Chapter Five

Crane woke the next morning to the sound of Merrick bringing him a cup of coffee. He opened an eye and registered that there was only one cup on the tray at the same time as he became conscious of the empty bed around him. He muttered a curse.

"Problem?" enquired his henchman.

"No. Nothing."

"Mr. Day didn't turn up, then?" said Merrick, homing in on his thoughts as ever.

"Been and gone."

"Came and went?"

"Oh, shut up." Crane sat up and sipped his coffee. God knew when Stephen had left, he hadn't even stirred, but the little sod had ways of moving around silently. There would, he knew, be no note. There never was.

And that was perfectly reasonable, because they were both free men who could do as they pleased. He would rather have found Stephen's small form curled under his arm, would definitely rather be having a slow, leisurely morning in bed with him, watching the laughter and the lust warm his tawny eyes to gold, but doubtless he was busy. Crane had learned not even to ask about his work, counting it only as "busy" or "not busy".

They really had needed to talk more about bloody Rackham. That was the only problem. Otherwise Stephen could come and go—thank you, Merrick—as he pleased, and it was absurd of Crane to feel hurt, let alone this sliver of fear that this time he wouldn't come back, that the whole damned magpie business and Rackham's blackmail might make Stephen decide that life would be safer lived alone.

Rackham. Crane's eyes narrowed as he watched Merrick move round the room. "Any luck yesterday?"

"Not a dicky bird." Merrick picked up a discarded sock. "No gambling, no junk debts. Nothing nobody's talking about. If Mr. Rackham's got himself in trouble, I reckon it's a shaman thing."

"He has got himself in shaman trouble," Crane said. "Stephen mentioned that, but he didn't think it was enough to warrant making a run for it. So he concluded Rackham must be up to something he doesn't know about."

"Suspicious-minded bugger, Mr. Day. So what about Mr. Rackham, then? Am I going to break his legs?"

"Not yet, no." Crane drained his cup. "He's battened onto Leonora Hart."

"The hell he has." Merrick's face darkened. "Why don't I break his fucking neck and have done?"

"Give it time. We've till Friday, he said. And we must act in a civilised fashion in this country, you know."

"If you say so, my lord," muttered Merrick. "What's Mr. Day think?"

"Says he should be fine. Says it isn't likely to be a problem."

"Believe him?"

"No. Come with me to the office today, I want you in Limehouse. I'm going to call in some obligations and do a bit more work on Rackham's affairs. Buy up some debts. Revive some old grudges. See how fast I can get him to the verge of ruin."

"Ah," said Merrick, satisfied. " That kind of civilised."

It was four o'clock when the summons came.

"My lord?" His clerk opened the office door with a perfunctory knock. "A message for you. Personal."

It was a girl, and not a very striking girl, at that. She had pinched features, with a sharp nose, dirty-blonde hair in a straggly chignon, a general air of scruffiness. Her face was grubby, but the dirt was superficial, not ground in; she evidently washed regularly, and her boots were reasonably new and sturdy. She looked about fifteen, for all that meant with city youths. She was flushed from running and had a paper gripped in her hand.

"You his la-a-awdship?" she drawled.

"I'm Lord Crane."

"Ooh." Her eyes widened with mock awe. They were a striking light silver-blue. "Well, Lord Crane, I got a message for you." She held out the paper.

It was a playbill, and the message was scrawled on the back in pencil.

My lord

If convenient, please accompany the bearer. Your help would be most welcome on a professional matter.

S. Day

Crane contemplated that for a second, keeping his face blank. It was beyond extraordinary that Stephen should be asking for help with his work, but it resembled what little Crane had seen of his hand, it was definitely a reference to their conversation the night before, and the salutation…

"My lord" in Stephen's voice wasn't a respectful address. The son of a solicitor, he had a great deal of the clerkly class's pride and fiercely refused to use terms that implied aristocratic superiority. He had never once used it to Crane, until they became lovers, and the game began. In bed (over a desk, against a wall), "my lord" was a breathless, frantic submission, a plea to be mastered, a wholehearted surrender to Crane's demands and desires. On the page, it made this letter as much a billet-doux as a summons, and thinking of Stephen writing the words gave Crane a jolt straight to the groin. Whatever the little sod was up to, he had known this would bring Crane running.

"I'll be with you in a moment," he said. "Merrick!"

Crane knew Limehouse reasonably well, but after following the girl through alleys and back ways for ten minutes, he was lost. Not cripplingly lost—he knew which way the river was and which way Ratcliffe Highway—but lost enough that he wouldn't have wanted to run for it. They were in the poorest parts of London now, where the faces on the street were filthy, slurred by alcohol, marked by disease, raw with hunger. There were a lot of Chinese, lascars, sailors. Every head turned to watch Crane's progress, his height and the perfectly tailored clothing and spotless shirt marking him out as a rich man, a potential victim, a pigeon worth plucking.

He had left Merrick at the office with several other jobs to do. The deeper they went into this no man's land, the more he had to resist fruitless regrets on that decision.

The girl turned down another dingy alley, so narrow the sun's rays would barely penetrate it at midday, and two men fell into step behind Crane. He turned, saw they were lascars, and rapped out a string of hair-raising abuse in the language of the Shanghai docks, to discourage any attempts on his life or purse.

"What you on about?" demanded the girl. "Come on."

