Corpse Thief

by Michael Arnold

  “Is he right?”

  Ruthven sucked his teeth. “You tell me.”

  “Not that I have heard,” Hawke said truthfully. “Might be another gang, but not one of ours.”

  “As I suspected,” Ruthven said. “She was shredded and slashed, not anatomised, though a layman would not know the difference.” He took a lingering breath through his big nostrils. “Butcher Milne blames you and your kind, and why wouldn’t he? And he has repute, Mister Hawke. He is known to slaughter more than livestock. You had better expedite your investigations, or he’ll soon be knocking at your door.” With a wink, Ruthven turned on his heels. “Maggie! One more here!”

  The serving girl brandished a blushing smile. “‘Course, Mister Ruthven, sir. What shall you ‘ave? Same again?”

  Ruthven shook his head. “Not I, Maggie. For my friend, here. Gin. Just gin.” He grinned nastily. “Always gin! Place it on my account.”

  Maggie smiled sweetly, though it was obvious she had no interest serving Hawke if the hero of London was not to remain. “Right away, sir.”

  Ruthven cast Hawke an uncompromising stare. “A girl with her face ripped off.” He set his jaw as if bracing himself against the image. “Something evil lurks, Hawke, and I’ll not have it in my town.” His gaze flickered to the table, where the stem cuttings lay side by side. “Keep those. Find their significance.” He went towards the door, hesitating to glance across his wide shoulder. “You were someone once. A man of justice, like me. I am not asking you to turn thief-taker. Merely pose a few discreet questions. You know people who might have heard something. Sniff about in the taprooms, listen at dark doorways. Wade in the filth you call home. Tell me what you discover.”

  And with that, he was gone.

  Θ

  The stink of the Thames, of open gutters, of horse shit and smoke was ripe in Hawke’s nostrils as he trudged home. It was dusk now, gaslight casting a wan cloak over the streets and buildings. The shadows at the road’s edges seemed all the deeper for it, as though forced to work harder against the tremulous glow, and Hawke made certain to stay in the very centre of the cobbled thoroughfare. He looked left and right with every pace, senses as keen as the knife sheathed at his belt, eyes and ears searching the penumbra for sinister shapes and sounds. A shadow shifted beneath one of the towering lamps. Hawke put a hand to his new purse, let the other hand slide to the dagger’s bone handle, his jaw suddenly tight, but he soon saw that a pair of children huddled there, draped in rags, pressed together for warmth. They would not likely survive the winter, and he wondered if he would soon be pulling them from a shallow pauper’s grave, destined for the schools and their scalpels.

  A discordant symphony of hooves and wheels rose up behind him, smashing the children from his mind’s eye, and he leapt to the side as a hackney carriage clattered past. He spat in its wake, curses drowned by the din.

  “Waste o’ hot air, friend,” a man’s voice called from a florist’s bolted doorway. “They wouldn’t hear if you were perched on their shoulders.”

  Hawke squinted into the gloom to see the toothless visage of an elderly man with slate-grey hair and a beard fringed in white. He was wrapped against the cold in a woollen shawl, a garment doubtless long discarded by some high-class lady, though his feet were bare and berry-red in the feeble light. “You’re right, of course.”

  The old man stooped, hunching against the chill breeze, but he straightened a touch, watery eyes widening. “Well strike me down, sir, if you do not hail from God’s own country!”

  “Lancashire, friend,” Hawke said.

  “Yorkshireman, me, and proud in it! But not an educated fellow like thysen, m’lord!” His dry-looking lips peeled back in a rictus grin. “Got a coin or three for a fellow northerner?” He gave a mock salute. “And a veteran o’ Waterloo!”

  There but for the grace of God go I, Hawke thought. A bitter internal voice sneered, there but for the indulgence of Messrs Szekely and Ruthven. Not wishing to display his newfound funds, he plucked a clipped and worn farthing from the pocket of his greatcoat, tossing it to the beggar. “I applaud the effort, friend, but you’re too old to’ve fought at Waterloo.”

  The man shrugged. “Worth a throw, was it not? Were you there, m’lord?”

  “I was too young.” But you saw fighting, the disembodied voices whispered around Hawke’s skull, cackling, mocking. He shook his head as though it were full of bees. “And don’t call me lord.”

