingham Boys, several cans of paraffin and a warehouse and decided all three were the economical route to killing Charlie, and I'll buy you supper."
"You keep saying that as though I'm likely to collect," Ellis said, leaning back and folding his arms. His gaze drifted toward the warehouse plan pinned along the wall. "You don't think Briggs was the point."
"I think everybody keeps trying to tell me what the point was because saying they don't know makes them uncomfortable," Cartwright replied, reaching beneath another folder for Walter Price's file. Detective Sergeant Simmonds looked over from the far end of the table as the inspector continued. "Marsh wants a rival gang because Billy Kimber understands rival gangs and Marsh understands Billy Kimber. Half the constables want several attackers because several men make the damage easier to picture. The newspapers apparently want German saboteurs because three years of war have convinced editors that attaching the Kaiser to English murder improves circulation."
"One asked me whether the paraffin could have been German," Simmonds said, pushing his spectacles higher with one finger while two younger detectives near the window glanced over.
"What did you tell him?" Ellis asked, already smiling.
"That we'd sent it to the Foreign Office for interrogation," Simmonds replied, and the tired laughter that moved through the room lasted only a few seconds before everyone returned to the papers.
Cartwright opened Price's file and flattened the first sheet beneath one palm. "What I would like," he said, looking down at the report, "is a person. Preferably alive. Somebody I can put in a chair and ask why instead of standing in a burnt warehouse asking a cabinet why it moved six feet and a pool of blood why the owner neglected to remain attached to it."
Walter Price had seemed almost reassuringly ordinary when compared with Briggs's warehouse, and Cartwright distrusted that feeling now. Price had spent years collecting money for Kimber and had therefore accumulated more than enough enemies to explain being shot in his own home. Nobody had taken his money, no drawers had been opened and his family upstairs had heard only the single report of the pistol. At the time it had looked like one of the countless private reckonings criminal men eventually invited into their own houses.
Briggs altered that.
"No robbery at Price's," Cartwright said, turning through the pages while Ellis drew his chair closer. "No money missing that the family can identify, no search, no cupboard opened. Whoever went through that door came for Walter rather than anything Walter owned."
"Could have been somebody he knew," Ellis replied, resting both forearms on the table while he studied the sketch of the room. "Lets him in, doesn't expect trouble, one shot."
"Could," Cartwright said. He tapped the report once with the cigarette between his fingers. "Or Walter knew exactly how much trouble he'd let through the door and decided not to shout with his wife and children upstairs."
Ellis looked at him but did not interrupt.
"And then Charlie Briggs," Cartwright continued, letting his eyes move to the office sketch on the wall. "Twenty men of his own downstairs before the later lot even arrive, revolvers and automatics going off through the building, and he crawls under a desk. If he feared the fire, he had a window. If he feared a fight, he had a building full of men whose entire occupation was fighting for him."
"Whatever frightened him got upstairs," Ellis said, quieter now.
"And didn't shoot through smoke from the doorway. Whoever it was came round the desk, found him beneath it and put a round through his forehead close enough for Llewellyn to find powder." Cartwright drew on the cigarette, watching the smoke gather above the paper between them. "That doesn't make Price and Briggs the same killer. It does make ignoring the possibility an excellent way to look stupid later."
"You're limiting it how far back?" Simmonds asked from the other table, already knowing what the answer meant for his day.
"Six months," Cartwright replied, and when Simmonds made a face he pointed the cigarette toward him. "Price collected first. Briggs appeared when collecting failed. I want publicans, bookmakers and businesses that saw both of them since spring. Anyone recently beaten, threatened or removed from a pitch."
Simmonds closed the file he'd been reading with something like resignation. "Do you have any idea how many men that could be?"
"Yes."
"And you're still saying it."
"Yes."
Simmonds sighed. "I should have become a gardener."
"You'd hate the weather," Ellis said.
"I already hate the weather."
"Plants don't answer questions."
"Neither do bookmakers."
Cartwright allowed himself the smallest smile. "Start close. If a man once called Price a bastard after three whiskies, I don't need him unless the fourth whisky caused him to purchase paraffin."
The investigation moved outward from there, not in great revelations but through the accumulated ugliness of Kimber's business. A publican near Aston showed Simmonds the remains of a cupboard door split down the centre where Briggs had driven a debtor's head through it. He had never repaired the timber properly, partly because money was tight and partly because leaving the damage visible had proved useful whenever younger staff complained about protection money. Price had stood by the bar during that beating, saying little while Charlie made the lesson physical.
Another bookmaker began his interview by insisting he remembered nothing about an earlier complaint and finished, after Simmonds placed his own signed statement in front of him, describing how two Birmingham Boys had held his hands flat against a table while Briggs discussed whether fingers ought to be broken beginning with the thumb or little finger. His complaint had disappeared the following morning because he suddenly decided the disagreement had been commercial rather than criminal. A shopkeeper's younger brother had been beaten until one eye never opened properly again, while a publican near Small Heath remembered Price sitting quietly at the end of his bar for an entire afternoon while customers noticed him and gradually left; Briggs had come at closing time to ask whether business looked any healthier without Kimber's protection.
Everywhere the police went they found hatred.
What they did not find was anyone behaving as though the warehouse had made that hatred profitable.
Simmonds returned around midday with rain dried in pale marks over his shoulders and dropped his notebook beside the teapot. "Everybody hated Charlie," he said, pulling a chair out with one foot before sitting heavily. "Some hated Price almost as much, most hate Kimber in principle, and one publican told me if Hell has a betting room Briggs is probably already charging protection at the door."
"Anyone suddenly spending more money than last week?" Cartwright asked, turning away from the wall map.
"No."
"Anyone leave Birmingham immediately after the fire?"
"No one we can find."
"Any bookmaker stopped paying Kimber?"
Simmonds hesitated there, and Cartwright noticed.
"That's the interesting part," he said, rubbing his hands together for warmth. "A couple of collections are delayed because nobody quite knows which of Kimber's men is still alive to collect, but nobody's openly told them to go to hell. No rival crew has started taking his pitches. Nobody has suddenly offered cheaper protection in districts where his people are unsettled. You'd think this would be the moment to test him."
Ellis reached for his tea, remembered the state of it and put it down again. "Maybe they're waiting for Billy to come back."
"That's what Pearce thinks."
Cartwright looked toward Simmonds. "Samuel Pearce?"
"He's downstairs. Took twenty minutes to persuade him that coming voluntarily was less noticeable than me walking him through the street."
"Bring him."
Samuel Pearce entered the smaller interview room wearing the suspicion of a man who had spent much of his adult life calculating what other people wanted from him. His nose had been broken years earlier and healed crooked enough to make Cartwright wonder what the original version had looked like, while both hands held the brim of his hat before he had even sat down.
"I haven't done anything," Pearce said, lowering himself into the chair only after Cartwright gestured toward it. His fingers immediately began working the brim, rolling it slowly inward and releasing it.
"That may be the most optimistic opening sentence I've heard this week," Cartwright replied, settling opposite him while Ellis remained by the wall with a notebook. "Keep it up and perhaps we'll have you home before the war ends."
Pearce gave him a flat look. "I'm serious."
"So am I. If somebody did that to Kimber for the pitches, what happens now?" Cartwright leaned his forearms on the table and watched the bookmaker's hands stop moving.
Pearce looked toward Ellis, then back. "What happens where?"
"You understood me."
"I understand plenty of questions I don't answer police."
"Answer this one and I may spare you several worse ones."
Pearce sighed and began worrying the hat brim again. "Depends who did it."
"Somebody wanting Kimber weakened."
"They wait."
"For what?"
"To see what Billy does when he comes back. See how many of his lads still listen to him. See if police start kicking in doors. Let everyone frighten themselves first."
Cartwright nodded. "And then?"
Pearce looked down.
"Samuel."
"Then they move," the bookmaker replied, irritation entering his voice now that he had been forced to explain what seemed obvious to him.
"Where?"
"Pitches. Bookmakers. Protection."
"Why?"
Pearce looked up with something close to disbelief. "Because that's why you'd bloody do it. You don't knock half another man's lot over so you can admire the empty chairs. You take whatever he can't hold afterward."
"And nobody has."
