Corpse Thief

by Michael Arnold

  “But we must put the question to every possible candidate. How can I achieve such a thing?”

  “The Runners?” Brommett suggested. “They have their ways and means, as we all know.”

  Hawke ignored the jibe. “Not even Bow Street has this kind of influence.” But even as the words left his mouth, he knew he had the answer. It was a solution too good to pass up, yet too dangerous to contemplate. He swallowed thickly as he turned to Corissa. “Will you ask your... friends?”

  Corissa held his gaze for a moment, her face becoming taut. She shook her head mutely.

  Brommett cleared his throat. “Friends?”

  Hawke was still staring at Corissa. “Colan has a web. You said so yourself. He can put the word out. You said you’d help. That’s why I asked you to meet us here.”

  “I cannot, Joshua,” she said quietly. “You know what he’d do if...”

  “And you know he has the ability, the reach, to find needles in haystacks.”

  Corissa’s jaw quivered as she gritted her teeth. “Then you bloody-well ask him.”

  “You know I can’t do that. He doesn’t trust me.”

  “Nor should he,” she hissed bitterly.

  “Say you’ve heard there is a rival group,” Hawke said, picking his words carefully, “over from France. Former soldiers, looking to establish their business in London.” He stepped forward earnestly, for the more he considered it, the more he realised that it was the only viable path, despite also being the one most fraught with risk. “Do not mention buttons, or Betsy Milne or Bow Street, or even me.”

  She laughed derisively. “Oh, that would suit you down to your swanky boots, wouldn’t it?”

  “That isn’t what I meant,” Hawke said. He rubbed his eyes with balled fists, racking his brain for an alternative.

  “And what of my... our... friends, eh? Lucas and Harlowe.” She jabbed a finger at the bewildered Brommett. “You enlist this fellow for his wit, so let him help us with our other problem.”

  Hawke tried to meet her fierce gaze, failing abjectly. Moreover, he knew there would be a heavy pistol concealed within her stylish pelisse, and probably at least one blade. She was not to be antagonised, so he let his eyes slip down to her dark lips, where they lingered for longer than he intended. “I would not bring the Brommetts into this.”

  “Brommetts?” Corissa echoed, nonplussed.

  “My wife, Kitty, is a woman of keen intellect,” Brommett offered, tentatively now, for he was nervous of Corissa’s quick temper. “She lends me her mind in all things.”

  “How nice for you,” she said witheringly, before shifting her focus back to Hawke. “Husband and wife, their dog and its fleas. I don’t give a rat’s turd, so long as they help us.”

  Hawke hesitated, looking from one to the other. He knew the point she made was logical, and that his refusal to embroil the apothecary in the affairs of Colan Szekely smacked of hypocrisy, but he feared it would compel the kindly couple along a dark path from which they could never turn back.

  Corissa edged closer, more intense now than angry. “He knows matters of the anatomy, does he not? Of wounds and weapons. You said you could not fathom those strange holes inflicted upon Lucas and Harlowe.”

  Hawke nodded, for he had indeed described the curious injuries to her before they had parted the previous night. “But the Brommetts are not from our world, Corissa,” he said, trying to be firm, and suspecting it sounded feeble. “It is not for us to burden them.”

  “So we die in our beds?” She flicked her slender neck with a finger. “Jabbed to death with knitting needles?”

  “Knitting needles?” Brommett asked, interest well and truly piqued.

  “No matter,” Hawke waved him down. “It is best you do not ask.”

  “I will strike a bargain,” Corissa said, trying a conciliatory tone. “If we may put the quandary of Lucas and Harlowe to Mister Brommett, I will agree to ask Colan for help in finding our Frenchie.”

  Hawke muttered a filthy oath.

  Brommett spread his palms. “Might one of you enlighten me?”

  Corissa said, “We have another case to consider, Mister Hawke and I.”

  Brommett’s dark brows climbed high. “The magistrates at Bow Street fill your days well.” If he noticed her frown, he did not acknowledge it. “More murder?”

  “Of a different kind,” Hawke said. He took a deep breath, for the dye had been cast. “Men, not children. Slashed at the throat.”

