Subtle Blood

by KJ Charles

  The papers weren’t proclaiming a special edition yet. He had time still.

  Down the Charing Cross Road. Across to St. Martin’s Lane. The smell of motor-cars and London streets, underpinned by a faint imaginary whiff of mud, as though his brain felt that was what a crisis smelled like. He paused casually outside a bookshop window, patting his pockets as if looking for a smoke, and saw nobody who seemed to be watching the entrance to May’s Buildings.

  He went round the back anyway. As ever, the narrow alley was empty so he scaled the wall with the ease of practice, and came to his back door.

  It was splintered. Someone had jimmied the lock.

  That might be the police, in which case they were waiting inside. It might equally have been Zodiac coming to get the Messer, and they were probably long gone. Will stood and considered for an indecisive second, but he had little choice: he only had about a quid on him and without money he was going to get caught. He took a breath and went in.

  The shop didn’t feel occupied. He stood still, listening for telltale creaks, then slid upstairs. The bedroom was empty too. He changed into the most dissimilar clothes he had in case of a description being circulated, threw a few days’ worth of clothing in a bag, checked he couldn’t see anything of Kim’s, and came down.

  He felt horribly exposed by the bare windows but to pull the blinds down in the middle of the afternoon would be too noticeable. He emptied the petty cash into his wallet, and checked the desk drawer. White Stains had gone along with the Messer. He’d told himself to expect that, but it was still a blow.

  Right, keep going. Clothes, money: he considered his other needs, had a good drink of water, and added a kitchen knife to his bag. It wasn’t the Messer, but it might come in handy.

  And that was it. Time to go to wherever the hell he was going.

  He let himself out the back again, into the yard, and got one step before a man held a gun to his head.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Will didn’t stop and think. (Do you ever? Kim would say.) He dropped low and put his right elbow into his assailant’s groin, connecting hard enough to jar his arm on bone and send the man over, keening. Will jabbed upwards and caught his chin, which took any remaining fight out of the enemy, and added a thump in the stomach to keep him quiet. He wrenched the gun from nerveless fingers and lobbed it away, over the side wall to his left.

  If they had men at the back, they’d have them at the front. Will grabbed his bag, chucked it over the wall to his right, and scrambled after it. That brought him into his neighbour Norris’s yard, which was empty except for a couple of stray cats sunning themselves. Will jumped the next wall as well, rapidly scanned his options, scrambled over one more damn wall, and landed in the Black Horse’s yard, among a stack of barrels. A building rose on the far side of the yard, so the only way out was through. He straightened his jacket, brushed his knees off, adjusted his grip on the bag, and let himself in the back door of the pub.

  It was empty, which must mean it was past three. Will nodded to the landlord who was wiping tables as he passed, ignored the bewildered, “Mr. Darling?”, and headed out the front.

  He risked a glance back down May’s Buildings. There was a black car parked in front of his shop, and a couple of men at the door. Bastards were probably breaking in. He didn’t wait to see if anyone looked his way, but kept going at the fastest walk that didn’t feel conspicuous, heading up to Leicester Square. Once he got on the Tube, he could vanish a lot quicker.

  The Underground wasn’t particularly busy, which for once he regretted: he wanted to be lost in a crowd. He went east by instinct, and made himself not get off at Holborn; instead he changed at Liverpool Street, got off at Whitechapel on the grounds that it was a place a man could disappear, and headed in the vague direction of the river, wondering what to do now.

  Had he just assaulted a police officer? He bloody hoped not. They very rarely carried guns, and would surely have identified themselves. Not that he’d given anyone a lot of time to do that, though in fairness, he didn’t feel it was on him to hang around when people were pointing guns at him. He wished he’d stopped to take a proper look at his assailant, but his overriding instinct had been to get the hell out of there.

  Either he’d thumped a policeman in the course of resisting arrest, or Leo had sent gunmen after him. Neither of those was good.