"Not yet."
"Nobody refusing Kimber outright."
"No."
"Nobody telling men quietly that they arranged the warehouse."
Pearce gave a small humourless laugh. "Nobody's going to put it in the Birmingham Mail."
"I didn't ask what they tell newspapers or police," Cartwright replied, and the laugh died. "Men boast where boasting has value. If a gang killed that many of Kimber's people, eventually somebody has to know who was strong enough to do it or the attack buys nothing but funerals."
Pearce rolled the brim once, slower this time. "No one's claiming it."
"Why?"
"How should I know?"
"You've spent your life around men who use fear as currency. Guess."
The bookmaker's mouth tightened. "Maybe they're clever enough to wait longer."
"Maybe."
"Maybe they're frightened by what happened as well."
"Maybe."
Pearce looked toward the closed door. "Or maybe whoever did it didn't care about the pitches."
Cartwright's expression did not change, though Ellis's pencil stopped.
"What did they care about?" the inspector asked.
Pearce looked back at him. "Maybe they just wanted the men."
That was as far as he would go, and Cartwright let him leave soon afterward. The last sentence followed the inspector back into the larger room anyway, attaching itself unpleasantly to the list of missing Birmingham Boys.
The missing men were becoming harder to treat as a secondary problem. Cartwright had stopped asking whether the warehouse might somehow still contain them and instead began asking what a living man required after escaping something violent enough to send him running from Billy Kimber. A frightened man might abandon his home and refuse his usual public house, but he still needed money, somewhere to sleep and, if the injuries inside the warehouse were any guide, a doctor.
New Street and Snow Hill received descriptions of the unaccounted men. Porters were questioned about travellers in torn or burned clothing, men buying tickets after midnight, soot-covered groups or anyone being helped by companions because he could not walk properly. Railway police worked through their reports from the relevant hours and produced ordinary city misery instead: drunken soldiers, racegoers asleep on benches, two labourers who had beaten each other bloody near a public house and one man who swore he had been robbed by a woman whose name he did not know.
Hospitals had already been checked, so the search widened to private doctors and chemists. A physician in Aston admitted stitching a long cut along a young man's ribs, and for twenty minutes the lead looked promising until three witnesses—and eventually the woman over whom the fight had occurred—arrived with enough indignant detail to satisfy a magistrate. A chemist remembered selling an unusual quantity of bandages after midnight, but the buyer proved to be a metalworks foreman whose employee had put his hand into machinery and lost most of the top of one finger.
Families damaged the escape theory far more efficiently than police work did.
Ellis returned from one such visit late in the afternoon and closed the office door behind himself with unusual care. His hat remained in his hand and his face had settled into the expression Cartwright had begun recognising after visits to wives and mothers.
"Which one?" the inspector asked, putting down his pen.
"Thomas Heddon," Ellis replied, crossing the room before lowering himself into the chair opposite. He opened his notebook but spent several seconds looking at the page without reading. "Wife and two little girls. Oldest is six, maybe. Younger one kept asking whether I'd brought her father home with me."
Cartwright leaned back slowly. "He left when word came about the fire?"
"Somebody ran down the street saying Briggs's warehouse had gone up. Heddon put his boots on, kissed the girls and told his wife he'd bring coal home in the morning." Ellis rubbed one thumb over the edge of the paper. "Six shillings in the house. No savings she knows about, no other clothes missing. She says if he'd meant to leave even for one night he'd have taken his good razor because he complained about the cheap one every time he used it."
"She thinks he's dead."
Ellis raised his eyes. "She knows he's dead. She wants us to find enough of him that the girls can see a coffin go into the ground."
The sound of a wagon moving along the wet street outside reached the room before either man spoke again.
"Others?" Cartwright asked eventually.
"George Falkner's wages are still waiting. Leslie Moore left boots at a cobbler's and promised to collect them before dinner the following day. Albert Nash owed a bookmaker three pounds, and apparently the bookmaker finds the idea of Nash fleeing without settling the account personally insulting."
That almost drew a smile from Cartwright and failed. "Some could still have got out and panicked."
"I keep trying to make that work."
"Try again."
Ellis stood and went to the map, taking up a pencil as though physical movement might force the theory into better shape. "All right. Twelve men. Forget fifteen. Twelve gives us room for witnesses being wrong about who actually crossed the doors."
Cartwright rose more slowly and moved toward the window, smoking while the grey Birmingham afternoon spread beyond the glass. "Go on."
"They don't come out together because somebody would remember twelve men. They scatter. They don't go home because they're frightened Kimber will call them cowards or decide they were involved. They stay away from hospitals because police will ask questions and avoid their usual pubs because the Birmingham Boys are looking."
"So far."
Ellis moved the pencil from the warehouse toward the railway stations. "Then all twelve also avoid New Street, Snow Hill, private doctors, chemists, boarding houses, cabs, wives, mothers, brothers, every bookmaker who knows them and apparently every friend they've made since infancy."
Cartwright turned from the window. "You're trying to convince yourself."
"I'm trying to make twelve men exist somewhere."
"That," Cartwright replied, looking again through the rain-streaked window, "is exactly the problem."
Removal worked no better. Twelve corpses required men to carry them, a cart or motor vehicle, and enough time to load everything without attracting attention. By the time Kimber's reinforcements were entering the warehouse, neighbours already filled windows and men stood in the street. Fire engines arrived while the later Birmingham Boys were still disappearing through doors and broken windows. Even if bodies had somehow left from a rear route, the vehicle carrying them needed a road afterward.
They checked the canals because Ellis suggested them and Cartwright refused to reject an ordinary explanation merely because it was inconvenient. Bargemen were questioned, livery yards visited, motor-hire offices asked whether a car had returned with blood in the upholstery, and cabmen forced to remember every fare they wished forgotten. Nothing useful came back.
By late afternoon Cartwright felt less as though he were proving a murder than systematically removing every answer sensible enough to put into a report.
Doctor Llewellyn made matters worse.
The temporary mortuary occupied a municipal storage building where gas lamps shone too brightly against pale walls and the cold preserved smells Cartwright preferred not to examine. Llewellyn stood at a narrow table in shirtsleeves when the inspector arrived, spectacles low on his nose and several pages of notes spread beneath one hand.
"Tell me the fire did it," Cartwright said from the doorway, removing his hat as the doctor looked up.
"Did what?" Llewellyn asked, already sounding wary.
"The missing men. Tell me the heat accounts for them and I can go home early enough to remember what my wife looks like."
Llewellyn removed his spectacles and pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose. "If you're asking whether a sufficiently severe fire can destroy human remains extensively, certainly."
"One body?"
"Possible."
"Two?"
The doctor hesitated before shrugging one shoulder. "Under particularly unfortunate conditions."
"Twelve?"
Llewellyn put his spectacles back on and looked at him directly. "No."
"Not likely?"
"No."
"Not probable?"
"No."
"Impossible?"
"I am a physician, Inspector. We avoid saying impossible because eventually some patient develops a professional interest in humiliating us." Llewellyn gathered one of the pages and turned it toward himself. "What I will say is that nothing in the pattern of burning supports twelve bodies being destroyed beyond meaningful recovery while numerous men lying close to the same heat remain sufficiently intact for individual examination."
Cartwright looked toward the covered tables. "Fragments?"
"May give us another individual once I am confident certain portions do not belong to bodies already counted. Perhaps two, though I will not promise that merely because your arithmetic wants help."
"And the blood pools?"
The doctor went still enough for Cartwright to notice.
"Several contained quantities consistent with severe injury," Llewellyn said after a moment, selecting each word with visible care. "Two especially concern me. I would not expect either person to remain mobile for long without assistance."
"Could someone carry them?"
"Of course."
"Could they crawl?"
"Perhaps."
"How far?"
Llewellyn looked at him over the top of his spectacles. "Not through brickwork."
Cartwright drew a long breath through his nose. "Good."
The doctor stared. "What in God's name is good about any of that?"
"Means the warehouse hasn't simply made me stupid from smoke."
"I wouldn't rule that out independently," Llewellyn replied, and when Cartwright gave him a tired look the doctor's expression softened by a fraction. "But yes. The absence bothers me. I can explain what an injury does to a human body. I cannot explain why a man leaves evidence of catastrophic injury on a floor and then fails to leave the remainder of himself anywhere near it."
