Dark Assassin

by Anne Perry

  Monk glanced at the sides of the tunnel. The old bricks were set in a close, carefully laid curve, now stained and seeping with steady drips and slow-crawling slime. The smell, unmistakably human waste, was thick in the nose and throat. The skitter of rats’ feet interrupted the slurp of water down the channel in the center. Otherwise there was no sound except their own feet slipping on the wet stone. No one spoke. Apart from the frail beam from their lanterns, the darkness was absolute. Monk felt panic rising inside him almost uncontrollably. They were buried alive, as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist. He could see nothing but dark, wavering shadows and yellow light on wet walls. The smell was suffocating.

  Perhaps their journey was no more than a mile, but it seemed endless until they met a junction of waterways. Scuff hesitated only a moment before turning to the right. He led the way into a narrower tunnel, where they were obliged to stoop in order not to strike the ceiling. The gangers couldn’t have been this way recently, because the piled-up sludge beneath their feet was deep and dangerous, catching at them, dragging at their feet, holding them back and sucking them down.

  Monk had no idea where they were. They had turned often enough that he had lost all sense of direction. Sounds echoed and were lost; then there was nothing but the steady drip all around them, above, behind, and ahead. It was like endless labyrinths through hell, filled with the odor of decay.

  One of the men let out an involuntary cry as a huge rat fell off the wall and splashed into the water only a couple of feet from him.

  Another half mile and they emerged into a dry tunnel, where the ceiling was considerably higher. There they met a pair of toshers, roped together for safety. They had long poles in their hands for fishing out valuables—or gripping the sides when caught by a sudden current after a rainstorm. They were dressed in the usual tosher gear: high rubber boots, hat, and harness.

  It was Scuff who spoke to them, leaving the River Police in shadows with their lanterns half concealed.

  Then they moved on again, probing the darkness with their feeble lights. The thought made Monk’s stomach churn and his throat tighten: What would happen if they dropped the lamps? They would never get out of here. One day, in a week, or a month, some tosher would find their bones, picked clean by rats.

  The last tosher they had questioned, half a mile back, had said there were people using this old way to get from one part of the city to another. The man they were looking for, whose name no one spoke, was one of them. In the subterranean world there seemed little of either friendship or enmity; it was simply coexistence, with rules of survival. Those who broke them died.

  It seemed an age before Scuff finally led them up a ladder. Their feet clanged on the iron rungs. A few yards later they passed a sluice rushing so loudly they could not hear their own voices. Above, in a dry passage leading to a blind end, a group of men and women were sitting beside a fire, the smoke going up through a hole a little distance away and disappearing into utter darkness.

  A short whispered conversation followed between Scuff and an old woman.

  “Which way, ma?” Scuff asked her, touching his tooth to remind her whom he was referring to.

  She shivered and jerked her head to the left. A younger man argued with her, pointing to the right. Finally Orme agreed to follow the youth one way with Kelly and Jones and return if he found nothing. Monk took the other two men and went with Scuff the way the old woman had indicated.

  Half an hour later, after more twists and climbs, they emerged into an open cutting, air fresh and cold on their faces.

  “She lied,” Scuff said bitterly. “Scared, I ’spect. Daft ol’—” He stopped short of using the word he had been going to say. “That way.” He pointed back where they had come from. At the next branch in the tunnel they divided again, Monk and Scuff going alone down more iron steps and deeper into the bowels of the earth.

  Monk stopped, Scuff close beside him. Their lights showed only ten feet ahead, and then there was impenetrable darkness. Now there was no sound at all except the steady drip from the ceiling. Monk’s anger had worn off, leaving him cold. He could not blame the old woman. He was shivering with fear himself. Had he ever felt this gut-churning terror before? He could not remember doing so. Surely he would never have forgotten it. It was primeval, woven into one’s existence. His skin crawled as if there were insects on it, and he heard every sound magnified. His imagination raced. The river could have been twenty feet away or twenty miles. Was the assassin really somewhere ahead of them, perhaps even waiting? He heard nothing but water, dripping, running, splashing around their feet. This part of the old system was no longer used. The stream was shallow, fed by nothing but rain down through the gutters, but it still smelled of stale human waste. The gangers had not been here for a long time. The piled-up silt of excrement was like stalagmites.

