Sweet Things Dying - Chapter XXVI

In the latest instalment, Cole finds confrontations, revelations, and more death...

XXVI

Drunken sailors and stevedores marked most of the Friday evening action along Cable Street. The prostitutes were not far behind as they made their way to whichever busy pub would take their hard-earned pennies.

Being just after six o’clock many other shops remained open. It was odd, then, that Cohen’s barbershop was dim, with the door locked and the sign turned to “Closed.” As he had before, Cole eyed the shop from the shadows of the railway arches. He’d followed Quinn and the file of eight constables and one sergeant as they’d marched from Leman Street station under cover of darkness, but he’d been cautioned to stay back and remain an observer.

A Black Maria – a re-enforced carriage for the transport of prisoners – had been summoned and waited nearby. Three constables were sent to the back lane while Quinn, his sergeant and the others stood in wait near the shop front. Then one of the constables came running from the back lane, hands held out as he showed Quinn the separate halves of brick – how they fit like puzzle pieces. It was a final mark of the Cohens’ complicity.

The constable returned to his post in the back lane. From across the street, through a vertical curtain of wet, fast-falling snow, Cole heard the sergeant’s ham-fist pound on the shop door. He tried again. Not a flicker of response.

The upper windows, where Cohen and his sister had their apartments, were also black. Were they out? Or were they, perhaps, at work upon their sinister trade, beyond the dividing wall at the back of the shop?

Quinn barked and two constables, towing a heavy cylinder of oak, rushed inward. With one thrust, the locked snapped and the door splintered off its hinges, falling back from the frame. The oaken cylinder was discarded. Like sand pouring through the neck of an hourglass, the five constables, followed by the sergeant and Quinn, funnelled into the shop. They disappeared within its interior shadows.

Cole crossed the road and stopped out front.

An explosion of violent shouts and crashes shot from the mouth of the shattered doorway. He peered inside. It all came from the back of the shop, beyond the partition, the door of which hung open. A rapid, back-and-forth movement of heaving bodies and flailing arms and truncheons betrayed the desperate struggle occurring within. From out of it stumbled a fleeing shadow, nearly falling headlong as it turned on its heels, away from Cole’s silhouette in the doorway, and raced through a side door leading to stairs.

Dim oil lamps gave the stairwell a sulphurous glow, enough for Cole to see the fleeing figure was in flowing dresses beneath a gore-smeared apron.

Emilia Cohen!

Two constables, one having lost his helmet, burst out of the backroom in pursuit.

Cole pointed: “There!”

He followed on their heels as they pounded up the stairs. The entirety of the house shook under the storm of urgent movement.