  He looked around, orienting himself to the Whitechapel streets. If ever he’d seen a place where policemen trod carefully, this looked like it. The street he was on was pretty mean, and a chaos of tiny, dark, deeply uninviting passages sprouted off it, obscured by barrows and stalls and sacks. It was all rank: low, filthy houses, blackened with coal smoke and industrial grime; crowds that were equal parts bustle and hustle, and lounge and watch. Joblessness had been a blight since the war ended, but it wasn’t nearly as obvious in Charing Cross as it was here. Pinch-faced children, hard-eyed women, idling men with hands in pockets looking for the main chance, or maybe just waiting till the pubs opened again.

  There were, Will knew, Whitechapel streets you would be very ill advised to walk down even in broad daylight—Flower and Dean, and Dorset Street, for two—but he had no idea where else in the area was no-man’s land. He was reasonably confident of his ability to look after himself, but looking after yourself included not getting into damn fool situations in the first place.

  He’d intended to find a dosshouse for the night, thinking he’d go unnoticed, but now he decided that was a mistake. There would be a lot of different accents around here, but most of them would be from a lot further afield than the Midlands. He’d sound like a stranger, and to a lot of people that meant ‘victim’, which in turn meant he’d have to make trouble, which would attract attention...

  Or perhaps he was fretting for no reason, these people were all minding their own business, and the sense of hostile eyes on his back was entirely created by his own fears. He couldn’t tell, because he’d never been on the run before.

  Will cursed internally, and set off to tramp the streets a bit. He wanted to familiarise himself with the lie of the land, identify somewhere to stay, and with luck find a telephone box. All the while sticking to the broader thoroughfares because he wasn’t plunging into the Whitechapel labyrinth for anyone’s money.

  After a couple of hours his hackles subsided a bit as he got used to the feel of the area. He went up and down Commercial Street, and stopped for a cup of tea and a snack at a Jewish café, which tried hard not to look German despite the owner’s accent. It provided a welcome distraction, since the meat and vegetables were pickled or preserved in unfamiliar ways with unusual flavours, and God knew what they did to the cobs—bagels, they were called here—to make them so chewy, shiny, and delicious. He’d want to come east again, he decided, once this was over, and found comfort in thinking about that.

  He’d identified a couple of decent-looking places he might kip for the night, but hadn’t gone into any. It was too early in the day, and in all honesty he didn’t want to sit still. He hadn’t found a public telephone in all his roaming, though, and he was uncomfortably conscious that even if he stayed the night here, he’d still have a problem in the morning.

  He just didn’t know where to go. If he’d actually been trying to flee a murder, he’d have headed straight for the docks and got on a boat, but he felt very reluctant to make himself look any guiltier than he already had.

  He was heading back west in the search for a public telephone when he heard the yell of a newsboy: “Ee’ng Sta’d! ’Orrible murder! Another Clubland killing!”

  He lurked long enough to be sure there was no photograph of himself on the front page, then bought an Evening Standard, and lounged against a wall, bag between his feet, to read.

  MURDER IN GOODGE STREET

  VICTIM WORKED AT SYMPOSIUM CLUB

  SUSPECT FLEES SCENE

  That was the part that interested him. There was very little detail, as yet: a man had been spotted at the scene but evaded the
police by escaping through a window; the Met was following several leads. He read the whole story anyway, as if “By the way, he’s called Will Darling” might be tucked away in a corner of the page, and was startled when someone tapped heavily on the other side of the paper he held.

  “Oi!” he said, lowering it, and found himself facing a uniformed constable.

  A wave of panic hit, the urge to knock the man down and leg it only just held in check by an equally instinctive respect for the uniform. “Uh—”

  “Move along, there,” the constable said, with just a flicker of a sneer. “Go on. You’re cluttering up the street.”

