Read Chapter 32: The Deal with the Devil

The café was called Lyon’s Corner House, and at this hour it smelled of stale tea and floor polish. Inspector Lestrange sat across from Arthur with her hands folded on the table, the posture of a woman who had heard every lie a guilty man could tell and had grown bored of most of them.

“You want me to believe you were a hostage,” she said. Flat. No question mark.

“I was,” Arthur said. “For longer than I care to count. Eddie Marsh can confirm it.”

“Eddie Marsh.” She let the name sit between them like a dead fish. “Your accomplice.”

“My rescuer.”

“They’re not mutually exclusive.”

Arthur kept his breathing steady. He’d practiced this conversation a hundred times on the walk over, rehearsed it in the mirror of the boarding house’s cracked washbasin. But facing her grey eyes and the slight downturn of her mouth, all his rehearsed lines felt like paper walls.

“Inspector, I’ve come to you because you have a reputation. You hunted Victor Cole for six years. You don’t take bribes. You don’t look the other way.”

“Flattery won’t save you from the rope.”

“No. But evidence might.” He slid the Baron’s ledger across the sticky tabletop, wrapped in brown paper like a meat parcel. “The Baron kept records. Names, payments, shipments. The full architecture of his operation. It’s all in there.”

She didn’t touch it. “And where did you come by this?”

“From his study. After he was dead.”

“After you killed him.”

“After he fell.” Arthur met her gaze. “I didn’t push him. Foley shot at me and missed. The Baron was trying to reach his vault, and he went down the stairs the wrong way. You can verify the body. Check the wounds. I’m not asking you to take my word for anything. I’m asking you to look.”

A long pause. The café’s single electric fan whirred overhead, pushing warm air in circles. Lestrange reached out and tapped the parcel with one finger.

“You said hostage. You also said you’d been running from Victor’s men. Now you’re telling me you were in the Baron’s study when he died, after a party he was throwing to celebrate his impending departure from the country.” She tilted her head. “That’s a lot of coincidences, Mr. Phelps.”

“I know how it sounds.”

“Do you? Because it sounds like you were in the middle of a robbery that went wrong, and you got lucky when the principal parties killed each other.” She leaned forward. “The only reason I’m still sitting here is that you asked for me by name, and the last man who did that turned out to be the only honest witness I had in the Cole case.”

Arthur let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “Then you know I’m not a liar by nature.”

“I know you’re not a criminal by profession. That’s different.” She unwrapped the ledger’s corner, scanned a page, and her eyes went still. “This is… comprehensive.”

“He kept everything. Payment schedules, police contacts, the docks he used, the men who owed him favors.” Arthur watched her face. “You’ll find one name in there that will surprise you. Maybe two.”

Lestrange looked up sharply. “What do you mean?”

“I mean the Baron didn’t operate alone. He had protection. Someone high enough to warn him before raids, to bury evidence, to keep certain files from ever reaching an investigator’s desk.” Arthur paused. “You’ve been hunting Victor Cole for years. Did you ever wonder why you never caught him?”

The silence stretched. The fan wheezed. A waitress clattered cups somewhere behind the counter.

“Careful,” Lestrange said quietly. “You’re dancing close to accusing your own police force.”

“I’m not accusing anyone. I’m telling you what the ledger showed me.” Arthur tapped the brown paper. “Page forty-seven. The section marked ‘Special Accounts.’ You’ll find a name there. A rank. A badge number.”

Lestrange’s jaw tightened. She flipped through the ledger, found the page, read. Her face didn’t change, but her hand flattened against the table as if she needed to steady herself.

“I see,” she said at last.

“I thought you might.”

“This explains a few things.” She closed the ledger and slid it back toward him. “But it changes the game. If I take this to my superiors, I don’t know who I’m handing it to. The man named on this page could have allies everywhere.”

“That’s why I came to you directly. You’re the only one I trust.”

“Trust.” She said the word like she was testing its weight. “You don’t know me, Mr. Phelps. Not really. You know my reputation.”

“It’s all I have to go on.”

She studied him for a long moment. Then she nodded, once, as if reaching a decision.

“All right. Here’s what I can offer. You give me the ledger, the money, and a full statement of everything that happened at the manor—the robbery, the deaths, Victor’s operation—and I will do everything in my power to see that you walk away from this. I’ll put you and Marsh in witness protection. New names, new documents, a relocation to somewhere the Cole network won’t find you.”

