The Harvest Man (4 page)

B
ill Pycroft closed the outer doors behind Hammersmith and they locked automatically. He took his time walking back to Adrian March’s cell. Once there, he turned March over and laid him on his cot. He arranged the former inspector on his back and pulled a blanket up over his chest.

He left the cell and went to a small closet at the end of the passage, where he picked up a bucket of soapy water and a brush. Back in the cell, he scrubbed the blue chalk marks off the wall. He stood on the end of the cot and dumped the dirty water from the bucket out the narrow window. He put it back where it belonged, along with the brush, and locked the closet. He surveyed his work carefully and nodded to himself. He’d more than earned the twenty quid he’d been paid for this. He pulled the cell door shut and went to sound the alarm:

“Inspector March has killed himself in his cell!”

As he ran along the outer corridor, he pulled a chunk of blue chalk from his pocket and dropped it in a rubbish bin.

B
y the time Day reached the crime scene, he was desperate for a glass of water. His tongue was dry and his head was pounding and his fingers were trembling. There was a hollowed-out sensation in his chest. He didn’t hear what the runner said to him, but he gave the boy a ha’penny and stepped inside the house. Henry Mayhew was there, leaning against the doorjamb. The big man grinned and scooped Day up for a bear hug. As his toes left the floor a wave of dizziness and nausea washed over Day. He patted Henry on the back and swallowed hard. Henry let him down and they exchanged greetings. Day took a moment to regain his balance and smiled at the black-and-white bird that was Henry’s constant companion. From across the room, a constable recognized him and motioned for Day to follow him up the stairs and across the landing to a room where Dr Kingsley stood silhouetted against a big picture window, leaning over two figures on a bed.

The smell was overpowering: coppery blood and emptied bowels and an acrid chemical trace beneath it like a distant memory. Day felt the sudden rush of vomit and tried to turn away. He dropped his cane and put his hands over his mouth, but too late. He spewed through his fingers, down his right sleeve, and onto the floor. He spat and wiped his mouth with his left sleeve.

Kingsley straightened up and surveyed the new mess, but didn’t approach the inspector. “Someone probably should have warned you,” he said. “It’s not a pretty sight.”

Footsteps sounded on the landing and Day turned to see Inspector Tiffany approaching. Tiffany held a finger up under his nostrils and touched Day’s elbow to steady himself while he looked past him into the room. He reeled back and gave Day a black look. “What’ve you done to my scene?”

“Sorry,” Day said. “Don’t know what happened.”

Tiffany sniffed. “By the smell of you, what happened is no great mystery. Why don’t you get down to the kitchen and clean yourself up? Have your jacket brushed out.”

Day nodded. He stooped to pick up his cane and limped past Tiffany to the stairs. He stopped halfway down, his hand on the wall. He took a deep breath and held it in his lungs. His throat hurt and he felt sloppy, panicky, like he was underwater. He let the air out and passed a hand over his mouth and leaned heavily on the banister the rest of the way down the stairs. In the kitchen, a girl jumped up from the long low table and took his jacket from him without a word. She folded it over her arm and bustled out of the room. Day went to the pitcher on the sideboard and dipped a cloth into it. He unfastened his cuffs and wiped his sleeve until it was drenched, then pushed it up past his elbow and rinsed his hands and arms in the basin. He splashed water on his face and tipped the pitcher up, drinking until it was empty, letting the water run off his chin and down the front of his shirt. He heard someone in the hallway approaching the kitchen.

“I don’t know if I’ve seen anything worse than this.” Kingsley’s voice was grim.

Day turned and grimaced at the doctor. “It’s bad up there.”

“I meant you,” Kingsley said. “I’ve disinterred better-looking corpses.”

“Sorry.”

“Desk work clearly doesn’t suit you.”

“I’ve not much choice in the matter.”

“Well, I’d appreciate your opinion on this one. If Inspector Tiffany’s agreeable, that is. A day or two away from the desk. Maybe more, if we don’t catch this madman before he kills another family.”

“Jimmy Tiffany’s a good man. You don’t need me.”

“I think I do.” Kingsley pulled out a chair and sat.

