The Winter Rose Page 5

  Joe's face hardened. He turned to Bennett. "How much do we owe you?"

  Bennett shifted in his chair. "There's fifty quid outstanding. That's what we agreed to, but that was before me arm and all. There's doctor's bills and..."

  "Will a hundred do it?" Joe asked.

  Bennett's eyes widened. "Aye. Quite nicely," he said.

  Joe paid him. He pocketed the money and said, "As I was telling your wife--"

  "That's all, Mr. Bennett, thank you," Joe said.

  "But I haven't told Mrs. Bristow everything yet. I was just--"

  "Thank you, Mr. Bennett," Joe said. The study door had closed. He opened it again.

  Bennett shrugged and left. When he was gone, Joe turned back to Fiona. "What happened to his arm?" he asked her.

  "It was broken. Charlie did it. He told Mr. Bennett to tell me that that was his answer. Loud and clear."

  Joe was furious. "Damn it, Fiona!" he yelled. "I thought we'd talked about this. I thought we agreed that it was much too dangerous to try to contact him. What were you going to do if he did agree to see you? Invite him to Sunday dinner? Have him dandle Katie on his knee? Maybe he could fit in a bedtime story between cracking safes and breaking heads."

  "I want to see him, Joe."

  "Well, I don't want to see him. I don't want him within ten miles of us. You know what he does. What he is. Bloody hell, Fiona! What were you thinking?"

  Fiona's beautiful blue eyes had filled with tears. There was a raw and wild sadness in them. "He's my brother, Joe. My brother."

  "Fiona, Sid Malone is a criminal."

  "That's not his name!" she said angrily, slapping her hands on the desk. "His name's Charlie. Charlie Finnegan."

  "Not anymore it isn't."

  "If I could just see him," she said. "If I could just talk to him..."

  "You could what? Convince him to go on the straight and narrow? Become an upstanding citizen? Not bloody likely. There are some fights you can't win, luv. Even you. You've got to bury the past. He made his choice. He told you so himself."

  She looked away. He could see that she was struggling with herself.

  "Fiona, I know what you're thinking. Do not go after him yourself. It's too dangerous."

  "But Joe, you heard Freddie Lytton. You heard what he said. He means to arrest Charlie. To hang him!"

  "Fiona, promise me you won't--" His words were interrupted by a knock on the door. "What is it?" he yelled.

  "Begging your pardon, sir, but the Reverend and Mrs. Barnett are leaving and wish to say their goodbyes," came Foster's voice.

  "I'm coming, Mr. Foster," Fiona said. She wiped her eyes, avoided Joe's, and hurried out of the study, ending the discussion.

  Joe sighed. He sat down on the desk. He didn't want to rejoin the party. Not just yet. The argument with Fiona had rattled him. He looked around the room and his eyes fell on the tall piles of folders on top of her desk. He knew what they were--dozens of applications to the East London Aid Society. Fiona used the same hard-headed approach toward her charitable endeavors that she did to make business decisions. Applicants were required to submit a dossier on their organization and its administrators, and a detailed plan of how funds were to be spent. Visits were then made and interviews conducted. The foundation was well endowed, but its funds were not limitless and Fiona was adamant that every penny be well spent. Joe knew that she spent hours reading the applications. He often found her in here at one or two in the morning.

  "Come to bed, luv," he'd say.

  "I will. Just one more," she'd reply, knowing that another check written meant fewer hungry children.

  There were reasons for her dedication. She had a good heart for starters, and couldn't stand to see a stray dog go hungry. Plus, she was from East London, as was he, and they both wanted to see the place that had made them made better for the ones still there. But Joe knew there was more to it. If only she could change ten ...a hundred ...a thousand East London lives, they might begin to make up for the one life she couldn't change-- her brother's.

  He rose from his chair now, his forehead creased with worry. He of all people knew that when Fiona loved, she loved forever. He worried that she would no more give up on Sid Malone than she would have given up on her quest for revenge against her father's killer. Ten years it had taken her to bring the man down, and she'd risked everything to do it--her fortune, her business, her life. What would she risk to save her brother?

