by James McGee
It was often the little things in life that gave the most satisfaction and, for the verger, having borne the brunt of Sawney’s scorn for the last few minutes, watching the look of incredulity steal over the latter’s face was as pleasurable as hearing a peal of church bells on a Sunday morning.
“He’s here?” A nerve quivered in Sawney’s cheek. “Christ, you led him here? He followed you?”
The verger swallowed. The pleasure of the moment withered, to be replaced by a creeping dread.
“I didn’t lead him anywhere,” Symes said defensively. “He was here already.”
Sawney frowned. “Then how …?”
“One of the gravediggers told him they thought they’d seen Doyle drinking in one of the local pubs. He’s probably visiting them all, looking for information.”
“Shite!” Sawney swore. “Did he see you?”
Symes reddened. His new-found boldness was disintegrating by the second. He took an involuntary step backwards. “I don’t think so.” The verger hesitated, and then nodded towards the girl. “He was talking to her.”
The room went very quiet.
Sawney pivoted slowly. His look was murderous.
“He was what?”
“That’s what I was coming to tell you,” Sal said quickly. She turned to the verger. “What was his name?”
“I can’t … no, wait, it was Hawkwood, Officer Hawkwood.”
“Officer?” Sawney repeated, frowning.
Sal bit her lip. “He told me his name was Matthews. Said he was a pal of Doyle’s and he was looking for him ’cos there was chance of work for the two of them.” Sal paused. “Didn’t look like a bloody constable. Bastard!”
“He still here?” Sawney asked.
Sal shrugged. “Don’t know. I left him to come to you.”
“What do we do?” Maggett asked. There was a fresh light in the big man’s eyes, promoting him instantly from low-witted bruiser to competent lieutenant awaiting orders.
“If he’s still here, I want a look at him,” Sawney said. He put down his mug and moved to the wall. Maggett and Sal followed. Symes brought up the rear.
There were several candle brackets set in the walls, all at eye level. Sawney moved to the middle one. Reaching up, he extinguished the candle flame with his finger and thumb, then tilted the bracket to one side. He stepped back, allowing access to the small two-inch aperture left in the plaster, and nodded at the verger. “Take a look. If he’s there, you point the bugger out. You got that?”
Symes stepped up and placed his eye to the hole.
“Well?” Sawney pressed.
Symes couldn’t see a thing at first. So poorly was the taproom lit that it took several seconds for his eye to focus and his brain to register what he was seeing. He was aware that the room was still crowded but in the gloomy interior, with tobacco smoke hanging over the counter like a bank of sea fog, it was hard to make out faces. Gradually, however, his eye grew accustomed to the light and individual features began to take shape.
“Chris’sakes!” Sawney breathed. “How long’s it bleedin’ take?”
The verger bit his tongue and continued to search the room.
Suddenly he stiffened. He backed away from the wall. “He’s in the corner booth, to the right: the tall one, with the coat and the long hair. He’s wearing military breeches, a yellow stripe down the seam.”
Beside him, Sawney heard Sal draw in her breath.
“You’re sure it’s him?” Sawney said.
Symes nodded. “He’s dressed rough, but yes, it’s the same man. I’m certain of it.”
Sawney pushed the verger aside and took a look for himself. When he stood back, his mouth was set in a grim line.
“What?” Maggett said.
“Sal was right. He don’t look like a constable. My guess is it’s because he ain’t. Verger said he called himself Officer Hawkwood. I’m bettin’ he’s a bleedin’ Runner.”
“Bloody hell!” Maggett said, alarm in his voice. “What’s he doin’?”
“He ain’t doing anything. Just sittin’ there, nursin’ a wet.” Sawney stepped away from the wall, his face thoughtful.
“Let me see.” The girl moved to the wall. She had to stand on tiptoe to reach the eye-hole. There was a pause and then she said, “Yeah, that’s him. A few of the girls asked him if he wanted some company before me, but he turned us all down. He’s not bad lookin’ – for a Runner.”
She stepped away and found Sawney giving her a hard stare. His eyes narrowed. “Don’t you even think about it. You do, I’ll slit your gizzard.”
Seeing the look on Sawney’s face, the girl’s expression faltered. “I was only jokin’, Rufus.”