"I don't much want to be coshed or have my throat slit." Crane glared at the two men.

"Yeah, never worry. I'll look after you. This way."

She swung into a dark, low doorway. Crane gave the two men a last, nasty look, and ducked under the lintel into close, hot, stinking darkness, following the vague shape of the girl's skirt round a couple more passages until he came out into a larger room.

It was windowless, lit by a few candles in lanterns, dark and hot. The floor was bare, the walls sweated moisture. It smelled of cooking garlic and acrid chilli seeds and offal and sewers.

In the room were seven people. Four of them were Chinese, faces guarded, squatting against the far wall, waiting. The other three were European. One was a burly young man of medium height, with light brown hair, vivid green eyes and a square jaw. He stood against the wall with his arms folded, next to a large bundle of sackcloth. The next was a woman, aged perhaps thirty. She was plainly dressed, with dark hair twisted in a neat chignon, an olive-skinned face that was strong rather than attractive, and large, intensely brown eyes.

The last person in the room was Stephen. He was perched on the edge of a rickety table, amber eyes glowing slightly. They crinkled almost imperceptibly as he met Crane's gaze.

"Hello, Lord Crane. Thank you very much for coming. I wonder if you can give us a hand."

"By all means, Mr. Day." Crane wanted an apology for Stephen's latest disappearance, an explanation of how Rackham's greed really threatened him; he wanted to wind his fingers in the curly russet hair and pull the shorter man's head back for a kiss. He gave a small, polite smile instead. "In what way?"

"Well," Stephen said, "we need to speak to a practitioner urgently. Our usual interpreter is not available, and nobody appears to grasp what we're asking for, and these gentlemen don't want us to go any further, but I'm afraid that's not an option. I'd rather not force my way in, given a choice. The practitioners here are Mr. Bo and Mr. Tsang, and we need one of them now."

"I'll see what I can do." Crane switched to Shanghainese, and spoke to the men carefully and reasonably for a few minutes, until it was abundantly clear that they had no intention of helping. At this point he raised his voice and lowered his tone.

"…and get him fucking now , you scrofulous, shit-stained syphilitic discards of a substandard brothel!" he bellowed after the three men who were fleeing out of the room, leaving one terrified guard flattening himself against the wall. He turned back to Stephen, whose expression was absolutely neutral. His colleagues looked somewhere between astonished and appalled. The girl was grinning.

"They weren't very cooperative," Crane explained. "The shamans are unavailable, they said. They should be getting a headman now, someone in authority, to tell me what the problem is."

"What are shamans?" asked the burly young man. He had a deep voice and an uncompromising look.

"A shaman is a Chinese practitioner," Stephen said. "Let me introduce you. Lord Crane, this is Peter Janossi, and Mrs. Esther Gold, and you've already met Jenny Saint."

Crane murmured courtesies and looked round at the urchin, realising that she must be the fourth of Stephen's team of justiciars. He had heard a certain amount about them all, and had pictured something rather more impressive than the reality. Janossi looked mildly hostile; Saint had what Crane suspected was a permanent smirk. Mrs. Gold was looking at him with interest, her head slightly cocked.

Crane knew from Stephen that Mrs. Gold was the senior member of the team, and that she resented the common assumption that she was subordinate to the men. He addressed his next words to her. "Please don't think this is vulgar curiosity, but if you want me to translate when someone arrives, it would help to know what I need to discuss. What's the problem?"

The practitioners glanced at each other, quick fleeting looks. Esther Gold said, "Rats."

"Rats?"

"Rats."

"We got a rat problem." Saint wore a malicious grin.

"I suppose you know you can hire a man and a dog in any pub in this city," Crane offered blandly.

"It wouldn't help," Stephen said. "Joss, show him."

Janossi put a toe under a fold of the sackcloth bundle and flipped it over. Crane walked over and looked at what lay within.

It was undeniably a rat. Its long yellow teeth were bared in death. Its eyes were blood-filled and bulging, which Crane attributed to Stephen, since he had seen a man dead that way at his hands. Its matted, dirty brown pelt was stiff with filth and dust, its claws were grey and scaly, its naked tail pinkish. It was a rat like any other, except in one respect.

It was about four feet long, not counting the tail, and would have stood perhaps a foot high at the shoulder.

"I see," said Crane slowly. "No, I don't suppose a terrier would help, would it. Did you say rat , Mrs. Gold, or rats ?"

"Rats."

"That's not good." Crane stared down at the monster. "How many?"

"Don't know," said Stephen. "At least twenty. And they appear to be normal rats apart from the size, so the answer to ‘how many' is, for all we know, ‘twice as many as yesterday'. It's been a busy morning," he concluded casually and met Crane's eyes for a second.

"You needn't let it concern you." Mrs. Gold spoke kindly but firmly. "We'll deal with this. Just help us speak to the practitioners here, and that will be all we ask of you."

Janossi nodded reassuringly. Saint smirked. Stephen's gaze skittered up to the ceiling.

"Thank you," Crane said pleasantly. "Tell me, what makes you think this is a Chinese problem?"

"How do you mean?" asked Stephen.

"Why Limehouse, why shamans? Are you sure you're in the right place?"

"Why wouldn't we be?" demanded Janossi.

"Someone's coming," said Esther Gold, and they all looked round as a fat, elderly Chinese man bustled in.

"Ah!" he shouted. "Bamboo!"