Jackdaw (4 page)

(Jonah, under him, grinding back against his thrusts. Jonah holding out his hand as Ben ran impossibly towards him.)

Ben lay awake for hours, thinking of all the options, all the different paths to an empty future. When he slept at last, it was to be awakened far too soon by the stir around him, as the other men in the cheap, stinking dosshouse rose off their pallets, preparing for another day of survival. He washed under the cold pump water, ignoring the ridicule of a pair of urchins, who felt that cleanliness came a very poor second to warmth. As he shivered and dried himself with his grubby towel, he could see their point.

He went to look for employment that day, joining the loose crowds of men who offered themselves for manual labour. He was becoming too shabby for anything except labouring work, but London was full of jobless men, scrabbling for piecework, anything to keep the wolf away, and he was one among hungry thousands.

There was nothing. He put his name down with a few hard-eyed men who claimed they could find him work, for a share of the few pence it might bring in, and lunched on a hot, greasy slab of suet pudding that filled his stomach, much as concrete might. At four o’clock he was sitting on a bench in Queen Mary’s Gardens, looking at the blossom and the crocuses bursting through bare, dry earth.

“Ben.” There was hesitancy in Jonah’s voice, from behind the bench, and pleasure, and Ben had to take a deep breath to stay still and controlled.

“I’m here. What do you want to talk about?”

“Shall we walk?”

Ben stood, turning, and Jonah’s black brows snapped together. “Are you all right? You look—”

“Tired. I’m tired.”

Tired, and hungry, and shabby, and Jonah in clean linens with a smart blue waistcoat setting off his eyes, even though his face was still marked by Ben’s blows. Resentment surged. Ben turned on his heel and set off, not waiting. Jonah caught up after a couple of strides. He didn’t speak, simply pacing Ben.

Ben wanted to ask, didn’t want to. He said, instead, “Tell me about the murders.”

“Murders?”

“Dead policemen. You must remember.”

“Well, yes, but that wasn’t
me
.” Jonah sounded mildly indignant.

“It was your gang. That’s what the justiciars said. Your criminal associates—”

“Hold your horses. I don’t know what they told you, but I’ve never had a gang.”

“They said there were four of you.”

“There were
three
, of
them
, and me,” Jonah said with precision. “I don’t join things, Ben. I don’t join gangs, or the justiciary, or trade unions, or the Quakers, or anyone else. Look, there was a warlock. A harpy of a woman named Lady Bruton, and she had a painter working for her. God, the painter. I hated that man. I’d have killed him if I could.”

“A painter?” Ben asked blankly. “Why?”

Jonah shuddered. “He was a murderer. He painted people and killed them by destroying the picture. He didn’t care who, or why, he just liked doing it.
Really
liked it, Ben, it made him hard. Lady Bruton gave him a series of victims, and he did whatever he was told.”

“As you did?”

Jonah’s lower lip jutted, mulish. “Lady Bruton had me by the short hairs. She needed a windwalker to carry out a chunk of her plan, and she found me. I didn’t
want
to work for her. She made me do it.”

“Oh, come on. Do you have any idea how often I hear that?”

Jonah swung round, face dark. “I’m not making excuses. Lady Bruton was hellish strong and I never even had proper training. She could have taken me apart on her own. For pity’s sake, she and the painter got Stephen Day on his knees—one of the senior justiciars, an absolute sod—and I shouldn’t like to meet someone more powerful than him in a dark alley. Or more tiresomely self-righteous,” he added, with feeling. “Ghastly little man, but strong as hell. If Bruton could get
him
down, I didn’t stand a chance.”

“What about the policemen? Who killed them?”

“The painter. Lady Bruton’s orders.”

“And you let them die?”

Jonah made a frustrated noise. “What was I supposed to do, run to the justiciary? You don’t understand, Ben. I was completely on my own—”

“Whose fault was that?” Ben snarled. “You were looking out for number one, even if it meant abandoning me and killing people.”

“I
didn’t
—”

“You might as well have done. If you stand by and watch while your employer commits murder and you don’t do a damn thing to stop it, that makes you guilty. In law, in common decency, in everything.”

“Oh, so I should have just sacrificed myself on the altar of virtue, should I?” Jonah said with heat. “Let Bruton destroy me for the sake of people I never even met? What the devil would a pack of coppers have done for me, except send me to prison with hard labour?”

“God, Jonah. You don’t decide whether you’re going to let someone die on the basis of how much use they are to you.”

“I look out for myself. Because nobody else does. And I’m sorry if you think I should have cared more about people I don’t know than people I do, but if you just let me tell you—”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Ben turned on his heel, hurrying away.

