Alex Grecian - Devil's Workshop

“Someone sent you?”

“Yes, sir. A second, please. Catchin’ me breath.”

“Is it the Yard?”

“No, sir. The prisoners, sir. The ones who escaped? Mrs Pye’s seen two of ’em, and on my very street, sir, where I live.”

“Two of the prisoners? Who’s Mrs Pye?”

“Lady lives on my street, sir. Gave me a penny to ride up here and tell you.”

“How did she know we were here?”

“Anybody, sir. Said to tell anybody I saw.”

“Where are they?”

“Phoenix Street, sir. Not far. I’ll show you. They’re livin’ in a house over there. They hurt Mr Michael and took his house, but Mrs Pye, she went right in like it wasn’t nothin’ and she untied Mr Michael and saved him, sir, but he don’t got a tongue no more. They cut it out of him, if you can believe it.”

Tiffany turned to Blacker. “Leave him.” Then to the gatekeeper. “Can you take him from here?”

The warder nodded. “I got him, all right.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

Blacker squeezed out through the gap in the gate and the warder swung it shut behind him with a mighty clang. Hoffmann twisted away and threw himself against the bars of the gate on the other side.

“No,” he said. “I can tell you where he is. The strange one. The Harvest Man. I can tell you. I only want toast in return. That’s not so much to ask! Tea and toast!”

“The hell with you and your toast,” Tiffany said. “We know where the other fugitives are now. We don’t need your information.”

“Toast!”

Tiffany ignored him. He and Blacker hopped up into the back of the waiting wagon. The boy on the bicycle circled around so he was facing back the way he had come. He jumped on a pedal and rolled away from them down the lane.

“Follow him,” Tiffany said.

The boy up top sighed. He picked up the reins and gave a haw and the old horse out front took a tentative step and then another and the wagon began to move.

“You coming, Sergeant?”

Hammersmith nodded and allowed himself to be pulled up into the back of the wagon with the two inspectors as the horse gained momentum and chuffed along after the waiting bicyclist. Hammersmith stared out at the weeping prisoner clinging to Bridewell’s gates and wondered how Inspector Day was faring.

At least, he thought, the remaining prisoners were hiding in a house on Phoenix Street while Day was safe and sound, far away from it all.

Is he gone?”

Day shouted at the rocks around him, not daring to hope for an answer. He knew that there were two men with him, one on either side, both shackled there by Jack. He did not know the man to his right, the one who might be dead, but Adrian March was only a few feet away, to his left. And if March was still alive. . How long had it been since he had last heard him? An hour? Two?

“He’s gone.” March’s voice came wavering through the rock. He sounded drugged or addled.

“Adrian?”

“I’ve dropped it, Walter. I dropped the lockpick.”

“Were you able to-”

“No. I couldn’t get the proper angle on the thing. I’m older, I suppose. I used to be able to hold those tiny things, but my fingers. .”

“Adrian, you sound. . Has he hurt you?”

“Of course. But he won’t kill me for some time, I think. He’ll keep me alive as long as he can. It’s a shame I don’t have my little jailer’s gun with me today.”

“Jailer’s gun?”

“Cunning thing. I sent you one, but you don’t have it here either, do you? Shaped like a key, it is. Holds a single bullet. A single bullet’s all it would take, one way or another, Jack or me.”

“What’s he done to you?”

“He has started with the wounds he gave Annie Chapman. One of his victims. They were the last wounds we inflicted on him before he escaped.”

“What kind of wounds?” He didn’t know what had been done to Annie Chapman. The photographs and drawings of Jack’s victims were horrible things to look at, but he had never read the autopsy reports. When Saucy Jack had committed his gruesome deeds, Day had been a country constable, riding his bicycle down winding lanes, giving warnings to children who stole apples from the market.

“He has cut my cheeks and my stomach,” March said.

“Oh, God!”

“Not as bad as all that, actually. Of course, he’s gone further than we ever did with him. I believe he’s cut something vital in my cheek. I don’t seem to be able to speak properly.”

Which explained the sound of March’s voice, slurred and heavy.

“Will you live?” Day said.

“For a while yet. Until he tires of me and kills me.”

“Adrian, I think I may have lost my leg.”

“You will lose more than that. And I will, too.”

“No. Nevil will come for us. He’s relentless. He’s probably already looking. He’ll find us, I know it.”

“There are miles and miles of tunnels down here. No one will ever find us.”

Day stared at the black inside of the hood and swallowed hard. He could feel icy panic in his chest. But panic didn’t help. He and March needed to stay alive long enough to find some means of escape. Otherwise, Claire would be left to raise their baby with no income, no prospects. He supposed she would go back to her family. They’d take her in. They’d be delighted to. And she was lovely. She would remarry, and some other man, somebody who wasn’t so afraid to be a father, would raise Walter Day’s child as his own. Day could see the future without him and he saw that he would be forgotten.

Unless he could escape.

He began again to grasp at his palm with his fingertips, twisting his elbow around, trying desperately to inch the cuff of his right sleeve up his arm. If he could just reach the cufflink, he might have a chance. All he had to do was find one tiny sliver of metal and slip it into a hole somewhere above him in the dark.

S he was tall and lanky, with big hands and blunt fingernails. Her hair was stringy and pulled back from her wide forehead, emphasizing her eyes, which were set too far apart. She stood at the corner outside the Whistle and Flute, waiting for a man to come along and give her a coin she could spend on a bed for the night. Or on a pint of gin.

Jack watched her from across the street until he began to feel the old familiar call, that special burning sensation in his fingertips and across his shoulders. He waited for a cab to pass by, then made his unhurried way across the street. She watched him coming, and her face rearranged itself from a sullen scowl to something she apparently thought was sexy, lowering her eyelids and pouting her lips, a half smile fighting with her arched eyebrows. Jack thought she looked more like a jester than a seductress, but he appreciated the effort. He stepped over a mound of steaming horseshit and hopped up onto the curb next to her.

“Good evening,” he said.

She affected a disinterested attitude, looking away in the other direction as if she had no idea who he might be talking to. He was amused by her attempt at subtlety. She played the game as if there were no transaction in their future, as if she were simply a woman and he a man.

He tried again. “I have sixpence here for you if you wish it.”

“I don’t go nowhere for less than half a crown.”

He laughed out loud and was startled to hear that there was no anger in the sound of it. His laugh was genuine and robust and free of malice. He looked at the girl, this weathered, big-boned woman, and he smiled at her. And there was nothing in his smile to frighten her, nothing that gave her any indication that she was looking at a god or a monster. He was simply a man, like so many other men she had known in her unfortunate life.