The Kingdom of Bones (10 page)

FIFTEEN

A
t that same moment, Sebastian Becker was emerging from the central police station’s main entrance. He was in his topcoat for the return journey and carrying the bag that he’d brought in case of an overnight visit. The day’s business had been concluded so quickly that there was no point in him staying around any longer, not when a train on the half hour could have him home by midevening.

Sayers would go before the stipendiary magistrate in the morning to be remanded for trial, and then the business of constructing a detailed case against him could begin. As Sebastian had been discussing with the assistant commissioners, this would be a complicated process. Sayers’ stroke of genius had been to commit his crimes in a variety of locations, all policed by different forces; no one force had been allowed a chance to see any pattern to them. It had fallen to a fifteen-year-old boy to lead them to it.

Arthur Steffens. His name would be recorded with honor. There was little that Sebastian could do for him now, but he could ensure that much.

That, and bring his murderer to the public gallows.

He saw no further point in trying to understand the man. There could be no mitigation for the things he had done. Perhaps some deeds truly did defy explanation, while their authors defied comprehension.

The police station entrance was a grand affair with double doors and a broad flight of steps leading down to the pavement. Sebastian was watching his feet as he descended, and glanced up to see a running man in the act of crossing the road. Even as the movement caught Sebastian’s eye, the man stopped to let a tram go by. In that same moment, another tram passed before him and the man disappeared from his view.

Sebastian stared in disbelief, waiting for the second tram to clear. There he was…on the street in shirtsleeves where everyone else, even the meanest artisan, was properly dressed. Sebastian got a better look at his face as the man glanced to check his way before starting forward again. Tom Sayers, or his ghost.

Sebastian Becker did not believe in ghosts.

He dropped his bag and barked, “See to that!” at a hapless stranger who happened to be climbing the steps to enter the building, and then leaped across the pavement and into the road. A good citizen on a bicycle saw him, assumed him to be a man in flight from the police station, and tried to intercede. Sebastian handed him off and dashed through the traffic after Sayers, who by now had disappeared in the direction of a street market. Sebastian could hear police whistles as he crossed the road, and knew that an organized pursuit would not be far behind; but by then Sayers might have rendered himself invisible…all that he needed to do was to stop running, pick up a coat, and turn around to blend with the crowd.

But only the most practiced fugitives could think so clearly. Was Sayers one of those? By the time Sebastian reached the far pavement, Sayers was out of his sight. But he’d marked the man’s direction and followed after him. People saw him coming, his dark coat flapping out behind him like a rider’s cloak, and scrambled out of his way.

A blue-gowned factory girl who must have seen Sayers pass by only moments before shouted, “That way! He ran that way!” and pointed him toward a street of warehouses. Sebastian took her at her word.

The street held a shoe market, its narrow way choked with temporary wooden stalls and canvas rain awnings. The buildings to either side were of sooty brick, and so tall that only a strip of sky was to be seen above them. Much of the fresh air and daylight was shut out, and as a result the market was all gloom with the stink of used leather.

Sebastian was slowed by the people that he had to push and dodge his way through, but as he looked over their heads was rewarded by what he thought was a glimpse of his quarry.

It was. It was him. Sayers was being slowed down, too. Fighting through the stalls was like swimming through a river filled with furniture. Sebastian saw Sayers look back, and thought he saw recognition in the man’s eyes; or it could have been the general anxiety of the pursued, with Sayers not spotting him at all.

Either way, he saw Sayers turn and duck down into the mass, leaving him with only an idea of the man’s direction. Another street joined this one just ahead, and his guess was that the prizefighter was making for that.

There was a public house on the corner. He stopped to speak to the children on the doorstep.

“Did a man just go inside?” he said, and they stared at him as if he’d spoken in some foreign tongue.

