Alex Grecian - The Yard

The coachman was well paid and had proven trustworthy on past expeditions. The bald man didn’t worry about him, but didn’t care to engage him in conversation. They had a long silent wait ahead of them. The boy had surely been walking half the night, but the bald man had traveled faster and was certain he’d got there first.

He thought about his shop and he wondered whether he had remembered to lock the front door after putting up the BE BACK SOON sign in the window. It would gnaw at him, he knew, if he didn’t return to check on it. But this was not the time. Once he’d found the boy, it would be a quick stop on their way home.

He needed to find the boy before he could do anything else.

There was always the possibility that Fenn had gone to the police, but the bald man doubted it. He felt sure that the boy was already beginning to love him, to think of him as his new father, and what son would dare to sic the police on his own father?

The bald man smiled to himself. When he caught Fenn again, he would be well within his rights to be angry. No one would think less of him for beating the boy. After all, he’d caused his father a long night of worry. But their little family of two was going through a difficult time, and so he would show mercy. Oh, there would be changes at home, that was certain, but the bald man could turn the other cheek this time and the boy would see how much his new father truly loved him.

He was snapped out of his reverie by the sight of Fenn himself, bedraggled and dirty and bare-chested, still in his pajama trousers, staggering up the hill at the far end of the street. There was no mistaking him. The bald man was so filled with relief and fatherly love that, for only a moment, he was unable to move.

The bald man was sure the boy saw the cab, and he must have suspected who was inside, but he kept coming anyway, tried to run right past. The bald man smiled. Fenn wasn’t making much of an effort to get away. The poor boy was clearly exhausted and running to his new father.

The bald man stepped out of the cab just long enough to scoop his son up, all in one motion, and lay him on the empty seat; then he clambered back in, sat across from the weeping child, and pounded twice on the cab’s ceiling.

He looked back as the cab moved down the street and saw that the children were still playing their pointless games. No one had noticed anything.

He smiled, thrilled by his own cleverness and courage. And by his extraordinary good luck.

He passed a note up to the coachman. They would need to stop at his shop so the bald man could check the locks. And then he would take the entire rest of the day off work.

Clearly he needed to spend more time with his son.

I promised you another penny, didn’t I?” Day said.

He held the coin up so that it caught the light. The dancing man reached out for it, but then drew his hand back.

“I know you,” he said. “You were in my dream last night.”

“It wasn’t a dream,” Day said.

“I’ll dance for you.”

“No need. Take the penny. Get yourself a loaf of bread.”

Day tossed the penny in the dancing man’s direction and walked quickly away, past the upturned milk crate and in through the back door of the Yard. Behind him, he heard the coin clink against the stone sidewalk.

Inside, Michael Blacker was already hard at work, along with two other detectives, Tiffany and Wiggins, who were at their own desks across the room. Neither of them looked up as Day entered. The piles of paper on Day’s desk had grown. Day could barely see Blacker on the other side of it, his legs crossed, a foot-high sheaf of notes in his lap.

“I thought I might beat you here this morning,” Day said.

Blacker grinned at him. He put down the notes he was reading and wiped his eyes.

“No chance of that, old man,” he said. “I never left.”

“You’ve been here all night?”

“Hasn’t been so long since you went home. Anyway, I’ve nothing to go home to. Not like you.”

“Well, I should have stayed. Had I known-”

“Better one of us should be fresh. There’s a joke in here somewhere about it being a bright new day or some such. Too tired to find it myself, so if you could work it out on your own, I’d be grateful.”

Day stared at the piles of paper that covered every inch of the workspace. Yesterday morning his desk had been pristine.

“Where did all this come from?” he said.

“I’ve been rounding up our colleagues as they arrive and commandeering their notes.”

“You? But I was going to-”

“And you should. By all means. Not stepping on your toes at all, old man. But we’re all so in and out, I was afraid we might miss a chance to talk to some of them if I didn’t seize these bulls by the horns, as it were.”

“And have you found anything?”

“Oh!”

“What is it?”

“I can’t believe it slipped my mind to tell you. First thing as you came in I wanted to tell you, but I let it go right by me.”

“Yes?”

Blacker beckoned and Day leaned over the desk, resting his hands on the papers there.

“He’s struck again,” Blacker said.

“What? Not another detective.”

“No, none of us this time. But another man with a beard was found dead last night. We only received word a few minutes ago.”

“A man with a beard?”

Day straightened back up, annoyed.

“Men with beards are killed every bloody day, Blacker. This is London, for God’s sake.”

“Well, that’s true enough. You’re beginning to sound like an old hand at this.”

“I’m sorry, but I thought you were going to tell me that we were being stalked and picked off, one by one.”

“The body that was found-”

“Yes?”

“His beard was trimmed and his throat was cut.”

“Just like Robinson.”

“Exactly like Robinson. Except that this bloke was found with his head in a toilet, not in a bathtub. But otherwise it’s the same, through and through.”

“Has Kingsley had a chance to look at it yet?”

“I rather doubt it. Sir Edward’s assigned this new murder to Waverly Brown, but I believe we can wrest it from his grip with very little effort. Little effort , right? Not bad. I haven’t lost my wits entirely.”

“I’m not convinced this means what you hope it does,” Day said.

“What do you mean? What do I hope?”

“If anything, this murder done up in exactly the same fashion as Robinson’s says to me that we have two completely different murderers. This one continues to kill, doing in bearded men right and left, while the man we’re after did the one killing. It’s something to do with Little specifically, not with any beard.”

“But surely you can’t ignore the bizarre features of the three murders when looked at together.”

“Little’s beard wasn’t shaved.”

“But Little didn’t have a beard for the killer to shave in the first place.”

“Exactly.”

“If he’d had a beard, it would have been shaved.”

“If he’d had a beard? It doesn’t matter what would have happened if he’d had a beard. He didn’t have a beard. There’s no beard and it’s not a clue that there’s no beard since there never was a beard.”

“Listen, we’re both tired. You’re getting upset.”

“I’m not upset. I’m simply…”

Day sat down. He picked up a pile of papers from atop another pile of papers and tossed it back down.

“I’m at sixes and sevens. I feel as though I’ve missed out on a great deal of activity and conjecture because I went home.”