Corpse Thief Read online

  Contents

  Also by Michael Arnold

  Corpse Thief

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  Acknowledgements

  Historical Note

  Also by Michael Arnold

  The Civil War Chronicles

  Stryker and the Angels of Death (Novella)

  Traitor’s Blood

  Devil’s Charge

  Hunter’s Rage

  Assassin’s Reign

  Warlord’s Gold

  The Prince’s Gambit (Novella)

  Marston Moor

  The Highwayman Series

  Highwayman: Ironside

  Highwayman: Winter Swarm

  Find Michael on Kindle HERE

  About the author

  Michael Arnold’s interest in British history is lifelong, and childhood holidays were spent visiting castles and battlefields. He became a Sharpe junkie at the age of 13, and his particular fascination with the seventeenth century was piqued partly by the fact that his hometown, Petersfield, is steeped in the history of the period. Michael is the critically acclaimed author of The Civil War Chronicles, featuring the indomitable Captain Stryker, and is also the creator of the bestselling Highwayman sequence of novellas. In Corpse Thief, the first in a major new series, he turns his attention to the dark underworld of London’s resurrectionists.

  You can find out more about Michael Arnold, Joshua Hawke, Captain Stryker and the rest, by visiting the following places

  www.michael-arnold.net

  Facebook: MichaelArnoldBooks

  Twitter: @MikeArnold01

  Corpse Thief

  Part one

  Michael Arnold

  Copyright © 2019 Michael Arnold

  The right of Michael Arnold to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters in this publication – other than the obvious historical figures – are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  First published in 2019 by Bad Baby Press

  www.michael-arnold.net

  For Maisie, with love

  PROLOGUE

  LONDON

  SEPTEMBER 1821

  “The good Lord blesses me,” Varney Tapp muttered, sketching a cross in the foul air with his long hoe, “for I wade in rivers of gold.”

  “Get on wi’ yer!” a retort, friendly if brusque, carried to him from another part of the crumbling brick tunnel. “We’re first down, Varn! Do not squander!”

  “I shall not, old cock!” Varney called back. His wry laugh was corrupted almost immediately by a bout of racking coughs, but still the water, stretching away to a lazy bend, glimmered yellow under the attentions of his lantern. He spat away the acrid mass that had erupted into his mouth and waded on, placing his feet carefully as sewage sloshed about his tall boots, splattering the canvas trousers and the hem of his voluminous coat. Every yard gained earned a pause as he prodded the ground delicately with the hoe, exploring the filth for valuables. He coughed again, managed to hawk up more mucus, and said a quick prayer that he would live long enough to find something of value. Of true worth. A legacy for his children.

  For time was running out. He was not yet fifty, but he sensed the decline in his bones. He could feel the burn in his chest. Could taste it too, the taint of decay that lingered upon his breath. His body was failing, infected and enfeebled. But what could he expect? Toshers saw out their lives under the feet of other folk - quite literally. They dwelt amongst the swarming rats and voracious wild hogs in London’s labyrinthine sewers, searching, ever searching, inhaling the stink, feeling it seep inexorably into every pore. This work that was his livelihood would eventually compel him to his death. Just one more find, he told himself as he pushed on through the viscous piss and shit of the greatest city in the world. One more treasure.

  It was only just dawn. The cold had come early this autumn, and the putrefied liquid that seethed between his boots seemed to bite at his very marrow. His few remaining teeth, clinging stubbornly to the soft and shifting foundations of long collapsed gums, chattered excitedly, and he alternated the hand that carried the little lamp so that the tiny flame’s meagre warmth might be shared as far as possible in advance of the day’s scavenge. He pictured his desires, as if seeing them in his mind’s eye might make them real beneath the ink-black water. Diamond necklaces, bejewelled rings, glittering pendants.

