“Thomas Coyle.”
He halted. Only two kinds of people would bother him at dawn—the police who wanted him as a vigilante, and the criminals he'd hurt to get the information he needed. The woman didn’t have the look of either.
“Who are you?” He walked towards her, stopping an arm’s length away. If she was about to try anything he wanted her close.
She tugged back her hood to reveal a pale face, pretty if unadorned, framed in shoulder length hair as black as everything else about her. It was her eyes that gave him pause. The right was a shocking electric blue, the left as gray as the sky above them. “My name’s Zephanie Sweetly. I’m supposing you know my family?”
Indeed he did, and Coyle didn’t bother to hide his distaste. “Pack of lawless guttersnipes. What do you want?”
Her eyes narrowed, but aside from that, her expression remained impassive. “People say you're the top private detective in London. Used to work for the Missing Persons Bureau. Heard you find people for the right price.”
“Your facts are straight,” he replied, “but I don't work for your sort.”
She kept her poker-face. “There’s plenty of people I could go to if it was something routine. Picked you for a reason.”
He rested his hands on his hips. “Which is?”
“I think I know who kidnapped your son.”
A chill rippled through Coyle, as cold as the rain trickling down his face. In all likelihood this was bullshit. A trick of some kind. Still. Ten years later, the possibility of knowing gripped his heart, pumped it harder.
He leaned in close, his jaw clenched. “Fair warning, Miss Sweetly. You’d best be careful what you say from this point on. I took what happened to my boy very, very personally.”
Her mismatched gaze met his. “I swear to God, Mr. Coyle, I wouldn’t lie about something like that. I can’t imagine how horrible it must have been for you.”
There was compassion in her voice, and, more importantly, the only thing he cared for anymore, the truth. “So why now?” he growled. “You been too busy sewer hunting the past decade to let anybody know?”
“Because until a couple of days ago, I thought it was impossible,” she answered.
The woman spoke in riddles. “What do you mean?”
“I mean there’s someone I thought was just a legend. Turns out she’s not. She's abducted some clients of ours, and I need to find them. Or at least know if they're alive or dead."
“And what does any of that have to do with my son?”
“I think I’d best show you,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any other way you’d believe me. It's just too fucked up for words.”
“Found where?”
She looked meaningfully at the ground, then back up at him. “Where do you think?”
“And how do I know this isn’t a trap, what with the kind of scum you deal with?"
She stood her ground. “Mr. Coyle, you might not care for the class of people we toshers work with, but I'm sure you know we keep as neutral as Switzerland. This is about business. Nothing more.”
Business for her, but from the aching in his heart, much more for him. "Fine then. When?"
She pulled her hood back over her head, shadowing her strange eyes. "As soon as you're ready. I don't know how much time we've got, but I'm guessing it's not much."
* * *
Zephanie’s light exposed the scene of carnage at the Tyburn market for Coyle’s inspection. She struggled not to gag. Toppled tables and chairs, dozens of spent bullet casings, spatters of blood staining the floor. And hundreds upon hundreds of rats.
“What happened here?” he asked, making his way over to the largest pile of bodies at the centre of the chamber, kicking aside the vermin that had been feasting on the corpses. They snarled at him but scattered, preferring to move on rather than fight over the dead.
“Rawheads,” she replied, straining to keep her voice level. Even through her gas mask, she could catch the reek of spoiled blood. One of the times when having a superior olfactory sense was a nuisance. She righted a chair and sat down before she went arse over elbow. It took a lot to turn the stomach of a tosher, yet Coyle seemed completely detached from the slaughter around them.
He knelt beside one of the bodies, a representative of the Russian mafia, and eased away the silver plated pistol still clutched in the corpse’s hand. “They some kind of gang?”
“No. I don’t know what they are.” It was true she didn’t know for certain.
Coyle turned, his spectral green eyes visible through the mask’s lenses, then looked back to the weapon. He slid out the clip, then tossed it aside. “Well, somebody killed these wankers. Where were you when it happened?”
“Right here.”
“Then who were they?” he asked, the gas mask rasping his voice.
“I told you I don’t know. But they sure as hell weren’t human. No bloody way.”
Coyle eased the Russian over onto his back, inspecting the wounds. Clearly something big had hooked onto the dead man’s shoulders, slicing them open even as its jaws had clamped down on the back of his neck.
In her mind, Zephanie could still hear the crunch of vertebrae snapping. She swallowed, then swallowed again. At her feet, there was a sound like the cracking of knuckles. It was a rat working on a human foot. She waggled her fingers in its direction, and with a unctuous squeak it skittered away.
Coyle followed the rat with his light, and paused before asking, “So what are you saying? They were vampires or something?”
Zephanie slumped in her chair. He thought she was crazy, and why wouldn’t he? But facts were facts. She swept her arm in an arc. “How many people do you see dead here?”
He stood, surveying the chamber. “About two dozen, give or take.”
“And how many were armed?”
“Virtually all, judging from the weapons laying about.”