  There was a sound ahead. Monk froze. It was not the scratch of rats’ feet but the heavier noise of a boot on stone.

  Monk covered his lantern.

  “It’s ’im!” Scuff whispered, reaching up and gripping Monk’s hand.

  The noise of footsteps came again. Then a light reflected yellow on the ancient, slimy stone of the tunnel. A shadow grew larger, moving, swelling.

  Scuff was holding Monk’s hand so tightly his ragged nails bit into Monk’s flesh, and it was all Monk could do not to cry out. He pulled Scuff closer, half shielding the boy behind him. His heart was pounding in his chest, choking him. Had he been aboveground when he was facing the man, however dark the night, he would have been calm apart from heightened senses. He was glad he had a gun, although this was like meeting the devil in his own territory, alien and dreadful, an inhuman evil.

  The sound of a boot scraping on stone suddenly vanished as the man coming towards them trod in a drift of silt. There was nothing but the swelling shadow and the dripping of water.

  Scuff’s breath hissed in through his teeth, and he clung to Monk.

  The man came around the corner only twenty feet ahead of them. He had gone another five or six feet before he realized that the shadows of Monk and Scuff by the wall were human and not detritus heaped against the stone. He froze, his lamp unwavering in his hand, the yellow glare of it lighting his face like a lined yellow mask. He was thin, his hair unkempt and ragged to his shoulders. The black slashes of his brows cut across his face. He had a long, narrow-bridged nose, flared nostrils, a lantern jaw, and a wide, thin-lipped mouth. Surprisingly, there was intelligence in the eyes, even humor.

  Very slowly he smiled, and Monk saw the sharp, oversized eyeteeth, the left bigger than the right. Monk froze, the picture indelible in his mind.

  Then the man turned and with astounding swiftness loped away.

  Monk galvanized into action. He tore the cover off the lantern and, still grasping Scuff by the hand, floundered through the silt and water and up into the drier streambed after the man. Scuff was now easily keeping up with him, so he let go of the boy’s hand. The man ahead was forced to keep his lantern high as he splashed, slipping, his huge shadow on the walls and ceiling like the image of a wounded bird trying to fly, arms wide. The yellow light jerked over the black, shining ooze on the walls and the slick surface of the stream.

  There was a turn, and then utter darkness. Scuff was so close to Monk he pressed against him.

  Monk realized how wet he was. His legs were frozen, but his body was sweating. He could feel the perspiration run down his back and his chest.

  There was a noise ahead, a splash. He jerked around to face it. The right tunnel.

  “Rats!” Scuff whispered hoarsely. “ ’E’s jiggered up ’em rats. C’mon!” And without waiting to make sure, he plunged through the water.

  Monk drew in his breath to cry out “Stop!” but bit it back. Sound echoed down here. He had no idea how far ahead the assassin was, perhaps only a few yards. He ran, slipping and struggling after Scuff. The dim reflection on the water made Scuff’s small figure oddly elongated as it moved with a jerky, swayi
ng gait.

  The light ahead was there again, bright and unguarded. Monk saw the assassin turn to face them, his arm lifted. There was a sharp crack, a spurt of flame. Scuff cried out and crumpled into the water.

  Monk lunged forward, pulling his gun out of his pocket. He fired it again and again even after the figure had disappeared and there was no light in the suffocating darkness except his own.

  He put his gun away and held the lantern high, staring at the stream, looking for the small figure. Scuff would be already floating, pulled along by the current, scraped by the sludge and filth. Monk saw him, lost him, and found him again. He bent over awkwardly, because there was nowhere to set the lantern, and picked up the limp body. Scuff’s face was white and wet, reminding him with a lurch of pain of Mary Havilland, but Scuff was far smaller, pinched and thin, the skin almost blue around his eyes and mouth. Thank God he was breathing, in spite of the blood that oozed through his clothes and stained them scarlet around his shoulder and chest.

