The Sugared Game

by KJ Charles

  It took a second for Will to grasp the implication. He stared at Kim, the words slotting into place. “You know. You do, don’t you? Jesus Christ. You know who Capricorn is!”

  “Of course I do,” Kim said. “If I’m honest, I’ve known for a while. ‘If I’m honest’.” He gave a little giggle. “That’s rich.”

  Will had so many things to say to that, he could barely speak. He went for the least of them. “Then why don’t you bloody arrest him?”

  “On what grounds? I’ve got a lot of nothing. Straws in the wind, and fears, and the words of the dead. The case needs to be iron-clad, and mine is wet tissue paper. I need objective proof. Not objective. What does Othello say? Ocular proof. Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore, be sure of it. Give me the ocular proof.”

  “Steady on.”

  “Othello’s wrong anyway. Lear would be better.”

  “I’m sure.” There was no point venting his feelings with Kim in this state—Will wanted him to remember what he said—and he might even be drunk enough to tell the truth, if pumped. That was doubtless a shabby, deceitful way to go on, but Will had learned from a master. “If you know who he is, we can get him. Tell me about it. We’ll make a plan.”

  “If I could get him, I’d have sodding got him.” Kim’s control of his speech was slipping now, the words slurring. Will wondered just how fast he’d put away the Scotch. “You think I’ve been sitting around doing nothing?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You should. I might as well have been. This is a fucking nightmare and it doesn’t stop. It’s never going to stop. I thought I knew best in 1914 and I’m going to pay for it the rest of my life. And I wouldn’t mind that, not really, it’s only fair. This isn’t fair.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “Any of it. Shit. I’m drunk.”

  “I know.”

  “You should throw me out.”

  “I don’t need telling. How much have you had?”

  “About...I don’t know. I finished the brandy. That’s a civilised drink, not like this muck.” He picked up the bottle on the second try and contemplated it as if wondering where the whisky had gone.

  “Sorry my booze isn’t up to your standards.” Will wondered if it would help to march him downstairs and find a water-butt to stick his head in. It would certainly relieve his own feelings. He tried again. “Look, why don’t you tell me about it? You’ll feel better.”

  Kim blinked. “Want to lie down.”

  Will had plenty of experience with the incapacitatingly drunk. He persuaded Kim to use the chamber pot he kept under the bed for emergencies before he collapsed, and took his shoes off after. He went downstairs to get water and check Kim hadn’t done too much damage on his way in through the window. By the time he returned, his unwanted guest was snoring, fully clothed, on top of the covers.

  It was a big bed, but Will had no intention of sharing it with him. He found a blanket to put over Kim and another for himself, left a mug of water on the table, rescued his pyjamas, turned off the lights, and went downstairs to sleep on the bloody rickety camp bed again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Will woke up to the sound of mortars far too close to the trench, a noise that sent him from deep sleep to sitting upright in a dizzying movement. Nausea sloshed through him as his brain caught up with his body and the bombardment—

  No. No explosions, no trench, no war. He was in the shop, someone was banging at the door, and it was the middle of the bloody night.

  He dragged himself to his feet. It wouldn’t be Zodiac—they usually just broke in—so he probably didn’t need the Messer. He fumbled for his dressing gown, realised everything would be easier if he put the lights on, did so, then spent the next seconds blinking painfully. The banging was shaking the room.

  “All right!” he bellowed, and stormed through the shop to the door.

  It was the police.

  Will stared through the glass. Three uniformed men, two constables, one whose hat suggested a more senior position. They were here for him. Someone had found Fuller’s body, or worked out what had happened, and they were here to arrest him, and he was fucked because Kim hadn’t hushed it up after all.

  Turn and run? But he was barefoot, the back door locked, and the front easily smashed in. He couldn’t do anything but brazen this out.

  He unlocked the door. “Officers? What’s all this about?”

