Blackstone and the Endgame Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Inspector Sam Blackstone Series from Sally Spencer

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part One: Openings

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part Two: Development

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Part Three: Endgame

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Inspector Sam Blackstone Series from Sally Spencer

  BLACKSTONE AND THE TIGER

  BLACKSTONE AND THE GOLDEN EGG

  BLACKSTONE AND THE FIRE BUG

  BLACKSTONE AND THE BALLOON OF DEATH

  BLACKSTONE AND THE HEART OF DARKNESS

  BLACKSTONE AND THE NEW WORLD

  BLACKSTONE AND THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

  BLACKSTONE AND THE GREAT WAR

  BLACKSTONE AND THE ENDGAME

  BLACKSTONE AND THE ENDGAME

  An Inspector Sam Blackstone Mystery

  Sally Spencer

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2013 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2013 by Alan Rustage.

  The right of Sally Spencer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Spencer, Sally

  Blackstone and the endgame. – (A Sam Blackstone mystery ;

  10)

  1. Blackstone, Sam (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Police–England–London–Fiction. 3. Great Britain–

  History–George V, 1910-1936–Fiction. 4. Detective and

  mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9'2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8289-9 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-444-7 (epub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  16th December 1916

  For days, the wind blowing off the Thames covered half of London in a cold, damp overcoat. Women who had forgotten how much their bones could ache were suddenly reminded just how bad winter could be. Men who had boasted about being in the rudest of health were starting to cough up bloodied phlegm. And the children, whose natural life was always on the street, found themselves huddled over the fireplace in their cramped kitchens when their parents could afford the coal – and sometimes, out of habit, even when they couldn’t.

  But at least there was no fog, people said, in an attempt to sound philosophical – at least they’d been spared that.

  And then the fog came. It was what was called a real pea-souper – though, in fact, it was more yellow than green. It held, within it, particles of carbon and sulphur which were eager to find new homes in the lungs of the weak and feeble. It wrapped itself, like poison ivy, around every building and lamppost. It slowed London down, but it did not halt it, because life still had to be lived, even in the middle of a poisonous cloud.

  Southwark’s New Cut street market had been as much a victim of the fog as everywhere else, and customers floated like ghosts between the stalls and barrows, guided only by the fuzzy light provided by the paraffin lamps which each stall holder had brought with him.

  But now some of those lights were going out, Harry Danes noted. Now, some of the other costermongers were packing up and going home.

  It was the ones who sold second-hand clothes and tools who were leaving, Danes told himself.

  And they might as well. If they stayed, they would probably sell nothing more that night, and their merchandise – as unattractive as it was – would still find ready buyers amongst the poor, who had no other choice, in the morning. But if you sold fruit and veg – like he did – you had to stay until the bitter bloody end, however slight your chance of making a sale, because your goods were rotting even as they sat there.

  Not that there was much left to sell, he thought, looking down at the miserable offerings laid out on his barrow. Not that, in all honesty, there’d been much to sell when he’d started the night’s trading.

  Life had been hard before the war, but nothing like as hard as it was now. The German U-boats were partly to blame – Danes had lost count of how many merchant ships they’d sunk in the last few months. But it was also due to the fact that instead of working on the land, all the young men were busy dying on the Western Front – and because the government was spending so much money on killing foreigners that it had none left to look after its own people.

  It was as he speculated on the total futility of war that he first noticed the tramp, although – for all he knew – the poor sod could have been standing there for some time.

  The tramp was tall – over six feet. He was as thin as a rake and had a bushy grey beard and watery eyes.

  There were some tramps who loved the vagabond existence – positively thrived on it – Danes thought, but this wasn’t one of them.

  ‘Can I help you, mate?’ Danes asked.

  The tramp hesitated. ‘I’d like some food—’

  ‘I can give you a turnip, if you like,’ Danes interrupted him. ‘It’s not much, I know, but it’s all I can spare.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you, and I do want it,’ the tramp said, then added firmly, ‘but I don’t want it now.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. You look to me like a man who’s got a family to support …’

  ‘You’re right there, pal, I have. But one little turnip isn’t going to make much diff—’

  ‘… so if you can sell it, then that’s what you should do. I only want it if you’ll definitely be throwing it away.’

  He was a strange tramp, Danes thought – very strange indeed.

  ‘Don’t I know you?’ he asked.

  The tramp shook his head.

  ‘I’m sure I do,’ the costermonger insisted. ‘Didn’t you used to be …’

  ‘I have to go,’ the tramp said. Then he turned awkwardly and disappeared into the fog.