“And how many died of gunshots?”
“None that I can see, though it’s hard to be sure given your little friends.” He moved his beam of light to the walls, examining the fresh holes in the ancient murals. “By the looks of it they gathered in the center of the room. All of them firing outwards. Last ones died back to back. Guns empty. Maybe a hundred rounds in all.”
“So what would you say killed them?” she asked.
He returned his light over the deceased. “Again, hard to tell. Looks like they were savaged by some kind of animals. Large dogs, perhaps. Very large.”
“Only that’s impossible, right?” she replied. “I’d be happy to think I was just hysterical at the time. My mind playing tricks on me. But how could any animal kill so many armed men? Not even a tiger could have done this. Not even a bloody bear.”
Her voice was rising, she realized, and she shut her mouth, forcing her panic back down. The man didn’t seem fazed. People had a lot of bad things to say about Thomas Coyle—mercenary, psychopath, hypocrite—but nobody had ever accused him of being a coward.
Though maybe his indifference came from already having been through the worst thing a man could experience. After that, any other horror would seem mundane.
“Aside from you, were there any survivors?” he asked.
Zephanie nodded. “My aunt. My cousin. A couple of others of our family.”
“Whatever killed your customers left you toshers alone?”
She chose to ignore the implied accusation. “Not exactly. When we went through the bodies we discovered that a bunch of them had been taken.”
“Correction. All were either killed or kidnapped. Except for your family.”
There was only so much one could ignore. “Yes, exactly. And there might be a reason for that, which I’ll be getting to. Believe it or not, I went after them.”
Coyle levelled his light on her midriff, shining it over her body. “You don’t look particularly dangerous. Any reason you were so brave?”
She waved her light over the bodies, the strobe effect making the dead seem animated.
“These men were part of London’s criminal elite. We were paid to keep them safe while they discussed their business. How am I supposed to explain to their bosses what happened to them? Nobody’s ever going to believe the truth.”
"Might help if you returned their bodies," he countered. "Or at least didn't leave them for the rats. Not sure I'd appreciate that if I was the one dealing with you. Seems disrespectful, even by their degenerate standards."
Zephanie sighed. "As soon as the attack was over, my people made for the surface. Nobody's been willing to come back here yet." And she didn’t think anyone would. Men and money. No use throwing more at a lost cause.
"Except for you," he said pointedly. “And what was your motivation? Duty, or just trying to save your own rear end by collecting some evidence?”
It rankled that he thought her a cold-hearted bitch. Probably because he saw her for what she was. Never mind, he was down here and interested because she gave her answers straight and quick. Just like her, truth was often a bitch. “Both. And it’s more than my rear we’re talking about. Best ways, my family loses our business. Worst ways, we suffer a vendetta by every crime syndicate in London. If I had a witness, that would at least be something, but this...”
Coyle kept his light on her as she trailed off. “How noble. What did you find when you followed?”
Gesturing, Zephanie led him to the rear of the chamber, away from the feasting vermin. “Back here’s a way down to some old mine shaft, part of it collapsed and flooded. Probably a good thousand years old. The supports have all rotted away, so a cave-in seemed likely if we disturbed it, and the air quality is pretty dodgy, too. We always considered it too dangerous to explore and left it be."
"But that's where they came from, was it?" he asked.
“I only went down as I was chasing after them. Figured the tunnel could stand me sneaking through it, seeing as it just took their numbers. You game to have a look?”
He turned his masked head to the shadowy hole in the floor, and nodded.
* * *
She was Ariadne in reverse, drawing him not out of the labyrinth but into it. It had crossed his mind that this was a trap, the slaughter above notwithstanding. She dealt with people who wished him dead, and right now, as she admitted, she needed to appease her clients. He’d make a lovely offering. But she’d dangled the carrot of his son and he’d follow her to hell and back on the promise alone.
Once they’d descended the stairs, she took him into a crudely hewn passage that forced the both of them to crouch, and soon enough they were wading in brackish water up to their knees. The air turned foul, but Sweetly pressed on. The tunnel wound onwards through the darkness for several hundred meters, bending back and forth as it followed some long tapped seam. Finally, it rose into a dry, circular chamber from which branched a half-dozen smaller passages, but she didn't need to lead him any further.
Around the room, alcoves were carved into the rock, each containing a pile of small bones, each pile a grisly little pyramid topped with a jawless human skull. Small human skulls. Children.
He couldn’t move. He’d turned to stone, like everything around him. In his dark hours he’d imagined the horrors Tommy had experienced. The taunts, the violation, the torture—in all the scenarios, it had ended in death. And there had been a kind of twisted peace to that. But this—this was an outrage that went beyond death. He stared at the first pile of bones, focused on the perfect set of upper teeth.
The Sweetly woman came alongside him, the beam of her light joining his on the pile. “I couldn’t go on,” she said quietly through her mask. “Suppose you could say I’d not the heart for it.”