  “William Darling?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re here on information received. May we come in?” The sergeant walked in, without waiting for reply, forcing Will back. “Upstairs.”

  “What information? What are they doing? Hey!” The two constables were disappearing upstairs. “What’s going on? Do you have a warrant for this?”

  “If I were you, sir, I’d cooperate,” the officer said with a sneer. “You’re in enough trouble as it is.”

  “What trouble?” Will demanded, sticking to the principle of Deny everything. “What are you talking about?”

  A constable appeared at the top of the stairs. “Well?” the officer said.

  “There is a gentleman up here, sir,” the constable began, a little awkwardly.

  “Right. Come down and keep hold of this one in case he makes a run for it.”

  “What the—? What do you mean, make a run for it?”

  “No, but Sarge,” the constable on the stairs said. “He’s fully clothed and out like a light. Fast asleep. Stinks of booze.”

  “Is that illegal now? It’s...” Will looked at the clock. “It’s four in the morning! Why wouldn’t he be asleep?”

  “May I ask who the gentleman upstairs is, sir, and what precisely he’s doing here?”

  “He’s Lord Arthur Secretan,” Will said, aware he was deploying the title as a shield and resenting it as he did it. “And he’s sleeping off a heavy one, just like your man said. What’s it to you?”

  “What it is to me, sir, is that we received a complaint of gross indecency at this address.”

  Gross indecency. Not manslaughter, or murder. Will felt a dizzying wave of relief, which was almost immediately swamped by a second of alarm, and a third of pure boiling rage.

  “A complaint of what?” he demanded. “On what grounds?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Grounds. You know, reasonable suspicion? Evidence? Something that would give you a justification for banging on my door at four in the morning?” The officer hesitated. Will pressed his point. “Whose complaint was it? Based on what? What the hell are you playing at? Do you even have a warrant?”

  “We asked your permission to enter, sir.”

  “And you didn’t wait for it,” Will said. “You forced your way in here while I was half asleep on the basis of what, precisely? What the devil is going on here?”

  The officer shot a look at the constable on the stairs, who said apologetically, “No sign of anything untoward, sir.”

  “Of course there bloody isn’t! I’ve been asleep down here. My bed will still be warm. In there. Go and check. Go and check right now!”

  One of the constables started a salute. He caught himself almost immediately and went off, meeting Will’s eye as he passed with an apologetic look. Will waited, fuming, until he came back out. “Camp bed, sir, been slept in.”

  “Right,” Will said. “Thank you. Now, am I not allowed to let a pie-eyed mate sleep it off in my own home? Is there something wrong with that?”

  “I’ll ask the questions, sir,” the sergeant said. “How is Lord Arthur Secretan your ‘mate’?”

  “Tell you what, why don’t you ask him that? I expect he’ll be pretty keen to talk to you tomorrow. In fact, I expect he’ll bring the sort of lawyer his type can afford to ask why you were hammering on my door in the middle of the night like the bloody Cheka, making slanderous accusations. What’s your name and what’s your station?”

  “I’d like to know your relationship with Lord Arthur, sir.”

  “Have you
seen any evidence of anything unlawful here? Have you?”

  “Sir—”

  “Don’t give me ‘sir’.” Will was fizzing with rage, and had a strong feeling he knew what was going on. “Answer my question. Evidence of any offence whatsoever. Any grounds for barging in here. Well?”

  “No, sir,” one of the constables put in. The officer shot him a glare.

  “No. And since that’s what you’re here to harass me about at four o’clock in the morning, I don’t think I need to stand here any longer. So you can all three give me your names, numbers, and stations for the complaint I’ll be making tomorrow, and get off my property.”

  He wrote down the details, saw the sergeant and his discomfited flunkies out, and bolted the door in a thoroughly bad mood.

  KIM CRAWLED DOWNSTAIRS at about ten the next day. It was lucky the shop was empty.

  “You look like a tramp,” Will said, in lieu of greeting.