The sentence followed Cartwright back through the evening rain.
By the time he reached the borrowed rooms, Ellis had found the first theory in two days that resembled an ordinary crime from more than one direction. The sergeant stood beside the warehouse plan with the watchman's report open under one hand and waited until Cartwright had removed his wet coat.
"The watchman," Ellis said, tapping the page as the inspector approached. "Last reliable sighting puts him making his outside round before nine. A worker from the neighbouring premises saw him near the loading side. After that, nothing until the body."
"Neck broken, revolver unfired, pockets untouched," Cartwright replied, remembering the medical notes.
"Exactly. A stranger carrying paraffin along Briggs's wall should interest an armed watchman." Ellis leaned forward slightly. "One of Briggs's own men carrying something that belongs in the building might not."
Cartwright became still.
For several seconds the answer was so reassuringly human that he almost wanted to protect it from further examination.
"Original occupants only," he said, pulling the list closer. "Anyone who came after the fire can't prepare the exits beforehand."
Ellis already had the names separated.
They worked through them until late. Money came first because money usually came first. One man owed gambling debts large enough to consume most of his wages before they reached home. Another had been humiliated publicly by Briggs after arguing over race proceeds. A third complained repeatedly that Kimber's senior men skimmed too much money before lower members saw their share, while a fourth had told his brother that Liverpool sounded better every week.
Each name gathered annotations.
Each annotation produced possible reasons.
Then each name ended the same way.
Dead.
"Doesn't clear them," Ellis said, standing with both palms flat against the table after they finished the fourth. "One could have helped lay the oil and been double-crossed. Could've thought somebody only meant to frighten Charlie or rob him. Could've expected a beating and discovered too late that whoever he helped had something else in mind."
"All possible," Cartwright replied, easing himself into the chair while looking toward the warehouse plan.
"It explains the watchman."
"Maybe."
"The paraffin."
"Yes."
"Could explain how outsiders get inside before anyone notices."
"Yes."
Ellis waited.
Cartwright looked toward him. "And then it stops."
The room around them had quieted as evening deepened. One of the younger detectives had gone for food, another worked silently near the window, and rain whispered steadily against the glass.
"Maybe that's the mistake," Ellis said eventually, straightening and looking toward the plan. "Maybe we keep making it one thing because it happened in one building. Fire, Briggs, missing men. Could be different purposes on top of one another."
Cartwright considered the thought rather than dismissing it. "Then find the seam."
Ellis frowned. "The what?"
"Where one purpose ends and another starts." The inspector rose and walked to the map, pointing first toward Briggs's office and then toward the ignition marks. "If Charlie was the target, why burn thirty other men around him? If Kimber's organisation was the target, why bother climbing upstairs and putting a bullet in Charlie rather than letting the fire decide?"
Ellis's gaze drifted toward Walter Price's file lying open on the table.
Cartwright followed it.
"And if Price belongs to the same business," he said more quietly, "then whatever happened at the warehouse began before anybody poured the first drop of paraffin."
Neither man found the seam that night.
The following morning the investigation finally acquired something firmer than a grudge.
It began with brass.
Cartwright had scarcely removed his coat when Ellis came into the room carrying a brown evidence envelope and an expression suggesting he had already read whatever lay inside several times. The inspector watched him put it down among the papers and reached automatically for his cigarettes.
"Before you ask," Ellis said, sitting opposite him, "Llewellyn hasn't changed his body count, nobody found a secret cellar overnight and none of the missing men sent postcards."
"You've managed to disappoint me three times before breakfast," Cartwright replied, opening the envelope. "Proceed carefully."
Three cartridge cases lay inside, darkened by smoke but sufficiently intact for their markings to remain readable. They had come from different portions of the warehouse floor, one recovered beneath a fallen partition where the fire had never reached its hottest.
Cartwright unfolded the armourer's note.
".32 automatic," he said, reading the short assessment twice. "Commercial cartridge."
"Nothing exotic," Ellis replied. "Could be fired from more than one make. Armourer doesn't want to name a specific pistol from the cases alone."
"Good."
"Llewellyn's projectile from Briggs is consistent with the same general calibre."
Cartwright looked up.
Ellis nodded toward Walter Price's file.
"And Price?"
"Also consistent with .32 automatic. Neither doctor nor armourer will swear Price and Briggs were shot with the same weapon."
The inspector sat back slowly.
That mattered.
Not because a .32 automatic was rare enough to identify a killer, but because at last they possessed something capable of producing a sensible question outside the warehouse.
"Gunmakers," Cartwright said, taking up the cigarette he had forgotten to light.
"I thought the same."
"Birmingham first. Recent sales, repairs, ammunition orders. Don't go in announcing we're looking for the warehouse murderer. Ask about the cartridges and make them remember their own customers before we teach them what to remember."
Ellis rose.
"And Harris," Cartwright added.
The sergeant looked back.
"Harris?"
"He knows enough about firearms to avoid asking whether ammunition has a trigger."
"An exacting standard."
"It's been an exacting week."
By half past nine Simmonds and Detective Constable Arthur Harris were working their way through Birmingham's gun trade with a small evidence tin, the approximate calibre and instructions not to feed anyone a story before hearing one.
The first two shops gave them nothing. One proprietor remembered selling twenty rounds to an elderly solicitor who owned a Browning and used it mostly against rats on a country property; the purchase had been nearly a month earlier and the solicitor's habits were sufficiently dull to clear him before lunchtime. Another gunsmith had supplied ammunition to two officers returning to France, neither transaction close enough to the warehouse fire to matter.
The fourth shop changed the investigation.
It stood in the Gun Quarter behind a narrow frontage darkened by smoke, its window displaying shotguns, revolvers, cleaning rods and boxes of cartridges behind glass polished often but never particularly well. Inside, the air held the familiar mixture of oil, timber, metal filings and faint powder residue, and an elderly gunsmith with grey whiskers was working beneath a magnifying lens when Simmonds and Harris entered.
"If it's about the warehouse, I've already told one constable I didn't sell anybody paraffin," the gunsmith said without looking up, turning a tiny screw with fingers permanently dark around the nails. "Nor dynamite, German bombs, poison gas or whatever tomorrow's newspaper decides was hidden under the floor."
"Then we'll spare you paraffin," Simmonds replied, removing his hat while Harris closed the door against the cold. "Detective Sergeant Simmonds. Constable Harris."
The old man finally looked up. "I gathered you weren't here for a shotgun."
"What gave us away?"
"Neither of you looks pleased enough."
Harris coughed into one hand.
Simmonds placed one of the cartridge cases on the counter. "May I trouble you with something less entertaining?"
The gunsmith put down his screwdriver and picked up the brass between thumb and forefinger, turning it toward the light. His attention sharpened with the ease of a craftsman entering familiar ground.
".32 automatic," he said after several seconds. "Nothing unusual."
"Sell much?"
"Less than before the war."
"Recently?"
The gunsmith looked at him over his spectacles. "Define recently."
"Within a week of the fire."
"Some."
"Any large orders?"
That question changed something.
The old man's eyes went back to the cartridge.
Simmonds did not rush him.
"How large?" the gunsmith asked.
"Fifty rounds."
The man's mouth moved faintly.
"A hundred?"
The gunsmith looked up fully.
Harris straightened almost imperceptibly.
Simmonds kept his voice unchanged. "Something come to mind?"
"Perhaps."
"Perhaps is more than I had five minutes ago."
The old man set the cartridge down and walked toward a shelf of thick account books behind the counter. He selected one, brought it back beneath the hanging lamp and began moving one finger down a page.
"I had a gentleman order a hundred rounds," he said, turning another page. ".32 automatic. Wanted the same supply if possible rather than odd boxes."
"When was the order placed?"
"Several days before."
"When collected?"
The gunsmith stopped at a notation.
"Day of your warehouse fire."
Simmonds opened his notebook.
"What time?"
"Half past three." The old man adjusted his spectacles and checked the note again. "Three-thirty is what I've written."
For a moment the ticking clock at the back of the shop seemed unusually loud.
"Same gentleman collected them?" Simmonds asked.
