Free Blood and Circuses by Kerry Greenwood Page A

white cup and put it into Tommy’s hands. ‘Drink up. Help yourself, Terry. Now, I am going to tell you something confidential. Do I have your word not to disclose it?’
    Grossmith nodded. Harris gulped tea and said, ‘Yes, sir.’ He was pleased that his voice did not shake.
    ‘Good. The interesting thing that Garinic said was “Exit”. We’ve heard that before. For the last six months we have been losing prisoners. There was Maguire and there was that rat Smythe. You know about them?’ They nodded. Tea was putting colour back into Harris’s white cheeks. Grossmith absently gave him his cup and Tommy drank, feeling more centred. ‘But what you haven’t heard about is Seddon.’
    ‘He’s dead, sir. Died in prison,’ said Grossmith. As Robinson did not speak, the big man added, ‘Didn’t he?’
    ‘Oh, yes. Certified dead by the prison doctor and carried out in a coffin. Given to his family to be buried—that won’t happen again, I can tell you, not without a post-mortem. Because last week I got this.’
    He handed them a card in a stiff white envelope. It showed dancing crowds of gaily dressed people. ‘It’s postmarked Rio de Janeiro.’
    Terence Grossmith read the spiky, idiosyncratic handwriting with difficulty. ‘It says, “Dear Jack, just to let you know I’ve arrived safely. If you are still doing that literature course, I refer you to Romeo and Juliet, Act IV, Scene i. Best regards as always, William Seddon.” William Seddon? Is this his writing, sir?’
    ‘Yes. They say it’s identical. The Shakespeare reference is to the scene between Friar Lawrence and Juliet, where he gives her a drug to mimic death. It annoyed me at the time but we have been lucky. If that cheeky bugger hadn’t needed to crow about getting away, then we wouldn’t have had a clue. But there is an undercurrent in the underworld, if I may put it like that. They are all talking about Exit. If you have the money, Exit can get you out of the country. I don’t know how to find them. No one will tell us anything else about it.’
    ‘I never heard of it,’ said Grossmith. ‘None of my telltales have told me anything about it.’ He was deeply ashamed. Robinson saw this and hurried into speech.
    ‘It hasn’t been mentioned in Brunswick Street, Terry, or it hadn’t until Harris here got the office from Garinic. If it had been, you’d have heard about it. I think that the ’Roy Boys might know more. Clearly they thought it important enough to kill for, if they snuffed poor Garinic, though we still don’t know that. He could have had a lot of enemies. But the smart money has to be on the ’Roys. Now. We have to stamp on this and stamp on it fast. You have read the papers, haven’t you? You know what’s happening in America. Gangs and bootleggers and machine-gun killings on the street. The police are helpless there and I regret to say that a lot of them have been bought and paid for. We aren’t going to let that happen here. We have been put off balance by the War, the whole nation has. To an extent, we have lost our nerve and there are a lot of people out there that the police surgeon reckons are potential loonies. If this Exit thing gets established, then bang goes law and order and it will be every man for himself. You remember the police strike, Terry? All the damage done in that was a few shops looted and a smallish riot. Can you imagine what would happen now, in 1928, if there was a police strike?’
    Terence Grossmith thought about it. The nerves of the people had been stretched to breaking point by the Great War, and the succeeding generation didn’t seem to care about anything, or believe in anything. He shuddered. Robinson nodded.
    ‘Exactly. We’re on the edge of a knife all the time. Anything could push us over. So we aren’t going to allow that to happen. Are we?’
    Constable Harris, much recovered, said, ‘How can we stop it, sir?’
    Grossmith grunted and Robinson smiled. He had a peculiarly