Corpse Thief

by Michael Arnold

  Hawke ignored the barb. “So be it.”

  Ruthven’s bulky arm shot up and he clicked his fingers.

  A girl scurried smartly over. She did not look at Hawke. “What’ll it be, Mister Ruthven?”

  “Gin with hot water, Maggie. Small beer for me.”

  Maggie turned away. “Certainly, sir.”

  “And two slices of pigeon pie,” Ruthven called after her.

  Hawke’s stomach seemed to have ears of its own, for it grumbled at the mention of food. “Thank you, sir.”

  Ruthven picked at something between front teeth that were like twin tombstones; big and flat and grey. “Can’t let my favourite informant starve now, can we?” He sat back, folded his arms, his face settling into a half-smirk that spoke of a man very comfortable with the trajectory his life had taken.

  The dagger at Hawke’s belt seemed suddenly heavy. Christ, but he hated the smug bastard. George Ruthven was a Bow Street Patrol Officer, a Runner to most, though he would never deign to use the unofficial moniker, and his name was known across the capital. As Principal Officer, Ruthven was a big cog in the thief-taking machine established in the middle of the last century, but his real fame had come from his part in the arrest of the Cato Street conspirators the previous winter. The group of ultra-radicals, known as the Society of Spencean Philanthropists, had planned to overthrow the government, beginning with the assassination of the cabinet, most of whom, they had discovered, were due to dine together at the house of a privy councillor, Lord Harrowby. Ruthven had learnt of these plans and led a party of Bow Street personnel to the conspirators’ hiding place in a stable in nearby Cato Street. In the fight that followed, one Runner had died, the Cato Street gang had been smashed, and Ruthven had made his name. Now, a year and a half on, the principal Officer was the darling of the great and good of London, and the nemesis of the rest.

  “I hear the Caribbee fellow’s taken the reins,” Ruthven said.

  Hawke nodded. “Blackbird.”

  “Looks a brute.”

  “Jack Tar, as was. Then into smuggling.”

  Ruthven fiddled with the rim of his hat, his expression one of wry amusement. “A life as colourful as his complexion. And now he slits throats and steals corpses.” He looked up sharply. “What did they do with Sheepy’s body?”

  Hawke waited while Maggie came over with their drinks. She set them down and returned to the counter to fetch two plates. Bending slowly, so that the fulsomeness of her bosom could not be ignored, she laid the crumbling segments of cold pie in front of each man. Hawke almost laughed at the brazenness of the gesture, for she might have been mistaken for one of the whores that flocked about the taverns of St Giles. Not that she had any interest in him, of course. Her eyes were firmly fixed upon the dashing officer and, he felt certain, the wealth it was rumoured he now possessed. Hawke caught her coquettish smile as she backed away, and his amusement soured. Girls like her had once reserved their winks and pouts for him. Back when he had been tall and handsome. Before it had happened. Before everything changed. Now he was just tall. His muscles had withered away, his skin turned as pasty as the corpses in which he dealt, his teeth decayed to mottled amber, his blue eyes dull. He felt like a faded man. A silhouette of what once he had been.

  Ruthven cleared his throat noisily. “Sheepy?”

  “Into the river,” Hawke said, blinking away his reverie, “like all the rest.” Sheepy Johns, dubbed so on account of his curly white hair, had been the leader until a quarrel in a rookery soup shop had ended with a rusty knife slammed deep into his belly. It had taken a long time for him to die, but die he had, writhing and puking, shitting himself and calling for a mother he had probably never laid eyes on.

  “Does that make you number two?” Ruthven asked thoughtfully as he lifted the ale pot to his lips.

  Hawke nodded, scratching the dark stubble at his skull. He had had to take a razor to his head to keep the lice at bay. “For the time being.”

  Ruthven raised his cup in mock salute. “Then I toast your promotion.”

  Hawke felt his face flush. He gritted his teeth. “Szekely seems to favour me.” He shrugged. “Thinks I’m useful on account of my letters.”

  “Does he know your,” Ruthven pursed his lips as he searched for the word, and the corners of his mouth twitched, “story?”

  Hawke said that he did not. “Such news would not be welcome, I suspect.”

  Ruthven chuckled. “But he knows you can fight.” His little eyes raked appraisingly over Hawke’s torso. “Despite your obvious frailties.”

