Corpse Thief Read online

  Θ

  There was a yard behind the building, ankle-deep with mud. It was almost empty, save a gaggle of scrawny hens performing a gamut of peculiar dances to charm worms to the surface. The whole space was bounded by a high brick wall, and, some thirty yards from the haberdashery’s rear, a row of wooden sheds marked the very end of the plot.

  “When?” Hawke asked. “Where?” They were all standing in one of the sheds, rain hissing on the roof. Harlowe’s body was there too, face up, lying flat on the filthy floor beneath a sheet that had been tugged back as far as his sternum. The blood had been wiped clean away, so that the destruction made by the blade was plain to see, the exposed tissue ragged and pink.

  “During the night,” Szekely said. “At his rooms down on Little Compton Street. Penley found him and brought him here.” He pursed his lips, pondering something. “First Lucas, then Harlowe. No coincidence, I’d wager.”

  Hawke tore his gaze away from the corpse, jolted by the pointedness of the words. “You think I did it?”

  “His lodgings are pissing distance from yours,” Goaty sneered through his dog-chewed jaw, relishing the opportunity to implicate his rival.

  Szekely looked at Hawke and Corissa in turn. “No one has seen you, Sólyom, since the two of you parted.”

  “I’ve been drinking,” Hawke said, which was, at least, not wholly untrue.

  Szekely smiled. “Now that I believe.” He turned to Corissa. “What say you, my love?”

  Her coffee-brown eyes seemed to gleam in the murk as they shifted from Szekely to Hawke and back again. “He did not do it.”

  Hawke should have been relieved to have her support, for Corissa’s word carried more weight than most, but his mind was turning cartwheels. Not so much because of the suspicion he found himself under, but, rather, because he was innocent. All the while the others stared accusingly at him, he found himself peering into their faces, wondering which of them might be the real killer. The shed walls seemed to be getting closer. The fetid air hotter.

  “The Giltspurs have declared war,” Blackbird growled, deep voice echoing. “Did I not tell you? They’re picking us off, one by one.”

  Hawke ignored him. He crouched instead beside the dead man, whose face had taken on a bluish marbled effect, but twisted to look back up at Gilroy Penley. The hospital porter returned his gaze quizzically. He was the Szekely gang’s connection to London’s anatomist community. Had something gone awry in that relationship? Was one of Doctor Vine’s competitors attempting to undermine his business? Perhaps they had some kind of leverage over Gilroy, or they could afford to pay him enough for his betrayal. Beside him, Goaty’s ruined face leered down in open challenge. The man hated Hawke, made no bones about it, but did his enmity run deep enough to attempt to frame him for murder? Especially as such a plan appeared to involve the whittling and weakening of his own comrades? It did not make much sense. Hawke glanced at the others, realising that none could be trusted in truth. Was Blackbird ambitious enough to destroy Szekely in an attempt to rebuild the organisation in his own image? Could Szekely himself be engineering a war with the Giltspur Boys for some complex purpose? And Corissa Lott. What had she to gain in all this? Hawke realised that he could be sure of no one.

  That was why, when he looked quickly away, he knew that Harlowe might just hold the answer. When he had worked in Manchester, under Joseph Nadin, a man generally disliked for his brutal methods but universally respected for his results, he had learnt to look upon the scene of a crime through the lens of scepticism. So much could be detected when one saw beyond the obvious. The respect might have leaked out of Nadin’s reputation after the massacre in St Peter’s Square, but the memory of his investigations remained indelibly inked upon Hawke’s mind.

  So he focussed. For the first time in such a long time, he tried to remember his old life, to recall his old skills. Tried to sharpen his senses and his wits. What would Nadin have done? The corpse, Hawke thought. The murder had not taken place here, so Harlowe himself was the only evidence. He studied his erstwhile friend. The neck had been slashed wide open, so violently that bone shone white at the base of the wound. The flesh, gaping at either side like escarpments over a crimson creek, was torn and frayed. Not the clean line he would expect from a butcher’s cleaver. He whispered, “Jesus wept.”

  “No doubt what killed him,” Gilroy Penley said. “Not a drop left in his body, poor bastard.”