  Danes scratched his head. ‘… a copper?’ he said, completing his sentence, though now there was no one to hear it. ‘A detective inspector from Scotland Yard?’

  His week on the run had taken its toll, Sam Blackstone
realized, as he pushed his aching body to its limits in an effort to put as great a distance between himself and the costermonger as possible.

  He had spent his nights shivering in dark, dank corners, and his days watching out for the policemen who he knew must be searching for him. He had fed on cabbage leaves and stalks he had picked up outside restaurants. Once, he had found a squashed – but still burning – cigarette end on the ground, and it had taken all his discipline – all his remaining self-respect – not to bend down and pick it up. And finally, on what was now his seventh day as a fugitive, he had given in to the demands of his growling stomach and risked the visit to the New Cut.

  But it wasn’t really much of a risk, now was it? asked a mocking demon hidden deep in the back of his mind. You’re only taking a risk if you’ve got something to lose, and what does a dying man have to lose?

  ‘I’m not dying,’ Blackstone said, in a voice that was weak and cracked, but still loud enough to cause several people to turn their heads.

  He stopped walking and clung to the nearest lamppost for support.

  ‘I’m not dying,’ he said again – though in a softer tone this time.

  Yet he knew that he was.

  He had fought Afghan tribesmen and New York gangsters – he had been shot at, stabbed, and beaten – and he had survived. But now he was dying.

  He would probably not die that night – or even that week. He might live for a month or two, but, in the end, the hunger and the cold – adding to the desperation and the disappointment that already weighed him down – would see him off.

  And dying was not even the worst possible ending.

  Far more terrible was the prospect of being caught.

  He had a vision of himself standing in the dock while the prosecutor tore his story apart with a contempt reserved only for the most despicable criminals. He could see the disgust in the eyes of the jury as the story unfolded, and hear the cold, vengeful tone in the judge’s voice as he passed sentence.

  What happened after that – whatever sentence was imposed – didn’t really matter. It was the trial he dreaded. It was those few days when everything he had ever worked for – everything he had ever believed in – first rounded on him and then condemned him.

  ‘How did I ever get into this situation?’ he wondered.

  But it was only a rhetorical question. He knew how he had got into it. He even knew exactly when and where it had started – could pin it down to that moment when he first looked across the desk at Superintendent Brigham.

  PART ONE

  Openings

  ONE

  9th December 1916

  It was just over two weeks to Christmas, and Blackstone stood at his office window looking down on the ragged men on the Victoria Embankment who were attempting to sell Christmas trees to the people passing by.

  It wouldn’t be a very joyous Christmas that year, he thought. How could it be, when almost every family in the country had sent its young men to fight on the Western Front – and so many of those families had already learned that their young men wouldn’t be coming back.

  ‘I think there should be a law making it illegal for criminals not to work over Christmas,’ said a voice behind him.

  Blackstone turned around to look at his sergeant, Archie Patterson, who was sitting back with his size-ten boots resting on his desk, and tearing a piece of paper into tiny strips.

  ‘What was that you just said, Archie?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s always the same,’ Patterson complained. ‘It gets to this time of year and the criminal fraternity decide they don’t want to be nicked and spend Christmas behind bars. So what do they do? For two or three weeks, they act just like ordinary decent citizens. And where does that leave us – the guardians of law and order? I’ll tell you where it leaves us, Sam. It leaves us stuck here in this bloody office – and it’s not right!’

  Blackstone grinned. ‘I’d never thought of it quite that way before,’ he said. ‘But you’re spot on – the criminal fraternity should be a little more considerate of our needs. So why don’t we go out and find a couple of bank robbers, point them towards the nearest bank, and—’

  ‘You’re just being silly, now, sir,’ Patterson said, still sounding aggrieved at life in general.

  There was a knock on the door, and a uniformed sergeant entered the office.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but Superintendent Brigham wants to see you right away,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’ Blackstone replied, mystified.

  ‘Superintendent Brigham – the new head of the Special Branch,’ said Patterson, who kept track of all kinds of people in his head. ‘He was a major in the army, served in India with the Worcester Regiment for a number of years, lives in Peckham and has two grown-up children, one of whom has just started training to be a lawyer.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘No, that’s about as much as I know,’ Patterson admitted.

  ‘And you’re sure it’s me that Superintendent Brigham wants to see?’ Blackstone asked the sergeant.

  ‘Yes, sir. He was quite definite about it.’