"Yes."
"Name?"
The gunsmith glanced down at the ledger before answering.
"Markus Wright."
Simmonds wrote it carefully. "Spell Markus."
The gunsmith did.
"Address?"
"Didn't take one."
Harris frowned. "For a hundred rounds?"
"He wasn't buying the pistol from me, Constable," the gunsmith replied, giving the younger man a mildly offended look. "He ordered ammunition, paid for it and collected it."
"Cash?" Simmonds asked.
"Yes."
"Did you see the pistol?"
"No."
"Did he mention what he used?"
The old man hesitated. "I think he said Colt when he placed the order, though I won't swear to that in a courtroom."
Simmonds nodded approvingly. "Then don't. What did he look like?"
That came more easily.
"Middle-aged. Forty-five, perhaps fifty. Difficult to say with some men. Well dressed. Good coat, good shoes, but he wasn't trying to advertise them."
"English?"
"No."
"German?"
"No."
"Accent?"
"Northern Europe, perhaps. Scandinavian if you insist on making me guess. He spoke English better than plenty born ten streets from here."
"Face?"
"Long. Pale eyes. Cheekbones." The gunsmith considered for a moment before adding, "Looked like a man who listened more than he spoke."
"Anything else memorable?"
"He ordered a hundred cartridges."
"Other than that."
"He was polite."
Simmonds sighed faintly. "Apparently that's becoming a distinguishing characteristic."
"It is in gun shops."
"Was he nervous?"
"No."
"In a hurry?"
"No."
"Did he ask anything about the area?"
"No. He checked one box, paid what remained and left."
"Which way?"
The gunsmith pointed toward the front window. "Out."
Harris suppressed a smile this time.
"No cab waiting?" Simmonds asked.
"Not that I noticed."
"Motor?"
"No idea."
"Could you recognise him again?"
The gunsmith looked almost insulted. "A foreign gentleman in an expensive coat buys a hundred rounds from me in the middle of a war and you think I forget his face?"
Simmonds closed the notebook.
Outside, he waited until he and Harris had reached the next corner before opening it again beneath the shelter of a shop awning. Rain had begun to darken the pavement, and Harris looked back toward the gunsmith's sign before lowering his voice.
"That's our man."
"No," Simmonds replied, tapping the entry with his pencil. "That's a man who purchased ammunition."
"A hundred rounds."
"Yes."
"At half past three on the day of the fire."
"Yes."
"Same calibre found in the warehouse."
"Yes."
Harris stared at him. "How careful are we planning to be?"
"Careful enough that we don't spend the afternoon making every fact fit the first man who interests us." Simmonds tucked the notebook away. "Cartwright catches us doing that and he'll bind the final report in our hides."
Harris looked toward the wet street. "So what now?"
"Now," Simmonds said, "we find out who Markus Wright is."
The name entered the investigation there, not through gossip but through an order book written before anyone knew the warehouse would burn.
By the time Simmonds returned to the borrowed council rooms, Cartwright had already heard enough over the telephone to know the visit had produced something worth waiting for. Ellis stood beside him as Simmonds laid the notebook on the central table and turned it around.
"Gunmaker in the Quarter," Simmonds said, drawing out a chair while rain dried across his coat. "Special order. Hundred rounds of .32 automatic. Collected at half past three on the afternoon of the warehouse fire."
Cartwright's eyes moved down the page.
"Markus Wright."
"That's the name in the ledger."
"Address?"
"None."
"Pistol?"
"Gunsmith thinks Wright may have mentioned a Colt when ordering. He won't swear to it and never saw the weapon."
"Good. I'd rather have an honest uncertainty than a useful invention." Cartwright read the description next, his face changing very little. "Foreign. Middle-aged. Money."
"That's the size of it."
Ellis leaned over the table. "One hundred rounds is a considerable purchase a few hours before a building full of men starts firing at shadows."
Cartwright looked toward him. "It's considerable enough that we look. It is not considerable enough that we decide."
"You sound disappointed."
"I sound employed."
Simmonds almost smiled.
"Now," Cartwright continued, placing one finger on Wright's name, "we go backward. Every statement mentioning a well-dressed foreigner comes back out. Don't tell people what the gunsmith said unless necessary. I want to know what they remembered before Markus Wright became interesting."
Once the name existed, Birmingham began supplying the man around it.
The boy paid ten pounds to count Birmingham Boys had already been mentioned in an earlier street report, but nobody had possessed a reason then to separate his employer from every other unusual stranger in Aston. Cartwright spoke to the child with his mother present, keeping the conversation simple and resisting the temptation to put Wright's name into the boy's mouth.
"You remember the gentleman who paid you?" Cartwright asked, sitting opposite George while the boy's legs swung several inches above the floor. "I don't want you guessing at anything you didn't hear. Did he give you a name?"
George squeezed his face in concentration before shaking his head. "No, sir."
"Anybody call him anything?"
Another shake.
His mother folded her arms. "I told your constable already, Inspector, he didn't give us an address. I went looking because ten pounds don't arrive in a child's pocket by Christian miracle."
"What did he ask George to do?"
"Count men," she replied.
"And tell him what they looked like," George added with the offended pride of someone whose responsibilities were being diminished.
His mother gave him a look.
Cartwright hid the beginning of a smile. "All right. What sort of men?"
"The Birmingham Boys outside that place. He wanted how many old ones and young ones and whether any looked like they had summat heavy in their coats." George became more animated now that the inspector appeared interested. "There were five first, then another came and I told him six."
The description matched the gunsmith closely enough to justify further work without becoming an identification on its own.
The publican did better.
When Simmonds returned to the Aston establishment where a foreign gentleman had spent time asking about Kimber, he found the owner behind the bar polishing a glass he had already polished during their previous conversation.
"Did the gentleman ever give you his name?" Simmonds asked, resting one hand against the counter while the publican frowned toward the shelves.
"Wright."
The sergeant stopped writing.
"You certain?"
"Markus Wright. Or Marcus, however he spelled the first one."
"Why wasn't that in the original statement?"
The publican looked at him as though the answer ought to be obvious. "Because your constable asked whether I'd seen anyone asking after Billy Kimber, not whether I knew the man's baptismal record."
Simmonds had to admit the objection was fair.
"What did Wright actually want?"
"Who did what. Who collected. Who was close to Billy. Who turned up if somebody stopped paying."
"Names?"
The publican's expression became more cautious.
Simmonds waited him out.
"Price came up."
"Walter Price."
"Yes."
"Charlie Briggs?"
A short pause, then a nod.
"Vale?"
"He asked who was usually near Billy when Billy was in town."
"When was this?"
The date placed the conversation before Walter Price's murder.
From there the trail became almost embarrassingly respectable. A tailor recognised the name immediately and produced an order book containing the fitting for expensive evening clothes. Wright had paid cash and arranged to collect the finished garments himself, giving no address because none had been necessary.
"He mentioned a patron," the tailor said while Ellis stood among rows of hanging jackets and examined the written order. "Benefactor, perhaps. I don't remember the exact word, only that I gathered he wasn't spending entirely on his own behalf."
The jeweller remembered platinum cufflinks, the same composed manner and payment without credit. Motor hire possessed bookings under Wright's name, one of them connected with Whitmore House on the night of the banquet. That opened another line into staff recollections, guest conversations and finally Pembroke, whose clerks confirmed that Markus Wright was not merely an eccentric foreigner prowling Birmingham's public houses but a man involved in serious discussions concerning a factory and private investment.
By late afternoon Cartwright's table contained the beginnings of a timeline.
Wright had appeared around Birmingham for several days.
He had asked questions about Kimber's organisation.
He had asked specifically about Walter Price and Charlie Briggs before either man was dead.
He had ordered one hundred rounds of .32 automatic ammunition and collected them at approximately half past three on the afternoon the warehouse burned.
Hours later, .32 automatic cartridge cases had been recovered inside the warehouse and Briggs had been killed with a projectile consistent with that calibre.
Wright had attended Whitmore House, hired cars, ordered expensive clothing and conducted legitimate business with Pembroke.
What he did not appear to possess was a bed.