  His voice, he had hoped when first he reached London, would be his saving grace. Clipped and disciplined by pricey education, but warmed by the tones of his native county, Hawke had expected it to keep him in the right strata of society. He wanted to find work in a law firm, or as a clerk for one of the big trading companies out at the docks. But he had found matters to the contrary, for he could not prove his credentials, had no letter of recommendation, and was deliberately vague about his background. Furthermore, he had come to the city with only modest funds, and none of the better kind of folk would deal with him in attire made shabby by the long hike south. He had quickly been forced to scrape for work of a humbler nature. Clerking in a less well-heeled establishment, perhaps, or shop work, if only to get his new life started. In the event, even that proved difficult, for the whiff of schooling in his tone worked against him when dealing with London’s poorest. It was only six years since the defeat of Bonaparte’s forces, and former soldiers still flooded the metropolis. The threat of civil strife simmered in the alehouses and gin shops, and the government were alert to any potential trouble makers. The common folk of London mistrusted a man asking for a pauper’s wage with the voice of the gentry. They took him for a spy. Which, of course, he was, Hawke reflected ruefully as he turned into Plumbtree Street. But not in the way folk assumed.

  He took a left and paced into Phoenix Street. He was in the place he called home now, the slum known as St Giles rookery, and he slipped his hand beneath the hem of his coat and gripped the hilt of his knife again. It was eerily quiet. There was almost no light here, the shadows growing in confidence as the lamps became fewer, their black talons lengthening to steal more of the dying day. Here was Hawke’s new world; the one he had received in the ill-fated trade for his former self. The one, he now accepted, awarded him as penance. Punishment for sins he knew he would never erase.

  It had not started badly. A job as an assistant in the London Hospital out at Whitechapel had seen him earn enough to fill his belly. He cleaned floors and moved patients and emptied buckets of excrement. It was hard enough work, but not entirely to be disliked. And yet his mind would not let him be at ease. It maintained a state of worry, replaying the old memories over and over, keeping him from sleep, barring him from happiness. He had turned to drink. Successfully to begin with. A perfect balance of hospital and gin shop, allowing him to work and sleep and function as a genuine member of society for the first time since he had fled Droylsden. But then the scales had begun to tip, so gradually that he had not foreseen the change until the balance was weighted fully on the side of the drink, and soon he had stopped eating, preferring to spend all of his coin on the liquid that had become a life-giving elixir. In a matter of a few short months he was missing work altogether, preferring to spend the days in gin shops and opium dens rather than hospital wards, and before he knew where he was, the job had been given to a more reliable man. A sober man.

  Hawke lodged in a cramped, dank, mouldering room nestled in the roof of an ancient tenement on Buckbridge Street in the very heart of the rookery. The whole building leaned severely so that a man could almost touch the eaves of the rooftops on the far side of road, and he glanced up as he negotiated the steps to the entrance, making sure no piss buckets were poised above. He moved quickly inside, shouldering open the door that was never locked, and up the splintered, crumbling staircase that was the structure’s decrepit spine. He scaled three floors, each with its own landing and several doorways, some of which seemed to speak to him as groans and shouts and laughter and sob
s emanated from the rooms beyond. Tonight, like every night, there would be screams. He reached the attic rooms. There were two doors, one on either side of the staircase, and he went right. He wondered if Lucas would be awake. He had not wished to share with the straw-haired stripling, but the lad was new to the city, having walked barefoot all the way from a fishing village on the Norfolk coast, and Szekely had taken the lad under his wing. And what Szekely wanted, he got. He was not a bad employer, Hawke mused. Indeed, the man had saved Hawke’s life just as he had saved Lucas. Hawke’s time at the London Hospital had put him in contact with a porter named Gilroy Penley, and Penley, it transpired, was a resurrection man, who happened to be part of a gang working the cemeteries during the blackest nights of winter. At first Hawke had baulked at the idea of partaking in such a grim business. The sack-’em-up men, as they were often called, were hated as much as they were feared, and it was dangerous work. But it was work. And Hawke, above all, needed funds, because the gin shops called to him. The memories needed smothering.

  The door to his room was ajar, which was not unusual. Hawke pushed it open, called to Lucas, expecting the spotty-faced pup to grin up at him from his raggedy bed in the far corner.

  Instead, Joshua Hawke froze. Lucas was there, lying flat as he had expected, and at first it looked as though he was grinning as he always did, but as Hawke’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw that it was not a natural smile that greeted him, rather one made by man. A man with a blade, who had torn a broad, ragged slash across the lad’s windpipe. Blood had coursed down Lucas’s narrow chest, so that his shirt was as dark as the grubby sheets in which he was bundled. Hawke moved closer, hearing himself swear. It was obvious there was nothing he could do, for Lucas was long dead. A fan of crimson droplets stained the rest of the bed, describing the pulse of his rapidly emptied jugular. The whole place stank of coppery blood.