  “That’s surprisingly positive, since I feel like a corpse. I imagine I have a fair bit to apologise for.”

  “You have no idea how much. Get cleaned up, get some food and coffee into yourself, and then get back here. And don’t piss me about, Kim. If you disappear on me now, you don’t ever show your face again.”

  “Worse than I thought, then.”

  “You’ve got half an hour. Try not to let me down, for once.”

  Kim was back within the allotted time, which was mildly impressive since he looked as if it hurt to move. Will doubted he’d eaten anything.

  “Tea?” he said, because the kettle was on and he was furious but not a monster.

  “God, yes.”

  Will locked the door, switched the sign to Closed, and led the way into the back room. Kim shot a glance at the camp bed. “I take it I stole your bed last night. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. If I’d been in it with you, we’d have been up a gum tree when the police came round.”

  “What?”

  Will gave him a brief summary. “I’m no expert, but I don’t think the rozzers generally bang on the doors of private homes at four in the morning to check whose beds people are in. The chap in charge was a Sergeant Spencer Thomas at Vine Street station, which isn’t the local nick, but is the station that covers the High-Low. I suppose that was Mrs. Skyrme’s parting shot at us.”

  “Spencer Thomas,” Kim repeated.

  Will passed him the sheet with the sergeant’s details. “He knew you were here, and exactly what he was looking to find. So we have to assume Zodiac know about you and me.”

  “Balls.” Kim shut his eyes. “I’m extremely sorry.”

  “I told Thomas that you’d be round with a lawyer in the morning.”

  “Consider it done. Anything else I need to clean up?”

  “You owe me a new bottle of Scotch, since you drank all mine.”

  “Christ, did I? No wonder my head hurts.”

  “And just one more thing,” Will said. “You admitted last night that you know who Capricorn is, and have for a while. So do you want to tell me what the fuck you’re playing at?”

  Kim’s face froze. Will said, “If you give me any flannel now, I will kick you down the street. I’m not in the mood. I’ve been kidnapped, I’ve had guns pointed at me, I’ve killed people and mixed up Maisie in this and pissed off the War Office, and now I’ve got the police sniffing around me, all because of Zodiac, and you knew who Capricorn was all along? And you didn’t trust me to tell me so?”

  “On the contrary,” Kim said. “I clearly did trust you once I was sufficiently plastered. In vino veritas. Give me a moment.”

  “To come up with a lie?”

  “Jesus, Will, let me think! Are you under the impression I’m doing this for fun?”

  That sounded raw enough that it might even be true. Plus the tea was well brewed by now. Will poured it out, waiting.

  “All right,” Kim said at last. “I have no idea what I said last night, but it is not correct to say I have known who Capricorn is all along. I had a suspicion at the end of last year, which has since become what you might call a moral certainty, unsupported by evidence. I’ve been looking for proof since. My belief was confirmed on Sunday at the High-Low. And there is absolutely damn all I can do about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s covered his tracks all the way, been incredibly careful about who knows his identity, and to make them fear revealing it. Skyrme wouldn’t stick around to testify at any price; she’s not stupid. We’ve found a lot in her papers, but she told me at the time we wouldn’t get Capricorn in them, and I don’t think we will. It’s been like that all the way. I can’t make a case that I can pass over to DS, still less the police.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  Will put his mug down hard enough to splash tea over his fingers. Kim flinched at his expression, but he said, doggedly, “I can’t, Will, do you think I’m trying to annoy you? I cannot share this.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “I can’t tell you that either. I realise that’s tiresome.”

  “Tiresome?” Will repeated, at a volume that made Kim wince. “Tiresome? What’s tiresome here is that you demand my time and work when it suits you and leave me in the bloody dark! What’s tiresome is that when you have a use for me you’ll talk for all the world as if I matter to you, but the second it’s not convenient, it turns out I don’t mean a thing!”

  “I know. I know.”

