Jackdaw (5 page)

“I knew nothing of the murders before you told me,” Ben said urgently. “Nothing.”

Day sighed. “I’m inclined to believe you, as it happens. But the Met may not. They need a scapegoat of some kind, and everyone else is dead. And you did let him go.”

“He got away,” Ben insisted. “He tricked me.”

Day made a face. “He used you, fooled you, left you to face the music, you did the hard time, and now you’re chasing after him. Why is that?”

“I…” Ben didn’t know, couldn’t say any more. That brief, vengeful fuck, and the rooftop escape, and the picture that stared up at him from the desk…

“He’s not an evil man, unfortunately,” Day observed.

“Unfortunately?”

“Oh, yes. That makes him all the more harmful. If he was evil, we’d kill him. No, he’s…chaotic. He’s left a lot of trouble in his wake. It has to stop, Mr. Spenser. You were a policeman, till he ruined you: you must know it has to stop. If he would just go away, or be discreet…but he won’t, and isn’t, and it seems he can’t be. And he will go on causing havoc until he’s prevented. Look at you. What has he done to you?” Day’s voice was sympathetic, almost unbearably so. “The worst thing is, I’d believe his intentions were good.”

He tapped the sketch, where one of the long tears reached almost to the pencilled face. “I saw the painter at work. I know how it was. He’ll have torn the paper, slowly, till the rip reached almost to your skull, and if it had reached there your troubles would have been over. Pastern didn’t let that happen. But at what cost, to you, to the dead men, very nearly to me and those close to me? At what cost to everyone, now that the Metropolitan Police and London’s practitioners are at loggerheads? How much trouble can he be allowed to cause?”

“I know, sir. I know.”

“God knows I sympathise, Spenser,” Day said softly. “Sometimes the wrong person is…inches away from being the right one. And vice versa.” A fleeting, foxlike smile twitched at his lips. “But you need to give him up. He’s an airborne catastrophe. Help us get him off the streets. I may even be able to help you in return.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

“Yes, you do,” Day said. “He’s in London. He’s told you some things—you clearly knew about the painter—but not all, because you didn’t know about the picture of you. You’ve an expressive face,” he added, at Ben’s look. “You’re talking to him. He cares about you. Therefore, you have an assignation, or a place to look, or some way of meeting him. Don’t you?”

Ben concentrated on keeping his features still. He knew damned well that he didn’t have an expressive face. Day had disturbingly clear sight.

“I can help you,” Day repeated. “I can’t wipe your record but I can put in a good word. Get you off the hook with the Met. You can take a new name, live without looking over your shoulder. Make a new start. What are you doing now, looking for piecework? Hauling bricks? Are you even eating properly?” He cocked his head to one side with a slight frown. “Don’t be a fool, Spenser. Tell us where to find Pastern. We’ll pick him up and pin him down, and your life can start again.”

“Pin him down,” Ben said. “You mean, cripple him?”

Day’s russet brows drew together. “Who said that?”

“Mrs. Gold.”

“Of course she did,” Day muttered. “Frankly, then…if he can’t control his powers, they’ll have to be controlled for him. He can’t just dance through the sky taunting the Metropolitan Police. I’m not going to lie to you. We will probably hobble him, yes.”

Ben swallowed. “I can’t…”

“Can’t do that to him? Can’t ask him to face the direct consequences of his own actions, so that instead you have to pay, for the rest of your life, serving another gaol sentence for something we both know you didn’t intend, slipping further into poverty and degradation, while he goes blithely on his way? Is he worth that?”

“No. I know.”

“If he was worth it, he’d hand himself in rather than watch you suffer. Do you think he will?”

“He saved me from the painter,” Ben said, clinging to that.

“He bartered four lives for yours. But the point is, Spenser, those were
other people
. Not himself. It’s his skin at stake now. Perhaps you know him better than I do, but…”

Ben stared ahead, unseeing, adrift. He didn’t know what he owed Jonah, or if he could forget what had happened. He knew what he should do, in the interests of justice, no matter Jonah’s motives. He was still so much a policeman, even if they’d taken that from him.

But to cripple him, to bring that glittering spirit to the ground…

“You can talk to me, in confidence,” Day said gently. “You might as well. It’s not going to get any worse for you. And I do understand.”

“Do you?”

“More than anyone else will, certainly. Here.” The bonds that held Ben down shivered away. He jerked his arms up from the chair, in involuntary reaction. He didn’t try to escape. That, it was quite clear, would not happen.

“Now.” Day tipped his head to the side. “You loved him?”

“Yes,” Ben said, defying Day, and the world, and his own damned stupidity. “Yes, I loved him.”

“And now?”

“He left me. He put me in gaol. He ruined me. What do you think?”