Day set the pitcher down and pulled his wet sleeve back into place, fastened the cuff. He leaned his cane against the table and sat opposite Kingsley. “What makes you think I can do you any good?”

“It’s not just the bodies,” Kingsley said.

“Did he do something different this time? Wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. Am I wrong in assuming this is the work of the Harvest Man?”

“You are not wrong. This is unquestionably his work. There’s a broken window at the back of the house and scuff marks in the dust up in the attic where he waited for the family to come home and go to sleep. We may take it for granted that he acted much as he did in the other three houses . . .”

Kingsley continued to talk and Day sat silent, drying, absorbing what information he could, trying to remember the basic facts he already knew. A killer had escaped from prison with three other men and had used the ensuing confusion to evade police. He was still at large. He had no known name, and his records had been lost, but he had been called the Harvest Man by other inmates. The Harvest Man broke into people’s homes while they were out during the day and hid in their attics, waiting until the household was asleep before emerging. He somehow made them groggy and unable to react while he methodically cut away their faces, a piece at a time.

“How do you think he keeps them still before he ties them down?”

“This one is fresher than the others. There’s still a lingering odor of ether. He’s sedating these people.”

“So they go to sleep and then he keeps them asleep.”

“Which gives him all the time in the world with them.”

“To harvest them.”

“I don’t think that’s where he got his name.”

“Why do they call him the Harvest Man, then?”

“It’s a spider,” Kingsley said. “Opiliones. A breed of arachnid-like creatures that live in people’s attics, out of the way, unseen, prey on common household pests, I think.”

“Of course,” Day said. “Every one of the victims has had an attic.”

“That fact is not lost on me,” Kingsley said.

“Nor on me.” Tiffany entered the kitchen and picked up the water pitcher, saw it was empty, and shot a damning look in Day’s direction. “And there are signs he spent time in this attic. Broken cobwebs, scuffs in the dust, like that. But there are hundreds of attics in London. Thousands of them. An attic is a natural place to hide, if there’s one near to hand.”

“So, what, you think he’s just been lucky all his victims had attics? You believe in coincidence?”

“Don’t you, Dr Kingsley? I’ve certainly seen enough of them.”

“I reserve judgment,” Kingsley said. “What do you think, Inspector Day?”

“I don’t think it’s coincidence. He specifically chooses houses with attics,” Day said. He could feel himself engaging with the puzzle, his nausea ebbing as he tried to imagine himself in the killer’s shoes. “That must be his first priority. Or, at least, an early priority as he goes about looking for victims.”

“So he’s always interested in the houses?” Tiffany pulled out a chair next to Kingsley and sat, staring at Day all the while. Day put his hands in his lap, hiding his sopping right sleeve from view.

“More than that, don’t you think?”

“I’d like to know what you think,” Tiffany said.

“I don’t know why the attic’s so important to him, but I do think the houses play a part in whatever his reasoning is.”

“Sure,” Tiffany said. “He seems like a reasonable bloke.”

“He chooses the house and he chooses the family. The two go hand in hand for him. He needs both circumstances to be right before he acts. And I imagine there are details about the members of each family that have to fit his criteria.”

“That’s a lot of things for a murderer to concern himself with,” Tiffany said. “I mean, most of them I’ve met barely have a single thing that sets them off. All you have to do to be killed is jingle a pocket full of coins.”

“Yes,” Day said. “That’s what sets this man apart from other killers, makes him that much harder to catch and more dangerous. But it’s also why we haven’t seen even more murders like this one since he escaped prison. The conditions have to be just so for him. It must take time for him to deliberate and then make his move.”

“Supposing you’re right,” Tiffany said. “Why? Why these particular conditions? What is it about the house and the family? I heard what the doctor said about spiders feeding on common pests. Does he think he’s a spider? Does he think those people upstairs, that man and woman he chopped to little bits, does he think they’re pests? Insects? What?”

“No, I wouldn’t guess he’s delusional in quite that way. I don’t know whether he starts with the house or the family inside it. I don’t know what it is about the house. Aside from the obvious fact that he wants it to have an attic.”

“But beyond that? You make it sound more complicated.”