  Hawke bridled inwardly at that, not so much in response to the mockery, but because it was a thrust that was painfully true. He glared at the table, his bony arms feeling suddenly more brittle. He wondered if they could even wield a sword any more. “Aye.”

  “Then you are useful for that alone,” the Principal Officer said. He waited for Hawke to meet his gaze. “And yet?”

  “And yet Blackbird has a particular friend who eyes my place.”

  Ruthven drew a handkerchief from his sleeve and dabbed the corners of his mouth. “The hospital porter?”

  “Gilroy Penley?” Hawke shook his head. “He’s useful for his connections with the anatomists, but he hasn’t the wit.”

  “The one they call Goaty, then?”

  “The same.”

  Ruthven screwed up his mouth in distaste. “Appears to have had half his face ripped off.”

  “You have it precisely, sir. Mastiff down at one of the Southwark pits. Jumped the fence.”

  Ruthven snorted. “Mistook him for a bear, did it?”

  “Evidently.”

  Hawke looked down at his drink. Just the sight of it made him salivate. It was life itself. Pure, unadulterated life. He worked for the stuff. Lived for it. Though he despised what it had done to him, how it had gnawed away at his insides and his mind, that did not stop him yearning for the next drink as though it were a secret lover. He felt the fingers of his right hand gently tremble, and he wrapped them about the glass, squeezing harder than necessary, hurrying the liquid to his mouth as though the world depended upon it.

  The gin, strong and bitter, burned remorselessly at his tongue and lips. He swilled the liquid about his mouth, raised as it was to a pleasant warmth by the water, bathing his teeth, feeling his pulse thump at their roots where his gums were suddenly lambent. The ache in his molar was muffled, the frayed edges of his nerves tied away, and, in a single, glorious moment, the memories of home were washed distant. Purged to half-formed wraiths. He closed his eyes.

  “You’ll continue,” Ruthven said as he watched the drink he had purchased disappear down Hawke’s throat.

  Hawke opened his eyes, lowered the glass, his face feeling the warmth of the gin, pulsating and welcome. He stared at the Bow Street Runner, wondering whether the words had been meant as a question or a statement. Ruthven seemed careless of the scrutiny, concentrating instead on the pie that he now greedily devoured.

  Hawke had decided to follow suit when Ruthven said, “Grubbing in the mud again?”

  He looked up from the pie cradled in his palms, realising Ruthven had noticed the grime beneath his fingernails. He licked crumbs from his lips. “We made a lift last night, aye.”

  “Flesh only, one hopes?”

  Hawke took a bite of the pastry-flecked pigeon meat as he nodded. A corpse was not considered property in the eyes of the law, and the grave robbers – the Resurrection Men as they were often called – who obtained fresh cadavers for the insatiable anatomy schools, were careful to take only what they required. To dig up a naked body would see you rapped across the knuckles by the magistrates, perhaps fined if you were unlucky, but little more. A man caught stealing goods from a burial – clothes, jewellery, anything – might be tried for theft, and that would see him transported to the colonies, or worse.

  “Flesh only,” Hawke said after another mouthful.

  “Good. Wouldn’t wish to see so useful an agent strung up.”
/>   “I am not your agent.”

  Ruthven wrinkled his flat nose to show that he cared little for Hawke’s belligerence. “My eyes and ears, then. My window on to the underworld.” He set down the pie crust and took a swig of beer. “It was successful, this lift?”

  “Aye,” Hawke said, thinking back to the night’s work. He stifled a shudder. Not for the act itself, but for the oppressive knowledge that he found the theft and sale of corpses so simple a thing. He had been in London two years, a resurrection man for half that time, and already the work had become mundane to him.

  “What was the trade?” Ruthven asked.

  “One large.”

  “Receiver?”

  “Doctor Vine, out at Stanhope Street.”

  Ruthven tapped his forefinger lightly against his temple. “Good to know. How much did he pay?”

  “Eight guineas.”

  “I’m pleased for you,” the big man said dryly. “Or rather, I’m pleased for Szekely. I hope he remunerates you well.”

  “You would not be speaking with me if that were the case.”

  Ruthven’s broad face split in a grin. “Touché.”