  Will nodded, rather than replying in his too-distinctive accent—once he was named that would be mentioned, and he didn’t want to be remembered. For much the same reason, he didn’t ask the policeman what his sodding problem was, or whether this was a free country. It wasn’t, not if you were poor. Standing on Whitechapel High Street with his bag and flat cap and worn old mac, he wasn’t Mr. Darling, bookshop proprietor: he was a worker, probably an itinerant, likely undesirable, and certainly nobody to be respected.

  So he swallowed the insult, folded his paper, and walked, heading back out of the East End towards Aldgate, feeling the average incomes around him rise with every step west. It didn’t take him long to find a telephone.

  It was snatched up at the first ring. “Secretan.”

  “Kim.” Will sagged against the phone box side, suddenly overwhelmed with relief. “Thank God. Did you get my message?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Aldgate.”

  “Get to Finsbury Square in an hour exactly and I’ll pick you up.” His voice was clipped. “I’ll be in the motor. Don’t be early and for Christ’s sake don’t get caught.”

  He hung up. Will stared at the receiver. He hadn’t expected a long chat, and clearly Kim was being efficient, but he could have done with a bit of human contact right then.

  Which Kim would probably have known, so either he was really pissed off or there was trouble at his end too.

  The next hour passed very slowly indeed. Will kept moving, because he now felt a lot too self-conscious to stop and read the paper on a bench. He just walked, looping through Bank and the City Road and Old Street, not wanting to get too far from his destination and keeping an eye on the clocks as he passed. There were plenty of men in suits leaving their offices, not so many working men like himself, and the numbers would start melting away pretty soon. He tugged his cap down a bit further and tried to look busy.

  He ended up in Finsbury Square with just a couple of minutes to spare. It was a big open square with a fair bit of traffic yet. He started to walk around it, and had to restrain himself from waving and yelling in sheer relief when he saw the gleaming Daimler ahead.

  Kim was cruising smoothly around the square; Will turned to head the other way, walking briskly, and met his eyes as he came around on a second circuit. Kim pulled over; Will jumped in, and slid down in the seat.

  “God,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “Were you followed? Seen?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Good,” Kim said. “Christ bloody Jesus, Will. Jesus.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Sorry, he says.” Kim took a deep breath. “What happened?”

  Will gave him the story, as concisely as possible. Kim heard him out in silence, weaving his way north-eastwards through the London traffic in an unusually sedate manner, presumably so as not to get stopped by the police.

  “What a mess,” he said once Will had finished. “Your instinct not to hang around at the scene of the crime was a good one, but what a bloody mess. I suppose you had to leave the Messer.”

  “It’s harder to get a knife out than to stick it in. And I didn’t think it needed extra fingerprints of mine on it.”

  “If only Chingford had your sense. On the down side, it’s extremely identifiable, and indeed it has been identified.”

  “Already? Shit. How did the Met get on that?”

  “They didn’t,” Kim said. “The Private Bureau did.”

  “What?”

  “I had that appointment with DS this afternoon. I was hoping to bargain for Chingford’s life. Instead, I found myself buttonholed by an extremely angry Bill Merton, who said you beat the daylights out of one of his men at the bookshop.”

  “Oh, bugger,” Will said wholeheartedly. “Damn.”

  “Is there a reason—?”

  “He held a gun to my head, and he didn’t identify himself.”

  “Seems fair to me,” Kim said. “DS won’t see it that way: he takes these things personally. Merton has been following up the Fairfax–Zodiac connection since he spoke to you a few days ago, and is also talking to Rennick. He recognised the description of the Messer. How the blazes does he know the Messer?”

  “I showed it to him at the shop when we were talking about Captain Yoxall. Oh, hell: there might have been a journalist hanging round outside as well.”

  “Looking in through the windows? Marvellous.”

  They were driving up the Columbia Road, which Will only knew in its Sunday best as a flower market, heading towards Stratford, the last rays of the sun well behind them. He had no idea where they were going; away was all he needed at this point. “Sorry. I’ve made a real mess of this.”

