“Probably. Sounds like Inspector Smith to me. Hmm. Hold this.” Miriam passed her the flashlight and continued to brush dirt and cobwebs out of the pinafore: It had started out white, and at best it would be gray by the time she surfaced. “Right, I think we’re just about ready to surface.”
“Where?”
“The next street over, in a backyard.” Miriam pulled the door open to reveal wooden steps leading up toward daylight. “Come on. Put the flashlight away and for God’s sake hide the gun.”
They surfaced between brick walls, a sky the color of a slate roof above them. Miriam unlatched the gate and they slipped out, two hard-faced women, one in a maid’s uniform and the other in a green much-patched suit that had seen better days. They were a far cry from the dignified widow and her young companion who had called on Burgeson’s emporium twenty minutes earlier.
“Quick.” Miriam guided Olga onto the first tram to pass. It would go sufficiently close to home to do. “Two fourpenny tickets, please.” She paid the conductor and sat down, feeling faint. She glanced round the tram, but nobody was within earshot. “That was too close for comfort,” she whispered.
“What was it?” Olga asked quietly, sitting next to her.
“We weren’t there. They can’t prove anything. There’s no bullion on Erasmus’s premises, and he’s a sick man. Unless we were followed from the works to his shop…” Miriam stopped. “He said some housebreakers were going to hit on us tonight,” she said slowly. “This is not good news.”
“Housebreakers.” Olga’s face was a mask of grim anticipation. “Do you mean what I think you intend to say? Blackguards with knives?”
“Not necessarily. He said two men were asking around a drinking house for bravos who’d like to take their coin. One of them looked Oriental.”
Olga tensed. “I see,” she said quietly.
“Indeed.” Miriam nodded. “I think tonight we’re going to see some questions answered. Oriental, huh?” She grinned angrily. “Time to play host for the long-lost relatives …”
The big stone house was set well back from the curving road, behind a thick hedge and a low stone wall. Its nearest neighbors were fifty yards away, also set back and sheltered behind stone walls and hedges. Smoke boiled from two chimneys, and the lights in the central hall burned bright in the darkness, but there were no servants. On arriving home Miriam had packed Jane and her husband Ronald the gardener off to a cheap hotel with a silver guinea in hand and the promise of a second to come against their silence. “I want no questions asked or answered,” Miriam said firmly. “D’you understand?”
“Yes’m,” said Jane, bobbing her head skeptically. It was clear that she harbored dark suspicions about Olga, and was wondering if her mistress was perhaps prone to unspeakable habits: a suspicion that Miriam was happy to encourage as a decoy from the truth.
“That’ll do,” Miriam said quietly, watching from the landing as they trudged down the road toward the tram stop and the six-fifteen service into town. “No servants, no witnesses. Right?”
“Right,” Olga echoed. “Are you sure you want me to go through with this?”
“Yes, I want you to do it. But do it fast, I don’t want to be alone longer than necessary. How are your temporary tattoos?”
“They’re fine. Look, what you told me about Matthias. If Brill’s working for—”
“She isn’t,” Miriam said firmly. “If she wanted me dead I’d be dead, okay? Get over it. If she’s hiding anything, it’s something else—Angbard, probably. Bring her over here and if the bad guys don’t show we’ll just dig out a bottle of wine and have a late-morning lie-in tomorrow, alright?”
“Right,” Olga said dubiously. Then she headed downstairs, for the kitchen door and the walk to the spot beside the greenhouse where Miriam had cleared the snow away.
Miriam watched her go, more apprehensive than she cared to admit. Alone in the house in winter, every creak and rustle seemed like a warning of a thief in the night. The heating gurgled ominously. Miriam retired to her bedroom and changed into an outfit she’d brought over on her last trip. The Velcro straps under her arms gave her some trouble, but the boots fitted well and she felt better for the bulletproof vest. With her ski mask on hand, revolver loaded and sitting on her hip, and night vision goggles strapped to her forehead, she felt even more like an imposter than she did when she was dressed up to the nines to meet the nobs. Just as long as they take me as seriously, she thought tensely. Then she picked up her dictaphone and checked the batteries and tape one last time—fully charged, fully rewound, ready for action. I hope this works.
The house felt dreadfully empty without either the servants or Olga about. I’ve gotten used to having other people around, Miriam realized. When did that happen!
She walked downstairs slowly, pausing on the landing to listen for signs of anything amiss. At the bottom she opened the door under the staircase and ducked inside. The silent alarm system was armed. Ronald the gardener had grumbled when she told him to bury the induction wire a foot underground, just inside the walls, but he’d done as she’d told him to when she reminded him who was paying. The control panel—utterly alien to this world—was concealed behind a false panel in the downstairs hall. She turned her walkie-talkie on, clipped the hands-free earphone into place, and continued her lonely patrol.
It all depended on Brill, of course. And on Roland, assuming Roland was on the level and wasn’t one of them playing a fiendishly deep inside game against her. Whoever they were. She was reasonably sure he wasn’t—if he was, he’d had several opportunities to dispose of her without getting caught, and hadn’t taken any of them—but there was still a question mark hanging over Brill. But whatever game she was playing wasn’t necessarily hostile, which was why Olga had gone back over to the hunting hide to fetch her. The idea of not being able to trust Olga just made Miriam’s head hurt. You have to start somewhere, haven’t you? she asked herself. If she assumed Olga was on her side and she was wrong, nothing she did would make any difference. And Olga vouched for Brill. And three of them would be a damn sight more use than two when the shit hit the fan, as it surely would, sometime in the small hours.
The big clock on the landing ticked the seconds away slowly. Miriam wandered into the kitchen, opened the door on the big cast-iron cooking range set against the interior wall, and shoveled coal into it. Then she turned the airflow up. It was going to be an extremely cold night, and even though she was warm inside her outdoor gear and flak jacket, Miriam felt the chill in her bones.
Two men, one of them Chinese-looking, in the wrong pubs. She shook her head, remembering a flowering of blood and a long, curved knife in the darkness. The feel of Roland’s hands on her bare skin, making her go hot and cold simultaneously. Iris looking at her with a guarded, startled expression, as unmotherly as Angbard’s supercillious crustiness. These are some of my favorite things, butter-pat sized lumps of soft metal glowing luminous in the twilight of a revolutionary quartermaster’s shop: Glock automatics and diamond rings …
Miriam shook herself. “Damn, if I wait here I’ll doze off for sure.” She stood up, raised the insulating lid on the range, and pushed the kettle onto the hot plate. A cup of coffee would get her going. She picked up her dictaphone and rewound, listening to notes she’d recorded earlier in the day.
“The family founder had six sons. Five of them had families and the Clan is the result. The sixth—what happened to him? Angbard said he went west and vanished. Suppose—suppose he did. Reached the western empire, that is, but did so poor, destitute, out of luck. Along the way he lost his talisman, the locket with the knotwork. If he had to re-create it from memory, so he could world-walk, would be succeed? Would I? I know what happens when I look at the knot, but can I remember exactly what shape it is, well enough to draw it? Let’s try.”