Arthur shook his head. “Witness protection is a cage with a nicer view. I’d still be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”

“It’s the best offer you’re going to get.”

“It’s not the offer I need.” Arthur leaned forward, lowering his voice. “I want amnesty. Full and unconditional. For me and for Eddie. The money goes to the Crown, the ledger goes to your investigation, and we go free. No protection, no relocation. Just a clean slate.”

Lestrange laughed, a short, dry sound. “You’re asking for a miracle.”

“I’m asking for justice. The Baron’s dead. Foley’s dead. Victor’s operation is collapsing. What good does locking me up do anyone? I’m a signalman, Inspector. I pull levers and I watch trains. I’m not a threat to anyone.”

“You helped plan a robbery that killed two men.”

“Three men,” Arthur corrected. “If you count the one the Baron ordered murdered twenty years ago. My father.”

That landed. He saw it in the way her eyes flickered, the slight shift in her posture.

“I didn’t know that,” she said.

“No one did. That’s why I stayed. Not for the money—I never wanted the money. I wanted the truth.” He held her gaze. “And I’ve got it. The whole truth, written in the Baron’s own hand. But I can’t testify if I’m in a cell, and I can’t testify if I’m dead. And right now, the only thing standing between me and Victor’s remaining men is that ledger and that money. They want both. They kill me either way.”

Lestrange was quiet for a long time. The waitress came by, refilled her tea, left. The fan kept turning.

“You’re asking me to break the rules I’ve built my career on,” she said eventually.

“I’m asking you to bend them. Just once. For the right reason.”

She looked down at the ledger, then back up at him. A flicker of something passed across her face—respect, maybe, or recognition. The look of a hunter who had finally found a fellow tracker.

“Amnesty,” she said slowly. “It’s not impossible. I have contacts in the Home Office. People who owe me favors. But it’ll take time to arrange. A week, maybe more. You’ll need to stay hidden until then.”

“I can do that.”

“No contact with anyone. No running off to settle old scores. You wait, you stay quiet, and you let me work.” She extended her hand. “Do we have a deal?”

Arthur looked at her outstretched hand. He thought of Eddie, waiting in the boarding house with the money stashed in a Wapping warehouse and the ledger’s key cold in his pocket. He thought of his father, dying on a French railway bridge with a bullet in his back, never knowing why.

He took her hand.

“We have a deal.”

She squeezed once, firmly, and let go. “Good. I’ll need you to write a full statement. Every detail, every name. Get it to me tomorrow—leave it at St. Pancras left luggage, desk three, under the name Whitmore. And don’t tell anyone about our arrangement. Not Marsh, not anyone. The more people who know, the more likely it falls apart.”

Arthur nodded. “Understood.”

She stood, collected the ledger, and tucked it into her coat. “One more thing, Mr. Phelps. You mentioned the man on page forty-seven had allies. If you’re right—if the rot goes deep—then there’s a chance my investigation will be compromised before it even begins.” She looked down at him, and there was something hard beneath her calm. “So I need you to be very sure you haven’t told anyone else about this.”

“I haven’t.”

“And I need you to be very sure you trust me.”

Arthur hesitated. A fraction of a second. Just enough for her to notice.

“I trust you,” he said.

She smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes.

“Good,” she said. “Then I’ll see you soon.”

She left. The café door swung shut behind her, and through the glass Arthur watched her walk down the street, a slim figure in a dark coat, carrying a ledger that could bring down half the London police force.

He sat there for a long time, staring at the empty chair across from him.

Something about the way she’d held herself at the end. Something in that smile.

He shook the feeling off. He was tired, paranoid, running on fumes and bad coffee. She was the one clean cop left in the city. She had to be.

But as he stood to leave, he noticed something on the table where the ledger had been. A scrap of paper, folded small, almost invisible against the Formica.

He picked it up. Unfolded it.

In neat, careful handwriting, four words:

*Ask about the signal.*

Arthur’s blood went cold. His father’s last message. The words the Baron had spat at him before he died, the phrase that had haunted him for years. How could she know that?

He looked through the window, but Lestrange was already gone.

He crumpled the paper in his fist and walked out into the rain, his heart hammering in his chest.

The deal had just become something else entirely.