“It is,” Day said. “He’s searching for something.”

“How would you know that? What’s he looking for?”

“Right now he may be looking for those children,” Kingsley said. “That should be our priority.”

“What children?”

“I’m sorry, Inspector Day,” Kingsley said. “There are two missing children. I should say, we think there are two. We don’t know much of anything yet, but Tiffany’s men are making inquiries. It’s a large part of why we asked for you.”

“To be clear, two children have gone missing from this house?”

“Yes. We think so.”

Day leaned forward. “What do you know about them?”

Tiffany broke in, swiping his hand through the air. “I have constables looking.”

“Nobody’s implying that you and your men aren’t doing the job,” Kingsley said. “But does it hurt to have another pair of eyes?”

Tiffany sat back and frowned, not objecting, but not agreeing.

Day looked at each of the men in turn. “You said the children were a part of why you asked me here. What’s the whole reason?”

Kingsley stared at Day without speaking.

Day nodded. There were politics involved here, and though Kingsley was the bluntest of men, it wouldn’t do to antagonize Inspector Tiffany too much. “I apologize,” Day said. “Long day. Long month, actually. It doesn’t matter. Tell me about the children. You’re right, that’s most important.”

“As I say, we know nothing about the children,” Kingsley said. “Not really.”

“There are two beds upstairs,” Tiffany said. “And there are two bodies, but they’re both adults and both in the same bed. The other bed’s smaller, child-sized.”

“You’ve looked . . .”

“We’ve searched the entire house, knocked on every door up and down this street and the next.”

“Speaking of those two bodies upstairs,” Kingsley said, “I must get back to them. And I probably ought to send poor Henry home. He’s not of much use to me here. Please excuse me, gentlemen. Godspeed.”

The two inspectors watched Kingsley rise and leave the room, listened for his tread on the stairs. Tiffany leaned forward and put his elbows on the table, tented his fingers under his chin. “What’s happened to you, man?”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at you,” Tiffany said. “You’re a disgrace.”

“The bodies caught me off guard, is all. The smell of it.”

“You’ve seen bodies before. We all have, and worse than this.”

“Never worse than this,” Day said.

“All right. Perhaps not worse than this, but certainly not much better.”

“It’s not a thing I really care to become used to.”

“You’ll never get off the desk with that attitude.”

“Maybe I don’t want to leave desk duty.”

“Please,” Tiffany said. He laid his hands palm down on the table. “We both know you’ve been hobbled.”

Day sniffed and changed the subject. “Do you think he took them? The Harvest Man, I mean. Do you think he has the children with him?”

“He’s never taken anyone out of a house before.”

“Not that we’d know if he did.”

“True,” Tiffany said. “We don’t know much. There was a bloody footprint, a small one, child-sized, near the bedroom door.”

“An injured child?”

“Or it just stepped in its parents’ blood.”

“Please don’t call the child
it
.”

“I don’t know whether they’re boys or girls. What should I call them?”

“Let’s just find them.”

“I have two constables looking for more footprints outside. Unless the killer carried them out the children may have left signs, but so far no luck.”

“They ran away. They saw what was happening, saw it was too late to act on their parents’ behalf, and they got themselves out of the house.”

“I hope so,” Tiffany said.

“They’re hiding somewhere nearby.”

“Why nearby?”

“So they can watch and come home when the Harvest Man leaves. I’d bet anything on it.”

“But he’s left already and they haven’t come back.”

“Because we’re here now.”

“They’re scared of us?”

“Of course they are.”

“My constables are at your disposal. The two in the garden are. Take them and find those children. I’ve got to get back to the investigation.”

They both rose as the girl came wordlessly back into the kitchen, holding Day’s jacket up to the light from the window. It looked passably clean. She helped him on with it and he thanked her. Tiffany nodded at him and turned to leave.

“You know,” Day said, “those children . . .”

Tiffany didn’t turn back to look at Day, but he stopped at the kitchen door. “What?”

“They saw him. They must have seen him. We could finally get a description of this madman.”

Tiffany passed through the door and into the hall beyond. His voice wafted back through the air. “That fact is not lost on me, Mr Day. Please find those children as quickly as you can.”