  ‘Well, you are going up in the world, sir,’ Patterson said.

  Yes, wasn’t he? Blackstone thought. The Branch – originally formed to combat Irish terrorism – had always regarded itself as a cut above every other department in Scotland Yard, so why would it even bother talking to a lowly detective inspector like him?

  ‘He did say immediately, sir,’ the sergeant persisted nervously.

  ‘Well, it’s been nice working with you, sir – and I hope you remember us little people with affection when you’ve been raised to new and dizzying heights,’ Patterson said.

  ‘Oh, do put a sock in it, Archie,’ Blackstone said, as he headed towards the door.

  Superintendent Brigham had a bullet-shaped head, to the top of which a thatch of iron-grey hair clung on precariously. There was no evidence of great intelligence in his cold grey eyes, nor any hint of humour in his tightly drawn mouth. And though he was making some effort to contain it, he was clearly very angry.

  But if he was angry, if he really didn’t want this inferior being from one of the lower floors in his office – and he clearly didn’t – then why was the meeting taking place at all?

  The superintendent gazed at the inspector for nearly a minute, almost as if he was a butcher assessing how much the other man would fetch per pound.

  ‘So you’re Blackstone,’ he said finally.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘They tell me you once saved the life of our late Queen,’ Brigham said in a voice that suggested it seemed unlikely that any man wearing a second-hand brown suit would ever have been capable of such heroism.

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ Blackstone replied.

  ‘But you did save her?’ Brigham persisted, as if expecting Blackstone to be decent enough to make some modest disclaimer, on the lines of him only being one small cog in a very large machine.

  ‘Yes, I did save her,’ Blackstone replied, because while he wasn’t going to brag about it, he wasn’t going to lie about it, either, and the fact was that but for his actions – and his actions alone – Queen Victoria would have died on the very day she was celebrating her Diamond Jubilee.

  ‘Hmm,’ Brigham said disapprovingly. ‘Still, none of us can live for ever on our past glories, can we?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Blackstone agreed.

  ‘Tell me, Inspector, what do you think is the main threat to this country at the moment?’ Brigham asked. ‘What do you think is really worrying our masters in government?’

  When a man like Brigham asked a big question of an underling, Blackstone thought, it was usually because he believed he himself had the answer – and the underling didn’t.

  ‘I should imagine that the strength of the German army along the Western Front is causing them some concern,’ he said, playing along with the superintendent’s game.

  ‘You are wrong,’ Brigham told him. ‘
The German army might seem formidable, but our brave British Tommies will overcome the cowardly Huns in the end.’

  ‘There are brave men in the German infantry, too, you know,’ said Blackstone, who had been to the Western Front and seen the bloody stalemate there with his own eyes.

  ‘I consider that to be a very unpatriotic statement,’ Superintendent Brigham said angrily.

  ‘Do you, sir?’ Blackstone asked calmly. ‘I consider it to be no more than a statement of fact.’

  ‘The real threat is from the German navy – and, specifically, its U-boats,’ Brigham said, brushing aside Blackstone’s comment as if it had never been uttered. He paused to light up a cigarette, though he did not offer one to his guest. ‘We are a small island, Inspector. We cannot grow enough to feed ourselves, and so much of our food must be imported. And as the damned Huns keep sinking our supply ships, we are edging perilously close to starvation.’

  He sat back in his seat, as if he was waiting for his visitor to applaud his brilliant insight.

  ‘Ah, that probably explains why there’s not much food around – at least, not in the poorer areas,’ Blackstone said.

  Brigham scowled. ‘Are you trying to be funny?’ he demanded.

  ‘No, sir,’ Blackstone replied. ‘I’m just agreeing with you that there’s not much food around.’

  ‘In order to sink these U-boats, we first need accurate intelligence on their exact location,’ Brigham continued, backing out of the blind alley which, it seemed to him, Blackstone was trying to lead him up, ‘and, fortunately, that intelligence is now almost within our grasp. We have a source – or, more accurately, I have a source – in the German high command. He has already given us a sample of the kind of material that he will be able to provide on a regular basis, and the Admiralty assures me that it is first-class.’

  Blackstone was growing tired of the man – and tired of his self-serving conversation.

  ‘With the greatest respect, sir, I don’t see what any of this has to do with me,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps if you’d shut up and listen, you’d find out,’ the superintendent snapped. ‘Our source wants twenty-five thousand pounds in return for further intelligence, and you are to deliver that money to him.’