Day shrugged. “Tell me.”

Ben met his eyes for a few angry, bewildered seconds, and leaned forward, putting his head in his hands. “I don’t know,” he said, voice muffled. “I don’t know what’s right any more.”

“I’m sure you don’t. You poor swine.” The sympathy in Day’s voice was worse than hate. “Really, is there not another man in all England you could have loved?”

“I don’t think so. There was never anyone else. And he made me laugh.”

Day was silent for a moment. At last he said, “Look, Spenser, you have to give him up. You know that. I can make you do it.” Ben looked up at that, sharply. Day reached out a hand, but didn’t touch him. “I can fluence you—influence your mind, your thoughts. You’ll tell me anything I want, and there is nothing you can do to stop me. It would not be your choice.”

It wasn’t a threat. It was far, far worse than a threat. It was a kindness.

“No,” Ben said.

“I need Pastern, one way or the other. Justice requires it. Or, at least, the justiciary do.”

“Yes.” Ben took a deep breath. “Queen Mary’s Gardens, in Regent’s Park. He’ll be there at four.”

Day nodded. “Thank you. You’ve done the right thing.” He hopped off the table. “We’ll keep you here till then. I’ll organise some food. Try not to think about it now. Things will get better from here, believe me.”

Chapter Five

Ben spent the next few hours in a small bare room. It wasn’t exactly a cell. The door was definitely closed on him, but there was a comfortable chair, books and periodicals, and he was brought a jug of ale and a huge plateful of steaming steak and kidney pudding. He devoured it, the richness of the greasy meat making him almost giddy. It should have been ashes in his mouth, after his betrayal, but in fact it was the best meal he’d had in months.

He’d given Jonah up. They would arrest him, hobble him, gaol him, and Ben would walk away a free man, with his revenge. He’d be a damned fool to do otherwise. Jonah hadn’t hesitated to save his skin at Ben’s expense, to twist and lie and manipulate him.

The picture, and that wild rooftop escape, throbbed in his mind. Jonah hadn’t abandoned him altogether. Jonah still cared for him, somehow.

But their charmed existence had been a fantasy, based on lies. Jonah had said it was just them, just two ordinary men loving each other, but that hadn’t been true. They had been a copper and a thief, a liar and a dupe, and their idyllic few months had only been possible because of Jonah’s deceit and Ben’s wilful blindness.

Now one of them had to pay for what happened. One of them had to go to gaol. And there was no doubt at all that it was Jonah’s turn.

Last October

Nobody blamed Ben for his failure to apprehend the burglar.

“You couldn’t be expected to cope with that,” Miss Nodder told them the next morning. She was talking to Ben, Constable Marshall, and the other two policemen who’d witnessed Jonah’s flight. “You weren’t expecting it. Our responsibility. We try not to tell people too much of what they might encounter in case they panic, and then if they do encounter it, they’re shocked. It can’t be helped. You’ll know next time.”

“What is he?” Ben managed to ask. His voice didn’t sound at all out of the ordinary, he thought, considering his exhaustion. He had sat up at home the whole night, waiting. Jonah hadn’t come back. “How did he do that?”

“He’s what we call a windwalker,” Miss Nodder said. “He can make the air bear him. That means he’s a blasted nuisance to get hold of. And he has other skills too.” She looked from Ben to the other men. “I believe I need to tell you about practitioners.”

Jonah didn’t come back to the cottage that night either. Ben sat up again, in the winged chair where he had so often read to Jonah,
Our Mutual Friend
abandoned on the table. He meant to wait all night, though he didn’t expect a visit, and if he received one, he didn’t know what he would do.

Jonah, his Jonah, was a magician. That was what “practitioner” meant, someone with unnatural powers. The ability to walk on air, or exert force on objects, or change a man’s thoughts.

Had he changed Ben’s thoughts? Ben had loved him so hard, so fast, falling into his arms and his life as though Jonah had been the missing piece of his existence. Had Jonah made him believe that? Was it all a lie? Nothing else about him had been true.

He had certainly pumped Ben for information. All those artless questions about work, about the robberies, and the investigation…

If he’d come back in time that night before the burglary, Ben would have told him about the trap laid at the Tring Museum, and Jonah wouldn’t have gone, and Ben might never have known that his lover was a traitor, and a magician, and a thief. He would have had lying, duplicitous Jonah in his bed now, and never known the truth.

He wished, more than anything in the world, that Jonah was here and he didn’t know.

The disaster that was overtaking him was too great for Ben to understand. Realisations burst in his mind like gunfire: the cottage that he could not afford alone, the appalling inevitability of the discovery that he had been living with Jonah, the likelihood that their true relationship would be discovered. The thoughts came on him sickeningly and died away, to be replaced by others just as bad, and at the centre of it all was the great airless darkness inside him where Jonah’s bright smile had been.