  The dreams still swirled in his mind like the flotsam at his ankles when he saw it. A hint of something precious, glimmering like a cat’s eye in the murk. It winked at him, some thirty paces distant, reflecting his soft light from a point just before the vile river vanished round the sweeping bend. It was a break in the brickwork, perhaps a small alcove, a relic of construction that served no modern purpose but in the snagging of debris. Such curiosities might not help the natural flow of sewage to the Thames, but they were a Godsend for a tosher. A trap for trinkets.

  Varney Tapp gathered the straps of his large bag and tugged them further up his shoulder. He set off, gripping the lantern harder and building speed by the leverage of the hoe, a rushing wake marking his path. From on high, the westernmost extent of Upper Thames Street, came the muffled clatter of coach and horses upon cobbles. The day above ground was beginning. He drew nearer to the alcove, squinting as he raised his arm to cast light upon its deep drift of waste. Movement shifted on the surface, like a black shawl sliding away. Rats, dozens, skittering for the shadows in fright.

  He saw the hand before anything else, for it was from its clawed grip that the metal shone. Tapp froze five paces short, his breaths rasping painfully, cacophonous in the lonely tunnel. He stared at the waxen form for a minute or so, though it felt as though hours raced by. Glancing back, he saw no sign of his friend, and knowledge that he was alone sent an icy spear up his spine. The metal winked at him again. It was enough. He swallowed hard and decided to edge closer.

  The corpse was that of a girl. Probably little more than a child, though it was difficult to tell amongst the vines. At least they looked like vines, or stalks of some kind, wrapped about her from ankles to head as if the roots of trees had risen from the earth to devour her whole. Only that extended arm had managed to work its way free in some final, tragic gesture.

  Varney stooped a little, avarice trumping trepidation. The glint had come from some kind of button, he now saw, for the white fingers held it up as though it were a trophy, clear above water and vine, dry despite the stinking scum lapping gently over the rest of the entwined flesh. He propped the hoe against the sewer wall and squatted, parting some of the bindings to get a better look at the girl. It was already obvious that she was naked within her strange harness, for enough of her was exposed to the fetid air to see that she had not the parts of a man, but he pushed the vines away to expose more flesh. She had been laid flat on her back, skinny as a rake and pale as candle wax. Her legs were long but shapeless, like a pair of tapers, while her pearly breasts were no more than small mounds amongst skeletal ribs, spring buds on winter branches. He realised that she was too young to have reached womanhood. A street urchin, he supposed, consigned to a hopeless life and a lonely death.

  He hooked fingertips beneath the vines covering the cadaver’s head, tearing them easily away to release a mass of thickly curled hair that cascaded about the filth in a wide fan the colour of honey, still vibrant in this cold hell. And then Varney T
app vomited. His guts erupted like a volcano, juddering up through his body in a torrent, steaming bile spewing down his velveteen coat, spattering the body. He recoiled, staggering backwards, caring nothing for the effluent slopping up his thighs, thinking only of clean air, wishing only for daylight. Yet he could not turn, nor even look away. The girl’s face was gone. No eyes stared back at him, only black holes like the sockets of some ancient skull. The nose had come away too, sliced cleanly to leave a red mass, as if a fat ruby had been plunged into her face in its stead. There were not even any lips to hide the girl’s ghoulish grin, simply ragged scraps of matter draped like a fiendish curtain over the exposed teeth.

  “Oh, good Christ,” Varney managed to blurt. “Christ.”

  Varney was gasping like a landed trout, his ribs more agonised than ever, and he feared his heart was finally poised to expire. He tore his gaze away, lest the very image of the girl’s ruined face be the last thing he ever saw, and turned his back on the corpse. The wan light quivered around him, painting shapes that were suddenly strange and frightening on the slime-stained walls. He realised the hand clutching the lantern trembled and he clamped his free palm around the wrist in an effort to keep it still. He waited for several moments, allowing his pulse to calm and his breathing to steady.

  “Leave, Varn,” he urged himself aloud, his words echoing up and down the oozing brick. “Get the devil out of this place.”

  And yet.