  Brommett sucked at his bottom lip. “And what would you ask of me in this regard?” He clicked his fingers, remembering something. “Needles!”

  Hawke nodded. “You worked with the surgeons during the war. What do you make of wounds that are deep but narrow? Very deep, perhaps many inches, but the smallest fraction in breadth.” He held up thumb and forefinger, leaving an almost imperceptible chink between. “Like so. Boreholes, almost. Could they be fatal, inserted towards the neck from above the collar bone?”

  Brommett thought for a couple of seconds. “The dimensions of the weapon are less significant than the precise angle of the thrust.” He put fingertips to his own throat, swallowing thickly as he privately played out Hawke’s scenario. “The neck is problematic. It is highly vascular, full of blood vessels, major ones, the puncturing of any of which might lead to a swift death. Then there’s the trachea - the windpipe - which brings its own risk.”

  “There was a pattern,” Hawke went on. “A zig-zag, made in the skin around the wound.”

  “Presumably marked by the strike of the hilt,” Brommett said, “as it impacted upon the flesh of the victim.”

  Hawke nodded. “Help me, Mister Brommett. What manner of weapon do I seek?”

  Θ

  The cemetery was busier than Hawke had expected, and he had been forced, upon arriving at the dilapidated entrance arch, to veer wide and scale the wall. Now he loitered near the foot of the low, crumbling perimeter, propped on aching knees behind a severely lopsided gravestone, watching from afar as black-clad mourners gathered like a murder of crows. He supposed the deceased, the wife of a farrier, whose brains had been dashed by the kick of a horse, had belonged to a burial club, her husband’s weekly pennies ensuring this grim procession would have respectability as well as a healthy attendance. The mourners were silent in the main, save the occasional sob and whimper, as the hook-nosed rector delivered the service in a deep, resonant voice, battling the caw of gulls perched like vultures on the nearest rooftops. Hawke, far enough away to remain concealed beyond the grave-markers, could just about hear the words, though he paid them no heed. His duty here today was to note the layout of the burying ground, the entrances and exits, the arrangement of surrounding streets, the wooden huts that would house the night watchmen, and what extra precautions, if any, had been taken against the feared theft of the dearly departed. He was here because when Corissa had whispered into his ear upon her arrival at the forge, she had been imparting the latest instruction from their employer, Colan Szekely. It was Hawke’s turn for reconnaissance duty, as the Irish-Hungarian liked to put it, as if his acolytes were soldiers in his army of the damned. What Hawke discovered in the afternoon would be put into practice when the funeral was done, and the assembly vanished, and when the grave and moon were both full.

  The church bells rang out three after noon. Already the sky was the colour of day-old bruises. Fingers of mist crept silently between the slanting, moss-clothed stones, slinking low as if to deliberately defy the vagarious breeze. A black cat sat on one of the more ancient markers, yawning as it scratched an ear, tail lolling languorously. Hawke wondered if its presence was some kind of omen. He took a mental note of the scene as the plain pine coffin descended into its final resting place. The salient points were that security appeared to be light, and that the burial itself was relatively shallow. The cemetery, like many in the rapidly growing metropolis, was full - literally to bursting point - and the consecrated ground was crammed with the dead of generations past, each new
corpse laid immediately above the last, so that many ended up no deeper than the topsoil, putrefying amongst the grass. This plot, in comparison with some, was positively gorge-like, but still it looked to be no more than a couple of feet. Ideal when it came to any nocturnal excavation.

  The rector droned on. The grieving widower played his dutiful part, teetering at the edge of the pit as though he might fling himself in, held steady by the comforting arm of a stoic looking woman at his side. Hawke wondered if they were already planning a wedding, immediately chiding himself for his lack of charity, and took the bottle of gin from his hip, swigging hard. As the warmth cascaded through his neck and into his chest and belly, his mind ran to Betsy Milne. He imagined her funeral. How her father, so frightening in his lust for revenge, must have blubbed like a baby when he laid her to rest. And her murderer was out there still. Laughing, most likely. Taunting those who would see him brought to heel. At liberty to pick another victim. Inexorably, his mind turned to Lucas and Harlowe, slain at random or for their dubious employment? The work of vigilantes, stoked by rage against those who would cruelly exhume their loved-ones for profit? Was it, as Blackbird so firmly believed, a power-play by a rival gang? Or, worse still, one of their own? A fellow gang member, like an aggressive canker, eradicating Szekely’s organisation from within?