Her admission eased him somehow, gave him the courage she claimed not to have. Slowly he stepped to the second pile, then the next, moved from one alcove to another, inspecting each set of remains, careful not to disturb them. Her beam of light followed along, doubled on his to bring extra strength. That was useful because the lenses of his mask dulled his vision. Then again, there was an advantage to not seeing things too clearly. Finished, he switched his light to the floor, Sweetly’s right with him. There were drag marks on the dark earth, and one of them had uncovered a twist of red cloth.
He walked over to it, and setting down his light, tugged it free to reveal a child’s torn t-shirt, the front emblazoned with the barely recognizable figures of Tom and Jerry.
His Tommy had been wearing a Power Rangers shirt. The pain he carried night and day like a chronic ulcer flared inside, and he was glad to be already bent over. He stroked the rotting cloth for a long time, remembering, and at the same time, trying not to remember. It came to him after a while that it was Sweetly’s light alone that was on him, his own too low to reach his hands. She watched and said nothing. Waited for him.
He let go of the shirt and found he could speak. “The bones aren’t fresh but they aren’t ancient, either. We need a forensics team, but I'd say these are all children. Judging from their size they were prepubescent. All about ten years old."
"Your son was nine when he went missing, right?" Zephanie asked. "My aunt told me."
Leona Sweetly would know. They’d clashed. "I had a lead that took me into your territory. But your family didn’t lift a finger to help. Your aunt tell you that too?"
Her light didn’t waver. "We did look for him, Mr. Coyle. We may not have told you, but there was a search. Everyone of us Sweetlys looked for him everywhere we could think to."
"Obviously not successfully,” he gritted out.
He heard her draw breath, a hoarse intake through the mask. “Any of these—you recognize?”
“No. My boy was missing one of his canines at the time of his abduction. All of these have them."
Her breath blew out through the filter. "How long have they been here?"
"No way to tell. Not by looking, anyway. T-shirts like this one didn't become popular till the 1960's, so odds are at least some of these kids have been here since then. The bones were thoroughly cleaned before they were left. Scraped free of flesh and dried, which would explain why the rats didn't get at them. We need to bring in the police."
"I know you're not going to want to hear this, but I can't lead the cops down here," she said. "No way."
Coyle felt his usual blaze of anger against those who stood in the way of justice. "Somewhere, somebody is looking for these children," he snapped. "Fathers, mothers—they have a right to know what happened to them. You have no idea how much they suffer from just not knowing."
"I'm sorry, but I can't. If our clients knew we were working with the cops in any way, then my whole family would be at risk. This place stays a secret."
He stood. "Then we need to bring the bones out. Drop them somewhere the police will find them.
He moved to the nearest alcove, and was reaching out when she seized him by the arm. "Don't touch them," she hissed, her strange eyes on his. "For the love of God, don't move a thing."
Coyle yanked his arm away, glaring at her. "Why not?"
"Because they belong to the Rat Queen. And you don't bloody well cross the Rat Queen."
And here he thought he was dealing with a rational woman. "And who's she?"
"I swear I'll tell you everything I know, Mr. Coyle, but now that you've seen this with your own eyes we have to get out of here. Understand?"
No, he didn’t. He had no idea where this was heading, or even if he wanted to find out. Yet he gestured to the passage behind them. "Fine then. Lead the way."
She did, and at a pace as fast as he could follow.
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Next up: Fox Hunt
Prologu
e
Akeno savored the sweet metallic purr of the antique safe as he smoothly spun its dial first right, then back. With the ocean of blood money Matsuda possessed, he could’ve had something more modern protecting his cash, but Akeno appreciated the crime lord’s old-world style. The Swiss precision of the mechanism, the Italian polish of its fittings—he was so glad he didn’t have to violate the artistry with the usual drills and picks and pliers, yet part of him also felt denied its deflowering on this, his final take.
So far, everything tonight had gone like clockwork. The mansion’s formidable security system had been deactivated with the codes provided, and the key to the old man’s office had been hanging right where it was supposed to be. It was shaping up to be a classic inside job—quick, easy and relatively low-risk. The real test was going to be getting away with it afterwards, especially considering who Matsuda was.
The last number reached, Akeno drew in a long, slow breath, and exhaled on a three-count. In a moment, he’d discover if his love really knew her employer’s secrets as intimately as his own. Pressing down on the safe’s handle, he heard a quiet but distinct click, then slowly swung it open to reveal the prize.
Although he’d paid many uninvited visits to wealthy L. A. estates in his career what Akeno saw before him now made his heart kick like never more: stacks of hundred dollar bills almost filled the safe to capacity. Without a doubt, the biggest single haul of his life sat right before him—even after splitting it with his accomplice.
Well, she’d certainly earned her money. He pulled a large microfiber bag from his pocket and swept the cash into it. Now, to make his escape. So long as there was nothing suspicious to tip off the old gangster, days, perhaps even weeks, might pass before the robbery was detected. By that time, they would be on the other side of the country, sipping margaritas in the Miami sun and living out their fantasies.
Undertow (The UnderCity Chronicles) Page 27