Leaving the warehouses and the market behind, Sebastian found himself in an area of mean-looking dwellings of a much greater age. They stood three stories high, the holes in their windows stopped with all manner of devices—strips of blanket, brown paper, the crown of an old hat. The overall impression was that of buildings stuffed to bursting point, so that clothing and rags pushed out at every seam. The remaining glass was so filthy that it might as well have been painted wood.

By now, he had no idea where he was. But in the comparative quiet of the street, he could hear running footsteps somewhere ahead.

Sebastian put on a spurt. But it cost him, and he had to slow to a walk for a few strides before launching off again. He was no weakling, but he was unused to this kind of exertion for such a sustained period of time. The effort, combined with the excitement of the chase, was taking a steady toll. He was beginning to feel drained and light-headed. If he
did
manage to lay an arresting hand on Sayers, he could only hope to find him equally diminished.

The street ended in a bridge. Sayers was nowhere to be seen. Sebastian slowed to a walk. By now his lungs hurt and his saliva had become a corroding fire at the roots of his tongue. Even his teeth had begun to ache. His walk was unsteady.

Out on the bridge, Sebastian stopped to listen. All that he could hear was his own uneven breath, raging in his ears. He couldn’t calm it, so he held it for a moment.

Down below, a dog barking.

He went to the side of the bridge and looked over. Instead of the railway line he was expecting, he found himself looking down onto a canal basin. A hidden canal, cutting right through the middle of town. The canal and its towpath went off in a curve around the backs of the warehouses, brown water in a man-made canyon. Directly below him were the ends of a number of barges, poking out from under the bridge. Releasing his grip on the parapet, Sebastian turned to the other side. A wagon went by, its ironbound wheels vibrating the cobblestones under his feet.

As he crossed the bridge, he was beginning to think that he should perhaps go back and look more closely at the public house. He had not noted its name. Some of them were known for having stakes and ropes in their garrets where illegal fights could be staged. Older pugilists were remembered and revered while the young contenders pounded at each other. A man like Sayers might be a stranger in the town, yet still find himself welcome if he made himself known.

But then Sebastian reached the opposite parapet. The side of the bridge was a series of panels of riveted iron, a parody of classical architecture put together with the crude confidence of this industrial age. The top of the parapet was widened like a handrail and worn shiny by use.

He looked down into the larger part of the canal basin, where a veritable fleet of barges had been herded and tethered into one great floating raft. All ages, all sizes…Sebastian had no idea whether they were awaiting cargo (many were empty), or mustered here for repair (most appeared to need it), or simply as living space (no actual signs of life, but washing hung out on decks, and he could see several smoking chimney stacks).

The dog that he’d heard was tethered on a narrowboat’s deck. It was smallish and particolored, like a Punch-and-Judy man’s Toby dog. It danced at the end of its rope, still barking at the solitary passerby, who was now some yards on up the towpath.

It was Sayers.

The fighter was walking—limping, actually—with one arm held out from his side, as if it somehow pained him. He looked beaten and tired, but far from resigned; it was as if he’d only slowed because he believed he’d outrun the possibility of capture.

There was another road bridge about a hundred yards on, but the only way up to it was from a wharf by a lockkeeper’s house on the other side of the canal. As far as Sebastian could see, his quarry had trapped himself on the towpath. He looked around for the way down.

An iron gate led to a narrow stairway in dark gray brick. It was open to the sky but enclosed on all sides, and it brought him out into the shadows underneath the bridge.

It was strange. It was as if the town had vanished and he’d entered a different world. Something rumbled over the bridge, but all of the aboveground sounds of the city had faded away. There were birds on the water and wildflowers growing alongside the towpath. There ahead of him was Sayers, still plodding on, still oblivious. He’d seized his injured arm with his other, as if he might squeeze out the pain.

Sebastian’s confidence grew. He started forward, moving as quietly as he could. If he could surprise Sayers, so much the better. The man might have been a professional fighter, but he was damaged and had run a hard chase, and Sebastian was determined to come up with him at whatever risk to himself.