  Hawke had brought Ansell Brommett into his confidence - partially, at least - in order to hasten that investigation to a conclusion, but even the sharp-witted apothecary had not been able to explain the strange wounds Hawke’s friends had suffered. Brommett had taken the task home with him, there to ponder further, on the agreement that they would meet again near the disused Bedlam site the following day. That rendezvous notwithstanding, Hawke suspected he would soon be forced to admit his impotence in the matter to Szekely, a man whose disappointment could well prove deadly. It made him feel queasy, so he revisited the bottle, taking a lingering draught in the hope of banishing the sensation.

  “Don’t get drunk,” Corissa Lott said. “You’re working tonight.”

  Hawke turned to watch her slide down the wall and come to crouch next to him behind the crooked tomb marker. “I can hardly forget.”

  Corissa stretched out gloved fingers for the drink, which he reluctantly handed over. “No Frenchies.”

  Hawke watched her press the bottle to her mouth. She might have been turning the gravestone to solid gold, so spellbound was he. “None?” he said thickly.

  She swallowed. Licked her lips so that they glistened. “Well, a few, here and there.” She gave back the bottle and counted her efforts on her fingers. “Squinty Francois with the wooden peg, down in Lambeth. There’s Claude the Bastard, cooking for the high and mighty at some club over at St James. And Jean of Cherbourg runs a gin palace up near Highgate. A motley crew, all told, but old and infirm to a man.”

  “The docks?”

  “More Frogs work the wharves than priests fiddle choirboys. You can question them all if you like.” She gave an amused grunt. “Damn sight fewer of them than Irish, at least, but you’ll still be there till Christmas next.”

  “Jesus wept,” Hawke hissed. “What about the stews?”

  She gave a slight shrug. “Some old soaks guarding the girls, but they’re in Colan’s pay. I doubt they’d take the risk.”

  “Take the risk?” he scoffed. “Of committing murder when in the pay of such a man? It must be second nature to them.”

  “Have a care, Joshua,” she warned, glancing over both shoulders.

  “The wall has ears?”

  “It is what lurks beyond the wall that bothers me, as it should you.”

  “You were followed?”

  “Always a chance.”

  Hawke relented, bringing himself back to the funeral, which was reaching its conclusion. “I would speak with the men on Bankside. If they work for Szekely then they are hardly paragons of virtue.”

  “Suit yourself,” replied Corissa, tucking ringlets of glossy black hair under the edge of her bonnet, “but do not reveal your association with Colan. It will get back to him.”

  He nodded. “How many does he employ?”

  “Two, I think. Place called the Red Petal, near the foundry. The bawd’s named Madam Yvette. With the big church at your back, head west, past the Anchor Brewery.” She rummaged about her person for a moment, finding a hunk of bread wrapped in brown paper. “What about the killer closer to home?”

  “None the wiser.”

  She had carefully unwrapped the bread, and was hungrily devouring it. With words muffled through a full mouth, she said, “Let us hope your ‘pothecary friend brings us something to work with.”

  “You should not have pushed me to ask him,” Hawke protested bitterly.

  “And you should not have pushed me to ask Colan.”

  She was right, he knew. Szekely was a naturally suspicious man. To compel Corissa to bring him into their search, however peripheral the involvement, was inherently risky. “What did you tell him?”

  “That I’d heard a parcel o’ Froggies, veterans of Bonaparte’s march into Russia, were looking to open a soup shop close by our territory.”

  “Clever,” Hawke acknowledged. An illicit forge for the purpose of melting stolen plate into untraceable chunks was not the kind of move Szekely would tolerate from his rivals.

  “Told him I’d heard they was making grand plans.” She paused to brush flakes of crust from her pelisse. Her tongue searched her lips for crumbs. “Said it was just a rumour, that I’d look into it for him, quietly, if he named some names. Could have sworn he knew I was lying, Joshua. Nearly pissed myself.”