“I wasn’t,” Sawney said softly. “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. Said I’d never heard of Doyle. I told him he’d probably got the wrong pub. He should try the Dog and Dray.”
Symes had registered the flash of fear in the girl’s eyes. A chill moved through him. There was an awkward silence. “What should we do?” he asked.
Sawney’s gaze moved from the girl to the verger.
“Rufus?” Maggett said. He was over by the wall, taking a look at the individual who was causing all the fuss.
“Hold on,” Sawney said, “I’m thinkin’.” He took a drink, swilled the grog around his tongue and swallowed. He poured out a fresh mug, then looked at the verger. “You’re positive he didn’t see you?”
The verger shook his head firmly, more confident now. “I’m sure.”
Too busy gawpin’ at Sal’s tits, Maggett thought to himself. And who could blame him?
Sawney mulled over the verger’s reply. After a few seconds he nodded. “Then I don’t reckon we’ve got anything to worry about. There’s no one here’s going to talk. They know what’s good for them. The bastard’ll be old news in a week. I’d say we’re in the clear.”
Sawney straightened. “Right, worth a drink, I reckon.” He looked at Symes. “How about it, Verger? Not much point us fallin’ out, not when we’ve more work lined up. What’s done is done. Tell you what, we’ll get some more booze in. Good stuff, not this rotgut. Come on, Maggsie, let’s see if we can’t find ourselves a couple of those bottles Hanratty keeps under the counter for the special customers.”
Maggett frowned. He was wondering what bottles. He was also wondering which special customers Sawney was talking about.
Sawney rolled his eyes at his lieutenant’s expression then turned to Symes. “Be best if you hung around, anyway, Verger, at least until that bastard Runner has slung ’is hook. Go on, have a seat, take the weight off. Sal here’ll look after you. How’d that be? Sal, entertain the man. That’s an order.” Sawney winked. “We’ll be back in ten minutes. Give you two a bit of privacy. Come on, Maggsie.” Sawney ushered the still-frowning Maggett towards the door. He turned. “An’ you be gentle with him, Sal, y’hear?”
Sal grinned and poked her tongue out. “Don’t you worry. I’m always gentle with Lucius.” She turned to the verger and chuckled. “Ain’t that right, sweet’eart? Go on, sit yourself down.” She nodded towards the chair. “Make yourself comfortable.”
Sawney and Maggett left the room. Symes watched them, a worried expression on his face.
“Don’t worry about them,” Sal whispered, as the footsteps retreated. “It’s just you and me. We’ve got the place to ourselves.”
The verger hesitated. Sal tugged gently on his sleeve. “You know you want to.” She dropped her gaze. “I can tell.”
The verger coloured, but he did not resist when she led him to the wing-backed chair and pressed him down into the seat. She leaned over him, placed both hands on the arms of the chair, and gazed at him from beneath her dark lashes. “Will it be the usual, then, sir?” she asked teasingly.
Symes closed his eyes, cursing himself for his weakness. He kept them shut as Sal knelt down and began to undo his breeches. When she had done so, she reached for him. Symes caught his breath as he felt the touch o
f her palm.
Sal grinned as she took hold. “Toot-toot,” she said softly, as she lowered her head.
The verger’s eyes were still clamped shut when Sawney re-entered the room. Symes was breathing heavily. His left hand was on the arm of the chair. His right hand was resting on Sal’s shoulder. Sal’s head was bobbing up and down in his lap. Neither of them seemed aware that Sawney had returned. A yellow-toothed grin creased Sawney’s face as he studied the verger’s rapt expression. Sal increased her rhythm. The verger’s breathing grew ragged. Without altering her position, Sal looked up, caught Sawney’s eye, and winked. Sawney felt himself stiffen. He reached down and adjusted himself through his breeches.
