Riley’s own face must have shone with hope, for Nancy pinched the boy’s arm, her eyes blazing a warning.
‘Hold your nerve, boy,’ she whispered. ‘Or we lose this battle before a shot is fired.’
Maccabee was the final person in the room.
Sir James Maccabee.
London’s most feared attorney. The attorney who had made his name leading the crusade against the scourge of highwaymen almost half a century since. They said that Sir James had stretched more necks than a turkey farmer. And, speaking of turkeys, here was the man himself, all buttoned up to his turkey neck and sweating like that selfsame fowl in the yuletide season.
Terrified, Chevie realized. This Maccabee guy is quaking in his boots.
This was the exact same observation that had vexed Tartan Nancy, though she phrased it rather differently in her head: What kind of evil cove is Lurky Boots if he can put the wind up a top gent like Maccabee?
Riley cared not a jot for the beak or the Lurker. His eyes were on Tom, up and down his body and face, searching for clues. ‘Speak to me, Tommy,’ he pleaded. ‘Give me something to jog me memory. It’s been so long and I was so very little.’
Maccabee laced his fingers, resting them on the prow of his belly, and in that stance it was easy to imagine him in chambers sporting the powdered wig.
‘No, sir,’ he said, his voice deep and rich but nervy like an actor’s on opening night. ‘He may not speak until our business is concluded. This man is condemned as a debtor, and as such he has no right to life nor any part of it until my client is satisfied. And I must say that bringing this young lady in here is hardly the perfect start to our business.’
Nancy glared at Riley, a warning to hold his tongue, then she stepped forward, took a few puffs to demonstrate her calm and launched into the wheedle.
‘Come now, sir. We ain’t heathens. We ain’t in Scotland or the like. We is civilized Englishmen, God bless the queen and so forth. We is in a negotiation here, ain’t we? I brung the boy as you requested, and brought the lady as he requested. Now we must confirm whether or not the product is the genuine article, as it were, and not some fakery.’
Maccabee glanced into the shadows before replying to this salvo. The man in shadow did not react visibly to the glance, not with so much as the twitch of a toe, but still Maccabee nodded rapidly as if he had received some orders.
‘I am afraid, madam, that this negotiation will not be like the others you have previously, eh, wheedled. My master … that is to say, my employer is not interested in your offer. He has terms, and they are absolute.’
Nancy puffed up a storm, which hung in the eaves like a thundercloud. ‘Terms, is it? Terms now? We ain’t in the Bailey, Sir James. This here is a wheedle cell, and why for are we gathered here in the sight of God if not to wheedle?’
Maccabee licked his fleshy lips. ‘Please, Nancy, please. For all our sakes …’
The Lurker stamped the heel of one boot and the darkness seemed to ripple. The meaning was clear: Maccabee had said too much.
Riley had only one ear on the conversation and the rest of his senses were focused on the man in the cage. Tom had been a boy when they had last met, barely older than he himself was now. Over a decade it had been since they shared a room when Riley was but a tot.
Could this be Tom?
Was it him?
Riley’s heartstrings were being tugged right enough. Perhaps his instincts knew what his brain could not fathom.
The Lurker’s boot stamp brought him fully back to the wheedle.
‘Your Honour,’ Riley said to Maccabee. ‘Tell your employer to name his terms, for there must be more to it than seeing me stew in this foul place.’
Maccabee sat on a battered stool opposite the Lurker. The stool wobbled and clunked on the uneven floor.
‘There are terms,’ he said. ‘That is to say, a term. One term, which is not open for haggle. You take it or you leave it at your pleasure.’
Nancy spat on the floor. ‘Do my ears confound me? One term? No haggling? What class of a wheedle is this? Come you out of the shadows, Lurker, or must I drag you?’
Maccabee was upright so quickly that the stool toppled and the attorney himself staggered forward, off-balance.
‘Quiet, woman,’ he hissed, righting himself. ‘No talk of dragging. Do you want to see us all put under?’
There was a noise from the Lurker’s corner then – a dry rasp, like the sound a rusty blade might produce when dragged along a stone. The disconcerting noise may have been a cough or a chuckle from the throat of a disturbed man. Whatever its origin, the sound did nothing to calm Maccabee’s nerves.
