Corpse Thief Read online

Hawke tossed it back on the windowsill. “Quite.”

  “Plenty o’ murders in these streets, I’m sad to say, but that?” The patternmaker laughed, shaking his head. “They’ve gone too far, if you ask me. The printers, that is. B’ain’t no chance such a thing be true.”

  Hawke looked at him levelly. “If it were?”

  “The rioters would return, sure as eggs is eggs. And London, like as not, would burn.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SATURDAY

  “Well?” Hawke said curtly as the tall figure approached through skeining dawn mist. He was ill-tempered already, having slept in a cramped and malodorous doss-house attached to Black Horse Yard, a large stable-block off Tottenham Court Road, too fearful was he to return to his proper lodgings, but clapping eyes on the new arrival stoked his ire yet further.

  The man, who moved with a gallingly confident swagger, wore a long blue coat and black cravat. Red hair sprouted from beneath the brim of a black topper. “Mind your tone, little fellow.”

  Hawke spat bitterly, tugging his own, rather more threadbare, coat tighter. “God damn you, Runner.”

  Principal Patrol Officer George Ruthven pulled an expression of sheer disdain as he came close, gilt-topped tipstaff brandished like a club in his meaty fist. He glanced at Hawke’s tall boots. “I see London’s phantoms have been haunting the dearly departed.”

  Hawke looked down, realising mud from the cemetery at Angel had clung to the soles. “I do what I must.”

  “Still, you may count your blessings. Not many of your ilk are fortunate enough to posses cavalry issue boots.”

  “What do you want?” Hawke snapped irritably.

  “I should like you to make your report, Mister Hawke. What have you discovered?” An unpleasant smile formed across his ruddy face. “Your edges appear a little... frayed.”

  Ruthven’s summons had reached his unwilling operative, through the usual network of whispers, late the previous night, though fortunately before Hawke had imbibed himself into oblivion. The Newgate Street rendezvous, in the shadow of the nation’s most infamous prison, was presumably intended as some kind of warning, a reminder to do Ruthven’s bidding well, but there was logic, too, in selecting a thoroughfare bustling enough to render them near invisible. A pair of anonymous faces in a sea of anonymity.

  Hawke, with scant choice but to obey, had been waiting for an hour now, nursing a gin-induced headache, the cold irking him as much as the delay, and now the sight of that smug face threatened to send him into a rage. “Frayed?” he hissed, as Ruthven ushered him away from the high grey fastness of Newgate’s outer wall. “Lucas and Harlowe are dead.”

  They walked more than thirty paces in silence, until finally Ruthven appeared satisfied, steering Hawke into the doorway of a small bakery. “Lucas and Harlowe.” His brow furrowed as he mined the depths of his memory. “Szekely’s men?”

  “And my friends,” Hawke said. He could feel the heat of anger rise up through his guts and into his chest. “My friends, Ruthven. You task me with investigating this girl’s death, and my group start dying. What in Christ’s name is going on?”

  “That, Mister Hawke, is what I would ask of you.” Ruthven’s expression, for once, seemed devoid of amusement. London’s premier enforcer of law and order had long since cultivated a look that spoke of hidden nuance, as though he alone held the real truth in any situation. But now it was all gone. He was telling the truth.

  The reality came as a shock to Hawke who had spent the night staring at his ceiling, wondering whether some deeper machination was playing out around him. He had told himself that the meeting with Ruthven, as inconvenient as it was, would, at least, provide a chance to confront the Bow Street Runner. Thus, he had left Buckbridge Street before dawn, expecting to discover some new morsel of information, but now his head simply swam with doubt. He scraped cold hands over cheeks made rough by stubble. “I know nothing. Have found nothing. The girl, the tosher, and now...”

  “And now your grave-plundering confederates,” Ruthven interjected archly. He paused, mulling over the news and breathing deeply of the air that blasted in sudden warmth from within the bakery, the aroma evidently as intoxicating for him as it was Hawke. “You find yourself looking into four murders? My my, but you appear to be taking on my duties as well as your own.”

  “I would rather have nought to do with any of it,” Hawke said truthfully.

  “Then why involve yourself?”