  Hawke staggered back, feeling the damp wall against his shoulder blades. He slipped in something wet, toppling onto his rump, and realised with horror that the floorboards, too, were thick with blood. He sprawled where he fell, scrabbling to find purchase, eventually inching to his feet like a fawn on an icy pond. He needed to leave, but he could not move his legs properly. He knew he should summon Szekely, or even Ruthven, but what if they accused him? He decided to hide the body. Make the whole horrific mess disappear. Tell everyone that Lucas must have done a midnight flit. He looked again at the corpse. The world swam before him, his feet and hips and guts all turning to water. He slumped heavily to his knees. There was a loose floorboard nearby and he reached for it, levering up the plank with savagely bitten nails. A lifeline glinted in the shallow, rectangular chasm beneath. He lunged for it, grasping the cold glass as a drowning man might grasp a floating spar. Then he reeled away, thumbing open the stopper and jamming the bottle between his lips. Nothing else mattered. Lucas could wait.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THURSDAY

  The icy water felt like shattering glass against Hawke’s skin. He gasped, flailing wildly, for a split second fearing he had been dumped in the Thames like the hapless Sheepy Johns.

  His eyes sprung open and he sat up with a start. It appeared to be daytime, for a feeble grey light bathed everything. His head pounded, hammer on anvil, and he thought he might pass out to the tune of his own blood rushing in his ears. The sight of a round, cleanly shaved face staring at him from beneath a high quality beaver hat brought a sudden, chilling clarity. The man was ghostly in his pallor, save the eyes which were glittering and baby-blue. The nose was pinched and arrow-straight, while the lips, pursed in curiosity, were narrow and purple. A thin, white scar bisected the left cheek from eyelid to mouth, the legacy of some long healed but never forgotten violence.

  Hawke realised where he was, not that it took a great deal of deduction. He had not moved since the night before. He had lain beside the hole in the floor, empty gin bottle cradled close like a lover, and now he was sitting, rump numb, beside a pool of his own vomit. There were more figures in the room, faces he recognised, and from their mouths came low mutterings as they surveyed the chamber. He realised they were looking at the bed on which a cadaver still rested, stiff and mottled.

  “My dear Sólyom,” the man in the beaver hat was saying, the strange concoction of Irish and Hungarian parentage brewing a famously exotic accent. He was dressed in an expensive looking suit of fine black wool that was expertly tailored to his narrow frame. “You look poorly.”

  “Mister Szekely?” Hawke managed to croak.

  Szekely held up a staying palm that was upholstered in spotless kidskin the colour of cream. “Shh, now, Sólyom,” he said softly, using the pet name reserved for Hawke. “Rest.” The blue eyes flickered to the bloodstained bed and back. “You must be exhausted after so strenuous a night.”

  “Christ,” Hawke rasped, panicking as he caught the intimation like a punch to the guts. He tried to stand, shaking his head as vigorously as his pulsating skull would allow. He trod in the vomit and slipped. “Christ, Mister Szekely, I...”

  “You look poorly,” Szekely cut him off, indicating for him to remain seated, “but perhaps not as poorly as he.” He jerked his chin towards the bed. “Tell me, Sólyom, what did young Lucas ever do to you?”

  One of the other men sidled into view, still clutching the bucket that had been used to dowse him. It was the hulking form of Blackbird, his scalp almost scraping the tie beam that held up the roof. He set down the empty pail and glowered grimly from above folded arms that looked like entwined gun barrels. “This had better be good.”

  Hawke shook his head again. “I...” he searched, desperately, for words that would exonerate, but he knew he had none. There was no alibi at all. “I did not...”

  Szekely tutted slowly. “Come, come, Sólyom, waste not your breath on denial.” He adjusted the flamboyant white cravat that bloomed like petals beneath his narrow chin. “Cleanse your conscience.”

  “I did not do...” Hawke twisted, levelling a trembling finger at the bed, “... that. I did not kill him, I swear. Mister Szekely, please believe me.”

  “It appears you are determined to waste your breath,” Szekely said, resigned to hearing what he evidently considered to be a futile argument. He stepped forwards a touch and crouched low before his prone subordinate. “Very well.”

