Horatio Lyle (9 page)

And suddenly the crowd slowed and thickened, until he was crushed between Teresa, who ignored him, and a constable trying in vain to push his way through. He could see how many dirty looks the coppers were getting from the locals, especially the costermongers, traditional enemies of the police, and wondered why. Thomas had always been taught to respect the police force as a tool against revolution, a wall of steel against any insurrection that might come from the lower orders. He looked at Lyle, and wondered if he thought the same way.

Lyle, meanwhile, had elbowed his way to the front of the crowd and was climbing over the parapet of the bridge on to a flight of creaky stairs that led down to the mud, greenish in places, of the river at low tide. The flight was missing some steps, and Thomas held his breath as he watched Lyle cautiously move each foot, sometimes pausing for thought, and then carefully avoiding a tread that looked particularly unsound.

At the bottom of the stairs was a shape almost impossible to see with the mud that caked and camouflaged it. Around it was a small crowd of filthy boys in rags, shoeless, and several policemen with their trousers pulled up around their hairy knees for fear of having to pay for a new uniform. Lyle stepped into the mud, which rose up around his ankles. He seemed oblivious, picking his way over to the body.

‘Who found the body?’

‘Miss saw it,’ said a raggedy boy, pointing up at a young, handsome woman standing by the top of the bridge and looking pale.

‘Did you touch it?’

‘No.’

Lyle glanced at them suspiciously, but a constable said, ‘We heard a commotion so we came running. They couldn’t have got to it till low tide, sir.’

‘So it hasn’t been moved?’

‘No.’

‘How long ago was it found?’

‘Half an hour, maybe?’

‘How long till the tide comes back in?’

‘Maybe an hour or two, sir.’

‘Right. Help me turn it over.’

The constables looked at each other uneasily. Lyle saw their expressions and tutted. ‘Come on, don’t fuss.’

They took an arm each and dragged the body unevenly round. Thomas saw mud settled on a shape in the man’s throat that shouldn’t have been there, and felt bile rising. Next to him, Tess looked on with a disinterested expression. Thomas heard Lyle say distantly, ‘A very clean cut. Entry from the left, right on the artery, dragged straight across to the other side. A lot of force behind this. Good, sharp blade. And a second stab wound to the lower abdomen.’ He saw Lyle scrape green-brown, probably toxic mud away from the man’s wet clothes without any sign of a second thought, and again felt nauseous. He turned his face away. At his side he heard Tess say excitedly, ‘Look! Do you think he’s goin’ to poke it? That ’s
horrid
!’

Down in the mud, Lyle bent further forward over the body, oblivious of the brown squelch which crawled at his knees. ‘This abdominal wound would probably have bled heavily, but not enough to kill.’ He looked thoughtfully up at the nearest constable. ‘Did it rain last night?’

‘Don’t think so, sir.’

‘Right. I want
. . .
’ He froze. ‘Constable?’

‘Yes, sir?’

Lyle bent down and carefully picked up the corner of the man’s muddy sleeve, dragging it and the limp arm within it from the mud with a slurping noise. A white hand sagged heavily in the sleeve. It had only four fingers. ‘C.R. Wells,’ sighed Lyle. ‘Egotist.’

‘Sir?’

‘Carwell. This man’s name is Gordon Carwell. He’s a thief. You’ll find an indecent tattoo dedicated to “Inga” on his back. He lost the middle finger of his left hand during a fight in Limehouse last year. He ’s notorious for small-time burglaries in the more expensive suburbs - Hammersmith, Chiswick, Putney and Hampstead mostly. A master of the “humble workman” ruse, along with his brother, Jack Carwell. He knocks on the door saying he’s come to repair a shelf, and doesn’t leave until his pockets are full. His brother plays look-out, or distracts people while he does them and their property over. They always work together.’ He straightened up and looked down sadly at the body. ‘Get it to the mortuary - and make sure only Nurse Marie is allowed to touch it, all right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And
. . .
’ Lyle hesitated, then shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Sir?’

