“It’s just superstition,” Lloyd said, signaling for more ale. “You pack enough people into a space small as this camp, you’re bound to get rumors and strange talk. Bound to.”
Dowden shook his head. “I don’t know, Mr. Lloyd. I wonder if there might be something behind the stories.”
“What stories?” Langton asked, leaning closer.
Lloyd swapped an empty mug for a full one from the barmaid’s tray. “Fantasies, no more. Too many folk with too much time on their hands and too many hopes.”
Langton turned to Dowden, who said, “Some claim to have seen lights around the Span. Like mist or slow steam, but colored yellow, gold, red, or orange. And they reckon they’ve heard children singing in the cables, and crying.”
Lloyd shook his head and smiled. “Oh, Mr. Dowden, Mr. Dowden. You’ve been listening to fancies, tales spun by people a little empty in the head, or by those who see what they wants to. They think the lights
are the spirits of their dead husbands come back to see them. They’re nothing like that.”
“So the lights do exist?” Langton said.
Lloyd reconsidered his words. “Well, you see a glimmer or two some nights, I’ll grant you that. It’ll be no more than marsh gas or dust from the uranium docks.”
“I’m not so sure,” Dowden said. “I’ve no wish to gainsay you, Mr. Lloyd, but my mother’s mother was a wise woman back in Donegal and I wonder sometimes if I see a little more than I should. There’s an air to this camp; a feeling of things a little out of kilter.”
Lloyd glanced at Langton, then looked at Dowden as if seeing the Corporation man for the first time. Before he could say anything, the door burst open in a blast of icy air. A gaunt man rushed up to Lloyd and spoke in a hoarse whisper.
“We might have your man, Langton,” Lloyd said, downing his pint and making for the door. “Bob here reckons there’s a newcomer over by the tower shanties that fits your account.”
“You stay here, Mr. Dowden,” Langton said, rising. “I thank you for your help but I don’t want you harmed if this is the man I’m looking for. He’s too keen to use his revolver.”
Dowden plucked at Langton’s sleeve. He checked that Lloyd was out of hearing before he said, “One thing, Inspector. This talk of lights and voices in the night; it’s not the only strange occurrence.”
Langton hesitated, torn between wanting to follow Lloyd and wanting to hear Dowden. “Go on.”
“People disappear,” Dowden said. “The young, the old, even full-grown men. Some say that gangs come for them in dead of night. Most won’t talk about it, but—”
From outside, Lloyd called out, “Langton.”
“I’d like to hear more,” Langton said. “Later?”
Dowden nodded.
Langton left Dowden in the pub and followed Lloyd down the
alley, heading west. Water ran down the middle of the muddy track as if drawn to the river glimpsed between leaning shacks; the surface of the Mersey looked like hammered pewter. On either side of Langton, the poorer shacks leaned at disjointed angles, propping one another up like wooden drunks. Wan faces looked out from glassless windows.
Langton checked the comforting weight of the Webley in his pocket. He didn’t want to use it, not with so many people packed tight. In truth, he’d fired a weapon only three times since returning from Africa, but Durham seemed to have no compunction about using his.
“Another old section,” Lloyd said, breathless. “Almost as old as the Caisson Widows’ cabins.”
The ground dropped away as it neared the high-tide mark. The original quay’s sandstone bank, where once boats had docked, fell away to an expanse of foul silt. Here, a rough framework of embedded timbers reached out across the void; lashed together with whatever the camp could scavenge, the precarious roadway connected the shore with the first of the Span’s towers, that immense column jutting from the river. Each stone block of the tower looked larger than a tram.
“We thought the Company wouldn’t dare touch us if we clung onto the tower,” Lloyd said. “But it isn’t the favorite place to stay.”
Langton could understand why; the stench of the river drove straight up through the open timbers. As he walked along the shifting, creaking platform, Langton looked back to shore; a dozen pipes jutted from the bank and spewed sewage and bloodred industrial waste into the water. The reek caught the back of his throat and made him gag. How could anyone live here?
But they did. As he strode after Lloyd, Langton heard babies crying from within the homes built onto and into the framework. Some of the hovels were no more than open wooden boxes nailed to the timbers, while others had doors, windows, chimneys. And the quarters continued right up to the very stonework of the Span tower itself. Up close, the scale of the bridge overwhelmed Langton. Despite logic, he couldn’t
escape the certainty it would sink down and crush him. He could almost feel the weight and mass of that thundering concrete and steel above his head.
