Unfit to Print

by KJ Charles

  “I promise. Do you trust me?”

  “Course.”

  Vikram tugged his hand up and Gil felt the lightest brush of lips over his fingers. “Then be quiet. Er, do you mind if your family is brought into it?”

  “Fuck ’em.”

  “I didn’t think so.” Vikram smiled blurrily, unless that was Gil’s vision, and squeezed his fingers. “Please try not to fret, and sit quietly while we wait for the doctor. In fact, stop talking as of this moment. I hear people coming.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Having a lawyer on his side was a new experience for Gil, and, it turned out, rather a pleasing one.

  Vikram stood over him as the law arrived, very like a guard dog if dogs used long words and ice-edged Oxford accents instead of teeth. Even better, the Met’s Inspector Ellis proved to be a lot more interested in bagging the Clare Court murderer than in asking too many questions about how and why Gil had been involved, especially when Vikram made it clear that his cooperation came with a lot of strings attached.

  Not that much was needed, since Oswald admitted everything as soon as asked. It was a simple enough story. He had sold Matthew Lawes the first set of images with Errol and Sunil; Matthew had commissioned the second set, offering forty guineas for the work. Oswald had duly taken the pictures, paying the boys ten shillings each, but had not wanted to leave the matter there with such a delightfully liberal client. He’d called Errol back on the fatal Saturday to discuss further ideas for pictures. Unfortunately, he’d left Matthew’s letter on a table, and Errol had seen it.

  The rest was grimly inevitable. An outraged Errol demanded a larger fee for services rendered and to come; Oswald declined; Errol threatened to report him to the police for indecent images. There was an argument, and Oswald struck him, knocking him to the floor where he hit his head and died.

  That last part was evident horseshit, but it hardly mattered: the police would have a doctor who could tell if Errol’s wounds had been inflicted by a floor or a mallet. Either way, Oswald had dumped the body in Clare Court and then, so far as Gil could tell, gone on about his daily business while his mind squirrelled into ever smaller and tighter circles.

  And that was that. Gil wouldn’t even have to appear in court: there would be no need to prosecute Oswald for assault with a murder charge on the table.

  “Will he hang?” Gil asked, once they were settled back in Holywell Street some hours later. His head had cleared somewhat in the interim. He had, apparently, nothing broken, and only what the doctor had called a mild concussion. It didn’t feel mild. But Vikram had fussed around him since he’d got him back home, cleaning him up, lighting a fire and bringing him hot, sweet tea, and even Satan had padded silently out of the shadows to take a leap onto his lap. Gil might feel sick as a dog, but he also felt absurdly cared for, and ridiculously domestic.

  “I should think so,” Vikram said. “I don’t see any reason to believe he wasn’t in his right mind when he killed Errol. Why the devil couldn’t he just pay the boys fairly in the first place?”

  “Beats me. Did he say anything about Sunil?”

  “Nothing useful, I fear. Errol introduced him as John Brown; Oswald had no means of contacting him. He insists he hasn’t seen him since the session, and I believe him. We’re back to square one there, I fear.”

  “Damn.”

  “Indeed. How are you feeling?”

  “Rotten. Teach me to turn my back on a homicidal maniac.”

  “I was going to mention that.”

  “Shut up.”

  Vikram grinned. “Don’t imagine I’ll let you forget it.”

  Gil didn’t, and the idea of Vikram sticking around to needle him about it was far too tempting. “I’m bloody glad you turned up when you did. Why did you come in?”

  Vikram looked slightly embarrassed. “You’d been some time, and you’d said you wanted tea and I, er, I was worried you might be thirsty.”

  “You should tell the temperance people. Tea saves your life.” Gil raised the mug he held in salute. “I had no idea you could handle yourself like that. Where did you learn to fight?”

  “I work in Shad Thames,” Vikram reminded him. “I took some lessons in self defence when I started, from a boxer. I’ve never had to put them into practice before.”

  “No? You looked like brawling was second nature.”

  “Well, it was a trying situation. He was swinging a mallet at me, and you were lying on the floor covered in blood. Good heavens, Gil, you frightened me. Don’t do that again.”