  Nothing, he told himself. Fiona might have been heedless of her own life ten years ago, but she had a family now, and she would not take those same chances again. You've got to bury the past, he'd told her only moments ago, and he was sure she would. She was no fool. She'd seen Bennett's arm.

  As he turned to leave the room, a lone folder caught his eye. It lay open on the floor near the desk. Fiona must have knocked it off when she left, he thought. He picked it up. Malone was written on the front in a hand he didn't recognize. Michael Bennett's writing, no doubt. He didn't bother to open it. He didn't want to know. It was over, done. He threw the folder into the rubbish bin.

  "Bury the past," he said aloud, as he left Fiona's study, never realizing, never even suspecting, that the past might well bury him.

  Chapter 3

  Sid Malone stepped out of his carriage at 22 Saracen Street. Frankie Betts and Tom Smith, two of his men, were there to meet him. The late hour and a hard rain meant there was little traffic in Limehouse. Sid was glad; he wasn't one for audiences.

  Except for the carriage, he looked like he belonged in the neighborhood, like a working man on his way home from the pub. He wore heavy boots, a pair of dungarees, and a sailor's navy wool jacket. A flat cap covered his head. He wore no flash jewelry. Nor did his men. He wouldn't allow it. It made a bloke stand out. His face was smooth. He shaved it himself. His red hair was bound into a ponytail. When it grew too long, he lopped it off with a clasp knife. He never visited a barber. He had too many enemies to allow anyone holding a razor close to his throat.

  "Got your message," he said to his men, tossing his fag end into the gutter. "What's this about? Where's Ko?"

  "Inside," Frankie replied. "He's got a bit of bother."

  Number 22 was a shopfront with Canton Superior Laundry painted on its windows. They were dark now. Sid knocked on the door and a few sec-onds later it was opened by a young Chinese woman in a red gown. Word-lessly, she led him and his men to a room at the back of the shop, bowed, and disappeared.

  Teddy Ko, the Cockney son of Chinese immigrants, was seated with his feet on his desk. His hair was stylishly short. He wore a narrow-cut suit, gold knots in his cuffs, and a large pocket watch. His spit-shined shoes gleamed like jet. He got to his feet when he saw Sid and came around the desk to shake his hand. When he'd settled Sid and his men, he shouted down the hall in Cantonese. Instantly an old man in a cotton jacket and skullcap appeared carrying a tea tray. He served small cups of strong black Keemun tea, then set the pot down. His gnarled hands shook as he did, sloshing tea on Teddy's desk. He tried to mop the spill, but Teddy ripped the cloth from his hands, threw it at him, then shoved him out of his office.

  "Fucking coolies," he muttered, slamming the door. He sat back down, looked at Sid, and frowned. "You want the name of a good tailor, mate? Got a bloke in Nankin Street. Cut you a suit looks like it's right off Savile Row."

  "He don't want no suit and he ain't your mate," Frankie growled.

  "What's up, Teddy?" Sid said. "Frankie says there's been trouble."

  "That's a bleedin' understatement. Got a doctor here, one of them SSOTs, and..."

  "You called us here because someone's drunk?" Frankie asked.

  "You read anything besides the racing sheet, Frankie? Not sot, S-S-O-T," Teddy said. "The Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade. They're right sneaky bastards. Paid their way in tonight like they was regu-lars then started going room to room hasslin' the punters and the brasses, too. Lecturin' them all on the evils of drugs. Wreckin' my business, they are."


  Sid shook his head, disgusted. He was worried it was Big Billy Madden from the West End or the Italians from Covent Garden meddling where they shouldn't. "I don't have time for this, Teddy," he said, standing. "Throw the wanker out yourself."

  "Let me finish, will you? The doctor brought a friend--Freddie Lytton.