  Varney turned back, resolving to brave the corpse one more time. After all, it was the lot of a tosher to spend his days searching the putrid depths beneath the metropolis for things that glittered, and the girl – what was left of her – promised just such a bauble within her decaying palm. Besides, he thought, what did she need with it now?

  He did not look directly at her face this time, for those sepulchral eyes were too much to behold. Instead he rushed to her side, shooing away a trio of returning rats. He stooped for the raised hand. Her skin was cold, it made him shudder, but he pulled all the same, prising the fingers apart and wrenching free his reward.

  It was only when he straightened that he felt the pain. His chest again, worse this time. More intense, in fact, than he had ever experienced. He stood stock still, unwilling to risk enraging his plaintive heart. The excitement, he thought. Too much excitement for one morning. At least he had the trinket.

  But the pain increased, and then the bitter taste of rot that seemed an ever-present drizzle at the back of his tongue was replaced by a torrid downpour of tangy metal, as though he had licked a lead pipe. It was a curious taste, one he was unused to, and only when he felt the blood well over his bottom lip and down the sides of his chin did he understand that something was amiss. He tried to breathe, but nothing would come. His arms felt suddenly numb, then his legs and his neck and cheeks. And Varney Tapp knew he was dying.

  He turned, trying to leave, but his path was blocked. A great silhouette loomed, black and massive, filling the tunnel as though it rose out of the toxic morass at Varney’s feet. At the creature’s centre there was a symbol, shining bright in the lamplight. The tosher tried to cry out but his lungs refused to respond, and in that moment he knew that he was not having the heart attack he so feared.

  He looked down at the fine tip of smooth steel that protruded through the coat at his sternum. At that same moment he felt the weight at his back, and knew that it must be the hilt of the weapon, dangling out beyond his spine like some perverse tail. He stared again at his killer’s metal heart.

  Then he was falling.

  CHAPTER ONE

  DECEMBER 1821

  WEDNESDAY

  “Hawke. Hawke!”

  Joshua Hawke arched his aching back. It always hurt more in the cold, and this night was more biting than most. He stared down at the three-man working party. “Aye?”

  “Jesus wept, Hawke!” one of the men hissed. “Keep your crapulous god-damned head steady.”

  “I’ve not touched a drop all day, Blackbird,” Hawke protested.

  A face tilted up, illuminated suddenly by tremulous light. It was pulpy, the dark skin damaged and healed too many times to count, the nose canted violently to one side. The black eyes, gleaming like nuggets of jet, regarded him nastily, brimming with repressed violence. “You’re a fucking liar.”

  “That I am,” Hawke said as jauntily as he could.

  “Well?”

  “All quiet,” Hawke replied, glancing briefly over his shoulder to check for the chink of light at the far corner of St George’s Bloomsbury burying ground. “No alarm as yet.”

  “Lucas had better not be dozing,” Blackbird warned, his gravelly voice a curious amalgam of Wapping and the West Indies.

  Hawke shook his head. “Not him, Blackbird. He’s caught on quick.”

  Blackbird snorted to show his disdain and went back to the task. They grunted and swore in the marrow-numbing blackness, voices soft, discreet in their terrible business. The ground was hard. It might have been impossible to dig, but for the patch of freshly turned earth that marked their target. Even here the pale shroud had descended in the hours after nightfall, gossamer frost creeping over the newest of the graveyard’s mounds as it had the grassy expanse between the crooked tombstones and the slanting rooftops all around. But in this dark place, where the earth was so recently disturbed, it could be scraped quickly away to reveal the loose soil beneath. They wielded wooden shovels, a deliberate choice to muffle the scraping of stones, shoulders working like tandem timber-saws as they hauled back debris.

  Joshua Hawke waited silently for the hole to deepen. He blew out his cheeks, watching the trail of hot breath rise in a plume against the sky, pleased for the cold, for it meant the rank vapours kicked up by the myriad shallow graves were frozen to a musty whiff. The place stank enough to bring tears to a man’s eyes in the summer months, for overcrowded plots disgorged what they failed to contain, spewing their decayed residents to the surface, the resulting noxious miasma free to corrupt the lungs of the living.