  “Why am I here, Mister Ruthven?” Hawke said quickly, for he did not wish to dwell upon Szekely. The mere mention of the name made his blood run chill.

  “I summoned you.” Ruthven tilted back his lantern jaw and quaffed the remainder of his beer.

  “I got the note, sir, but I have no news of significance,” Hawke persisted. He leaned in a touch. “So it must be you who have something to impart.”

  Ruthven set down the pot, placing his elbows on the table and making a steeple of his hands. “I would ask you to keep your ear to the ground.”

  “Don’t I always?”

  Ruthven’s small eyes became suddenly tiny in that vast skull, his face sagging. “Two weeks ago, a pair of bodies were pulled out of a sewer beneath Upper Thames Street. One was a tosher named Varney Tapp, the other a little girl, who we believe to be one Betsy Milne, daughter of a Smithfield slaughter-man.”

  Hawke stared back at the officer, barely able to contain his incredulity. “That’s what you’ve dragged me over here for? A sewer sucker and a gutter snipe? You expect me to believe the Runners are interested in either of those poor bastards?”

  Ruthven’s jaw twitched. “We are not Runners, Hawke, we are Bow Street Patrol Officers.” He sat back, cracked his knuckles. “The girl was wrapped.”

  Hawke frowned. “Raped?”

  “Wrapped.”

  “In a shroud?”

  “In stalks,” Ruthven said. “Two kinds.” He fished briefly inside his blue coat, producing a pair of what looked to be plant cuttings, each between six and eight inches long, one green and the other light brown. He placed them on the table. “Taken from the body.”

  Hawke picked up the greener piece. It had the texture of celery, but its aroma struck him instantly. “Fennel?”

  “What say you of the other?”

  Hawke inspected it, then shrugged. “Tell me.”

  “We cannot identify it. The victim was woven within the stuff. Like a cocoon.” Ruthven traced an invisible line with a finger beneath his chin. “That’s how she died. Throttled with the stuff. But-”

  “But?”

  Ruthven seemed to hesitate, then blew out those ruddy cheeks as though his head were a huge set of bellows. “She had no face,” he said eventually, his tone unusual for its sudden discomfiture. “Or rather, it had been ripped off.”

  Silence followed. Hawke stayed leaning in, Ruthven remained as he was. “Ripped off?” Hawke echoed the words slowly, hoping he had misheard.

  The tension in Ruthven’s face told him his ears functioned as well as ever. “Eyes gouged out, nose cut off, that kind of thing. You can appreciate why such a find has come to our attention.”

  “The tosher-man?”

  “Not he. His end came by way of a knife in the back.”

  Hawke slumped backwards, rubbing his palms hard over his eyes, as though the images could be purged from his mind. “Jesus wept,” he whispered, and now the faceless girl faded, only to be replaced by other children. Cleaved and bloodied. Their mothers too. All hewn by steel and rage and hate. Not again, his mind muttered, and he planted his hands on the table top and pushed himself upright. “Not for me, Mister Ruthven,” he said blearily, as though waking from some nightmare. “Not this time.”

  But George Ruthven’s tipstaff was immediately up, flashing across to press against Hawke’s narrow waist, barring his escape. “Stay, Mister Hawke,” Ruthven intoned. “I said stay.”

  The words were laced with threat, and Hawke did as he was told, but as soon as he had checked for prying eyes he hissed, “Fuck you, Ruthven. You do not own me.” He moved round the edge of the table, easing back the tipstaff, and craned over the pots and the remnants of pigeon pie to look down upon the man in the expensive silken waistcoat. “You pay me to pass you information so that you and your bastard Runners can stay ahead of the villains. I do that. Happily so, for I once observed things from your side of the wall. But this? A child mutilated?” He shook his head slowly. “Not this.”

  Ruthven laughed, though it was a dark sound, devoid of mirth or empathy. “My side of the wall? Your delusions demean us both, you gin-soaked wastrel. You do as you’re told because Szekely does not pay you enough to keep you in drink and opium, and because you are not fit for employment elsewhere.”

  “I will give up the gin,” Hawke spluttered, “if it will keep me from this task.”