  The assassin must be somewhere ahead of them, but the thought of leaving Scuff and going after him never entered Monk’s head. Clumsily, because of the lantern, and trying to carry Scuff gently with only one arm, he turned and began the long way back. He walked in the center of the sewer floor, where he could move the most easily. He had very little idea where he was, and his only thought was to find the way up towards help.

  He did not know how badly Scuff was hurt, but he could not stop here to find out. There were rats everywhere, and they would smell blood. Far worse than that, the assassin knew he had hit Scuff. The fact that Monk had not followed him would tell him that Scuff was not dead and that Monk was trying to get back up again, hampered by carrying a wounded child. As soon as he was certain of that, would he double back and try to finish Monk off? If the positions were reversed, Monk would!

  He was lost. There was a fork again: three ways, two ahead, one behind him. Which way had he come? Think! Scuff’s life depended on it! The water was flowing around his feet quite rapidly. It must have kept raining all day. What happened if it got harder, heavier? Flash floods, of course! Deep water. Enough to pull him off his feet, maybe even drown him and Scuff. Was it still raining? He could feel the panic rising inside him. He commanded himself to stop behaving like a fool, and think.

  Water flows downwards. On the way in, had he been going with the flow or against it? With it, of course. Down, all the time, down. So he had to go back against it now, upwards. It didn’t matter anymore where he emerged, as long as it was into the air and he could get help. Any opening would do.

  He started forward again. Scuff was growing heavy held on one arm, but he had to hold the lantern high in order to see. Its weight was pulling on the wound from the fight on Jacob’s Island. One good thing: If he was simply going up, and not necessarily retracing the way he had come, then there was no trail for the assassin to follow.

  As Monk trudged upwards, his mind was working. Why had the killer never gone back to Sixsmith for the second half of his payment, nor apparently to Argyll, either? Perhaps he had never expected to collect the second half; he might have asked for what he meant to have in the first payment. Maybe he feared that Argyll meant to kill him, tidy up the ends. Was he right?

  Rathbone would have to drop the prosecution or risk hanging Sixsmith, and Argyll would escape. Neither Mary nor her father would ever be vindicated.

  Monk shook his head to clear it. All that mattered now was getting Scuff up to the top before he died of shock and the cold. He wanted to look at the wound, but there was nowhere to lay Scuff down, nowhere to hang the lantern so he could see. His legs were freezing and clumsy, his heart was pounding, and the stench of sewage all but made him gag, but he was moving as fast as he could, always uphill, against the flow of the water. Once he passed a series of iron rungs in the wall; alone he would have climbed, but not with Scuff.

  He rounded a corner. The light seemed clearer now. He must be nearing the surface!

  Then he saw a figure ahead of him, a man, thin, with his arm raised. There was a shout, but in the tunnel it echoed. Against the roar of the water going over the weir he could not make out the words. It must be raining harder.

  The shot still took him by surprise, ricocheting off the wall and sending brick chips and dust flying. He threw himself against the wall, sheltering Scuff as much as he could with his own body.

  There was another shout, and another, but they sounded further away. He looked around and at first thought there was no one there. Then he saw the lantern held high, Orme’s familiar figure behind it. Relief washed over him like a warm tide, almost robbing him of the little strength he had left.

  “Orme!” he shouted. “Here! Help me!”

  “Mr. Monk, sir! Are you all right?” Orme ran over, slipping in the water, his lantern swaying wildly, his face crumpled with concern.

  “Scuff’s shot,” Monk said simply. “We’ve got to get him up.”

  Orme was aghast. “Now? Just now?”

  “No! No…we caught up with the assassin and he shot at us.”

  “Right, sir. I’ll lead the way,” Orme said steadily. “Come with me.”

  It seemed a long way before they finally emerged into the open cutting. By now Monk had abandoned his lantern, simply following Orme’s light ahead. He wanted to hold Scuff gently, in both arms. The boy was beginning to stir, and every now and then he let out a soft groan.