The problem became apparent only once detectives tried to find him rather than reconstruct where he had already been. Hotels under the name Markus Wright gave them nothing. Respectable boarding houses used by commercial travellers produced nothing. Several private clubs where a man with Wright's money and clothes might plausibly lodge did not know him.
The Danish identity itself existed well enough in British records to prevent Cartwright dismissing it as a name invented that week, but no Birmingham residence presented itself.
Ellis returned after another round of hotel enquiries carrying a list almost entirely composed of crosses and dropped it onto the table.
"Nothing at the Grand under Wright, nothing at the Midland, nothing at the Crown, nothing at the respectable boarding houses and nothing at the slightly less respectable ones," he said, leaning back against the wall and folding his arms. "Tailor knows him. Gunsmith knows him. Jeweller knows him. Publicans know him. Motor hire knows him. Pembroke knows him. Yet apparently no human being in Birmingham has ever seen Markus Wright take his shoes off."
Cartwright looked up from the ammunition order. "Perhaps he sleeps in them."
"I'm serious."
"So am I. It would explain his efficiency."
Ellis shook his head, though amusement tugged briefly at his expression. "If Wright were just an alias he used when asking questions in pubs, fine. But why use the same name buying ammunition? Why go to Whitmore's under it? Why do business with Pembroke under it?"
"Exactly."
"A false name is supposed to make you harder to connect to things."
"And Wright has spent a week making himself memorable."
"Then disappears whenever anyone asks where the day starts or ends."
Cartwright looked toward the map.
Nothing supernatural was required to explain it. Birmingham was enormous, full of alleys, cabs, rented rooms and private houses. A man with money could move between districts without leaving every driver a biography. The troubling part was not that people occasionally lost sight of Wright; it was that every effort to establish a fixed point outside his public appointments failed.
"Forget the lodging tonight," Cartwright said eventually. "Where does he return?"
Ellis pushed himself away from the wall.
They worked through the sightings again. Several public houses had seen Wright once or twice but gave no reason he would return. The tailor's business with him was finished. The hundred rounds had been collected from the gunsmith. Motor hire received bookings rather than regular visits.
Pembroke remained active.
"Factory," Ellis said, tapping the name.
"Solicitor involved."
"If Wright plans to leave Birmingham, he either abandons the matter or comes back to speak with Pembroke."
Cartwright nodded. "Put Harris across the street."
The sergeant looked faintly amused. "You enjoy giving him wet assignments."
"He has a face people forget."
"And feet he'll remember forever."
"A sacrifice to public service."
By the time Detective Constable Arthur Harris settled beneath the awning of a closed stationer's opposite Pembroke & Co., Billy Kimber was returning from the races and learning that the police had finally attached a name to one of the week's stranger threads.
Vale had joined him for the final part of the journey into Birmingham and discovered within the first half hour that Billy's silence was worse company than his anger. Anger at least accumulated toward something. It produced instructions, names and eventually men sent somewhere. Silence meant Kimber was still trying to make the world resemble one he understood.
The motorcar carried them beneath a colourless afternoon while brick terraces and chimneys gradually replaced open road. Vale supplied information only when asked, having already learned that filling the spaces between questions did nothing but irritate Billy.
"How many dead do we actually know are ours?" Kimber asked eventually, sitting angled toward the window with one hand resting on his knee.
Vale gave him the current count.
Kimber's jaw shifted once. "Missing?"
Vale hesitated, and Billy turned his head.
"Say it."
"Twelve I know went into the warehouse after word spread. Could be more depending on who was already inside before the fire."
"Twelve."
"Yes."
"And police?"
"Still revising their own count."
"Useful as ever."
Vale let that pass.
The motorcar rattled over wet cobbles as Birmingham gathered around them.
"Anybody claimed it?" Kimber asked.
"No."
"Racecourse lot?"
"Nothing."
"Coventry?"
"Nothing."
"London?"
"Nothing I trust."
Billy looked back through the glass. That answer bothered him more than Vale needed to explain.
They did not go to the warehouse. Kimber had no intention of standing outside a ruin while reporters and neighbours studied whether Billy Kimber looked frightened by it, and even Superintendent Marsh could only bend access so far before someone above him began wondering why one of Birmingham's most conspicuous criminals was receiving privileged tours of an active murder scene.
Summer Lane was familiar enough that he did not need privilege there.
The Stag's Head sat warm behind misted windows, smelling of ale, tobacco and wet wool whenever the door opened. It was not some formal headquarters for Kimber's entire organisation, which had long since spread across racecourses and bookmakers farther afield, but Summer Lane belonged to the geography of the man he had been before money carried his influence farther. People there knew him without needing to perform the knowledge.
Conversation lowered by degrees when Billy entered. Nobody stopped outright; men who had known dangerous people for years did not behave like actors in melodramas. Faces turned, recognised him and turned back toward their drinks a little more carefully. An older man near the bar raised his glass and Billy acknowledged him with the smallest movement of his head before Vale led him toward the private room at the back.
Kimber noticed the watchers before his coat was off.
One stood outside near the corner. Another remained close to the door. A third smoked with the absent-minded concentration of a man using the cigarette as an excuse to remain in place rather than because he wanted it.
"Why've I got men standing around Summer Lane like we're expecting the Army?" Billy asked, laying his gloves beside the whisky someone had already poured while Vale shut the door.
"Because nobody knows what they're meant to look for," Vale replied, keeping one hand on the opposite chair as Kimber's eyes settled on him. The answer sounded worse after he said it, but he did not retract it. "That's the truth, Billy."
Kimber sat slowly. "Then give me only that."
Vale took the chair opposite while two older Birmingham Boys remained farther along the table.
"People outside heard gunfire, screaming, glass breaking. Something heavy hit the loading door or wall hard enough they heard it across the street," he said, resting his forearms against the tabletop. "They saw our lads go in after the fire started, but none of the men who crossed into the building came back to say who was fighting whom."
"Rival gang?"
"People say it."
"Did anyone see one?"
"No."
"Several attackers?"
"Some reckon so because the noise seemed to move through different parts of the building."
"Did they see several?"
"No."
Billy's fingers closed around his glass without lifting it. "One man."
Vale rubbed his jaw. "People say that too."
"Did they see one?"
"No."
The room became quieter.
"That is what is frightening them," Vale continued, lowering his voice slightly. "Not what anybody knows. What nobody knows."
Kimber finally drank.
"What are police doing?"
"Recent enemies. Charlie's work. Walter's collections. Racecourse disputes. They're looking at whether Walter and Charlie are part of the same thing."
Billy's eyes lifted. "Price."
"Yes."
For several seconds he stared at Vale without seeing him.
"Inside man?"
"They're looking at that too."
Kimber leaned back, and for the first time since the journey began something like familiar ground appeared beneath the discussion. "One of Charlie's own lays the oil. Knows the watchman. Lets somebody inside."
"Could be."
"Who had trouble with Charlie?"
Vale supplied the same four names police had considered. Billy recognised each: the man buried in gambling debts, the one Briggs had humiliated publicly, the complainer over race money and the fellow talking about Liverpool.
"Bring them in."
Vale's mouth tightened. "They're dead."
Kimber looked at him.
"All four?"
"Yes."
A traitor could die. Billy knew that perfectly well. He could be double-crossed, trapped in the fire he helped prepare or discover too late that the arrangement he agreed to had never included his survival.
It simply left nobody alive to hurt until he spoke.
"What about the missing?" Kimber asked, looking down into the whisky.
"None home."
"Doctors?"
"Nothing."
"Stations?"
"Police checked. So did we."
"Coventry?"
"Word sent."
"London?"
"Same."
Billy moved one thumb along the edge of the glass. "Maybe they ran."
Vale studied him. "Twelve?"
Kimber looked up sharply.
"One man runs from you, I understand it," Vale continued, refusing to retreat from the expression across the table. "Two, maybe. Twelve men come out of the same warehouse, never touch money, never see a wife, never use a train, never show up at a doctor and never speak to anyone we know?"
"Bodies moved."
"How?"
Billy's gaze hardened.
Vale lowered his voice but kept going. "Street was full by then. Our lads, neighbours, fire brigade arriving. If somebody loaded twelve bodies onto a cart after all that, half Birmingham ought to know whether the horse was brown or grey."