The verger was close to the point of no return. He emitted a low moan as Sal increased the pressure of her lips. She was still looking at Sawney and continued to gaze up at him as he leaned over the back of the chair. Suddenly the verger grunted. At the moment of release Sawney, with exquisite timing, looped the cord round the verger’s throat and pulled tight. Caught in that moment of confusion between pleasure and pain, the verger shuddered. As the realization of what was happening struck him, his eyes shot open and he clawed at the cord encircling his throat. Legs kicking, he flailed from side to side in a vain attempt to free himself. Scrambling away from the verger’s thrashing limbs, Sal rose and spat the contents of her mouth into the nearest mug. Sawney’s forearms bulged. Gradually, the verger’s struggles grew weaker, then stopped. Sawney waited for half a dozen seconds before releasing the cord. A strong faecal smell filled the room. He gazed down at the verger’s inert body with a look of disgust. “Bloody sod shat himself.”
Sal rubbed a hand across her lips and grimaced. “Bleedin’ took you long enough.”
“The bugger was spryer than ’e looked.” Sawney tossed the cord aside, reached for the bottle and picked up a mug. He was intrigued to discover his cock was still semi-hard.
“I wouldn’t use that one,” Sal said.
Sawney looked into the mug and wrinkled his nose. He put the mug down, raised the bottle to his lips, took a swig, then handed it to Sal. “Clean your mouth out, girl.”
She was swilling the grog around her gums when Maggett came back in, looking confused. Having accompanied Sawney outside, and then been told to stay put for five minutes, he’d been kicking his heels on the landing, wondering what the hell Sawney was playing at. Now he knew. The big man glanced down at the verger’s corpse. His face betrayed no emotion. If Sawney had thought it necessary to kill the verger, then it would take a braver man than Maggett to question the decision. He sniffed. “Aw, Jesus!”
Sal poured some grog into a mug and passed it to Maggett. “There you go, Maggsie. This’ll take your mind off the smell.”
As Maggett took the mug and raised it to his mouth, Sal glanced at Sawney and stifled a grin.
Sawney’s eyes flicked to the mug and, as Maggett swallowed, he let go a snort of laughter.
Maggett lowered the mug and frowned. “What’s the joke?”
“Not a thing, Maggsie.” Sawney smiled benignly at his lieutenant. “Not a bleedin’ thing.”
Maggett drained the mug and nodded towards the chair. He missed Sal turning her head away as the giggles took hold. “What’ll we do with his ’Oliness? You want to hang on to him? Or should we feed ’im to Reilly’s hogs?”
Behind him, Sal’s shoulders were shaking.
Sawney clamped his mouth shut and shook his head. He tried not to look at Sal. He could feel himself starting to go.
Reilly was a slaughterman with a yard off Hosier Lane. He’d dispose of anything for a price; he wasn’t particular. Neither were his hogs. He kept three of them in a pen in his yard; huge, vicious brutes, with a reputation for devouring whatever was put in front of them. The word was that Reilly kept them hungry on purpose, starving them periodically in case their services might be required. Keeping them hungry made them less likely to question their menu. Sometimes Reilly let people watch – for a fee, of course; always the businessman.
“We’ll stow ’im with the others for the time being,” Sawney said, managing to control himself. “I’ll ask around. One of the schools might like him. Don’t see why we should bring that bogtrotter into it when we can do it ourselves an’ make money from it.”
“You want me to take ’im downstairs, Rufus?” Maggett asked, though he didn’t look overjoyed at the prospect. The smell was getting worse with each passing minute.
Sawney nodded. “We can swab ’im down later.”
“What about the bastard outside?” Sal asked. She had recovered from her giggling fit. Her face was instantly serious.
“I’ll take a look,” Sawney said, and moved to the wall.
Attaching his right eye to the peephole, Sawney surveyed the taproom. The Runner, if that’s what he was, was still at his table, but as Sawney watched he pushed his chair back and rose to his feet. Suddenly, he paused and turned. For a moment, it seemed as though he was staring directly into Sawney’s eyes. Sawney’s breath caught in his throat. He knew there was no way he could be seen, but it had been a heart-stopping moment, nonetheless.
Sawney let go his breath as the tall, unsmiling man strode off through the tables, heading for the door to the street. He followed the black-coated figure’s progress, noting how calmly and easily the man moved through the crowded taproom. As he disappeared, Sawney stepped away from the wall and repositioned the light bracket.
“He’s on his way.” Sawney relit the candle and looked down at the body in the chair. “Stupid sod, thinkin’ I’d let the likes of him tell me what I should do!”