  “It wasn’t my idea to get hit on the head.”

  “You wouldn’t have been hit on the head if I hadn’t dragged you along. You wouldn’t have been involved in any of this if I hadn’t involved you.” Vikram leaned over and gripped his hand. “I am so sorry.”

  “If you hadn’t involved me, you wouldn’t have found Oswald.”

  “No, I doubt I would.”

  “And he would have got off scot free. And maybe in a few weeks some other poor sod might have annoyed him, maybe another boy like Errol. I’ll take a bump on the head for that.”

  “I still wish you hadn’t had to.” Vikram’s fingers tightened.

  Gil looked down at their entwined hands, both ink-stained for such different reasons. “Me too. And I wish we’d found out something about Sunil.”

  “I’ve had thoughts on that. We aren’t giving up yet.”

  We, as they sat with their hands clasped in front of the gently crackling fire. Maybe it was the thump on the head, but Gil liked the sound of that.

  Vikram stayed the night, putting him to bed before nine when the headache got worse, soothing him when he awoke in a sudden thrashing panic from a nightmare that mixed up a mallet-wielding lunatic, and a dead, reproachful Errol, and the dark shadowed gate of Pentonville. If Gil hadn’t felt rough as dogs they could have spent those hours together in far more pleasurable ways, yet he didn’t feel cheated by fate. He simply felt cared for, in a way that seeped through every hard accreted layer of defence and softened it as it went.

  Vikram left early on Monday morning, locking the shop after him. He was back at lunchtime with a plate of stew and firm instructions to rest, and again in the evening, by which point Gil felt compelled to observe that he wasn’t an invalid.

  “You don’t have to be. You can just take some time off.”

  “While you do all the work?”

  “This isn’t work. I’m enjoying it.” Vikram gestured at the two of them sitting in chairs by the fireplace. He did so with some care, because Satan was draped lazily over his lap, which made sudden movements a risky business. “Talking to you. Having a little time together. Even your ghastly cat.”

  “He’s not my cat.”

  “No, of course not. He just lives here. How long has he ‘just lived here’?”

  “Since I moved in,” Gil admitted. “He turned up and wouldn’t go.”

  “You named him, correct? You feed him. This is his sole or primary residence.”

  “Don’t you lawyer at me.”

  “Gil, this is your cat. You have a home, a business, and a cat. It’s more than I have achieved.”

  “You can have the cat,” Gil said with feeling. “Take him.”

  “That’s very generous of you but I imagine I’d lose an arm trying. And in any case...” Vikram met his eyes. “I’d rather share him. If you’d let me.”

  “I... Oh, mate. I’d love to share my cat with you.” Gil’s chest felt a bit tight. “But he’s a fleabitten scrapper. He scratches if he thinks you’re going to hurt him, even if you weren’t. He’s a bastard, and you could have any cat you wanted. An easy one. Something sleek and pretty that doesn’t leave a trail of mouse parts. You deserve a better cat than this.”

  Vikram’s big, elegant hand was running over Satan’s long black fur. Gil could do with being stroked that way. “This fellow’s had a hard life and it shows. That’s not his fault. And I’d rather have my own particular fleabitten scrapper—as long as h
e sits on my lap now and then—than any other cat in the whole damned world.”

  Gil couldn’t have looked away if he’d wanted to. Vikram’s eyes were locked on his. “Then you’re an idiot. But if this is the cat you want—”

  “I’ve never wanted another. It’s meant everything to find you, Gil. It was appalling not to know where you were, what had happened. I have missed you all my life.”

  Gil’s chest felt a bit tight, somehow. “I’m sorry. I should have come looking for you.”

  “Yes, you should. And the least you can do is not leave me again. I realise that I’m an awkward, self-righteous, dogmatic nuisance, and that you have an entire life about which I know nothing, but will you please not abandon me? The world has been so much less enjoyable without you.”