Bob halted and pointed to a shack perched half on the framework, half over the water. “Mrs. Naylor’s place, boss. The bloke came over yesterday.”
“Stay back,” Langton said. “If it is Durham, he’s dangerous.”
“You’re welcome to him,” Lloyd said. “Only remember that—”
The rough plank door to the shack swung open. Langton pushed Lloyd back and reached for the Webley. Instead of Durham, a ragged woman emerged from the shack and emptied a basin of dirty water over the side. Only as she turned to go back inside did she spot Langton. She yelled once.
Langton crossed the distance in seconds. He shielded the woman and looked around the edge of the door. Bunk beds, no more than planks covered with patched blankets. A woodstove perched on bricks. A wriggling baby, its crib an old drawer. And next to the fire, a man’s muddied jacket that could have been Durham’s.
The wind blew the trailing edges of a dirty curtain through the hole that passed for a window. Langton hesitated before leaning out. The cold river churned and surged fifty feet below him. As he turned to question the woman, Langton heard the clatter of boots on wood; when he ran from the shack he saw Lloyd and Bob but no Durham. Still, the sound of boots on wood, as if someone ran along the length of the framework.
“What’s underneath us?” Langton asked.
“Why, the timber struts of this here platform,” Lloyd said, “with planks running the whole length, unless they’ve ripped them up for firewood. Wait, man.”
Langton had already climbed out over the edge. He hung there for a moment. His hands clutched the splintered wood. Between his swaying feet, the sheer drop to the cold water so far below.
He swung his body like a pendulum until his legs twined about the
nearest strut. He let go above and clung to the structure. Like a bridge built by a drunken carpenter, the underside of the platform stretched on either side of him in a jigsaw of mismatched timbers. He ignored the stench from the encrusted pigeon droppings and ducked inside the platform. Disturbed birds flailed and shrieked.
Just as Lloyd had said, a collection of planks ran beneath the bowed underside. Langton batted away the panicking birds and saw the back of a man, crouched running. “Durham. Stop!”
The figure didn’t even look back. Langton sprinted after him, keeping his head down to avoid the crossbeams and jagged nails. He jumped from plank to plank, skidding on the guano.
Then, as Durham reached the end of the platform, the fugitive slipped; an unsecured plank spun away and hit the water with a silent splash, leaving Durham clinging to a crossbeam.
That slowed Langton. He looked to see if the next plank beneath his feet looked secure or loose. “Durham, wait. You’ll never make it.”
Durham ignored him and ran on, then seemed to fall again before he caught himself. He clambered back onto a beam and jumped across a gap. Another few yards and he’d reach the sandstone bank.
Langton raised his Webley. He sighted on Durham and pulled the hammer back, the trigger cold and slippery under his finger. “Durham. I’ll fire. Durham!”
The man square in the Webley’s sight didn’t stop. He reached the sandstone wall of the riverbank and started to climb it.
Langton swore and eased the hammer down. Even though Durham had fired on him, he couldn’t shoot him down like a dog. Instead, he sprinted after him and jumped over the gap left by the fallen plank. He reached the sandstone bank just as Durham clambered up its face not ten yards away. Langton followed him, clinging to the slimy sandstone.
Voices from above as Lloyd and a group of men lowered a rope down the bank.
Durham looked up, then back to Langton. His unwashed,
unshaven face contorted with pain or anger, or both. He started to move across the face of the rock like a mountain climber following a seam.
Langton wanted to yell at him, but he needed to concentrate on every move. He tried to find ledges for his boots, crevices or holes for his hands. He pressed his face into rock that stank of sewage. And it seemed that Durham was aiming for one of those sewage pipes nearby; he angled up until the plume of brown water arced out less than a yard away.
Where could he go? Surely he couldn’t climb up a sewer pipe in full spate?
As Langton risked calling out, Durham disappeared. Langton stared at the plume of sewage, then down at the water below. Durham hadn’t fallen. So where had he gone?