  You know ...the MP? He's up ere right now. With a bloke from a newspaper. And he's threatening to shut me down."

  Sid frowned. That was troubling. Lytton had been making noise about the Firm's robberies recently, but he'd never made ructions about their opium dealings and Sid didn't want him to start. The Firm made good money out of Ko. He--and others like him--bought opium from them and also paid them to keep any comers off their turf.

  "You told Lytton to go?" Sid asked.

  "My girls did. And the old man."

  "Your girls?" Sid said. "Get in there yourself, Teddy. Break some heads."

  Ko leaned back in his chair, offended. "I'm a respectable citizen, ain't I? Fuckin' pillar of the community, me. Breakin' heads ain't in my line of work."

  Frankie snorted. "What he means is he don't want the Honorable Mem-ber to see his face," he said. "Won't get invited for tea at Westminster if Lytton twigs that Ko the Chinese striver is also Ko the opium peddler and Ko the ponce. He's a bit of a climber, our Teddy."

  "Hell, Frankie! I pay you protection money, so fucking protect me!" Ko yelled, banging his fist on his desk.

  "You want to watch your tone, Edward," Frankie warned.

  Sid saw that Frankie was getting restless and he wasn't in the mood for a smash-up tonight. The lad was like a bull terrier that needed regular exercise to keep him from chewing up the furniture.

  "Come on," Sid said. "We're here. Let's do this and go."

  Frankie led the way out of Teddy's office and up a narrow flight of stairs. He banged on a locked door at the top of the first-floor landing. A glass peephole was opened but the door was not.

  "Havin' yourself a gander, are ya?" he asked, smiling into the peephole. Then he drove a cosh into it, shattering it. "Open the bleedin' door or I'll kick it to pieces and you with it!" he shouted.

  The door was yanked open. The wizened old man who'd served them tea stood on the other side, rubbing his eye. Sid entered and looked around, disoriented by the opulence. Wooden platforms painted with flowers and dragons and canopied with heavy silks lined the walls. Thick rugs overlapped on the floor. Candles flickered in what seemed like a thousand pa-per lanterns and a bitter blue smoke hung in the air. These were exotic rooms that belonged in some fabled Chinese city, not London.

  Teddy Ko owned a dozen buildings in the area. He called them laun-dries, and by day people washed and pressed clothing in them, but the laundries were only the respectable fa�e of a much darker enterprise. At night, long after the wash kettles had been emptied and the irons cooled, men and women, hurried and furtive, knocked and entered, slipped coins into the hands of Ko's hostesses, then slipped into oblivion.

  Sid saw them now--lying on the platforms or sprawled on the floor--heavy-lidded, slack-jawed. The young woman who'd let him in moved among them, stooping to refill pipes with chunks of brown paste or to tuck a pillow under a lolling head. Other young women lay entwined with male customers in curtained beds. There were people with money here--Sid could tell by their clothing--and others whose night's high had cost them a week's wages. Frankie bent over one well-heeled woman who was lying dazed in a corner. He patted her cheek and, when he got no response, helped himself to her rings. Sid looked around the room but there was no sign of Lytton.

  Teddy came up behind him. "Where's Lytton? And the doctor?" Sid asked him.

  "Round here someplace," he said, waving Sid through a doorway.

  They entered another room, which was much like the first, only noisy because two women in it were arguing. The first, a brunette, was reclining languidly on a platform next to a handsome boy who couldn't have been more than eighteen. The other woman, a slender blonde, was chafing the first woman's wrists, berating her.

  "It's a very powerful drug, Maud," she said, "one that should be used only by doctors. It's addictive and damaging."

  The dark-haired woman let out a pained, trailing sigh and looked imploringly around the room. Her eyes came to rest on Teddy. "Ko, darling, can't you throw her out?" she asked, propping herself up on one elbow.

  "Who is she?"

  "My sister."

  "Then you throw her out, Maud!" Teddy shouted. "You get out, too! She's only here after you!"