“Ben!” Jonah sprinted after him. “Will you let me
talk
?”

Ben stopped and swung to face him, almost colliding. Jonah was a few inches shorter, just enough that he had to turn his face up and Ben to dip his head for a kiss. He glared down now as though they had never touched, never met except in anger.

“I don’t want to talk,” he gritted out. “I don’t want to hear this. You’re—” He glanced around swiftly but they were alone on the path. “You’re not the man I fell in love with. That was a lie, all along,
your
lie, because I’d never have loved such a self-centred callous swine as you. Go away.”

Jonah stood, speechless, expression raw, as Ben turned, striding down the path, he didn’t know where to. He cursed himself. He shouldn’t have gone, should have known it would be nothing but lies and excuses, but Jonah was like an open sore that he kept prodding, making the infection worse.

“Ben,” Jonah called from behind him. “I’ll come back. Here tomorrow, same time. I’ll wait for you.”

“You can wait forever,” Ben said aloud, to himself or the air, and strode on.

Chapter Four

Last autumn

They lasted a handful of blissful months, March to October, with long walks through the summer woods and fields, endless lovemaking, sometimes a drink in the pub where Spenser’s pal Pastern was now a casually accepted face—though never when drinking with his police colleagues—and Ben’s favourite thing of all, nights together downstairs in the little cottage, Ben in the big winged chair and Jonah on the floor, leaning against his legs, while Ben read to him. They read
Bleak House
and
Dombey and Son
and
The Old Curiosity Shop
, which made Jonah cry, and laugh at himself through his tears. It was the most joyous time of Ben’s life.

Then Jonah burned it all down.

The end was already coming in September, though Ben didn’t know it. That was when daring cat burglaries of offices and grand houses in Hertfordshire had reached such a number that the outraged wealthy of the county had begun putting pressure on the chief superintendent to get results. That was when the justiciars came.

Ben hadn’t dealt with justiciars before. He knew
of
them: the funny ones, the not-quite-police who dealt with peculiar cases. Not uniformed, not disciplined, all of them with an odd air of confidence and a habit of unhelpful remarks and abrupt disappearance. These two were Miss Nodder, a freckled, authoritative, green-eyed woman, and a dark unkempt man named Webster who smoked Turkish cigars with unnerving intensity. They had been all round Hertfordshire, he heard, with access to the files on the burglaries, and now they settled in Berkhamsted, appearing and disappearing, claiming an office in the police station and evicting its previous occupant without consultation. The scuttlebutt was that they were closing in on the cat burglar here.

A couple of weeks after the justiciars arrived, one bright October day, they called in four men, Ben among them, and announced they had been requisitioned for a special job. The cat burglar was known to be setting his sights on the Tring Museum. The justiciars would wait there, take the man in the act, the following night. The constables would act as backup, extra manpower, in case it was needed. They had been chosen, Miss Nodder told them, for their steadiness and discretion. They were men who would not panic or speak loosely. They would be trustworthy, she said with certainty, and her voice carried a very slight note of “or else”.

Ben would have told Jonah all about it. He told Jonah everything, always, glorying in his passionate interest and the glow of happy pride any of Ben’s small successes brought to his eyes. He had told him about the investigation into the robberies, prompted by Jonah’s endless curiosity, and he would not have thought twice about breaking Miss Nodder’s injunction that none of them should speak of this at all. It was Jonah, for heaven’s sake. Ben could trust him.

He didn’t have the chance. Jonah didn’t come home until very late that night, and slipped into bed sometime in the small hours. He didn’t talk, simply held Ben close, fiercely, almost desperately. The next morning he was gone before Ben arose.

So Ben waited in the Tring Museum that night, in the silent dark, with the shadowy forms of long-dead things all around him.

He was in the main hall, on the ground floor, near the great wooden door, a fellow constable on the other side of the room. The first floor was mostly open, just a walkway round the walls lined with cases, so he could see up to the ceiling.

He was expecting something—the justiciars had seemed quite certain of that—but it was still a jolting shock as angry voices shattered the silence. There was a crash from the first floor, and a flare of some bright yellow light, and Ben saw a dark shape run to the railings that ringed the first-floor landing, and vault the iron with effortless grace, leaping over to the thirty-foot drop onto marble below.

He cried out, thinking he had seen a man plunge to his death, and then he cried again because the man didn’t fall. He landed on thin air as though it was solid ground, foot braced on nothing, ran a few steps, and hurled himself sideways as something like a rush of wind hissed through the air, making Ben’s ears pop.

