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Authors: Thomas Brennan
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“Look at her, Inspector: the engineering marvel of the century. The Company owns all these docks, all these piers, warehouses, and wharves, but she is the jewel.”
Salisbury’s plush quarters offered a superb view of the Span. Sunlight glinted on iron and steel, on the sweeping catenary support pipes strung between the vast towers, and on the delicate vertical cables holding the road and rail deck; the polished electric rails glimmered like silver threads.
Langton had never been this close to the structure. The angular bas-relief figures on the first tower’s Egyptian-themed frieze dwarfed him.From this angle, the first tower, with its crown lost in cloud, looked like a mythic pillar supporting heaven. “It’s very impressive, your lordship.”
“More than impressive, Inspector: stupendous.” Salisbury rested one hand against the glass as if reaching out to touch his creation. “For thirty years have I dreamed of this. Thirty years. Engineer after engineer failed until the Brunels stepped forward. Whole countries were quarried to supply the foundations and facings of those towers. Those beams and cables carry steel from every foundry in the empire. The Span is more than a mere bridge, Langton; it is an emblem. A symbol. Nothing is beyond us. Nature is at our command.”
Then, before Langton could ask where the various dispossessed families camped below fitted into the design, Salisbury turned to him and said, “Yet all this could fail. Those foundations rest on a mountain of pound notes and promissory papers, the deposits of hundreds of thousands of investors. Yet if one—just one—of those investors loses his nerve, the whole beautiful edifice could collapse. All because of a simple whiff of scandal. I must not let that happen, Inspector.”
Salisbury stepped closer. His eyes burned. “In four days’ time Her Majesty the Queen will open the Span. Nothing must prevent that. Nothing.”
* * *
A S HE WAITED for McBride in the lobby, Langton wondered why Lord Salisbury had taken the time and effort to warn him, indeed to threaten him. Langton would have to choose his path with care; Salisbury could prove a powerful enemy.
“They gave me the address, sir,” McBride said as he descended the marble staircase and followed Langton outside. He drew a typewritten sheet from his jacket and said, “Abel Samuel John Kepler. Forty-seven years old, unmarried. Joined the Span Company almost six months ago. Currently lodging in Gloucester Road in Bootle.”
The text confirmed McBride’s words but also added to them. “Who’s this? Peter Durham?”
“Another Span fella, sir, a daytime security guard who bunks at the same lodgings as Kepler. Seems he joined the same day as our man, too.”
More coincidence. “Durham wasn’t on Lord Salisbury’s absentee list, so I suppose he must have arrived for work today…”
McBride grinned. “Happens he did, sir. He’s over on pier three in the King’s Dock, the clerk said. Seems that the Span owns a fair chunk of the Mersey waterfront.”
As Langton followed the signs toward the King’s Dock adjacent to Albert Dock, he wondered how the ship owners and liner companies regarded Lord Salisbury and the Transatlantic Span. After all, the bridge would rob them of millions of pounds of cargo and passenger revenues; it might put many of them out of business altogether. Could they be behind Kepler?
Langton considered that a remote possibility. He and McBride avoided the trundling carts laden with cargoes of sacks, timber, and bundles, and dodged between swaying towers of crates. All the while, the background bedlam of the docks assaulted them: yells, curses, the pounding of steam winches, the shrill cries of ships’ whistles and horns. Even the odd flurry of song.
They crossed a narrow bridge set above stout wooden sluice gates between the docks and the river, then pushed through a crowded wharf to pier three. Langton questioned a wizened man with a clipboard, who
Salisbury’s plush quarters offered a superb view of the Span. Sunlight glinted on iron and steel, on the sweeping catenary support pipes strung between the vast towers, and on the delicate vertical cables holding the road and rail deck; the polished electric rails glimmered like silver threads.
Langton had never been this close to the structure. The angular bas-relief figures on the first tower’s Egyptian-themed frieze dwarfed him.From this angle, the first tower, with its crown lost in cloud, looked like a mythic pillar supporting heaven. “It’s very impressive, your lordship.”
“More than impressive, Inspector: stupendous.” Salisbury rested one hand against the glass as if reaching out to touch his creation. “For thirty years have I dreamed of this. Thirty years. Engineer after engineer failed until the Brunels stepped forward. Whole countries were quarried to supply the foundations and facings of those towers. Those beams and cables carry steel from every foundry in the empire. The Span is more than a mere bridge, Langton; it is an emblem. A symbol. Nothing is beyond us. Nature is at our command.”
Then, before Langton could ask where the various dispossessed families camped below fitted into the design, Salisbury turned to him and said, “Yet all this could fail. Those foundations rest on a mountain of pound notes and promissory papers, the deposits of hundreds of thousands of investors. Yet if one—just one—of those investors loses his nerve, the whole beautiful edifice could collapse. All because of a simple whiff of scandal. I must not let that happen, Inspector.”
Salisbury stepped closer. His eyes burned. “In four days’ time Her Majesty the Queen will open the Span. Nothing must prevent that. Nothing.”
* * *
A S HE WAITED for McBride in the lobby, Langton wondered why Lord Salisbury had taken the time and effort to warn him, indeed to threaten him. Langton would have to choose his path with care; Salisbury could prove a powerful enemy.
“They gave me the address, sir,” McBride said as he descended the marble staircase and followed Langton outside. He drew a typewritten sheet from his jacket and said, “Abel Samuel John Kepler. Forty-seven years old, unmarried. Joined the Span Company almost six months ago. Currently lodging in Gloucester Road in Bootle.”
The text confirmed McBride’s words but also added to them. “Who’s this? Peter Durham?”
“Another Span fella, sir, a daytime security guard who bunks at the same lodgings as Kepler. Seems he joined the same day as our man, too.”
More coincidence. “Durham wasn’t on Lord Salisbury’s absentee list, so I suppose he must have arrived for work today…”
McBride grinned. “Happens he did, sir. He’s over on pier three in the King’s Dock, the clerk said. Seems that the Span owns a fair chunk of the Mersey waterfront.”
As Langton followed the signs toward the King’s Dock adjacent to Albert Dock, he wondered how the ship owners and liner companies regarded Lord Salisbury and the Transatlantic Span. After all, the bridge would rob them of millions of pounds of cargo and passenger revenues; it might put many of them out of business altogether. Could they be behind Kepler?
Langton considered that a remote possibility. He and McBride avoided the trundling carts laden with cargoes of sacks, timber, and bundles, and dodged between swaying towers of crates. All the while, the background bedlam of the docks assaulted them: yells, curses, the pounding of steam winches, the shrill cries of ships’ whistles and horns. Even the odd flurry of song.
They crossed a narrow bridge set above stout wooden sluice gates between the docks and the river, then pushed through a crowded wharf to pier three. Langton questioned a wizened man with a clipboard, who
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