  When they reached the end of the cutting and were on level ground again, they stopped. For the first time Monk saw Scuff’s face in the daylight. He was ashen, and there were already hollows of shock around his eyes. Monk felt a tight pinching in his heart. He looked up at Orme.

  “You better get ’im to a doctor, Mr. Monk,” Orme said anxiously.

  Scuff’s eyes flickered open. “I want Crow,” he said weakly. “It ’urts summink awful! Am I gonna die?”

  “No,” Monk promised. “No, you’re not. I’m going to take you to the hospital—”

  Scuff’s eyes grew wide and dark with terror. “No! No ’ospitil! Don’t take me there, please, Mr. Monk, don’t take me…,” he gasped. His face turned even whiter. He tried to reach out his hand as if to ward off something, but only his fingers moved. “Please…”

  “All right,” Monk said quickly. “No hospital. I’ll take you home. I’ll look after you.”

  “You’ve got to get ’im treated proper, Mr. Monk.” Orme’s voice was sharp with fear. “Just carin’ isn’t gonna be enough. That bullet’s gotter come out an’ the ’ole stitched up…an’ cleaned.”

  “I know,” Monk answered, more sharply than he meant to. “Get a message to Crow and have him come to my house. My wife’s a battlefield nurse.”

  Orme saw the futility of arguing when time was so desperately precious. He ran out into the street and stopped the first hansom passing, ordering the startled passenger out to find another hansom. This was police business. The man saw the injured child and made no demur.

  Orme left to look for Crow.

  It was a nightmare journey. Monk sat cradling Scuff in his arms, talking to him all the time about anything and nothing, wishing he knew how to help. The trip seemed to last forever, and yet it was perhaps no more than half an hour before he climbed out, paid the driver, and carried Scuff to the front door.

  The house was dark, empty, and cold. God! Had she gone back to Portpool Lane already? He could have wept with fear and the aching loneliness of knowing he was inadequate to do what was needed. Where was Hester? Why was she not here? What could he do without her? He felt panicky and sick. There was no time to wait!

  He must keep Scuff warm! He was slipping away, bleeding too fast. His face was gray and there was barely a flutter of his eyelids.

  Monk must warm up the room, riddle the stove, put on more fuel. He should boil water to make it clean. Where was Hester? Why was she not here? He had no idea how to get a bullet out! He could kill Scuff just by trying!

  He moved quickly, ramming the fire with the poke
r. He must be careful; if he added too much coal, he would put the fire out. Then it would take ages to light again. He blew on it, to make it draw. Then he filled the biggest pan with water, but changed his mind and put on a small one instead. It would be quicker.

  Finally there was no excuse to wait any longer. He lifted Scuff from the chair where he had put him and laid him on the table under the light. He must take off his coat and remove the bit of scarf Orme had put in to pack the wound. It was soaked through with blood. His hands shook as he pulled it off and saw the scarlet hole in the white skin, still welling up scarlet inside. Scuff was unconscious and barely breathing. Perhaps it was too late already?

  He did not even hear the front door. It was not until Hester was standing beside him that he realized his face was wet with tears of relief. He did not ask if she could save Scuff because he could not bear the answer.

  She said nothing except to give orders: “Pass me the knife…clean this for me…cut up my petticoat, it’s soft…put the vinegar on this—yes, it’s clean. They used to use it in the navy, in ships of the line. Just do it!”

  They worked together. She probed for the bullet, pulled it out, packed the wound, and finally drew the flesh closed and stitched it over with a darning needle dipped in boiling water. She used the only silk thread she had, a dark blue from a dress she had been altering. He obeyed, his teeth clenched, his body now shuddering with cold and exhaustion, his heart pounding with fear.

  Finally they were finished. Scuff was bandaged and dressed in one of Hester’s nightgowns, which was the only thing that was anywhere near his size, and laid gently on her side of the bed. Only then did Monk finally ask. “Will he live?”

  She did not lie to him. Her face was pinched with grief and tiredness, and her blue dress was irrevocably stained with blood. “I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait. I’ll sit here with him, try to keep his temperature down. There’s nothing else to do now except wait. Go and wash, and put dry clothes on.”