‘You might want to think about searching the rest of the river.’

‘Why’s that, sir?’

‘As I said, Gordon Carwell never worked alone.’

A little later, Lyle climbed back up from the river looking weary, and at the top stood slowly dripping damp mud from the bottom of his trousers on to his filthy shoes. For the first time he seemed to become aware of this. He gave a deep sigh, then put a hand on Tess’s shoulder and on Thomas’s and said, ‘Come on.’

‘Where we goin’ now?’

‘The Bank broken into and Carwell dead in the river? Too much of a coincidence.’

‘So where
are
we goin’, Mister Lyle?’

‘To find a blood trail.’

The crowd opened around Lyle, Tess, Thomas and Tate without a care, the living not as interesting as the dead, and closed again behind them, absorbing them without a thought. Tate wove through a forest of shoes and feet, aware that his ears were in peril, his nose twitching nervously, overwhelmed by the smell of the river, the fish in the wharves, salt and tar and soot and coal and, oddly, just a touch of ginger biscuit.

It took a good five minutes to find a cab, Lyle protesting all the way that there’s never one when you want one, and things weren’t like that when he was a lad. The inside of the cab smelt of old leather, battered wooden seats and too much time in stables, until, finally, the tired cab horse raised its head, turned, and they rattled away from the almost heedless crowd.

Almost heedless, because it takes just one exception to disprove a rule.

Someone watched them go.

CHAPTER 5

It took them forty minutes to find what Lyle was looking for, in a quiet side-street near the church of St Anne. In the middle of the road, too narrow for the press of traffic that swarmed around St Paul’s, and overshadowed with bakeries and tailors competing for space to serve the local merchants’ hall, Tate suddenly stopped and began to bark. Lyle picked his way through the horse manure that liberally littered the centre of the street, and smiled when he saw what was causing Tate so much dismay. ‘Here it is.’

Thomas scurried over, eager to see. He looked at the cobbles and saw only a darker brown stain that reminded him of spilt cough mixture. ‘What is it?’

‘Blood,’ said Lyle with some satisfaction.

Tess sniffed suspiciously. ‘Could’ve come from the meat goin’ to market up at Smithfield, Mister Lyle.’

‘Good thought, if unwelcome,’ he sighed. ‘I can prove it, though.’ He squatted carefully next to the stain in the street, while passers-by gave him looks of deep mistrust. Thomas started to feel uncomfortable, hoping that no one in this mixture of hawkers, and merchants going to the halls, would recognize him or, worse, report him to his father.

The thought of his father brought a brief pang of guilt, followed by a sharper pang as he realized this was the first thought he’d had of his father since he ’d followed Lyle. For a second he wondered if he would ever see his father again, or if he was going to be kidnapped, dragged down to the docks and sold into slavery or murdered for his wealth or replaced by an evil twin who would steal his fortune while he was condemned to a life of servitude and
. . .

‘Thomas, you might be interested in this.’

Lyle had produced from his pocket a small handful of tubes. He chose one that looked no different from the others, except for a small red dot on the top of the glass, shook it vigorously, thumbed the cork off the top and carefully tipped a few drops on to the brown stain. Immediately, the cobbles beneath it started to hiss. A thick, smelly white smoke rose up from the ground and all three backed off quickly as it drifted up, sizzling on the stone. Lyle coughed. ‘Yes, well, I think that settles the issue, don’t you?’

Thomas waved smoke out of his eyes and managed to croak, ‘What is it?’

‘A little compound that came to me one day while I was trying to repair the privy. Only what’s
special
,’ said Lyle, instantly warming to his subject, ‘is that it only works on human blood, because when you leave blood to settle, or even better whirl it round and round at very high speeds on a piece of string, you can get a separation effect which isolates certain unique components and
. . .
’

‘So it’s human blood,’ coughed Tess.