How had Sayers managed to escape the cells? Desperation could drive men to extreme deeds. Sebastian had once known a prisoner to leap from the dock and flee the courtroom after a drop of eight feet, flooring two officers of the court and a passing soldier who’d joined in the chase; then there had been the thief who’d climbed three stories up an air shaft so narrow that one would imagine a cat could barely slide through it, before crossing the courthouse roof to descend by a waterspout.

He would not be surprised to learn that Sayers had killed again to secure his freedom. He would have to take care. But he did not dare flinch.

Sayers continued to limp along, grimy and torn, clutching his arm, a sorry-looking spectacle. Sebastian closed the distance between them and continued to approach unnoticed, until the dog on the boat began to bark all over again.

Sayers looked back and saw him. Then the man’s energy seemed to return. As Sebastian started forward, Sayers took a second to check his options and then broke into a run.

Sebastian had been thinking that he had his man trapped on the towpath, but now he realized his mistake. There was, indeed, no access to the next road bridge from this side of the canal. But before the bridge there was a set of lock gates, and across the top of the gates there was a rampart just a few inches wide.

Sayers reached this walkway and started across. Sebastian was there only moments after, and he was on it before Sayers had made it to the other bank.

The gates were massive. On this side, only the top edges of them were visible above the water. But looking over, he could see that the level on the other side had fallen to reveal the deep trench of the lock. Below him was the sheer fifteen-foot drop of solid timber necessary to hold back the enormous weight of canal water behind them. Where the gates met in a V, jets were spouting through the slightest gaps under tremendous pressure.

The walkway was nothing more than a plank fixed just below the edge of each gate. There was a handrail, painted white. The crossing took some care, but it did not feel unsafe.

In the middle where the gates met, Sebastian missed his footing and fell.

He hit the canal without grace, and went under. The sudden plunge in temperature was the greatest shock. Sebastian had no fear of water, and he knew how to swim. But his topcoat tangled around him and grew heavy, and he took a long time to rise. The water around him was so dark that the play of light above the surface was all that he could see.

Just as he was beginning to wonder if it was the last thing he ever
would
see, his face broke the surface and he was able to draw breath. He was right up against the gate, and he reached out to pull himself up.

But something was wrong here. Something was holding his arms down. He couldn’t raise them more than halfway. He was held like a drowning sailor, being dragged back under by creatures from the deep.

He started to struggle. It was his coat, his damned topcoat. It was halfway down his arms and pulling him under. But surely even the coat plus the weight of water could not draw on him so hard. He fought to get free of it, but only seemed to become more entangled, and its pull on him, if anything, seemed to increase.

Then he realized. It was not merely the sodden weight of the material that was drawing him down. His coat was being sucked through one of the gaps between the gates.

He braced his feet against the wood and tried to wrench himself free. He had to grab a breath as his face went back under, and hold it in while his efforts came to nothing. When he stopped trying, he did not bob up to the surface again. He stopped about an inch short of it.

And still the suction drew him down.

He started to fight. Not in an ordered way, but as a child in a panic might, frantically and without any thought-out purpose. The dead breath came out of him in a bubbling stream. It was a simple enough matter to get his arms out of the sleeves, but the harder he tried, the worse he seemed to make it. Without ever meaning to, he gulped in a lungful of water. The reflex of spluttering it out only caused him to draw in more. He realized with dismay that not only was he going to drown, but that his body was an eager participant in the process. His will no longer mattered.

Then something got a handful of his hair and yanked him upward. His body was racked with coughing, and he couldn’t see.

“I can’t hold you,” Sayers said. “Grab hold of something.”

Sebastian could not answer, nor could he free his hands. He shook his head. Which, under the circumstances, was a mistake.

“God Almighty,” Sayers swore, and released his grasp. Sebastian started to submerge again but it was only for as long as it took for Sayers to switch his grip to the detective’s shirt collar.

“Don’t just thrash around,” Sayers told him. “Think. Use your right hand to pull off the left sleeve.”