  It was those words that stirred something within Hawke. He agreed, of course, for a torn throat had obviously made certain the murder. But the mention of doubt lit a spark somehow. Was that what the killer wanted, for there to be no shred of uncertainty? He leaned in, even as Goaty and Gilroy embarked upon a fatuous conversation about which type of blade was best suited to severing a windpipe. Checking the upper torso, he found nothing of importance. No unusual bruising, no broken ribs, no stab wounds. He revisited the neck, which, though ruined, showed no other signs of struggle. No ligature or finger marks. The skull, too, seemed robust and undamaged. Gently, he placed his fingers on Harlowe’s stone-cold jaw and eased the head to the side. He could not shift it far, so rigid were the muscles, but he did not require a great deal of movement before he saw what he had been looking for. A pair of tiny freckles, set just above the collar bone on the right-hand side. He squinted in the feeble light while the others talked and the rain came down. The marks were not as closely positioned as those he had found on Lucas, the distance between being more like three inches, but the zig-zagging pattern, albeit patchier and more faded this time, was unmistakable upon the skin. He pressed thumb and forefinger to the flesh either side of the almost anonymous lesions, pulling the openings apart. They would have been lost amongst the blood had the body not been cleaned. Yet now, against waxen skin, they were plain to see.

  A dull thud sounded through the shed wall. Hawke looked up, startled. “What was that?”

  Szekely was apparently unmoved. “While you have been drowning yourself in gin, dear Sólyom, I have conducted my own investigation.” He left the shed, beckoning the others to follow.

  Hawke hung back, taking the coil of wire from his pocket and quickly unravelling it. He inserted it into one of the strange puncture wounds, pushing and teasing the shaft so that it found a route into Harlowe’s neck. It went remarkably deep. Two-thirds of an index finger, maybe fractionally more. Someone called to Hawke, startling him, and he whipped the wire free, stuffing it back into the pocket and making for the door.

  Θ

  “Who is he?” Hawke asked. The noise had come through the thin timber wall, and Szekely had led the group to the shed adjacent to Harlowe’s temporary resting place. Now the six of them gathered around a figure who was very much alive, but whose feeble mewling spoke of someone who would rather that was not the case.

  “Seamus O’Neill,” Szekely said, the Irish note in his accent becoming prominent as he uttered the name. “Of Giltspur Street.”

  Hawke gaped. The captive was bound to a chair with thick rope. He was gagged, bloody and naked from the waist up. His face was almost devoid of discernible features, so battered was it, the lips split to shreds and the eyes almost entirely swollen shut. “You’ve started a war.” He looked round at Szekely. “You said you wanted to know for certain.”

  Szekely sucked at his teeth. “As you have witnessed, Sólyom, matters have moved on a pace. They fired the opening salvo when they murdered Lucas.” He brushed dust from his immaculate collar with gloved knuckles. “And by your own account, you and Corissa have done little to build new bridges.”

  “They did not make us at the baiting. Harlowe’s death cannot be blamed upon what happened.” Hawke pointed to O’Neill, to the ragged strip of flesh where, until very recently, his right ear had been. “But this? How can you hide this? There is no going back.”

  “They started the war. I will finish it.”

  “I do not think it was the Giltspurs, Mister Szekely.”

  The Hungarian rounded on him, that ste
ely glint inflecting his blue eyes. “Why? Was it you after all?”

  “No.” Hawke thought back to the night at Hockley-in-the-Hole. He had no evidence for the Giltspurs’ innocence, but years of practice had taught him how to gauge a person. He did not know how to articulate such a notion without inspiring a raft of further questions, so in the end he simply shrugged. “Their demeanour.”

  “Demeanour?” Blackbird echoed incredulously. He spat a gobbet of phlegm that landed in O’Neill’s lap. “Horse shit.”

  Szekely’s gaze was still locked onto Hawke, like a cat eyeing a mouse. “How is it that you are able to read guilt - or innocence - on a man’s face?”

  “They were at leisure,” Hawke tried to explain as evasively as possible. To his side, he could feel Corissa’s intensely curious gaze. “At the baiting, I mean. Relaxed. I would be on my guard if I had recently murdered one of Colan Szekely’s soldiers.”