One of the older men shifted in his chair.
Kimber noticed immediately. "What?"
The fellow glanced toward Vale.
"If Tom knows it, Tom speaks."
Vale drew a slow breath. "Police got a name this morning."
Billy placed the glass down.
"Whose?"
"Markus Wright."
The banquet returned to Kimber immediately. A long pale face, expensive evening clothes, an accent that did not belong to Birmingham and the deeply irritating calm of a man who had looked at Billy without first deciding how dangerous Billy might be.
"The Dane."
"That's him."
"What have they got?"
Vale leaned forward. "Gunsmith in the Quarter says Wright collected a hundred rounds of .32 automatic ammunition at half past three the day the warehouse burned."
For the first time the two older men at the table reacted without disguising it.
Billy did not.
"A hundred," he repeated.
"Yes."
"Police found that?"
"Yes."
"What else?"
"They've been going backward from the name. Publican remembers Wright asking about us. You. Walter. Charlie. Me. Who collected, who handled trouble, who'd been around longest."
"Before Walter died?"
"Before."
Kimber's fingers settled against the glass again.
"Where does Wright stay?"
Vale looked at him.
Billy caught the hesitation.
"What?"
"Nobody knows."
"Explain that."
"Police have checked hotels, boarding houses, clubs. Nothing under Markus Wright. People see him around the city. Tailor knows him. Jeweller knows him. Gunsmith knows him. Pembroke knows him. He hires cars, goes into offices, sits in pubs. But nobody can tell you where he sleeps."
"Men sleep somewhere."
"Yes."
"Then follow him."
"They've only just started properly looking."
"Have we?"
"Not yet. We didn't have the ammunition lead before today."
Billy stared into the whisky again. A foreign businessman who asked questions about his organisation was irritating. A foreign businessman who bought a hundred cartridges on the afternoon Briggs's warehouse burned and then could not be traced to a bed was something else.
"Who is Wright supposed to be?"
"Danish. Commercial adviser."
"Money?"
"Plenty."
"Business?"
"Pembroke."
Billy's eyes rose.
"Factory arrangement," Vale continued. "Some benefactor behind Wright. Serious enough Pembroke's got solicitors looking at it."
That complicated things again.
Pembroke might boast too much and enjoy hearing himself display scraps of knowledge, but he was not stupid about money. Nor was Whitmore likely to have knowingly hosted some gutter impostor among industrialists and manufacturers.
"Take Wright next time he appears?" one of the older men asked.
"No," Kimber replied so quickly that the man looked surprised.
Vale watched him.
"If he's nothing more than a wealthy foreign bastard with legitimate business, you drag him behind a betting shop and Pembroke begins shouting. Whitmore hears. Maybe someone in London hears because apparently this benefactor has money." Billy's gaze moved briefly around the room. "And if Wright isn't nothing more than that, I'm not sending two lads after a man who buys a hundred rounds in daylight, asks about my people under his own name and somehow doesn't have a front door."
Nobody laughed.
"Watch Pembroke," Kimber said. "Watch anywhere Wright has appeared twice. If police are already following him, let them do it first."
Vale almost smiled. "Let the coppers earn their pay."
"For once."
"And if they find where he goes?"
"We find where he goes."
"If they lose him?"
Billy lifted the whisky again. "Then we learn something else."
Across Birmingham, Nathan was arranging his journey home.
He telephoned The Knapp shortly before four from his own room at the Grand, standing beside the writing desk while the operator worked the call through the exchange. His room had acquired the small disorder of actual occupation: academic correspondence beside an open journal, a waistcoat over the back of a chair, two letters forwarded from Dorset still unopened because the hands on the envelopes told him neither was urgent and a book lying facedown near the bed where he had stopped reading several nights earlier.
The connection clicked twice, breathed static softly and then carried a familiar voice across the distance.
"The Knapp."
Nathan's expression softened before he answered. "Mrs Hargreaves, it's Nathan," he said, leaning one hand against the desk as afternoon light weakened beyond the window.
"Professor," Mrs Hargreaves replied, and the relief beneath her practical tone appeared only long enough for him to hear it. "I was beginning to think Birmingham had discovered enough business to keep you until Christmas."
"I believe the last of it should be concluding shortly."
"That is considerably better than your earlier arrangement, which amounted to returning whenever you felt the universe had finished inconveniencing you."
"I thought it admirably flexible."
"You would."
A smile touched his mouth.
"I'm arranging my return in two days," Nathan said. "I expect to take a train at roughly five in the afternoon, assuming the War Office hasn't concluded civilians are an inefficient use of railway carriages by then."
Paper rustled immediately at the other end.
"Two days, approximately five. Which service?"
Nathan gave her the expected connection and station. Mrs Hargreaves repeated both while writing them down, and he could picture the little crease appearing between her brows whenever she dealt with arrangements she expected somebody else to complicate.
"I'll arrange a motor car to meet you."
"That won't be necessary."
"It will."
Nathan smiled more visibly. "I wasn't aware you had assumed authority over my transportation."
"I haven't."
"Then I appear confused."
"I have assumed authority over what happens after the railway abandons you several miles from the house."
"Ah. A narrow constitutional distinction."
"An important one."
Nathan gave a quiet laugh.
"The driver can wait if the train is late," she continued. "And before you object again, I've already written it down, so changing my mind would require additional effort."
"Then I've entered negotiations after the treaty was signed."
"Precisely."
"You've grown remarkably authoritarian while I've been away."
"I manage a house belonging to a man who occasionally forgets that meals happen every day. Authority becomes necessary."
Nathan leaned more comfortably against the desk, Birmingham receding a little simply because she was describing home. "How is everything there?"
"Quiet," Mrs Hargreaves said, and he found himself appreciating the word. "Two letters from London arrived this morning. Neither marked urgent. The coal account is finally settled, although I remain convinced Mr Shaw and the supplier came to terms only because I threatened to place both versions of the arithmetic on your desk."
"Fear remains an efficient administrative tool."
"I did not say anyone was frightened of you."
"You implied it magnificently."
"I implied that neither man wished to spend an afternoon explaining simple figures to a professor who would undoubtedly discover three new problems while doing it."
"Less flattering."
"More accurate."
She continued through the ordinary life of The Knapp. Laboratory glassware had arrived in the wrong dimensions. One section of garden wall should be repaired before winter. A rug needed moving away from damp near one room. A package addressed to Nathan plainly belonged to Mercer, and a timber supplier wanted a decision soon if the estate intended to secure the current price.
Nathan listened to every detail.
For several minutes there was no warehouse. No Charlie Briggs hiding beneath a desk. No Margaret sitting opposite him with both hands around cold coffee while speaking about the son she believed dead, and no rain striking his umbrella while his father's name darkened beneath water.
There was coal, laboratory glass, a wall and a rug.
There was home.
"You sound tired," Mrs Hargreaves said eventually, after the final household problem had been accounted for.
Nathan looked toward his reflection faintly visible in the window. "Do I?"
"You do."
"The Birmingham business became more complicated than I expected."
"It often does when men combine money with pride."
Nathan smiled. "You should have become an economist."
"I prefer useful employment."
He laughed softly.
Mrs Hargreaves waited for the sound to fade before speaking again. "Come home safely, Professor , And do not apply your usual reasoning where surviving an unreasonable decision becomes evidence that the decision was perfectly sensible."
His thumb stopped moving along the telephone cord.
The remark was innocent. She knew his habit of overworking, conducting experiments upon himself when caution advised otherwise and treating physical exhaustion as though it were a bookkeeping error.
Still, it landed close enough that his expression changed.
"I'll attempt to conduct myself like an ordinary railway passenger," Nathan replied.
"I would very much like to witness that."
"Thank you, Mrs Hargreaves."
"For the motor car?"
"For everything."
The line became quiet.
Mrs Hargreaves handled sentiment no more comfortably than he did.
"Then come home," she said after several seconds. "I'll have the car waiting."
"I will."
..
Across Birmingham, Detective Constable Arthur Harris had been sitting beneath the awning of a closed stationer's opposite Pembroke & Co. for almost three hours and had developed private grievances against Cartwright, Markus Wright, the weather and whoever had manufactured his shoes.
His instructions had been painfully clear.
