Y. Lee - The body at the Tower

"You paying or not? I ain't got all night."

"Neither have I, Keenan." Harkness sounded oddly calm. "Neither have I."

The voices were so near that Mary instinctively shrank back into the warmth of James's body. He placed a hand on her shoulder. If it was meant to comfort, it did rather the reverse: his fingers trembled, very subtly and very quickly, and she wondered again about those powders he'd taken. She'd never noticed his hands shake before – had marvelled, rather, at their steadiness under pressure. Tonight they vibrated.

"Well then?"

"Oh, you'll get what you deserve, Keenan. I'll make sure of that."

"You ain't threatening me, Harkness. I ain't afraid of you."

"Ah – and here is what's interesting: I'm no longer afraid of you."

There was a pause.

"You didn't think of that, did you? What happens when silly old Harkness is no longer frightened of you?"

Another pause.

"No smart rejoinder from you, Keenan? You're not generally short of one."

"Stop your blathering: you paying up or not?"

"I'm not." Harkness took a deep breath, and Mary heard the smile in his voice. "Did you hear me? I'm not going to pay you any longer, you blackmailing devil."

James sucked in his breath sharply. Mary tensed – it sounded loud in her ear – but Keenan and Harkness continued, fully absorbed in their exchange.

"I did a few sums earlier today," said Harkness conversationally. "D'you know how much you bled me for, Keenan? The total of what I've paid you and Wick both, these past ten months?" He didn't wait for a reply. "It seemed quite manageable, at first, one pound a week. Then two. Even five. I could manage five, although I expect it was divided between you three, so to you it didn't seem so splendid after a while. It was ten pounds – ten pounds a week! – that broke me. Such a paltry sum, really: a couple of new dresses for my daughters, the cost of a party given by my wife. But all told it came to more than two hundred pounds.

"And here's what I'd like to know: I can see how I'd have spent it. I've a wife and family. Daughters are expensive and sons even more so. And I suppose Wick had a family, too – poor souls. But what did you do with your eighty pounds, Keenan? That's what I can't understand."

"Go to hell," snarled Keenan. "If you don't pay up, you know what'll happen to you."

"The question of hell is in the hands of the Almighty. But you might have gathered by now, Keenan, that I'm no longer afraid of what you might do to me. In fact, I'm almost looking forward to it."

There followed a long silence, during which Mary carefully leaned past the doorway at the top of the stairs. James did likewise. The two men were, as she'd imagined, in a far corner of the belfry. Harkness had his hands braced against the half-wall, as though he were admiring the effects of sunset over the London streets. His posture was deceptively casual but the set of his shoulders, hunched and stiff, revealed his underlying tension. In contrast Keenan, who stood facing him, leaned slightly forward, poised for a physical struggle. Yet there was a curious rigidity in his stance, as though he didn't know how to manage the situation before him. Harkness's desperate serenity robbed him of his most effective weapon: the threat of violence.

"Then why'd you call me here?" growled Keenan. He clenched and unclenched his fists as though he could feel Harkness's soft, loose neck between his fingers.

"Why, to tell you of my decision, of course."

"Up here? What's wrong with the office?"

Harkness smiled and looked out over the city. "It's a beautiful evening. I wanted to enjoy the view."

"I don't give a damn about the view."

"You might, if you consider what your future holds."

"What's that, then?"

"Breaking stones, at best."

For just a moment, Keenan blinked with surprise. Then, he gave a sudden bark of laughter. "You outdone yourself there, Harky. Don't you know if I go to gaol, you're going too? I'd lie myself black in the face to see you get more time than me."

Harkness, too, was smiling – a curious bend of his lips that had as little to do with humour as Keenan's laugh. "You're not as clever as I'd expected, Keenan. I confess to a touch of disappointment. You know," he went on, straightening now and leaning against the edge of the belfry, "you've a certain low, criminal cunning not uncommon to your class. But your problem, Keenan, is that you lack imagination. You can't possibly imagine what I'm thinking or feeling right now. And that will be your downfall."

"Rubbish," growled Keenan, swinging away sullenly. "All rubbish. How the hell you going to get me in trouble while covering over your own part? You took half the profits; you fixed the bloody books."

Harkness's gaze, intent on the glowing horizon, never wavered. That intense serenity transformed his entire face, returned to it colour and even a little youth. And then Mary became aware of the greatest difference in his appearance: the twitch was gone. Harkness's left cheek was entirely still and smooth. "I've no interest in covering my own guilt. Far from it: I've left a letter detailing the entire scheme." He swung to meet Keenan's surprised face. "Yes, everything from the time I caught you thieving. I've set out why I agreed to turn a blind eye and even falsify the accounts, in exchange for half the profits. Also how your friend Wick discovered our plan, and began to blackmail me. It took me a while to work out that you were behind that neat trap, you know – setting him onto me like that. Such crookedness was entirely beyond my experience."

"No more, though," sneered Keenan.

"You're quite correct." Harkness's tone was austere, schoolmasterly. "I've done wrong, grievous wrong. And I shall atone for it."

"How?" Keenan's tone turned suspicious. "What's this letter, and where is it?"

"Ah: the low instinct for survival, coming once again to the surface. Suffice to say, the letter's in a safe place. You'll not find it. But the authorities will, you may depend upon it, and they'll know precisely what happened."

"All right. Supposing this letter's real, and supposing some copper finds it, and supposing he believes all your rot. What's to say he'll find me? It's a big town, is London – supposing I stays in it." He stared at Harkness, who stood, unmoving, staring out over the darkening streets. "Eh? Supposing all that?"

Harkness blinked and smiled, as though emerging from a reverie. "D'you want to know what happened to Wick?"

Keenan's face became very still. "I know what happened. He fell."

"But how?" persisted Harkness. "And when, and why?"

"He just did, all right? Accidents happen – specially here, it seems."

"I suppose they do. But you must wonder why he was up here."

"No. I don't." The voice, cold and stony, also held just the suggestion of a quiver.

Behind her, Mary could feel James holding his breath. If Harkness did intend goading Keenan into an explanation, this was a desperate and foolish method. It couldn't last. It was only remarkable that Keenan hadn't already exploded.

She crept forward another few inches, angling for a better view of Keenan's face. She would now be almost entirely visible to them in the doorway. There was no cover in the belfry, no small nook in which to tuck herself unnoticed. And over them all, the great bell loomed high in the tower's peak. Black inside, monstrous in scale, it hung there like a lofty, judging god, waiting for the puny humans below to do something definitive. To act, rather than talk.

"I'll tell you."

"I said, I don't want to hear!" The sharp lash of Keenan's voice reverberated through the small space, ringing slightly in the bell's great cavern.

"It was his suggestion – Wick's, I mean – that we meet up here," said Harkness. He couldn't be oblivious of Keenan's rising panic. If anything, he seemed to welcome it. "He insisted, in fact. I didn't want to meet him at all; tried to put him off for as long as possible. He was only going to raise his demands, you know. Of course you know – you probably put him up to it. Didn't you, Keenan?"