  Gil’s mouth was rather dry. “I’m not going anywhere. Ah, hell, Vik, listen, I need to tell you this.” He really didn’t want to say it. He’d spent his adult life armouring the vulnerable spots, making sure people couldn’t tell where it hurt. It felt unnatural to expose himself, but Vikram needed to know. He had to force the words out, all the same. “The reason I didn’t ever get in touch—well, I was afraid you’d look at me and decide you didn’t want to know.”

  “I wouldn’t—”

  “No, listen. I stood my father leaving me to starve. I stood everything I did to survive. But I couldn’t have stood you turning your back on me. I was too scared to try.” The truth was bitter on his tongue. “Better to be where I was than to risk finding that out. I didn’t stay away because you didn’t matter. It was because you mattered too much. I’d lost a lot of dreams, or hopes. Memories, even—of Pa, of you, of everything before Matthew ripped my life apart. I couldn’t lose any more. And I wish I’d done it differently, but I was so afraid. Can you understand that?”

  “Of course I can. Of course I do, because I was afraid too.” Vikram’s voice sounded as raw as Gil’s throat felt. “Gil, I decided you were dead. I had an enquiry agent looking for you for a month, to no effect, and then I gave up because it was more bearable to believe you were gone for good than not to know. The not knowing coloured everything and I couldn’t tolerate it any more, but I wish I’d had the courage to keep looking more than I can say. You deserved better of me. I’m sorry.”

  Gil exhaled. He wasn’t sure he felt better for them both getting that out, but he had a feeling he might, one day. “But you’re here now. We’re here now. And if you really want—uh, the cat, he’s all yours. He might even have been waiting for you to come along, in his own stupid sort of way.”

  Vikram started a movement up, and froze as Satan shifted a meaningful paw. “How do I come over to you without being castrated?”

  “Don’t risk it.” Gil got up, carefully, so his brain didn’t bounce off the inside of his skull, and moved to the other chair where Vikram sat. Lowered his head so their lips met, a brush of a touch. Felt Vikram’s mouth move as though he was going to say something, and pressed down harder because he’d said enough. Because all Gil needed was him and Vik kissing by the fire, tongues and lips and occasional inhalations as one or the other remembered to breathe; no more touching than that, and a pair of tangled hands. And there they were: Vik where he should have been all along; Gil letting himself believe that he wasn’t going away; the both of them together.

  It was even better when the cat buggered off.

  TWO DAYS LATER, THE headache finally passed. Gil still had a cracker of a bruise on his shoulder and a dark purple swelling on the side of his face, but the absence of a nagging throb in his skull felt like springtime, and he was whistling as he contemplated his shop. He’d been shut for two days and he wasn’t sure he felt like opening now. Life was too good; he didn’t want unkind Fate to even up the score.

  Well, he’d open, and if anyone he didn’t know came in hinting they wanted books unfit to print, or prints unfit to see, he’d offer them Dickens and look blank. The Society for the Suppression of Vice would get no joy from him today, and nor would anyone else. Unless they liked Dickens, of course. There was no accounting for taste.

  He couldn’t help but notice that, what with him being preoccupied in the last few days, his place had become a dirty bookshop in every sense, including something disembowelled under his desk, courtesy of Satan. The prospect of giving it a good clean wasn’t hugely inviting, and he definitely wasn’t going to start that now, but it might need to be done soon. Gil had spent a lot of the past days’ enforced inactivity in thinking. He might take today to turn his thoughts into a plan.

  By four that afternoon he’d done a lot of calculating, and taken a walk round to Wych Street for a bit of bargaining, and he’d decided he deserved a rest. That meant settling down behind the counter with Jonathan. He’d wolfed down a good half of it before Vikram had come back into his life, leaving the story with the handsome hero in chains, at the mercy of the evil guardian and his hunchbacked henchman, making protests that weren’t fooling anyone. Gil had an inkling, or maybe just a hope, that the turncoat tutor who’d bedded and betrayed Jonathan might come to the rescue in the end. He was looking forward to finding out.

  He sat down with a mug of tea and the precious book, and was so absorbed in the hero’s pains, pleasures, and plot that he barely registered a dark shape striding meaningfully through the murk outside the window. The door flew open with a wild jangle, and Gil almost jumped out of his skin.

  “Bloody hell, Vik!” he protested. “I thought you were the peelers!”