Watch Pembroke.
If Wright appeared, note the time.
Do not approach.
Do not decide that enthusiasm could replace evidence.
During the first hour clerks entered and left. During the second rain began. By the third Harris had folded the same newspaper into so many arrangements that no sensible passer-by could have believed he remained interested in yesterday's parliamentary news.
Pembroke's upper office was still lit.
Most of the clerks had gone home.
Harris shifted his feet inside damp shoes and had just begun considering whether five minutes inside the public house farther along the street would truly constitute dereliction when movement in the alley beside the neighbouring premises caught his attention.
He kept the newspaper raised.
A man stepped out.
Harris had not seen anyone enter the alley, though that fact meant little; it ran behind several buildings and probably opened into service yards beyond his line of sight. He watched the stranger adjust one cuff as he approached the pavement.
Then the nearest lamp found his face.
Long features.
Pale eyes.
Silver beginning at the temples.
Dark coat cut much too well for a clerk.
Harris forgot the cold.
Markus Wright crossed the street without looking toward the stationer's and entered Pembroke's building as though he had arrived from somewhere entirely ordinary.
Harris checked his watch beneath the newspaper and wrote carefully in the notebook on his knee.
6:14 p.m. — Markus Wright observed entering Pembroke & Co. Approached from side alley east of premises. Point of origin not observed.
He paused, then underlined the last phrase.
Inside, the final clerk was putting papers into a leather satchel when Markus reached the outer office. The young man looked up, surprise changing quickly into recognition.
"Mr Wright," he said, straightening while one hand remained on a sheaf of invoices. "Mr Pembroke is still here, although I don't believe he was expecting anyone."
"He rarely expects me," Markus replied, drawing one glove slowly from his hand as he approached. "It has yet to cause lasting injury."
The clerk almost smiled. "I'll announce you."
"There is no need."
"There really is, sir," the young man said, and the quiet determination in his expression made Markus stop rather than turn an office procedure into a contest.
"Very well," Markus replied, inclining his head. "Announce me."
The clerk disappeared through Pembroke's door and returned less than a minute later looking faintly annoyed at both men.
"He'll see you."
"I had every confidence."
Pembroke remained behind the same desk beneath the warm circle of a lamp, though the factory proposal had spread noticeably since their previous meeting. Solicitor's correspondence lay beside revised estimates, notes filled margins that had once been empty and another sheet appeared to contain rough calculations for land and construction costs. A glass of whisky sat near one hand but had barely been touched.
The windows behind him had darkened until they reflected the office back upon itself.
"Wright," Pembroke said, removing his spectacles and leaning back when Markus entered. "You possess an almost supernatural instinct for appearing precisely when I decide I've worked long enough."
Markus closed the door and placed his hat on the side table. "I consider it maintenance."
"My work ethic does not require maintenance."
"Most declining institutions believe that."
Pembroke stared at him, then allowed a short laugh despite himself. "Sit down before I discover whether that paperweight can reach you."
Markus took the chair opposite and glanced over the solicitor's papers. "You've moved quickly."
"You told me to engage a solicitor," Pembroke replied, replacing his spectacles and touching the topmost letter with one finger. "I engaged one. He informs me the structure you proposed is irritatingly reasonable, which has done considerable damage to my opinion of you both."
"Then I approve of him already."
"I don't."
"You may in time."
"I sincerely hope not."
Markus gave a small grunt of amusement while Pembroke pushed one sheet partly across the desk.
"He dislikes the continuation clause," Pembroke said, leaning forward enough that the business briefly reclaimed the room. "His view is that 'enterprises arising directly from the concern' can be interpreted broadly enough for your mysterious benefactor to claim an interest in businesses nobody contemplated when the first company was incorporated."
"Then narrow it," Markus replied, reading the solicitor's proposed note before setting it back.
Pembroke lifted his eyebrows. "That easily?"
"My benefactor wants protection against the profitable portion of the undertaking being transferred into a successor company while his capital remains trapped in the original shell. He has no interest in owning a portion of every idea you develop for the remainder of your life."
"I told my solicitor much the same."
"Then despite your German, your command of English remains serviceable."
Pembroke stared across the desk. "There he is."
"Who?"
"The insufferable foreigner from Whitmore's banquet."
Markus almost smiled.
For several minutes the darker purpose of the visit receded. Pembroke argued that wartime material costs rendered one construction estimate too optimistic, while Markus countered that Pembroke had overprovided for early working capital and underprovided for eventual expansion. They discussed whether adjoining land should be secured at formation even if construction occupied only part of it, and Pembroke complained that Wright possessed the irritating habit of making expensive suggestions sound like precautions.
"You're very generous with other people's money," Pembroke said, tapping a figure with the blunt end of his pencil while Markus studied the proposed site.
"I'm trying to prevent you paying twice later for land you could buy once now."
"I haven't bought the first yard and you're already annoyed I don't own the second."
"I prefer planning before regret."
"You prefer spending."
"Only when spending saves more spending."
Pembroke shook his head, though something in his expression suggested he had already begun agreeing.
Then he became quieter.
Nathan noticed before the subject changed.
Pembroke removed his spectacles and polished them with a folded handkerchief despite there being nothing visibly wrong with the lenses.
"The police have been asking about you."
Markus looked up from the figures.
"I know."
Pembroke stopped polishing.
"You know."
"Yes."
"They found you?"
"No."
"Then how?"
Markus placed the sheet down and settled farther into the chair. "Policemen asking questions leave much the same wake as businessmen asking for credit. Everyone visited becomes suddenly interested in remembering exactly what was said."
Pembroke put the spectacles back on. "That might have sounded amusing yesterday. Today I had a detective asking one of my clerks how often Markus Wright visits this office."
Markus's expression did not change.
"What the devil have you done?" Pembroke asked, leaning forward now, the concern beneath his irritation too obvious to hide completely.
"Asked questions."
"Apparently very unfortunate ones."
"Useful questions often become unfortunate afterward."
"Walter Price," Pembroke said, watching his face closely.
Markus gave him nothing.
"And Charlie Briggs."
Still nothing.
Pembroke sat back and stared for several seconds. "Christ, Wright."
"I didn't come to discuss their investigation."
"You came into the office of a man the police are questioning about you." Pembroke rested one palm over the factory papers. "I think the investigation has earned at least a seat in the room."
Markus considered that before nodding once. "Fair."
Pembroke looked almost more unsettled by the agreement. "You agreeing with me may be the most worrying thing you've done this evening."
"Which is why I'm here," Markus replied, leaning slightly forward. The humour drained from his voice without needing to be announced. "Whatever attention attaches itself to me should not attach itself to my benefactor's plans. The factory remains commercially worthwhile, and I won't allow personal matters to overtake an undertaking that may have value long after neither of us is here to argue about it."
Pembroke's brow furrowed. "What are you saying?"
"For the next day I'll be indisposed," Markus said, resting one forearm against the chair while Pembroke watched him. "After that, you should consider me unavailable."
The businessman said nothing for a moment.
"Unavailable."
"Yes."
"That is a remarkably polished word for a man telling me he intends to disappear."
"I prefer polished words."
"Where are you going?"
"Elsewhere."
"Wright."
"Pembroke."
The businessman closed his eyes briefly and exhaled through his nose. "Do you ever answer a simple question like a normal human being?"
"Occasionally."
"When?"
"I'll have someone inform you."
Pembroke laughed before he could stop himself, then looked irritated at having done it. "What happens to the factory?"
"The factory continues."
"Through whom?"
"A liaison."
Pembroke stared. "Another mysterious man."
"You haven't met him yet. Give him time to disappoint you personally."
"And this liaison actually has authority?"
"Within defined limits."
"Which are?"
Markus drew one of the papers closer and tapped the relevant clauses. "Your solicitor may negotiate the subscription percentage within the range already discussed, refine the qualifying holding, obtain evidence of funds and alter practical wording in the memorandum and articles. The reserved directorship remains. Protection against dilution remains. My benefactor retains the right to maintain proportional participation in direct expansion arising from the company."
"And the clause my solicitor hates?"
"He may narrow the language so long as the protection survives."
Pembroke looked up. "Name."
Markus reached into his coat.