  “Let us say you are right, just for a moment,” Szekely said. He paused briefly, for O’Neill was mumbling something through the filthy rag that blocked his mouth. Blackbird’s hulking frame lurched forwards with surprising speed, his huge fist darting out like a spear to crack upon the helpless man’s chin. O’Neill’s already battered head snapped back with sickening force, then lolled loosely to the side. Szekely politely thanked Blackbird, then looked back to Hawke. “You think it Milne?”

  “In truth,” replied Hawke, “I have my doubts.”

  “You said he made threats.”

  “Wouldn’t you, were you in his position?”

  “If I were in Milne’s position,” Szekely replied coolly, “every man and woman under the merest hint of suspicion would have been flayed alive by now.”

  Hawke spread his palms. “You have proved my point better than I ever could.”

  Szekely considered that for a few moments. As he did so, he plucked the exquisite gloves from his fingers, handing them to Corissa. “So you are saying,” he said, removing his coat as well, “our persecutor is a third party?”

  “I am saying we cannot be certain.” In his mind Hawke saw the marks. The little wheels imprinted on the skin of both Lucas and Harlowe, encircling what looked to be stab wounds of unknowable depth. Did they link the murders?

  Szekely nodded. “I must think on it. And you are in the right of it, dear Sólyom. We must attempt to avoid confrontation if at all possible.” When he moved it was like the strike of an adder, all speed and efficiency. There was no discussion, no struggle and no remorse. Szekely, thin as a reed and delicate and pale as porcelain, had covered the few paces between himself and Seamus O’Neill before Hawke even realised what was going on. The knife that somehow found its way into Szekely’s hand was long and slender, and it slipped easily through the Giltspur Boy’s left eye, not stopping until its ivory hilt met the solid socket. Szekely stepped back, clicking his fingers, and Goaty was immediately on hand to take the blade for cleaning. The Hungarian yawned, as if the murder had tired and bored him in equal measure. He looked at Hawke again. “In the mean time, let us bend our minds to business. There was a burial this afternoon, out at Angel.” He took his coat and gloves from Corissa and got dressed. “The night watchmen assure me they will doze just after midnight. You’ll go with Blackbird and Goaty. Pay your respects. When you sell Doctor Vine the corpse, offer him this one as well.” He nodded towards the twitching body of Seamus O’Neill. “Give him a discount for the damaged product.”

  “It’s wet out,” Blackbird protested.

  “The soil will be cold enough,” Szekely said, slipping his fingers into the smooth kidskin. “Get it done.”

  Θ

  “Eat up, Jemima, there’s a good girl.” Reggie McDow spoke gently, lovingly, as he hand-fed scraps of dried fish to the little grey cat that perched on the edge of a well-used woodworking bench. “A smidgen more, ma’ beaut?” he muttered, his vowels coloured by the rhotic influence of the South Western counties. He offered the meat for the purring cat to take. “Aye, you’re a greedy girl, aren’t you, eh? Aren’t you, ma’ beaut?”

  Joshua Hawke, leaning against a glass-doored cabinet that held an extensive collection of chisels, mallets and planes, thrust his fists into the deep pockets of his greatcoat, lest he smash something in frustration. “Spit it out, Reggie, for Christ’s sake.”

  McDow’s spine was permanently distorted, compelling him into a perpetual hunch, but indignation allowed him to straighten a fraction as he shot his unexpected visitor a hard glance. “No need for rudeness, chum. You’ll give her tummy ache.” He stroked the cat’s chin with a finger. “Won’t he, Jemima?”

  Hawke sucked at his rotten molar, the pulsating pain a welcome distraction. He had always found McDow, an ashen-faced man in his mid fifties, to be a frustratingly opaque figure, whose bumbling obfuscation was a touch too convincing to be accidental, but, he told himself, the man’s broad knowledge was worth suffering. There were a few hours to spare before Hawke’s grim night’s work would begin, so he had resolved to see the patternmaker, whose premises were on Coal Yard, about the strange, narrow stab wounds he had discovered on the bodies of Lucas and Harlowe. The interview could, if necessary, be expedited by furnishing McDow’s calloused palm with one of Ruthven’s thick coins, but the expert patternmaker had been in Szekely’s pay for a decade. A bribe would be at once both wasteful and dangerous. That was why, after a slow ten-count and a lingering breath that was ripe with the smell of wood-shavings, Hawke said patiently, “I need your advice, Reggie, please. Do not force me to relay that you were unaccommodating.”

