Read Chapter 18: The Buyer's Folly

The Albion Hotel stank of boiled cabbage and cheap disinfectant, the kind of smell that clung to the wallpaper and got into your bones. Arthur stood across the street in the doorway of a shuttered tobacconist, watching the rain bead on the hotel's grimy windows. The clock above the jeweller's shop next door said ten to nine.

Scar materialised at his elbow like a bad penny.

“He's here already,” Scar said, his voice a low rasp. He smelled of whisky and nerves. “Room nine, up the back stairs. Prentice booked it for the week.”

Arthur didn't turn. “Alone?”

“Far as I can tell. He's got a man on the front desk, but he's just for show. Paid him off to look the other way.”

Arthur weighed the diary in his coat pocket. Heavy. Solid. The hardcover binding had been good quality once, the kind the police issued to their own. He'd already decided he wasn't handing it over if he could help it. The diary was all he had left.

“You remember the arrangement,” Arthur said. “You introduce me as a fence with eyes on the manifest, get me in the room. Then you collect your second half and walk.”

“And if he wants to see the goods first?”

“Then I show him exactly what he wants to see, and we all go home happy.” Arthur turned to face him. Scar's eyes were restless, darting to the hotel, then back to the street. The man was a tell waiting to be read. “One thing, Scar. I find out you've sold me up the river, I'll make sure Eddie Marsh's diary finds its way to the police—with your name written all over the parts that matter.”

Scar's jaw tightened. “You think I'd double you after you paid me half up front?”

“I think you'd double your own mother for the price of a pint. Let's go.”

They crossed the street quickly, heads down against the drizzle. The hotel's front door was unlocked, the lobby empty save for a sleepy-looking clerk behind the desk who didn't glance up from his racing paper. Scar led him through a side corridor and up a narrow staircase that creaked with every step.

Room nine was at the end of the hall. Scar knocked twice, paused, then once more.

The door opened a crack. An eye peered out, pale and watery, took them both in, then the door swung wide.

The man called Prentice—Marlow, if that was his real name—was smaller than Arthur had expected. A wiry little ferret of a man in a grey suit that had seen better decades, with a face that looked like it had been carved from a potato. He gestured them inside with a hand that trembled slightly.

The room was mean and cramped. A single bed with a threadbare coverlet, a cheap writing desk, and a sink in the corner with a cracked mirror above it. On the desk sat a leather satchel and a bottle of whisky, two glasses already poured.

“Mr. Scar,” Marlow said, his voice thin and nasal. “And you must be the man with the information.”

“Name's Phelps,” Arthur said, staying near the door. “I understand you're in the market for a manifest.”

Marlow gestured at the glasses. “Drink?”

“I'd rather talk business.”

The little man's eyes flickered to Scar, then back. “The manifest. You've seen it?”

“I've seen enough to know what it is.” Arthur kept his voice flat. “It's not a cargo list. It's a death warrant. Names Victor was paid to cross off, one by one. You're the one holding the pencil, aren't you?”

Marlow's face went still. For a long moment, nobody moved.

Then Marlow laughed—a dry, rasping sound like paper tearing. “Mr. Phelps, I think you've misread the situation entirely.” He glanced at Scar again, and something passed between them. “I'm not the man who buys the manifest. I'm the man who makes sure it's never found.”

Arthur's hand closed around the diary in his pocket.

“Scar,” he said, not taking his eyes off Marlow. “What's he talking about?”

Scar didn't answer. Instead, he took a step sideways—cutting off Arthur's path to the door.

“I'm sorry, Arthur,” Scar said, and the regret in his voice sounded almost genuine. “Victor pays better than promises.”

Marlow reached into his satchel. Arthur didn't wait to see what he was pulling out. He moved first, throwing himself sideways as Marlow's hand emerged with a snub-nosed revolver.

The shot was deafening in the tiny room. Arthur felt the impact slam into his chest, driving the air from his lungs, and for one terrible heartbeat he thought it was over—

But the diary was there. The hardcover stopped the bullet with a sickening thud, the force of it shoving him back against the wall. He felt the ribs crack under the leather, pain lancing through him like a hot knife.

Marlow was already bringing the gun up for a second shot. Arthur's hand shot out, grabbing the whisky bottle from the desk and swinging it in one desperate arc. It connected with Marlow's wrist with a wet crunch. The revolver clattered to the floor and skittered under the bed.

The little man shrieked and stumbled back, cradling his arm.

Scar was moving now, lunging for Arthur with a blade that had appeared in his hand. Arthur didn't think. He swung the diary again, catching Scar across the face with the corner of the hardcover. There was a sickening crack as it connected with cheekbone, and Scar staggered, cursing.

Arthur dove for the door, but Marlow was already grabbing for him with his good hand, trying to drag him down. Arthur turned and drove his knee into the man's stomach. Marlow folded like a cheap suit.

Scar was getting up, blood streaming from his nose. Arthur shoved the door open and half-fell into the hallway.

Behind him, he heard Marlow gasp through the pain: “He's got the journal, you idiot! The one from the locker—if that gets to the police, we're all done!”

Arthur ran. He hit the back stairs at a dead sprint, taking them three at a time, feeling every jolt like a punch to his cracked ribs. The diary was still clutched against his chest, the bullet lodged in its pages, the cover dented and scarred.

He burst out through a back door into an alley reeking of bin juice and cat piss. The rain was falling harder now, a proper London downpour that soaked through his coat in seconds.

Behind him, he could hear shouts. Footsteps on the stairs.

He didn't look back. He ran.

He ran until his lungs burned and his legs screamed and the sound of pursuit faded into the general noise of the city. He ducked into another alley, leaning against a damp brick wall, gasping.

His hand went to his chest, feeling for the wound. The diary had saved his life, but the impact had cracked something. Every breath was a knife. He pulled the diary out, peeling back the cover.

The bullet was embedded halfway through the pages, nestled near the end of Eddie's entries. That close to the final page—the one with the name Arthur still hadn't read properly, the one that might hold the key to everything.

He thumbed through the damaged pages, working the bullet loose. And stopped.

The last entry wasn't written in Eddie's cramped hand. It was typed—a single line on a slip of paper that had been tucked into the back cover, now pierced by the bullet.

*If you're reading this, you're the only one left. Find the watch. It belongs in Soho, above Leek's Pawn Shop. Ask no one.*

Arthur read it twice.

Scar. Marlow. Victor. They were all part of the puzzle, but they weren't the whole picture. Someone else had been running Eddie Marsh. Someone who'd left a dying man a final message about a watch.

Arthur folded the paper carefully, ignoring the tremor in his hands.

First, he needed to stop the bleeding in his chest. Then, he needed to find out what the hell Eddie Marsh had been trying to tell him.