Trying to search the spot, Langton leaned out too far. He lost his balance and scrabbled at the rock. His boots skidded and lost purchase. He began to fall. The rope appeared in front of his eyes like a mirage; he clung to it and flinched as the weight of his falling body dragged his hands down the splintered hemp. The burning became cold, raw pain. His blood smeared the rope.
Lloyd and the others dragged Langton up the face of the bank. Despite the pain, despite his body slamming into the riverbank’s uneven surface, Langton stretched out and searched the plume of sewage. And he saw, beneath the gushing jet, a tunnel big enough to swallow a man. From the tunnel’s mouth scuttled a disturbed colony of cockroaches unused to daylight, with almost translucent carapaces.
The edge of the bank drew near. Langton felt himself pulled over the top and onto the cobbles. He lay gasping at Lloyd’s feet. Every muscle screamed out. He stared at his hands, at the stiff hemp fibers embedded in his bloody palms.
“You trying to kill yourself?” Lloyd said. “Suicide, that was.”
As soon as Langton got his breath back, he said, “Thank you.”
“Yes, well. I suppose.” Lloyd waved away the throng of onlookers, saying, “Get on with you, go on. Leave the man alone.”
Langton got to his feet and looked over the edge. “He got away. He climbed into a tunnel down there.”
Lloyd joined him and spat over the side. “Good luck to him, then. I wouldn’t fancy it.”
“Where might it lead?”
“Who knows? Riddled with old workings and tunnels, the riverbank is. Shafts go up, down, across, and inland. He could come out anywhere. If he survives.”
I
T DIDN
’
T MATTER
how hard Langton had braced himself, how much he expected it; the pain cut through his palms like scalding blades. As his hands curled into reflexive fists, he winced and bit back the curse that came to his lips.
“I did warn you,” Nurse Milne said. “Come on—let me see those hands.”
Like a reluctant child, Langton forced his hands open. The raw flesh on his palms, scoured by the hemp rope, bore stripes of purple iodine. He looked away as Nurse Milne brought the pungent swab closer. She leaned over and brushed his wounds with delicate movements. This time around, the pain receded a little, not as though every nerve ending screamed.
Nurse Milne sealed the brown bottle and dropped the dirty swab into a bin. “All done. Just leave them there to dry.”
“Thank you.”
Langton sat at an old scavenged school desk, with the back of his forearms and his knuckles flat against the scrubbed wood. The reek of
disinfecting iodine drifted through the small room and mixed with Nurse Milne’s odors of hospital carbolic and sweat.
Mr. Lloyd had guided Langton to this small sick bay, a room set back off the shanty camp’s main street. With its canvas stretcher leaning against the wall, its scavenged couch and table, its smells of mud and chemicals, it reminded Langton of Transvaal dressing stations. The nurses out there had used whatever they could find, too.
Nurse Milne reminded Langton more of Sister Wright. She wore the same uniform as the Infirmary staff: dark blue tunic, white apron, white straps crisscrossing her broad back. She even hung the same type of inverted watch at her breast, next to a silver pin with an ornate head.
Langton tried to remember where he’d seen that pin before. “Nurse, do you work at the Infirmary?”
She turned from washing her hands in the porcelain basin. “Why, yes I do.”
“As well as here at the camp?”
“Oh, this is voluntary. Quite a number of us give a few hours each week.”
Seeing her hide a yawn, Langton said, “You come here after your shift?”
“When we can.” She checked the time on her apron watch. “Soon be home in bed, God willing.”
Again, the pin glinted in the light of the oil lamp. The head, smaller than a sixpence, looked like a convoluted letter
A
.
“May I ask what that means?”
“This? It’s from the Guild,” Nurse Milne said, touching the pin and blushing.
“The Guild?”
“Of Asclepiadae. I joined it in nursing school. We try to donate some of our free time and experience to the needy, to people who can’t afford doctors or hospitals. Some don’t even like coming to the Infirmary. We do what we can.”
Langton understood. The Guild must be one of the many charitable organizations set up by philanthropists or religious groups. In the rush of industrial progress and the expansion of the empire and trade, little thought was given to the poor. Bodies like the Guild helped fill the void, despite the protestations from Reverend Malthus, who said that poverty, disease, and death were all part of the Divine Plan.
Langton remembered where he’d seen that type of pin before. “Tell me, does Sister Wright visit the camp?”