The other copper was swearing devoutly, gaping up. Miss Nodder leaned over the balcony, making another throwing gesture, green eyes narrow and intent and glowing like a cat’s. The burglar was changing direction in midair, leaping like a squirrel bouncing between branches, and Ben heard him laugh aloud.

That laugh.

It couldn’t be.

Ben stared up, mouth open in sickened shock, as the burglar danced through the air above him. The burglar looked down, and their eyes met.

Jonah’s gleeful, wild smile dropped away. He dropped too, suddenly scrabbling at the air, as if whatever held him up had vanished. He lunged out for an invisible handhold, pulling himself up as something sizzled through the room above his head. Jonah glanced round, and at Ben one last time, and then he was moving once more, diving through a window on the ground floor that broke before he was anywhere near it.

He was gone, leaving Miss Nodder shouting orders from the balcony, and Ben with a gaping hole in his chest that he knew nothing would ever fill again.

Now

Ben had given the justiciary a public house as his address for contact, since he had not wanted to admit he was sleeping in a dosshouse, and he had not been sure if he wanted them to find him. It was the Red Lion, just down the road from his grimy lodgings, where gangmasters gathered to look for casual work, and when he went in there the next morning he was greeted by the landlord’s cry.

“Hoi, mate! Constable Marshall, right?”

Reddening, aware of the scornful glances cast at his shabby clothing, Ben took the letter the man held out. It was a tersely worded request for his attendance at eleven that morning from Peter Janossi, giving no detail of the reason.

He couldn’t imagine why the justiciary wanted him. He didn’t need them now, and he should be looking for work. But the fruitless search was draining, and this might be useful, and he was curious. He breakfasted on a stale roll and coffee from a street stall, and killed the time till the meeting in a church, for the sake of the seat and the quiet.

At eleven he was at the Council, being shown in to Janossi’s office. The justiciar had been joined by another man, a small, rather shabbily dressed fellow with a mop of dark red curls that needed cutting. He looked rather younger than Ben’s own twenty-six years, except for the lines round his remarkably vivid golden eyes. He stood, holding out a hand, and Ben was startled to see that he was no more than five feet tall.

“Stephen Day,” said the short man, and his fingers closed around Ben’s.

“God!” Ben recoiled at the electric crackle against his skin, snatching away his hand. It felt as though it had been bitten by a snake.

“Sorry,” said Day. “My hands do that. Are you Constable Marshall, of Hertfordshire?”

“Yes, sir.” Ben held himself straight. It seemed prudent. Day didn’t look like much, but he remembered Jonah’s words.
Senior justiciar. Absolute sod.

“And you’re looking to arrest Jonah Pastern.”

“Sir.”

“Sit down.” Day waved him to a chair. “I’m very happy you’re here, Constable Marshall. Have you found any indication that Pastern’s still in London?”

Ben had thought about how he would answer that, sitting in the church. He had resolved that he would tell the truth. Jonah could not expect his protection, and what he expected didn’t matter anyway. He stood convicted out of his own mouth, and Ben could not mislead officers of the law.

That was what he’d decided. Now he said, “I’ve some useful leads, sir.”

“Oh, good. Well, we may be able to help you.” Day pulled over a manila folder that sat on the desk. “Has anyone told you about the painter?”

Ben couldn’t remember if Janossi had told him or not. He went for safety. “If you could, sir.”

“One of Pastern’s criminal associates. He drew people, and destroyed the pictures, and that killed them. He killed a man in front of my eyes.” Day’s voice was calm and level, but Ben found himself sitting straight, skin prickling. “He drew a friend of mine, and threatened to tear the picture up to force my obedience. Pastern was working under the same threat.”

He said that in an informative sort of way, as if it was just a simple fact, hardly important at all. “The threat of a picture?” Ben repeated. “A picture of whom?”

“Precisely,” said Day, seeming not to hear the last question. “Newhouse drew a picture and held that threat over Pastern’s head. I don’t think much of Jonah Pastern. A dangerous, amoral, self-centred piece of work.” There was quite a lot of feeling in Day’s voice. “But there is no doubt that he did Lady Bruton’s bidding because of the picture. When its threat was lifted he was off like a rat up a drainpipe.”

Ben nodded, numb.

“I’m sure you’re wondering how we know this,” Day went on. “In his hurry to save his skin, once he was sure the picture had been rendered harmless, Pastern left it behind. We picked it up and filed it, and Joss here, in a praiseworthy effort to help your search, actually found the file, which is impressive even for his powers of vision. Hence, we called you here. We thought it might be useful if you had a picture of the one person Pastern cares about who isn’t Jonah Pastern. You might be able to track the fellow down. Ask some questions about who he is and what he knows. That’s what I’d do.”