  Ruthven laughed again, lowering the tipstaff. “Is that right? Tell me, Joshua. How are the good folk of Droylsden?” He put the stave to his lips, blowing warm breath across the shining end and polishing it with his sleeve. When he was satisfied, he glanced up. “Your mother? How about dear Uncle Jack?”

  Hawke thought he would be sick there and then. He swallowed hard, felt his eyes prick with heat. “You wouldn’t.”

  Ruthven stood suddenly. Hawke was not a short man, nearly six feet, but the lawman looked down upon him, his boxer’s face brutal in the smoky air. “Try me,” he replied slowly. “You are a member of Colan Szekely’s organisation. Ghouls, traders in death. You disgust me. But your position is useful, so I allow you to continue. I pay you for your whispers, Hawke, but you are not my employee. You are my creature. You’ll do as you’re damn well told. Not because of this,” he jabbed the tipstaff into Hawke’s ribs, then nodded at the empty gin glass on the table, “or even that. But because I know who you are.” He leaned closer, the smell of beer and meat and pastry on his breath. “Who you really are, Joshua Hawke. And don’t bloody well forget it.” He backed away suddenly, the aggression ebbing. “I’ve a great deal riding on this case. If you do not offer your assistance freely, I will be left with little choice but to dig up your roots and place them in the palm of Colan Szekely. If ever he discovered your duplicity, he would weight your ankles and dump you in the river.” He indulged in a triumphal smirk. “If he were to learn of your past as well, your death would not be so easy.”

  Hawke slumped back, deflated and defeated. “Bastard.”

  “Be sure to set about your work promptly. The penny bloods are full of the tale. Sensationalised, of course. Witches and sorcerers and demons, stalking the night and preying upon beautiful young maidens.” He rubbed his face, suddenly looking exhausted. “But the newspapers will duly follow, and I shall have a riot on my hands.”

  “And my work is what, exactly?”

  “Our officers have encountered something of a dead end,” Ruthven said bleakly, the corner of his eye flickering. It was evidently not easy for him to admit Bow Street’s shortcomings, and that fact alone cheered Hawke immensely. “It is imperative that this matter is resolved swiftly, and to the satisfaction of the mob, but no one will speak with us.” He shrugged. “There are no witnesses.”

  Hawke folded his arms. “Do I get a tipstaff?”

  “You get to live a little longer,” Ruthven said flatly. “I need
a man with a modicum of wit, experience in the detection of villainy and the requisite connections within the city’s criminal fraternity. You may have fallen far, Mister Hawke, but you once served under Joseph Nadin.”

  “The man was as crooked as Szekely.”

  “The man was an excellent thief-taker and Deputy-Constable of Manchester. If you worked for Nadin, then you can work for me.”

  Hawke shook his head. “Those days are long behind me. I’ll pass you information, as I have always done, but no more.”

  Ruthven fished in his coat, pulling out a small but bulging leather bag that chinked loudly as he set it on the table. “You will learn who killed Betsy Milne. This bounty will free up whichever axles may need greasing. The remainder is yours, to be invested in as much gin and laudanum as you can consume.”

  Hawke stared at the money. It was a small fortune. He licked his lips greedily, like a wolf eyeing a lamb, and instantly chided himself, yet there was little point in playing it coy. He slid out a hand that quaked slightly, gathering up the purse as though it contained the very secret to salvation.

  Ruthven smiled coldly down at him. “There’s a good chap.”

  Hawke forced his mind back to the matter in question. “Two weeks, you said. Since the bodies were discovered. Can I see them?”

  Ruthven shook his head. “Long since buried. But they were not killed a fortnight ago. They were much decomposed. The coroner believed the crime took place back in the autumn.”

  “Who found them?”

  “Another tosher-man, named Mayhew.”

  “I will need to speak with him.”

  “Be my guest. You’ll find him with the mudlarks and beggars down on the north foreshore. Do not think my men have omitted him from our enquiries. He was questioned.”

  “And?”

  “A fool and a sot. Worthless.”

  “Even so,” Hawke began, but Ruthven cut him off.

  “A word to the wise. Rumour has it that Boris Milne sniffs vengeance.”

  “Milne?” Hawke replied, nonplussed. “The girl’s father? The butcher?”

  Ruthven nodded. “He believes his poor dead daughter was the victim of resurrection men requiring fresher corpses than usual.”