  “Then why don’t you stop?” Will shouted. “You choose to do this! You choose to make everyone around you miserable and shut out the people who give a damn for you—not just shut us out, insult us. Do you think Phoebe doesn’t see how you ignore her when it suits you? Do you think I’ve nothing better to do than wait for you?”

  “I never asked you to wait,” Kim said, white-lipped.

  “That’s always your excuse, isn’t it? I never asked. You bloody did, Kim. Just because it’s not in words doesn’t mean you never asked, or promised, or made people hope. If you don’t want lovers or friends, stop fucking making them!”

  “Your expectations are your responsibility.”

  “Right, it’s my fault for asking too much, so now I’m embarrassed to tell you what a shit you are. Christ, the state of you. You’re so busy torturing yourself for your sins, you don’t even notice how much you’re hurting other people.”

  Kim had gone entirely white. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Why, because I’m not as refined as you? I could hang, Kim, do you understand that? Never mind two years for gross indecency: I killed a man!”

  “It was an accident.”

  “It bloody wasn’t,” Will said impatiently. “I kicked him off a two-storey drop so he didn’t shoot you. You said yourself I saved your life, and if you say ‘I didn’t ask you to’, so help me God I will break your jaw. I’m not asking for thanks, but for Christ’s sake, I’m not your fucking hired killer! I helped you because—”

  “Because you wanted to,” Kim said. “You’re bored out of your mind and you wanted adventure. Let’s not pretend I forced you into this. I told you it would be dirty.”

  “I didn’t think you meant you’d do the dirty on me!”

  “Then more fool you, because you’ve plenty of experience to suggest exactly that.”

  “Don’t you dare blame me for this. And horseshit,” Will said. “You know bloody well it’s been different between us.”

  Kim’s eyes were weary, and desperately miserable. “I know.”

  “I don’t understand why you’d build all that up just to smash it down again.”

  “You would if you listened. I literally cannot tell you about Capricorn. I’m not doing this because I like hurting you. I’m stuck.”

  “Then get unstuck. Do something. Don’t just hide in a bottle of whisky like a coward.”

  “You have no idea what I’ve done,” Kim snapped.

  “No, because you won’t tell me! I thought—�
��

  I thought we were in step. I thought you knew I’d stand by you if you only let me, but you won’t.

  “I thought we were together,” he said inadequately. “I really thought we were. And you’ve been lying to me every second of the day.”

  Kim’s face was painfully drawn. “I don’t know what I can say. You’re asking for more than I can give.”

  “Well, that’s me told. I thought we were both grown men and equals. I forgot I should be coming cap in hand to your lordship. My mistake.”

  “Oh, go to hell. That’s not what I meant.”

  “You dole out information like Lady bloody Bountiful at the village tea. Everything we do is on your timetable, your decision, and if I don’t like it I can leave.”

  “Yes. You can.”

  “That’s not a relationship!” Will shouted. “That’s not how you treat a friend or a lover or a partner, or any damn thing! ‘Take it or leave it’ is for customers, not people you care about. You’re meant to compromise, and find a way through, not just say this is how it is because you don’t have the guts to face up to things. You’re meant to give a damn when you hurt people!”

  “Will—”

  “I told you not to use me, Kim. You know what I feel about that, and you did it anyway, and—oh, the hell with this. We’re finished. I’m done. Get out.”

  Kim couldn’t have been surprised to hear it and yet his face twitched, a single tiny flinch that made Will even angrier because he had no right in the world to be upset.

  “Go on, go,” he said. “Don’t come back. Keep your precious secrets if that’s all you care about, and leave me alone. This isn’t forgivable.”

  Kim went. He didn’t even have the decency to give Will a fight or slink out shamefacedly; he just picked up his coat and hat and left. The door closed behind him, setting the bell jangling­­­­.

  Will stared at where he’d been, breathing hard, then kicked his chair across the room.