  The blond woman stood up. She was slight and wore spectacles. Sid guessed she stood about five feet six inches in her boots.

  "You are wrong, sir," she said. "I am here for every poor, miserable, addicted soul in this room."

  Sid groaned. He and Frankie were supposed to be at the Bark talking with the rest of his men about an upcoming job--a very lucrative job--and instead he was larking about doing work Teddy could've paid a boy in short pants to do.

  "Teddy, where's the bloody doctor?" he snapped.

  "Are you blind? She's right in front of you!" Teddy said.

  "Who? Her? She's a woman," Sid said.

  "How very observant of you," the blond woman said. "I am indeed a medical doctor and I'm also a member of the Society for the Suppression of--"

  "Aye, luv. I know all about it," Sid said.

  She faltered for a second, then recovered. "Yes. Well. Then you also know that I and my colleague, the Member of Parliament for Tower Ham-lets, are determined to close down these dens of misery. These people should be at home with their children, not giving their hard-earned wages to drug lords and prostitutes."

  Sid had heard enough. "Frankie, Tom, get her out of here," he ordered.

  Just then, a tall, wheaten-haired man emerged from yet another doorway in the rabbit warren of rooms. Sid knew him. He was Freddie Lytton. Another man was with him. Sid knew him, too. His name was Michael McGrath. He was one of Bobby Devlin's reporters from the Clarion and he was carrying a camera. They hadn't seen Sid yet.

  "Did you get one of me breaking the opium pipe in two?" Lytton asked McGrath. McGrath nodded. "Good man. Make sure you get my name in the headline. �Lytton Uncovers London Drug Peril'... or maybe �Lytton Teaches Firm That Crime Doesn't Pay'..."

  "Not as well as politics," Sid said to Frankie. "That's for sure."

  "But that might be over-long for a headline, no?" Lytton said. "And don't forget to mention all my good work with the SSOT. When will the story run?"

  "Day after tomorrow," McGrath said, folding the legs of the camera's tripod.

  Frankie gave a low whistle. "A flipping camera no less, guv. If that ain't taking liberties, I don't know what is." He was on McGrath in an instant. He'd ripped the equipment out of his hands and thrown it out of a window before the man knew what had happened. The sound of shattering glass carrying up from the street told him.

  "Jesus Christ!" McGrath cried. "That was a brand new camera!"

  "Get out. Now. Or you're going out the window after it," Sid said.

  McGrath, a big lad, rounded on Sid, ready to take a swing. His eyes widened. He took a step back. "Bloody hell." He turned to Freddie Lytton, ashen. "You never said he'd be here!" And then he was out the door and gone, feet pounding down the stairs.

  "Let's go, missus," Sid said to the doctor.

  "Keep your hands off her!" Freddie Lytton ordered. "I should've known you'd be behind this, Malone." He turned to the doctor and said, "India, get Maud out of here now. I'm going to fetch the police and have these men ar-rested and this place closed down."

  Frankie burst into laughter. "Not bloody likely, mate. Teddy Ko pays the rozzers more money than he pays us."

  "You can repeat that to the magistrate, Mr. Betts," Freddie said angrily. "I want that name ...Ko, was it?"

  "Frankie..." Sid said through gritted teeth. His patience was wearing thin.

  "Righto, guv." Frankie walked over to Lytton, grabbed him by the back of his mackintosh, and marched him
out of the room. Sid heard curses and scuffles, a few thumps, and then a door banging back on its hinges.

  "What are you doing to him? Leave him alone!" the doctor shrilled.

  Sid smiled at her regretfully. "It's time to go, luv," he said.

  "I'm not going anywhere."

  "Don't let's have a scene now, miss," Sid said.

  "It's Doctor, not luv. Not miss. Dr. India Selwyn Jones."

  "India, dear, be quiet for once and listen," the dark-haired woman said. "Do you have any idea who that is? It's Sid Malone. Surely you've heard the name. Even you. Be the clever girl I know you are and walk out of here now while you still can."