Sal and Maggett said nothing. When Sawney was off on one of his rants, it didn’t pay to interrupt.
But it seemed that was all Sawney had to say, on the subject of insubordination, at any rate. He turned to Maggett. “You had that word with Hanratty, right?”
Maggett nodded. “All done.”
Sawney nodded. “We’d best get busy then. I’ll go and get the cart. You take care of that –” Sawney nodded towards the chair. “Check ’is pockets first. You never know, he might ’ave some spare cash. We can use it to give ’im a send-off. Let the bugger pay for ’is own bloody wake.”
A chill rain was falling as Hawkwood left the Dog. There were no street lamps. The insipid candle glow seeping from the pub’s small, square, smoke-blackened windows cast a leathery sheen across the saturated cobbles. Further down the street faint pinpricks of light the size of fireflies were all that could be seen through chinks in the rough wooden shutters of the adjacent tenements. The rest of the alley was as dark as a catacomb.
The heavy drizzle had driven most people indoors, though there were still a few hardy souls around. Through the murk he could make out vague, waterlogged shapes darting under the overhanging eaves in an attempt to stay dry. Heads bowed, their cast-down faces were little more than pale blurs in the shadows.
Hawkwood turned up the collar of his coat. The rain, cold and hard against his face, matched his mood.
A series of ear-splitting feline howls pierced the night. The din was followed by the sound of an object being thrown and a high-pitched shriek that ebbed away into an uneasy silence. The rain continued to fall.
A sickly smell was drifting along the alleyway. The city was full of such odours, but Hawkwood recognized the stench. It was the Fleet. After two nights of heavy rain, the river had burst its banks. Not that anyone referred to the Fleet as a river. Most people called it the Ditch. Though even that was a euphemism for a trough of filth that was no more than an open sewer. The Fleet didn’t flow so much as ooze. That was if it bothered to move at all. It was said the rats didn’t need to swim across the Fleet, they sauntered.
Some stretches ran below ground, but where the Fleet saw the light of day, such as the section that ran behind Field Lane, it was used as a dumping ground for every type of effluent matter, solid and liquid, that humans and animals could excrete, as well as discarded waste from the nearby meat markets. The smell h
ung over the confined streets and alleyways like a blanket. On some days, depending on the weather, the stink would carry for miles. Even for a city renowned for its foul odours, the Fleet was in a class of its own.
The smell did at least give Hawkwood his bearings. He was skirting the southern boundary of the district known as Jack Ketch’s Warren, in memory of the city’s former hangman. Most locals referred to it simply as the Warren. A labyrinthine web of narrow lanes and passages, the slum was aptly named.
Hawkwood hunched into his coat and tried to ignore the water dribbling uncomfortably down the inside of his collar. Holborn Bridge lay around the next corner. Once there, he would be back on the main thoroughfare and out of the midden. He looked up. A small uneven gap had appeared in the clouds. Framed in the opening, a round moon hung like a pearl-grey teardrop. Caught by the ghostly radiance, rooftops and chimney pots rose in stark silhouettes against the night sky. The rain pricked like tiny arrows against his skin while above him overspill from the gutters ran down the slatted walls of the tenement houses in bright ribbons of quicksilver.
The sound of a heavy tread to his right drew his attention; a boot heel striking the cobbles, someone else hurrying to escape the wet. Hawkwood was aware of an indistinct shape moving at the edge of his vision; a vague shadow tucking itself into the side of the alleyway, blurred behind the drifting curtain of rain.
Then, as the slit in the clouds widened, he saw a dark form detach itself from the shelter of a low archway. He caught, too, the dull gleam of metal as moonlight glanced off an object in the figure’s hand: some sort of hooked implement, held low and partially concealed.
He sensed rather than saw the second shadow materialize from the entrance to a dark passageway to his left, close to the end of the bridge’s low wooden railing, and knew immediately that this was more than two bedraggled pedestrians seeking shelter from the inclement weather. His suspicions were confirmed when he saw that the second man was also armed with a broad, oblong blade, some kind of cleaver.
Hawkwood was already turning, his left hand pulling aside the hem of his coat, allowing his right hand access to the ebony tipstaff. He pulled the baton free.