  “Szekely commands me as you command me,” Hawke answered bitterly. “A dead child, Butcher Milne rampaging about London and the prospect of war with the Giltspur Boys.”

  “The Holy Land,” Ruthven said, using the nickname St Giles had earned on account of the high number of Irish immigrants to the area, “will verily run with blood.”

  “It already is,” Hawke said.

  Ruthven gnawed the inside of his mouth. “Go on.”

  “I was dispatched to follow the Giltspurs.”

  “Why?”

  “To discover if it was they killed Lucas. In the event, they caught us.”

  “Us?”

  “My associate and I.”

  “And?”

  “My associate stabbed one of them in the neck. I hamstrung another.”

  Ruthven grinned wolfishly. “All that gin and opium,” he crowed, tapping out a rapid tune on the bakery’s door-frame with his tipstaff, “and the old thief-taker’s still in there.”

  “When I made it to safety,” Hawke went on, “I discovered that Harlowe had been sent the same way as Lucas. In the mean time, Szekely had abducted a Giltspur and attempted to torture the wretch into confessing to the murders of our men.”

  “And the hapless fellow failed to cough?”

  Hawke shrugged. “What could he say?”

  Ruthven frowned. “You do not think his gang were responsible?”

  “Do you care what I think?”

  “If Szekely and the Giltspurs chop one another to bits, all the better for me. But I’ll indulge you.”

  “No, I do not think they killed Lucas or Harlowe, and I told Szekely so.”

  Ruthven chuckled. “Impertinent fellow. Did he heed your advice?”

  “I think he did.”

  One of the officer’s eyebrows arched. “In another life you’d have been called to the bar.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “But still he offed the fellow he had tortured?”

  “Aye.”

  Ruthven made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Sensible. Can’t have him scuttling back to Giltspur Street telling tales of woe, can he?”

  “The Giltspurs will eventually discover it was Szekely,” Hawke said, “and then we shall be at war regardless.”

  Ruthven waited for a trio of teenage boys to trundle past pushing barrows stacked high with flour sacks. “Was I right about the butcher, then? Is it Milne? You said he was... what was it... rampaging?”

  Hawke said that he could not be sure. “I encountered him by chance at Smithfield. He did not seem like a man who had exacted revenge, but one who yet sought it.” He thought about Betsy, the butcher’s daughter. He had not seen her, but her injuries were easy enough to imagine. One thing that both men could agree upon was that her killer needed to be caught. The image shifted in his mind’s eye so that her ruined face became the staring, pale visage of Lucas. He met Ruthven’s stare. “Besides...”

  “Speak plain,” Ruthven pushed.

  “The bodies bore strange marks.”

  Ruthven gave a mirthless grunt. “I would say young Betsy’s injuries were not altogether run-of-the-mill.”

  Hawke shook his head, trying to find the right word. “Different, then. Unexpected.”

  “Go on.”

  “Two small holes at the base of the neck,” Hawke said eventually. “Just above the collar.”

  “A cleaver will make holes,” Ruthven said. He added a quick wink. “So will swords, as well you know.”

  The memories bubbled up then, as they always did, and Hawke instinctiv
ely turned to scan the row of shops.

  Ruthven’s smile broadened as he sensed his barb had snagged. “Plenty of gin palaces hereabouts. Need to service the crowds when they come to watch the hangings.”

  The fact that Ruthven had guessed correctly was enough to bring Hawke’s mind back from the brink, and he shook the urges from his head. “The wounds were present upon the flesh of both Lucas and Harlowe,” he said, forcing sharpness back into his mind if only because he would not give Ruthven the satisfaction of seeing him scrabble for the drink he so dearly wanted. “They were narrow. Almost invisible. But deep, I think. Not the kind of damage done by an edged weapon.”

  Ruthven seemed unimpressed. “Ask your Doctor Vine.”

  Hawke shook his head. “It would get back.”

  “To Szekely?” The corners of Ruthven’s eyes wrinkled with interest. “You haven’t told him of this matter? Of the deed done to his employee?”

  “What if Szekely did the deed?”

  Ruthven looked at him sceptically. “Why ever would he dispatch his own man in so strange and secretive a manner? It makes little sense.”