‘We must finish this business and be away from here,’ he shouted. ‘We must conclude, I tell you.’
Nancy was vexed and confused. The advantage here should clearly be in her favour, as her opponent was wound tighter than a clock spring, and yet she felt outmanoeuvred. ‘Sir James Maccabee? That be you, am I right? The man that cleared the Great North Road?’
Maccabee had apparently suffered enough of Nancy’s impudence.
‘I said, Quiet, woman! Blast you!’ he shouted, and for a moment the Old Bailey lion of legend asserted itself. ‘The single act that will secure the release of Thomas Riley from Newgate is as follows: one Riley for another. A simple trade.’
Nancy gawped, for this was a condition unlike anything she had heard in her three decades in the wheedle business.
Chevie filled the silence with outrage and blurted her first words since entering the chamber. ‘ OK. Enough with the garbage. We are so outta here.’
A simple trio of sentences, but their effect was electric. Riley reacted instantly, backing away from Chevie as though she were the enemy.
‘No, Chevie,’ he said. ‘No. This is a decision for me to make. Mine alone.’
Nancy wasn’t far behind. ‘No one leaves the chamber. Not till a deal is hammered. I ain’t having no amateur-like walkouts on Nancy’s watch.’
But the most surprising reaction was from the Lurker. Surprising in that he reacted at all. Not that he was flinging himself about or bonking his head on the stonework, but, given that his sole contribution to the negotiations so far had been a tap of his boot and possibly a wry chuckle, it was surprising to see the boots withdraw entirely into the coal-black shadows with harsh scrapes at the sound of Chevie’s anachronistic expressions. And even more startling was the sight of the Lurker’s dark figure stretching to its full height and a single hand emerging from the corner into the candlelight.
The slow-moving hand hypnotized the room’s occupants and they watched it as they might the head of some poisonous snake. The pale hand was cuffed by velvet and fringed with long fingers, which quested through the dark as though seeking to pinch the echoes of Chevie’s words. But then they stopped, reconsidered, curled themselves under the shell of fist and withdrew, leaving everyone spooked and none the wiser.
‘Well,’ said Nancy. ‘Well. That was a fine howjadoo, weren’t it?’
The man who might be Tom defied the order imposed upon him to remain mute. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘In the name of mercy, please. I didn’t do nothing.’
‘I’ll do it!’ blurted Riley. ‘I accept. Him for me. A soul for a soul.’
Maccabee bolted across the room, almost stumbling in his haste, and grabbed Riley’s hand. ‘Agreed,’ he said, and spat on the clasped hands to seal the deal, as he had heard once that this was how the lower classes conducted their business.
‘A pox on you, Maccabee,’ swore Nancy. ‘You shift yerself plenty quick when the mood takes you.’
Maccabee sighed mightily, flapping his fleshy lips. ‘The deed is done, madam. The shake is shook.’
Normally Chevie prided herself on her quick reactions, but for a person raised in twenty-first-century America’s litigious society this deal had been concluded in lightning fashion. There had been no haggling. No mock disbelief. No throwing of hands in the air. Just bang, boom, done. Shake, spit and that’
s all. Her friend had condemned himself to death.
‘Oh no no no,’ she said, as though admonishing a naughty group of children who had agreed to run off to Narnia together. ‘This isn’t happening on my watch. This deal smells so bad I hardly know where to start.’
Riley was ready for the objections. ‘I know what you plan to say, Chevie. It ain’t really Tom, perhaps. Or we don’t even know what he is accused of.’
‘Exactly,’ said Chevie. ‘And no offence to this so-called Tom guy but I don’t know him from Lady freaking Gaga. Not to mention the fact that we’re all having our chains yanked by some creep in the corner. No, thank you. This stinks. We are vacating the premises. Elvis and his entourage are leaving the building.’
Riley closed his eyes tight, as if he could shut out Chevie entirely. ‘I have no choice, my dear friend. None. There ain’t no horns and no dilemma. If there is a single chance in a dozen that this is my kin, then I must take the chance. I must.’ Riley thought of a devastating argument and opened his eyes to present it. ‘Were this your father, Chevron, would you not do anything to save him?’