  “I returned last night,” Hawke said, mind sifting frantically through the silt of disjointed and half-formed memories.

  “From?” Szekely asked patiently, as though speaking to a child.

  Ruthven! Principal Officer George Ruthven! Bow Street Runner, hero of London’s thief-takers! Scourge of men like Colan Szekely! Hawke clamped shut his eyes, screwing the lids hard down as though they would dam the stream. A stream, if articulated, that would surely see his guts teased out through his nostrils. “A tavern,” he answered at length.

  “Which?”

  “I forget,” Hawke answered.

  “And?” Blackbird chimed in.

  “And that is the fact of the matter,” Hawke retorted hotly, managing defiance when not addressing Szekely. “I drank until I was in my cups. I came home.” He shrugged. “I found Lucas.”

  “You did not quarrel?” Szekely asked. He removed his hat to reveal an entirely bald pate. Not shaved to stubble, like Hawke’s, but as smooth as an egg. The gesture made Hawke flinch. “You did not fly into a rage?” He blew gently on the hat’s upturned rim. “Blackbird says you have a temper.”

  A thought struck Hawke and he reached for his belt. “Here.”

  Blackbird and the others, men Hawke now recognised to be Goaty and Harlowe, converged as one, instinctively moving to protect their master. But Szekely, not remotely flustered, held up the hat like a barrier. “Hold.” The gang froze in place. The pale face regarded Hawke and nodded. “Continue, my dear Sólyom.”

  “My dagger,” Hawke said, inching it free as slowly as he could. He turned it so that the blade shone in the weak light. “It is clean, see?”

  “So you cl
eaned it,” Szekely said, unimpressed.

  Hawke got up, slowly so as not to trigger the others to violence, and staggered over to Lucas. He stared down at the corpse. His guts twisted cruelly but there was nothing left to bring up. “He lies flat,” he managed to mutter through the gasps. “There are no wounds to his hands.”

  “What’s that got to do,” Goaty said angrily, scratching the beard that only partially masked the misshapen tangle of scars that was his lower face, “with ‘is fackin’ neck?”

  “The suggestion,” Szekely answered calmly, “is that Lucas put up no fight.”

  “And I am uninjured,” Hawke went on, sensing with relief that the Hungarian was gradually questioning his own initial reaction. He made himself look into Szekely’s chill gaze, desperate to seize upon what little momentum had gathered. “Do you think neither of us would have suffered defensive wounds had we fought?”

  “Hark at him,” Blackbird muttered, dockyard iron softened by sugar island drawl. “He sound like a coroner.”

  Szekely’s delicate eyebrow arched at that.

  “The craven bastard offed him while he slept,” Goaty remarked before his leader could speak.

  Hawke shot him an acidic look. “Then we were not quarrelling.”

  “So you waited for him to fall asleep,” Goaty sneered. “Planned it.”

  “Precisely. You must ask yourself why I would do such a thing. Do you think me so cold blooded?”

  “Aye,” Goaty said nastily. “I do.”

  Hawke looked instead at Szekely. “Do you?”

  Szekely gnawed briefly at his upper lip, staring hard at the waxen cadaver, before turning back to fix that glittering gaze upon Hawke. “I am undecided.”

  “And look at the floor,” Hawke blurted, letting his mind tumble, studying the room for the finest detail in the knowledge that it might just save his skin. “It is covered in blood. Would it be so, if he had been attacked in his bed?” That got him to thinking. He bent down to inspect Lucas’s neck wounds, which were savage and undoubtedly lethal, but it was true that the spatter, congealing and fading to brown, was far too extensive to be the consequence of an assault confined to the bed area. Yet, as he had stated to Szekely, there was a conspicuous lack of defensive wounds. Could Lucas have been sleeping when he - they? - had come for him? Examining the scene after abject terror had sharpened Hawke’s wits like a whetstone to a blade, he suddenly did not think so. Then he saw the marks. Below and to the side of the gaping slash, just above the dead man’s right collar bone. He stooped closer, narrowing his eyes to resist the gloom. At first he took them for tattoos, for they were circular in nature, about an inch apart, and etched in a zig-zag pattern, almost like a pair of wheels. But they were tiny, each the size of a well-fed tick, and hardly worthy of the effort of ink and needle. He touched his fingers to one of the marks. It was crisp where the blood had dried. He applied a little pressure, cracking the seal, and wetness gleamed underneath. A fresh wound in its own right.