‘Erm, yes.’

‘Well done. What are we goin’ to do now?’

‘Follow it, of course.’

Lyle flapped his hand at the smoke until it finally cleared, and looked down at the cobbles. A small, neat hole had been burnt in the stone where the drops had fallen. He coughed and looked away innocently. ‘I think there ’s another stain over there,’ he said, taking the fascinated Tess and the appalled Thomas by the arm and leading them further on.

There was indeed another stain, in fact the trail ran intermittently on and off in larger and smaller droplets and pools all the way up the road, disrupted here or there by the erosion of feet or the intervention of traffic, or that traffic’s digested meals. Lyle stood above the largest, most conspicuous line of blood and muttered, almost to himself, ‘All right. I’m stabbed about here,’ indicating with two fingers on his abdomen, ‘I’m bleeding heavily, I’m trying to move, so the blood is falling behind
. . .
’ For a second his lips moved soundlessly, then he grinned and pointed down the street. ‘He ran in that direction. Towards the river. Which, I suppose, makes sense.’

‘So?’

‘So we follow the blood trail and find out where it began.’

They followed it through winding streets, occasionally losing it, to where the traffic became thicker and thicker around the great cask of St Paul’s cathedral, one half of which was covered in scaffolding that ran right up to the dome as emergency repairs were carried out on the dirty white stone and tarnished green roof. Here the stain was obliterated beneath the press of carts in the street, the drivers yelling at each other to move out of the way, horses neighing and wheels clattering. But by that point, they could guess where it was heading, and Tess ran on ahead, darting and dodging enthusiastically between carts to shout back occasionally, ‘I’ve found another stain! It ’s goin’ the same way!’

Close behind her, Thomas made a great effort to study each particular stain that Tess found, bending over and looking as thoughtful as he could, without actually disgracing himself by running. Lyle and Tate followed slowly after, Lyle with his hands buried in his pockets, Tate with his paws buried at least in a pair of hypothetical pockets.

The blood led directly to the Bank of England, and suddenly stopped. So did the group. Tess pouted. ‘Is this
it
?’

Lyle studied the smeary pavement, and said, ‘I think I can see a larger stain here. Very faint. And
. . .
’ He hesitated, suddenly aware that there were other things in the world apart from him and the thoughts in his head.

Tess said impatiently, when Lyle didn’t move, ‘And? You were sayin’ somethin’ an’ then you all sorta stopped.’

‘I
was
going to say that this much blood in one place is more than I would have expected from the injuries Carwell received.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t entirely know.’

They waited. Finally Thomas said tentatively, not wanting to sound like a fool, ‘Didn’t you find the fruit thing here, sir?’

Tess stared at Thomas as if he was mad, and for a second Lyle did too. Then Lyle started to laugh, a sudden, quiet sound that grew to a delighted roar. They both stared at Lyle. Even Tate looked a little surprised. Lyle clapped his hands together. ‘Of course! They waited here and stabbed him the second he brought the goods! It was cold last night - they probably got hungry and bored! Why not eat something?’

‘Sir?’

‘Come on!’ He turned and started marching back the way they’d come.

‘Where are we goin’
now
?’

‘To find the other end of the bloodstain!’

Tess groaned. But Thomas, all thoughts of his father gone, felt more excited than he had in a long time.

 

And down by the river, in the thick, green-brown mud that bends and rises around each footprint, smothering ankle and knee in essence of squelch, the passage of the sun across the sky burns away a shadow that has fallen beside a docked boat.

And the cry goes up: ‘Sarge! There’s another body over here!’

 

They found the far end of the stain in a quiet, dark street just above Blackfriars Bridge. They also discovered a larger pool of blood which, Lyle declared gleefully, was ‘Probably straight from the jugular.’

Then, to Thomas’s horror and Tess’s exasperation, he said, ‘Right, children, I want a volunteer to go and ask people what they heard last night, sometime between midnight and three a.m.’