  “Not your fault,” Kim said. “This is what dealing with Zodiac has always been like. I assumed Waring was the twisty brain behind it but clearly Leo has impressive powers. Which raises the question: how the devil did he know enough about the Aveston deal to set you up like that? That came off before Fairfax’s death. Has he been watching you, or me, for a while?”

  “That’s a good question,” Will said slowly. “You know George Yoxall is friends with Aveston? His name came up when we were talking.”

  “The same Yoxall who Fairfax attempted to blackmail, and who has no alibi for the murder?”

  Will did not want to consider Captain Yoxall’s nephew in that light. “Oh, hell, Kim. I liked him. He seemed a decent man.”

  “So did Waring, to most people,” Kim said. “Leo will be just as intelligent and manipulative. Highly plausible, good at deception, with at least superficial charm—”

  “Oh my God. It’s you, isn’t it?”

  Kim grinned for the first time since Will had got in the car, even if it looked a bit tight. “Oh, sod off.”

  “Is it likely, though? I mean, why would Yoxall have involved himself in the investigation if he was the killer? And Merton said he was an honorary nephew.”

  “As recent events demonstrate, we all have unfortunate relatives,” Kim said. “Relatives— Hold on, wait a moment. Didn’t Aveston’s uncle bequeath part of his collection to his club?”

  “Sporting books, including the first six volumes of Pierce Egan’s Boxiana.” Will had resented missing out on that plum, which was a lot more to his taste than madrigals. “Which club—?”

  “Take a wild guess.”

  “Of course. It all leads back to the Symposium, doesn’t it?”

  “There’s a library committee, people will have talked about you after the Cheveley business—all right, that wouldn’t be hard to dig out. But Leo has to be a member, it’s all too close otherwise. Incestuous, even. Next question: how many people were involved in trapping you?”

  “I reckon it was a two-man job at least.”

  “It was timed extremely tightly. Someone gets you out of the way with that fake phone call, raids your shop for the Messer, heads up to Goodge Street and Quiller’s rooms. Someone else is watching your shop and makes a telephone call when you come back, at which point the man with Quiller rings you again and you agree to come to Goodge Street. Our murderer waits a reasonable amount of time, kills Quiller, and places the call to the police. I wonder if that call came from Quiller’s rooms, or from a telephone box where someone was watching for your arrival.”

  “There’s one on the corner of Goodge Street. I passed it.”

  �
��If I were official, we could chase up telephone operators and find out which calls were placed from where. I’m sure that’s happening now. I expect they’ve already learned that a call was made from Quiller’s number to yours shortly before the murder.”

  “You think they called me from his room?”

  “I would. It ties you in very neatly and easily. They might even have had him make the call himself. He would certainly not have been killed until you were well on your way.”

  Will imagined the old man, bound or gagged, listening to someone croak out an imitation of his quavering, fearful voice. “Jesus.”

  “There is a very familiar cruelty to it, and a cleverness. They’ve really got you, Will. Your prints on the murder weapon, your presence at the scene, calls to and from your shop—”

  “From?”

  “A fiver says the person who took your knife stopped to place a call to Quiller while he was at it. Again, I would. Piling up the evidence against you.”

  “About that,” Will said. “They took the book. White Stains. The one you wrote in.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “Damn,” Kim said. “Damnation. All right. Leo has that. The Met has a handy pile of circumstantial evidence, plus you resisting arrest. The Private Bureau has you doing the same with violence, plus knowing the Messer, and is well aware of the connection between us. Not that the Met will be far behind on that.”

  “Hell’s teeth. Any more good news?”

  “The police found a bloodstained handkerchief in Quiller’s room, bearing Chingford’s embroidered crest.”

  Will turned to stare at him. “You’re bloody joking.”

  “If only. One damn thing after another, isn’t it? Still, you did say there’d be a handkerchief, and it’s nice to be right.”

  “I could have lived with being wrong. How did Quiller have that?”