  It was risky, invoking the spectre of their mutual master, for it heightened the possibility of word getting back to the haberdashery on Great Store Street, but Hawke doubted whether McDow would tell tales when his assumption would surely be that the interview had been ordered by Szekely himself. In short, let the coy bugger believe Hawke had been sent by Szekely, and dare him to call the bluff.

  Hawke, in truth, did not fully understand why he had kept the knowledge of Harlowe’s curious neck damage to himself. Or that it was almost identical to injuries present on Lucas. The decision had been borne out of instinct. At the very moment when he was gauging his colleagues, wondering which, if any, of the resurrectionists he could trust, the notion of revealing his discovery seemed at odds with every fibre of his being. Thus, he had kept his mouth shut, a choice made simpler by the distraction of Seamus O’Neill’s untimely demise.

  He was pleased to see the hint at Szekely’s displeasure had apparently done the trick, for the patternmaker grimaced. “Worrisome, is all. I worries, chum, really I does.” McDow winced, perhaps at a passing fragment of memory. “I pass on what I hears to Mister Szekely. Happy to. And I pays him my rents, on time and ne’er a penny short.” The cat had been forgotten now, left to paw the air at his back. “But injuries? Violence? To be embroiled in such doings, chum. Gives me the shivers.”

  “Then answer me and I will leave you in peace,” Hawke replied. He gazed around the workshop, at the tools and the piles of paper that were marked with intricate scale drawings. Nodding at one such stack, he said, “You work with those?”

  “From which I makes wooden patterns of machine parts.”

  “They are sent to a foundry for casting?”

  McDow nodded. “All manner o’ thing, chum, I can tells you.”

  “Without your expertise,” Hawke said, “the factories would soon grind to a halt. You are the best in your field.”

  McDow managed to puff himself up proudly, flashing a smile as crooked as his back. “So they do say!” He glanced at the cat. “Do they not, ma’ beaut?”

  Hawke looked out of the workshop’s large window onto Coal Yard. Outside, the rain had stopped, giving way to a fog that thickened by the minute. On the sill, amongst bits of discarded wood and dog-eared sketches, lay the latest editions of several crime broadsides, tatty now and crumpled. One in particular caught his eye and he picked it up. “And you make use of many different hand tools to achieve such marvel
lous workmanship?”

  “Very many indeed,” McDow answered. “Right devil’s breath, this one,” he added as he took note of the fog outside.

  Hawke stared at the broadside in his hand. It was a single printed sheet, dominated by the title Horror Beneath the Streets, below which was an engraving of a corpse wrapped in thick coils that looked to Hawke like serpents. He did not need to read the fine text to know what the story was about. Silently he swore. If the tale of Betsy Milne spread beyond the cruder publications and into the more respectable newspapers, hysteria would soon take hold. He pushed it from his mind. “Then I’ll ask you again, Reggie. Which tool would be thin, little wider than wire, but sturdy and sharp enough to pierce a man’s flesh? Long enough that, upon entering the body here,” he jabbed a finger at his own collarbone, “it might reach a vessel, thereby incapacitating the victim.” The last comment was a deal of guesswork, for he had no proof as to the final depth of the wounds, so fleeting had his glimpse been, but a theory had already begun to take form in his mind.

  McDow went to an ornately carved cupboard, swirling oak-sprigs rendered around the doors by a remarkably gifted hand. “Here,” he said, taking a box from within. He set it on the bench, causing Jemima to leap clear, and fiddled with the lid’s catch. “These are your most likely culprits.”

  Hawke inspected the contents of the box. “Awls?”

  “Bradawls and scratching awls,” McDow said. He ran a hand over the tools, a dozen in all, each with a wooden handle and straight, thin blade. “For puncturing and marking respectively. Nowt else comes close to what you’re describing.”

  And not a single one narrow enough, thought Hawke, “You’ve been a great help,” he said, trying hard to hide his disappointment. “Thank you for your indulgence.”

  “Ghouls and goblins,” McDow said. He was looking at the broadside in Hawke’s hand. “What will they come up with next?”