The businessman's eyes followed the hand immediately.
Nathan noticed.
"Relax."
Pembroke's eyebrows rose almost to his hairline. "Do not discuss murdered gangsters with me, reach inside your coat and then tell me to relax."
For the first time that evening genuine amusement reached Markus's eyes.
He withdrew a small card and placed it on the desk.
"Edwin Harland."
Pembroke picked it up and read the London correspondence address beneath the name before turning the card over.
Blank.
"Who is Edwin Harland?"
"A commercial liaison."
"You have simply repeated the term I was objecting to."
"He handles correspondence and meetings for individuals who would rather pay someone else to be bored."
Pembroke looked up. "So you, with less personality."
"Considerably less."
"That may be an improvement."
"I'm trying not to take offence."
"You should try harder."
A hint of the old rhythm returned between them, but it did not erase what sat beneath the conversation.
"Has Harland met my solicitor?" Pembroke asked, setting the card beside the papers.
"No."
"Whitmore?"
"No."
"Does anyone in Birmingham know him?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"So you disappear, a man nobody here has met begins writing to me, and both of you supposedly represent another man nobody has met."
"When you say it like that, you make respectable private finance sound suspicious."
"It is suspicious."
"Much of respectable private finance is."
Pembroke almost smiled, then removed his spectacles again and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Do you understand how this looks?"
"Yes."
"I'm not convinced."
Markus waited.
"Walter Price is shot. Charlie Briggs dies in a warehouse with more Birmingham Boys than anyone wants to count. Police begin asking about the foreign gentleman who was apparently curious about both of them, and now that same gentleman walks into my office after dark to announce he'll be unavailable tomorrow." Pembroke leaned both hands against the desk. "You cannot seriously expect me not to connect those things."
"I don't expect you to do anything of the kind."
Pembroke stared.
"If the police ask whether I came here tonight, tell them I did," Markus continued, voice quieter now. "Tell them when. Tell them we discussed the factory. Tell them I gave you Harland's details. If they ask anything else, answer according to your own judgment and whatever your solicitor considers proper concerning confidential finances."
The surprise in Pembroke's face was almost immediate.
"You aren't asking me to lie."
"No."
"I had rather assumed that was coming."
"I would consider it insulting."
"To me?"
"To both of us."
Pembroke settled slowly back into the chair. "If they ask whether I think you had anything to do with Price or the warehouse?"
Markus's pale eyes rested steadily on him. "Answer however you believe."
Pembroke's expression tightened. "That is an appalling thing to say."
"Would you prefer I instruct you?"
"No."
"Then we agree."
The last clerk outside shut a drawer, and both men heard papers being gathered before footsteps crossed the outer office and descended the stairs. Rain tapped steadily against the black windows. Once the door below closed, the building seemed larger around them.
Pembroke looked toward the office door and then back to Markus.
"Are you in trouble?"
The question had changed.
Nathan heard the concern beneath it.
For a moment the colder composure around Markus's face softened.
"Nothing I cannot manage."
Pembroke leaned back with a tired sigh. "That is precisely what dangerous men say immediately before someone finds them floating in a canal."
"I have no intention of being found in a canal."
"That is not remotely reassuring."
"I thought it excellent."
"It was dreadful."
A quiet breath of laughter escaped Markus.
Pembroke watched him for several seconds. "You genuinely mean to disappear."
"I mean Markus Wright will no longer be available for commercial correspondence after tomorrow."
Something about the wording made Pembroke's eyes narrow, but he did not ask the question that followed.
Instead he looked down at the factory papers.
"The money remains?"
"Yes."
"The subscription?"
"Yes."
"The directorship?"
"Yes."
"My solicitor will demand a bank reference."
"Harland will provide whatever evidence is reasonably required."
"Without giving me the benefactor's name."
"Correct."
Pembroke looked toward the ceiling. "Of course."
Markus stood and began drawing his gloves on.
The movement ended something in the room more effectively than a formal farewell.
"This is it, then," Pembroke said, watching him from behind the desk.
Markus glanced over. "For us?"
Pembroke gave a short laugh that carried much less amusement than before. "You appear at Whitmore's banquet, correct my German in front of Elena, somehow know enough about my shipping affairs to pry where you've no business prying, propose a factory I spend several evenings trying to convince myself I don't want, and now you leave another stranger's card on my desk before disappearing."
Markus pulled the second glove snug over his fingers. "When you describe it that way, I sound exhausting."
"You are exhausting."
"Then perhaps you'll enjoy the quiet."
Pembroke looked at him for a moment, and the silence made that answer less certain than either man expected.
Markus picked up his hat.
"I've enjoyed our conversations."
Pembroke stopped touching the papers.
"You have?"
"Yes."
Pembroke waited, visibly expecting some qualifying insult.
Markus settled the hat beneath one arm. "You're considerably less dull than most men with money."
For a moment Pembroke only stared. Then a genuine laugh escaped him.
"That may be the kindest thing you have ever said to me."
"Don't become sentimental."
"God forbid."
Both men smiled.
Markus's faded first.
"There is one last thing."
Pembroke closed his eyes. "Of course there is."
"You should consider acquiring more space in Birmingham."
The businessman opened his eyes again. "For the factory?"
"For whatever follows."
"We haven't incorporated the first company."
"I know."
"We haven't purchased the first site."
"I know."
"And you're already telling me to buy more land."
"I'm telling you to pay attention to districts you've previously considered troublesome."
Pembroke frowned. "Why?"
Markus reached the door and rested one gloved hand on the handle.
"Because certain parts of Birmingham may become easier to acquire."
Pembroke's expression sharpened. "Why?"
For a moment Markus merely looked back at him across the lamplit office while rain whispered against the glass.
Then he answered with the same measured calm he had used while discussing shares.
"Birmingham will soon be less criminally inclined."
Pembroke stared at him.
There was no smile to make it a joke and no threat theatrical enough to become an admission. Wright had said it almost conversationally, as though commenting upon some economic condition he expected both of them to recognise eventually.
"What the devil does that mean?"
Markus opened the door. "You'll know when the prices fall."
"Wright."
He paused at the threshold.
Pembroke remained behind the desk, Harland's card beneath one hand and the factory papers beneath the other. There was no accusation on his face because accusation required certainty; there was only the beginning of a conclusion he did not yet possess enough evidence to complete.
Markus gave him nothing further.
"Good evening, Pembroke."
The businessman held his gaze for another second before leaning back.
"Good evening, Wright."
Markus inclined his head and left.
Pembroke remained seated for several minutes after the door closed, listening to Wright's footsteps descend until the building swallowed them. His eyes drifted toward Edwin Harland's card, and eventually he picked it up, turned it over despite already knowing the reverse was blank, then set it among the factory papers.
There were perfectly sensible ways to interpret Wright's last remark. Police pressure after the warehouse might break parts of the Birmingham Boys' organisation. Rival gangs might move. Businesses protected by Kimber might fail, or frightened owners might sell property cheaply. Pembroke could have chosen any of those explanations.
He disliked that none had been the first thing that entered his mind.
Across the street, Harris lowered the newspaper when Pembroke's front door opened.
Markus Wright stepped out alone.
The detective constable checked his watch and waited rather than standing immediately. Cartwright had told him to follow, not pounce, and Harris intended to be dull enough to succeed.
Wright crossed the first intersection without looking back. Harris folded the newspaper, tucked it under one arm and left the stationer's awning after enough time had passed to make the movement ordinary.
Wright walked without hurry, pausing once to allow a cart to pass and another time beneath a shop awning while pedestrians crossed in front of him. Harris kept enough people between them to avoid becoming obvious, and the foreigner's dark coat appeared repeatedly among factory clerks and businessmen making their way home.
Then a tram entered the next intersection.
Harris stopped at the kerb while its lamps and wet metal slid between them. Wheels shrieked along the rails, the carriage taking several seconds longer to clear than seemed reasonable.
When it passed, Wright was gone.
Harris crossed immediately.
The far pavement held two women beneath umbrellas, several clerks, a labourer with his collar turned up and a boy carrying a parcel.
"Bloody hell," he muttered, turning back.
Several rooftops above, beyond the lamplight and the rain, a black crow rose through chimney smoke and turned north.