Read Chapter 24: The Bait

The ledger clerk’s name was Donald Preece, and he had a weakness for greyhounds and a terror of his own employer. Arthur had spent three days tracing him through the betting shops of Whitechapel, and now the man sat across from him in the back room of a shuttered turf accountant’s office, sweat beading on his upper lip as he stared at the stack of banknotes Arthur had spread across the table.

“You’re mad,” Preece whispered. “He’ll kill me.”

“Victor will kill you if he finds out you’re here,” Arthur said, sliding the notes closer. “That’s five hundred. There’s another five hundred waiting when you give me something I can use.”

Preece’s eyes flicked to the money, then to the door, then back to the money. He licked his lips. “He keeps the real books at his flat in Mayfair. Not the one everyone knows about—the one on Curzon Street, under a false name. Lambert. Edward Lambert.”

Arthur leaned forward. “And the deposits?”

“He’s got accounts in three banks. Barclays, Coutts, and one in Jersey. I handle the transfers personally.” Preece’s voice dropped. “But the big money—the untouchable money—goes through a man called Foley. He’s the Baron’s banker. Nobody meets him. Everything’s done by courier.”

“The Baron,” Arthur repeated. The name settled in his chest like a stone. “You’ve met him?”

Preece shook his head violently. “No. No one meets him. He communicates through letters. Typewritten. No signature. Just a symbol—a circle with a cross through it.”

Arthur felt the floor drop beneath him. His father’s coded message. The same symbol, scratched at the bottom of the note. He had stared at it for hours, thinking it a family mark, something his father had used as a signature. But now—

“When was Victor supposed to report to him?” Arthur asked, keeping his voice steady.

“The list,” Preece said. His face had gone pale. “Victor keeps a list of every man on the crew, their debts, their weaknesses. He sends it to the Baron once a month. It’s how the Baron controls everyone.”

“Where’s the list now?”

Preece glanced at the money. Arthur pushed it forward.

“The diary,” Preece said. “Victor keeps it in the binding of a ledger diary. He never lets it out of his sight. But last week, after the warehouse—” he swallowed, “—he thought he lost it. Went mad. Turned his own office over looking for it. He still doesn’t know who took it.”

Arthur’s blood ran cold. The diary. The one he’d left behind. Eddie had told him about the list hidden in the binding, but Arthur had assumed it was still with Victor. He had never retrieved the diary from where he’d hidden it in the basement of the signal box—and if Victor had discovered it was missing, then the crew would already be tearing London apart looking for it.

“That’s everything,” Preece said, reaching for the notes. “I swear. That’s everything I know.”

The back wall of the shop exploded inward.

Arthur threw himself sideways as plaster and timber burst across the room. Preece screamed, scrambling backward, but the first shot took him in the shoulder and spun him off the chair. Arthur hit the floor rolling, reaching for the fire escape door at the rear of the office, when a second bullet punched through the wood inches from his head.

Through the dust, he saw two men in dark coats stepping through the wreckage. Victor’s men. They moved with the calm efficiency of professionals, pistols raised, scanning the room.

“Where’s the list, Phelps?” one of them called. “Victor wants his diary back.”

Arthur’s hand closed on the fire escape handle. He wrenched it, and the door slammed open into the narrow alley behind the shop. He dove through, hitting the wet pavement hard, and ran.

Gunfire chased him down the alley. A bullet clipped the brickwork above his head, showering him with mortar fragments. He burst out onto Commercial Road, weaving through startled pedestrians, and heard the heavy footsteps behind him. Two of them. They were faster than he was, and his lungs were already burning.

He turned down a side street, then another, losing his bearings in the tangle of dockland lanes, when a black Humber pulled up ahead of him, blocking his path. The driver’s door opened.

Arthur skidded to a halt, trapped between the car and the men closing in behind.

The woman who stepped out was not what he expected. She was tall, in a grey coat that matched the rain, with dark hair pinned beneath a cloche hat. She looked at Arthur, then past him, and raised a small revolver in one gloved hand.

Before he could move, she fired three shots in quick succession.

Arthur heard the tires explode. Two of them. The pursuit stumbled to a halt behind him, cursing, as the Humber dropped onto its rims. The woman lowered the gun, calm as a Sunday, and opened the rear door.

“Get in,” she said. “Unless you’d rather negotiate.”

Arthur hesitated.

“Eddie sent me,” she added. “If you want to stay alive past the hour, you’re out of options.”

Shots rang out behind him. Arthur climbed into the car. The woman slid into the driver’s seat, and the engine roared as she pulled away, leaving Victor’s men shouting in the rain.

She drove in silence for a long time, weaving through the narrow streets of the East End before turning north toward Hackney. Arthur watched her in the rearview mirror. The set of her jaw was familiar, though he couldn’t place it. When she finally spoke, her voice was clipped, precise.

“They’ll be watching your signal box by now. And the Soho address.”

“How do you know about Soho?”

She glanced at him in the mirror. Her eyes were light grey, steady as a level.

“Your father taught me everything I know.”

The Humber rolled to a stop outside a warehouse on the Lea River. She killed the engine, and in the silence, Arthur heard his own heartbeat crashing in his ears.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She turned to face him, and for the first time, her composure cracked—just a flicker, there and gone.

“My name is Margaret,” she said. “Margaret Harlow. I worked with your father in the war. And I’ve been watching you since the day he died.”