Ben’s mouth was sandpaper-dry and there was blackness at the edges of his vision. A man Jonah cared about. Could that be the excuse, the explanation for what Ben had been through? Another man?

No. Anything but that.

“Would you like to see it? It may be enlightening.”

Ben couldn’t speak. He managed a jerk of the head.

The justiciar opened a file, flicked out a sheet of thick artist’s paper. It was stained brown with what looked like dried blood, and torn in several places, with straight careful deliberate rips from the edge. Day turned it over to show the sketch, and put it on the desk.

Ben looked down at his own face.

There was a second’s total silence, then he sprang from his chair—

Except he didn’t, because though he felt the surge of his muscles, something had clamped round him, holding arms and legs as though they were glued down, giving his limbs the leaden feel of a nightmare. He strained uselessly, with a rising sense of terrified helplessness, but his efforts made no difference at all.

“No, you stay there, Constable Marshall.” Day walked round the desk. “Well, I say Marshall. Joss was quite startled when he found this picture, so we sent someone down to Hertfordshire with it.
Is this Constable Marshall
, she asked them. In fact, she asked Constable Marshall himself, it turned out. That didn’t go down well. I don’t think he was very happy to learn you were using his name.” He hopped up to perch on the edge of the desk. “You’re Benedict Spenser. There’s a name to conjure with, having read Pastern’s file.”

Ben pushed back against the invisible bonds, to no effect. He couldn’t move and, he realised, he couldn’t speak. He was trapped like a fly on flypaper. His heart was pounding with a hollow thump, lungs tight with fear.

Day went on, thoughtfully. “Benedict Spenser. Constable Spenser, before your dismissal from the force. The man who was living with Jonah Pastern.”

“As man and wife,” Janossi put in derisively.

“I’m speaking, Joss.” Day’s voice was quite calm, but Janossi’s mouth clamped shut. “The man who helped Pastern escape arrest. The man Pastern left behind to suffer in his place. How was that for you?” He smiled. It didn’t touch his eyes. “Jonah Pastern’s lover, abandoned to his own cost, then preserved at the cost of four other lives. Lives of actual policemen, Mr. Spenser, not corrupt, dishonourably discharged ones who associate with felons. And here you are now, wasting our time, making a mock of us. I don’t like any of those things.” He leaned forward. “I’m not inclined to like you.”

It was quite mutual. Ben stared at the glowing gold eyes of the frightening little man opposite him. He couldn’t move, and he could barely think for all he’d been told.

Jonah. Him. His picture.

Dear God, had he truly meant it? If Jonah had loved him, if he had done all these terrible things to protect him…

If Jonah had let four men die for him. Oh, sweet Jesus, no.

Day was looking at him, expression quizzical. “It’s an odd thing, you turning up here. We couldn’t decide if you were trying to pick up your partner in crime after you’d got out, or if you were the spurned lover coming for revenge. That became more obvious after the other night. You may not know this, and Pastern certainly doesn’t, but we expect practitioners to behave with a certain discretion in public. A little restraint.
Not
windwalking out of a whorehouse window. Really, ex-Constable? The joys of reunion, and you have to make a spectacle of yourselves and rub the Met’s noses in Jonah blasted Pastern’s existence,
again
?”

“Typical mary-anns,” Janossi said, coming in hard and scornful. “No self-control.”

Day paused, just a fraction of a second. “Am I keeping you from your work, Joss?”

“No, sir.”

“I’m sure you must have some paperwork to do.”

“Well, yes, but this is my office,” Janossi pointed out with a grin. “It’s all in here.”

“So go and do something that isn’t paperwork, somewhere else.” Day’s tone remained pleasant, but Janossi opened his mouth, shut it, and left without a word.

Day looked after him until the door shut, and turned back to Ben. “What exactly do you think I’m going to do now, Mr. Spenser?”

Ben stared back at him, unable to respond. Day raised a brow, then said, “Oh, yes, I beg your pardon,” and quite suddenly the force that clamped Ben’s jaw and throat was no longer there.

He took a gasping breath and a moment to steady himself before replying, “I have no idea.”

“You’re well out of your depth, aren’t you? I don’t suppose your last time in gaol was very pleasant, and believe me, it will be a great deal worse in London. Bad enough if it’s for gross indecency, but if you’re also there for aiding and abetting a murderer—”