Black Sun Rising by Mathew Carr

Author:Mathew Carr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2020-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

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The gas lights were only just coming on as he hurried back down the Ramblas, past the carriages, bicycles, and trams moving past him in the dusk. Apart from the police and militia there were not many people on the thoroughfare, but now, for the first time since coming to Barcelona, he had the feeling that someone was following him. He stopped and pretended to peruse a kiosk that was still open, but no one stood out among the shadowy pedestrians moving back and forth. In London there was no reason for anyone to follow him, and he was more likely to be following other people. Yet even there he sometimes felt the same sensation, as if invisible eyes were pressing against the back of his skull. Now he was in Spain, and it was little more than twenty-four hours since Weygrand had sent someone to kill him, and only a few days since the police had nearly deported him. Even though the doctor was supposedly in Vienna, Lawton sensed the bulbous eyes staring fiercely down at him from some place he could not see. He cursed the illness that produced such foolish delusions, even as he quickened his pace to put them behind him.

By the time he reached the hotel the faces and objects around him had begun to regain their solidity. Even the sight of Señor Martínez’s smooth bald head and scowling visage seemed like a comforting barometer of normality. Señor Martínez did not ask where he had been, and Lawton did not tell him, but he was pleased to find that his old room was still empty. He took some of the potassium and broke open a vial of amyl nitrate before undressing for bed. That night he kept the wooden bit on the bedside table beside him as he lay on top of the sheets in his underclothes. Despite the heat and his aches and pains, he quickly fell asleep. In the mountains he had had no dreams at all. Now he dreamed of Boers in their bush hats, of horses surging through bloody rivers, and trenches filled with bodies. He was woken up by a gunshot. At first he thought he was still dreaming, then he sat up as the shots continued in a short ragged exchange before the night fell silent once again. His watch gave nearly four o’clock, and he lit a cigarette and listened to the streetcar rattling northward from the direction of the Ramblas.

He was just about to lay down again when he found himself thinking of the skulls and Bertillonage mugshots in Foulkes’s house and his museum-laboratory in London. In the same moment he thought of the pictures in Mata’s newspaper, and he felt suddenly awake. He lit the lantern and opened up the newspaper. Years ago he had attended a lecture at Scotland Yard, where a visiting professor of criminology had explained Cesare Lombroso’s theory of atavism. According to the professor, Lombroso believed that certain categories of

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