  Hawke lifted the iron bars he grasped in each gloved hand. They were dark as the heavens, heavy and hooked, lethal in a scrap. But not tonight. Tonight they would be employed in a task of skill. When the time was right.

  “Through?” another member of the party asked. He was standing to the side of the excavation, craning his neck to see into the crumbling shaft. His voice was a strained whisper behind the lantern in his raised fist, though Blackbird heard him well enough, for he returned a sour glance.

  “Not yet, Gilroy. Keep your bloody britches on.”

  All but one of the lantern’s sides were covered so that it would illuminate the prize without betraying those engaged in the search, and the single beam quivered manically as Gilroy replied in a hoarse whisper. “Well get on wi’ yer!”

  Blackbird dropped his spade and twisted back, squinting into the light. “Give us a chance!”

  The lamp-bearer set his jaw. “God’s bones, but you’re slow as a lame bullock.” He glanced around, eyes searching for the lookout’s lamp near the burying ground’s main gates. “They have paid watchmen here. Christ, but I heard they’re all veterans. Warty-loo, Tally-vera, Bada...”

  “Pah!” Blackbird spat contemptuously. He was sitting back on his haunches now, rubbing hands against heavily muscled forearms. “Every bugger twixt here and the river would claim the same if it got them the job.”

  The second digger nodded. His was a narrow face, lop-sided, almost hollow on one side, as though the greater part of his left cheek had been removed, while his chin tapered sharply into a pointed beard that he now tugged between thumb and forefinger. “Most guards are tumbledown old gin-hounds, Gilroy.” His voice, nasal and pitched high, carried the hard crackle of London’s eastern suburbs. “Worry not.”

  Gilroy blew a gust of air through his hooked nose. “You’d better be bloody right, Goaty. Dawn’s not far off.”

  Blackbird nodded at that. “Best get on.”

  The third digger, a fellow in his fortie
s, with salt-and-pepper hair and a wiry beard, panted, “We’re almost there. Ain’t deep.”

  “Finish it off, then, Harlowe,” Blackbird said.

  It was only moments after Harlowe’s nodded response that one of the battered tools hit upon something with a low thud, dull but distinct from the surrounding loose earth. Unmistakably wood upon wood. Blackbird glanced up at Gilroy with a grin. “What was you saying?”

  Hawke smirked as the lamp-bearer hacked up a wad of phlegm and deposited it at the foot of a nearby tombstone. “To business, then.”

  The five converged on the grave, peering along the lantern’s modest beam. They had dug what amounted to a narrow shaft. It was the width of three spades, and no more than two feet deep, ending abruptly where, they now saw, dark soil gave way to the pale flatness of timber. Blackbird dropped his spade again and delved into the hole, rapping the coffin lid lightly with gloved knuckles. “Wake up, sirrah. You’re late for work.”

  The others sniggered.

  Blackbird slunk away from the fresh tunnel and straightened slowly, dropping the tool and stretching his back like a waking tomcat. “If you please, Mister Hawke.”

  Hawke moved to the edge of the hole and dropped to his knees. The world swam for a second, and he screwed his eyes tight shut, waiting for the gin-haze to drift away. Head clearing, he thrust both crowbars into the abyss, hooking the timber lid firmly. Only a small portion of the coffin was exposed, but quite enough for their purpose this night. He sucked a huge breath into his lungs, the cold air racing up and down his ribs. And then he pulled.

  Hawke had been strong once, but all that had gone, ebbed away to leave him a brittle shell of former glory. But the wood used for such a coffin was cheap, more rotten than the body it contained, and it snapped easily, splintering between the force of the bars and the weight of remaining soil. For a heartbeat the group fell silent. The snapping had sounded unnaturally loud in these smallest hours, and, though none said it, Hawke knew that they each would be listening for the dread tone of a rising hue and cry. Nothing came. Stillness only. Suffocating silence.