  “What makes sense to me,” Hawke retorted hotly, “is the fewer people who know of it, the safer I am.” He gathered himself for a moment, then said, “Betsy’s body. Did you see it with your own eyes?”

  Ruthven indicated that he had. “What of it?”

  “Did it bear the same marks?”

  “It had been mutilated,” Ruthven answered impatiently.

  “You said the eyes were gouged out. Be specific, please.”

  Ruthven’s small eyes narrowed further as he plucked detail from quarters of his memory necessarily locked tight. “Her face was removed. Eyes, lips, nose.”

  “And she had been throttled?”

  “Yes.”

  “But no narrow holes?”

  “None that I noticed,” Ruthven said, “though I confess I was not looking at her god-damned neck.” This time he waved a gloved hand, as if swatting any further questions away. “Enough of this! I am unconcerned with the tawdry happenings of you and your fellow gutter rats.”

  “Tawdry?” Hawke almost spat. “We are being murdered.”

  “And not a one of you will be mourned,” Ruthven said in an iron tone, “but the Milne girl will see our good citizenry panic. Once that sluice is open, it will not be in my gift to shut it. Her death matters.”

  Matters to your career, Hawke thought, though he could hardly deny the truth of it. “Sorghum was the second plant used in her,” he hesitated as he considered the state in which her body had been discovered, “cocoon.”

  “Sorghum?” Ruthven said. “Never heard of it. But that is commendable work, nevertheless. Does that lead you down any new paths?”

  Hawke shook his head. There was no need to inform the officer of his discussion with Ansell Brommett until he had something more certain to report. “I will keep my ear to the ground.”

  “Both ears,” Ruthven said, jabbing the tipstaff into Hawke’s chest.

  “And your men?” Hawke asked pointedly. “What have they discovered?”

  “Inquiries continue to be made,” Ruthven said, a little too primly, and Hawke knew that the great and good of Bow Street had blundered down a dead end. “I intend to scour Limehouse in due course. Strikes me as a case reeking of superstition, and where better to look than the Orientals who infest that part of the city? Whether they be Mussulman or Chinaman, they’re all rotten at the root. They believe in pixies and jinns and all sorts of absurdities and perversions. My shilling’s on Limehouse. That’s where we’ll find this vermin. But you must continue to keep that nose of yours to the breeze.” The hero of Cato Street breathed on the end of the tipstaff and buffed it with his sleeve. “This matter is my sole concern. Therefore, it is your sole concern.”

  “Christ, Ruthven,” Hawke hissed through gritted teeth, pushing the staff away. “Our group is whittled away through acts of supreme violence, and you would have me do nothing but your own bidding?”

  “What Szekely and his rivals do to one another is their business. Indeed, it is a slice of good fortune for the Patrol, truth be told.”

  “I cannot look into Betsy Milne’s death when I myself must fear daggers in the dark!”

  Ruthven laughed at that, a sound dripping with scorn. “Oh, but you can.”

  “Spare your breath, you self-satisfied bastard. You’ll inform Szekely of our association. I am well aware of the threat.”

  For answer, Ruthven unexpectedly lifted the tipstaff again, making Hawke flinch. This time he touched its tip to the door of the bakery. “I can be more creative if you’d like. After all, it doesn’t pay to have folk blabbing your private affairs about town, not least when the knowledge of those affairs might get you torn to shreds by the unwashed masses.” He paused for effect. “If you refuse to do as you’re told, sirrah, then I shall whisper one little word that will spread around this great metropolis as a plague, and you will be hounded to your doom like the flea-bit rat you truly are.”

  Hawke felt horror climb the sinews of his neck like ivy vines. “You would not.”

  “Try me. I can see it now. A full page in The Times, recounting that dreadful day.” He leaned closer. “A list of the names of those involved. The brave members of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry Cavalry and the gallant Hussars that provided such stoic support.”

  Hawke swallowed thickly, he could feel his hands trembling at his sides. He feared the man standing before him, and yet he could not believe Ruthven would jeopardise a key informant so callously. “Fuck yourself, Runner.”