  Vikram strode over, all but crackling with energy. He looked like he was about to explode, but in a good way, like a child at Christmas, and Gil couldn’t help grinning in response. “What’s up with you?”

  “Gil,” Vikram began, and then, “Back room. Now.”

  Startled but laughing, Gil let himself be backed into the storeroom, where Vik grabbed his face with both hands, slightly too hard for the bruising, and kissed him with some force. Gil went with it, relishing Vikram’s urgent need as his own built, relishing even more that Vikram was applying his tendency to single-mindedness where it would do the most good. They ended up with Gil bumping into the table, causing the cat sleeping on his half-finished manuscript to give a yowl of protest. Vik pressed up against him, hips grinding hard together, and Gil grabbed his arse, feeling the muscle tense pleasurably under his fingers.

  “Not sure what this is about,” he said, muffled, “but I like it.”

  “It’s about—” Vikram pulled back a little so Gil could see his smile. “Great Scott, I have spent all day wanting to come here and tell you but I had to go to Shad Thames first and then when I got here you distracted me.”

  “What? I did not.”

  “Yes, you did, you smiled. We found him, Gil. We found him. He’s alive.”

  “He— Sunil?”

  “Yes!” There was pure joy on Vikram’s face, a slight sheen to his eyes, and all for the fate of some boy that anyone else—Gil himself—would have written off as not worth worrying about. “I had to tell his parents first. His sister’s screams are still ringing in my ears. Honestly, the relief, I can’t tell you.”

  Gil was grinning too, he realised, so widely it hurt his face. “Alive. That’s marvellous. Sodding marvellous. Where the hell was he?”

  Vikram coughed. “In gaol. He was arrested for disorderly conduct that Saturday night, and got twenty-eight days. He’ll be out at the end of the week.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. Did you not say your man had looked into that?”

  “For Sunil Gupta. It dawned on me that he might be using his John Brown alias, so I gave my investigator that name on Monday and he came back this morning. I went to see him. It’s him.”

  Gil settled back against the table. “Well, now. How is he?”

  “Subdued, afraid, and unhappy, but not harmed. Mostly concerned that his parents will be angry, as well he might be. I told him I would intervene to smooth matters over if he agreed to accept assistance in finding alternative employment once he’s released.”


  Gil lifted a brow. “Taking a bit on yourself there, aren’t you?”

  “Perhaps,” Vikram admitted. “But I feel I owe him a great deal. If I hadn’t looked for him, I wouldn’t have found you.”

  Gil didn’t entirely agree that constituted an obligation, since Sunil hadn’t exactly got himself arrested as a philanthropic act, but he wasn’t going to argue, not with Vik this close and the satisfaction rolling off him. He probably didn’t get enough victories, and if the boy was alive that was a hell of a thing. “What are you going to do with him?”

  “I have no idea,” Vikram said frankly. “I didn’t think that far ahead. I need to speak to him further, find out his capabilities and interests. I know he can read, but that’s all. I am aware I rather rushed in.”

  “You do that. Mph. Well.”

  Vikram gave him a hopeful look. “Do you have an idea?”

  He sort of had one. Gil had never taken on help in the shop before. It had felt like a risk he didn’t want to run and a responsibility he didn’t want to have. He was no William Dugdale to put his faith in some bright, hungry, scrappy boy and trust him to be loyal.

  But maybe a man with a home and a cat and a—well, call it a someone who was willing to put up with the cat—might hire a lad to sweep the floor, and if that lad was bright and personable and could learn how to sell something that wasn’t himself, that might even work.

  “I could use him in here for a bit,” he suggested. “He already knows what’s what so he’ll keep his mouth shut. Unless you wouldn’t want him involved, of course, but—”

  Vikram grimaced. “I did rather have in mind getting him away from this trade.”

  “That’s going to be up to him,” Gil pointed out. “It’s easy to say do something else, but he’s been bringing in good money with no heavy lifting for a while. A month in chokey won’t have been fun, but nor is scrimping and saving and sweating for every penny when you know you can get a couple of days’ meals for your family for an hour’s effort.”