Ben stared at the ashes in their hearth, long after the candle guttered and died, until dawn greyed the windows, and then he got up and went to work because he couldn’t think what else to do.

Halfway through the morning, a messenger sent by Miss Nodder burst in.

“Men. Now. We’ve found Pastern.”

Ben and Marshall were among the last on the scene. It seemed Jonah had been hiding in the timber yard down by the canal, and it seemed as though he had resisted arrest. The justiciar Webster was nursing a bloody nose, there were hysterical sobs from somewhere in the milling crowd of bewildered people, and the great carved totem pole all the way from America that adorned the timber yard lolled drunkenly to one side. Jonah was face down on the ground, swearing and spitting, with three constables sitting on him. His wrists were handcuffed behind his back, and a fourth man was awkwardly cuffing his ankles together.

As Ben stared at the filthy, struggling criminal, his lover, he heard an ominous rumble from the timber yard, and a crash that shook the ground.

“That’s the bloody logpile going again!” Webster leapt up. “All men, get in there, follow Miss Nodder’s orders. Someone, get that flying bastard in the carriage and
keep
him in there.”

“I will,” Ben said.

He dragged Jonah up and hauled him, filthy and wild, to the police cab. The horse neighed nervously as he approached. He half pushed Jonah in, since his ankles were so tightly tethered he couldn’t go up the step, and then he shut the door and sat on the hard bench, opposite the man who had ruined him.

“Ben.” Jonah had a split lip, and his tongue dipped at the blood. “Oh God, lover. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry,” Ben repeated. “You’re
sorry
.”

“I am. I didn’t mean… Ben, you have to let me go.”

“What?” Ben stared at him, incredulous.

Jonah’s absurdly blue gaze was melting him with its intensity. “You have to. I can’t go to gaol now.”

“Perhaps you should have thought of that before you became a bloody thief!”

“I know. I know, I’m sorry, but—” He hesitated, before rushing on. “They’ll hobble me, Ben. They’ll cut my tendons so I can’t windwalk. They’ll cripple me and take away my flight and put me in a tiny cell and I’ll go mad, I will.”

“I’ll get a lawyer.” Ben cursed himself for his weakness as he spoke. “Someone. Somehow. They’ll argue your case—”

“Lawyer,” Jonah said with scorn. “I won’t even get a trial. I’ll just disappear, and they’ll hobble me and…I can’t be locked up. Please, Ben. Don’t let them do that to me. Don’t let them take me.”

“Christ,” Ben said thickly. “Stop.”

“I’m so sorry and I shouldn’t ask this but I have to. Please just undo the cuffs. Give me a chance.”

“You had a chance.
We
had a chance and you—you just—Jesus, Jonah. I
loved
you.”

“Don’t.” Jonah sounded as defeated as he looked. “Don’t say that. Don’t stop loving me.”

“You’ve ruined me,” Ben rasped. “You lied, and you cheated, and you made a fool of me and if I let you go— Go to the devil. I won’t be your dupe any longer.”

“I didn’t lie about us,” Jonah said. “I promise. I love you.”

Ben clenched his fists. “I don’t care!”

“I do.” Jonah moved forward, and his lips were on Ben’s, warm and bloody and gritty with sawdust. Ben tried to push him away, got a grip on his shoulders to do just that, and Jonah whispered, “Ben, listen to me, love me,” and somehow Ben’s hands wouldn’t let go. Then he was kissing Jonah back, as desperately as that first time when they’d stumbled out of the pub and into the alley, sloppy and wild. Jonah leaned heavily against him, unbalanced by his restraints. He twisted around, and half fell sideways, and Ben went with him, and over him, sprawling on the hard benches of the police carriage. He kissed Jonah with a reckless madness, feeling the lust springing through him as they rolled together on the cramped space of the floor, legs bent and limbs tangled. Jonah squirmed round and hauled him upwards, onto the bench, hands cupping his face, warm and close on Ben’s skin. He stared into his eyes, his own cobalt gaze bright with tears.

“I’m so sorry, Ben.”

And, as the carriage door opened, just as Ben realised that Jonah’s hands were no longer cuffed, his lover leapt out and backwards and up through the air, darting to freedom.

He left behind the police-issue cuffs on his wrists and ankles, both sets opened with the key he’d taken from Ben’s pocket as they’d embraced, and he left Ben, mouth red with kisses, clothes dishevelled, face tearstained, helplessly taken in the act.

After that, there was nothing but shame.