  The bigger man tutted, as if correcting an errant child, and pushed the tipstaff so that the door swung inward ajar. To Hawke’s bafflement, he began to softly sing. “And the heroic host no more shall boast, the mighty deeds of Waterloo.”

  Incredulity turned to twisting horror in Hawke’s guts. “Mister Ruthven, sir, stop.” He spied with dread the folk on the other side of the door.

  Ruthven went on, grinning, “But this henceforth shall be the toast,” his voice built in volume, “the glorious feats of Peterloo!”

  There were six or seven people within, the baker and his assistants, and their bustling work ceased, all eyes training on the doorway. “Sir?” one of them called.

  Ruthven waited, letting the word hang there, an invisible but pungent ingredient mixing with the floury air. Then he looked down at Hawke, who could manage nothing but a weak nod. Ruthven looked back into the bakery. “Peter who? I was asking my friend, here, about a mutual associate. I cannot recall Peter’s family name.”

  “Well close the door, if you please!” the baker bellowed. “It’s too bleedin’ cold out!”

  “My apologies, of course,” Ruthven said, “I do have a habit of leaning too heavily.”

  “I should fucking do you right now,” Hawke snarled as the door thudded shut. His hand was clamped fast round the hilt of his knife.

  Ruthven was unruffled, though he placed the staff between them as a precaution. “You are free to try, naturally. After all, it is eminently sensible to eliminate those privy to one’s dirtiest secrets.” With his free hand he patted a spot at the side of his long coat, eliciting the unmistakable clink of coinage. “Depends whether you can afford to do without me.”

  Hawke relented. He stared into those tiny eyes, wondering whether the lawman knew just how tempted he was to commit murder. “I will do my best with the Milne case.”

  “There’s a good fellow,” Ruthven said smoothly. “I want a report by dusk. Come to the safe house on Red Lion Square.”

  Θ

  “Che cosa vuoi da me?”

  The eye peering through the narrow slit was dark brown, the voice behind it nervous and accusing. A metallic click followed, the unmistakable speech of a cocking pistol.

  Joshua Hawke let go of the dolphin-shaped knocker and took a step away from the door so that he could be easily seen. He held up his hands to show they were empty. “No need for that, friend.�
�

  The disembodied eye flickered rapidly left and right, up and down. “You are not here to buy.”

  “Who says?”

  “You’re a vagabond,” the voice, obscured by thick timber and thicker accent, went on rapidly. “Tell me what you want or I blow a hole in you.”

  Hawke smiled, partly because of the brutal assessment, and partly because he would like to see how the fellow proposed to get a bullet all the way through the stout oak. “I would speak with you, sir.”

  “About?”

  “The Benandanti.” Hawke waited now, letting the words sink in. Then he added, “Ansell Brommett sent me.”

  The interior of the building on Perceval Street was a place of wonder. A cavern of fine, strange tools, built for work of complexity and precision, of benches littered with objects in glass and metal, toothy cogs and intricate numbering scales rendered in carefully inscribed ink. The walls groaned with shelves displaying what appeared to be the completed products, though Hawke was unfamiliar with the exotic devices. They were things of great beauty that seemed both functional and fantastical in their design, inventions combining expertly carved wood, mesmerising dials, and slender tubes filled with liquid. They were boxes in the main, rectangular cases with no lids, so that their spectacular innards were displayed for the world to see. They reminded Hawke of the fine clock his father, a moderately successful brewer, had kept in the reception hall of the family home as a sign of his hard-earned status. Yet this curious machine had neither pendulum nor hands. He forced his eyes away from the walls to meet the suspicious gaze of the man who had confirmed himself to be Marco Totti. “Barometers?”

  “To measure atmospheric pressure.”

  “You make them?”

  Totti, around forty years old by the look of him, shook his head, glossy black-and-silver curls shimmering at his shoulders. “I create them.”

  “This is fine work, sir.”

  Totti still gripped the pistol. He shook it gently. “Who are you?”

  “No one of importance,” Hawke said. “I merely have some questions.” Reading the scepticism in Totti’s face, he added, “Brommett told me to come to Clerkenwell. Assured me you were a man with answers.”