  “Thank you,” Hawke said, feeling suddenly wretched. “All the same,” he added, attempting to stifle the pang of guilt, “Ansell Brommett is a good man. I had hoped to avoid bringing him into this.”

  She nodded. “He seemed a bright fellow.”

  “And now he is a fellow in grave danger. All because I have needlessly embroiled him in our business.”

  “Wouldn’t say it was needless. We need to know. You need to give Colan something.” She backhanded his shoulder gently, indicating the funeral procession that now shuffled back towards the church, filing solemnly and silently onto the narrow cinder path that bisected the cemetery. “It’s done. We can go. What do you reckon?”

  “Tonight?” Hawke answered. “Simple enough. Deceased wasn’t a big woman and she’s lying shallow.”

  “Heard her skull’s a mess. That’ll affect the price.”

  “Plenty of her left for Doctor Vine to explore,” Hawke said bleakly.

  “Is she protected?” Corissa asked.

  Hawke pointed towards a little wooden shack that leaned precariously against the wall at the opposite corner of the burying ground. “In there. I’ve seen two guards this afternoon. Both armed. They set goodly supplies in their hut.”

  “So they’re in for the night.”

  “Aye,” Hawke said. He watched her as she observed the guard hut with an expert eye. One of her eyelashes had fallen, sticking to her cheek, and he desperately wanted to reach out and brush it free.

  She caught him looking, raised a brow inquisitively. “Yes?”

  He flushed with embarrassment, feeling like an errant schoolboy as he searched for something to say. “Thank you,” he muttered eventually, “for not betraying me.”

  “As you have betrayed us?” she said harshly.

  The heat in his cheeks cooled at once. “I had no choice, Corissa.”

  “You’re a treacherous weasel,” she said, but her voice had softened.

  “And yet?” he ventured.

  She smiled grudgingly. “And yet I like you.” It was Corissa’s turn to look self-conscious. “I think you’re kind.”

  “Kind?” Hawke echoed incredulously.

  She frowned. “What?”

  “Kindness,” he spoke tentatively, not wishing to offend, but unable to quantify the sentiment with the lover of Colan Szekely, “is not something I’d expect you to value in
a man.”

  “You think me a heartless sow, Joshua?”

  He grinned. “Not a sow.”

  She punched him playfully. When he fell back, she clambered to her feet with a final glance in the direction of the church, ensuring the area was now empty. “I’ll tell Colan the lift is to go ahead as planned?” When Hawke nodded, she tugged the pelisse tighter around her neck. “I’ll go, then.” Shivering theatrically, she said, “Christ, but it’s getting cold now.” She stepped closer to Hawke, who was still kneeling on the grass, and plucked off a glove, pressing her hand against his cheek. “See?”

  Hawke felt the skin. Smelled it. He leaned into her, just a fraction, but it made her pull away. Furious at his own stupidity, he scrambled to his feet.

  Corissa, putting on the glove, was saying, “That Ruthven seems a proper bastard, the way he’s got you trapped.”

  “He is.”

  “I understand why you work for him. I’d do the same in your shoes.” She looked down. “Boots.” When he smiled, she said, “But how did he find you in the first place? And why not simply tell him to fuck himself?”

  Hawke looked down at her. How could he tell her that he had been a broken shell of a man when he had arrived in London? A fugitive from the massacre that had shaken the nation to its core. A perpetrator. How could he describe the shame that had driven him to destroy himself with liquor and opium? “Laudanum,” he said, which was partly true. “Ruthven offered to fund my habit.”

  Her sigh was disdainful. “Why’d you start with that poison, Joshua? You deserted the army. Plenty do. Don’t mean they choose to broil their brains.”

  Slashing sabres, thundering hooves, snarled orders, swirling banners, massed bodies, screaming children, screaming women, screaming men. Blood. So much blood. “I can hardly recall.” He smiled wryly. “My brain has been broiled, after all.”

  She flashed a white grin in the failing half-light. “Just as well I’m helping you, then, eh?”

  “It is a great risk you take.”

  She nodded enthusiastically. “Aye, it bloody well is.” Her expression hardened and she pointed to the ground beneath her feet. “But then I think of that poor girl, down there, floating in all that shit.”