He was arrested, inevitably, and interrogated, and it took no time for his living arrangements to be revealed, or for them to become widely known through the station. They kept him in the cells for days, catcalled and spat at by the other prisoners and officers alike. Twice, in the night, the door opened and his fellows came in, shadowy figures as if he wouldn’t recognise them. The first beating left him bruised and bloody; the second time he fought back savagely until Marshall kicked him hard enough to crack a rib.

He was absolved of having deliberately freed Jonah. Whether the police believed his protestations that he had not handed over the key, or whether nobody wanted the additional scandal, he didn’t know. The justiciars, while cursing him up hill and down dale, admitted that Jonah was known to be extraordinarily talented at picking both pockets and locks, and had escaped on plenty of occasions before this. That accusation was dropped, leaving the gross indecency charge, based on his discovery in the carriage. Ben pleaded guilty to that. He lacked the strength to fight any more, and he could not afford a lawyer, and it was true, all true.

Ben served ten weeks with hard labour for Jonah’s last Judas kiss. He did the kind of time that could be expected for a bent copper and a mary-ann. The other prisoners despised him, and showed it; the guards would not protect him. Sometimes they watched and laughed, or made bets. Ben fought when he could, at first out of terror of what might be done to him if he didn’t resist, later because hitting out at other men, without restraint or rules, brought him some kind of satisfaction. It came to a head when a red-faced fellow, maddened by forced abstinence from gin, went for Ben with a broken bottle. He broke the man’s jaw, though not before the jagged glass ripped his temple. At least the relentlessness of the harassment dropped off afterwards.

On his release, he was dishonourably discharged from the police force, to the open contempt of men who had been friends. And when he returned, aching and soul-weary, to his parents’ home, they did not open the door. His father hissed his rejection and disgust from a part-opened window, while in the room behind, his mother wept.

He had no career, no reputation, no friends, no family. All of it gone. Jonah had burned through his life and left it waste to save himself.

Now

Some few minutes after the distant chime of three o’clock, Day and Janossi came for him in the cell, along with a young woman. She was slender, sharp-featured, with a measuring look in her silver-blue eyes, and she was wearing boy’s clothes: trousers, a sack jacket and a cap, with long blonde hair falling from beneath it.

“This is Miss Saint, our windwalker,” Day said. “She has a few questions to ask you.”

“Yeah, I do.” Saint planted her hands on her slim hips. “The peelers said you windwalked, with Pastern. They saw you. But you ain’t a windwalker. So what was that? How’d that work?”

“I don’t know. Jonah did it. He said he’d walk me.”

“What did he say to do?” Saint demanded.

“Just run. He told me I had to run or I’d fall.”

Saint chewed viciously at her thumbnail. She wore a rather large diamond ring on a rather grubby ring finger. It looked peculiarly unfitting for the scruffy boy’s garb. “Was he touching you? What did it feel like?”

“No, he wasn’t. And, uh, I could feel I was treading on something. It went away if I stopped moving.” Ben winced at the sudden, vivid memory of the foothold disappearing from under him. “He said we couldn’t do it together. He went first and I ran to him. That’s all I know.”

Saint wore the kind of expression that would have made Ben’s mother warn her about the wind changing. “Fuckin’ell,” she muttered. “Prancing git.”

“Jenny.” Day spoke with weary rebuke.

“Yeah, but how the f— How the hell? I never knew anyone could do that.
I
can’t do that. I want to know, Mr. D, that ain’t normal.”

“Ask him when we catch him,” Day told her. “Although you’ll have to talk quickly. We’ve received what I can only call an ultimatum from the Met, and giving them Pastern now will save us from making about fifty very unwelcome concessions. We’re out of time. Spenser, you’ll come with us.”

They took a carriage to Regent’s Park. Ben was to wait for Jonah in the gardens, and to lead him towards a certain path, where Day waited. Janossi would be in the gardens; Saint would be somewhere overhead.

“It will all be over after this,” Day said, as Ben stared at his clasped hands. “You are doing the right thing. You know it. There’s no choice.”

They walked him into the gardens, then the justiciars disappeared. Ben went forward alone, to the bench he’d sat on before, and seated himself. It was still a few minutes to four.

The crocuses pushed through the earth in front of him, many of the flowers now in full bloom. They brought back the memory of the other day—was it just yesterday? It felt longer. He’d sat here, waiting for Jonah…

…who they were going to arrest, and hobble, because Ben had told them where to find him.

Giving Jonah up was the right thing to do. He knew, absolutely, that it was the right thing to do. There was no question of that. He was a criminal.

Ben looked down the path. A trim figure came towards him, lifting a hand in greeting. Ben could see Jonah’s irrepressible pleasure in every quick stride, as he hurried towards his imprisonment, his betrayer.

Then he was on his feet, screaming. “Run, Jonah! They’re here for you!
Run!
”