Corpse Thief by Michael Arnold

Author:Michael Arnold [Arnold, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bad Baby Press
Published: 2019-04-24T16:00:00+00:00

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The wind became bitter as Hawke reached Drury Lane. It numbed his face and stung his eyes and lips, and he was forced to clamp a hand upon the rim of his topper to keep it from whirling away with the last of the leaves. He stared hard at the ground, placing each foot carefully as he stepped, for his head still swam precariously. A coach rounded the junction with High Holborn, fifty yards up ahead, and thundered towards him. He was forced to scuttle to the opposite side of the road lest he be crushed beneath wheels and hooves. As the whip-wielding driver bellowed obscenities at him for good measure, he found himself skirting the frontage of a row of businesses. A cobbler first, a bonnet maker and a tailor. Then came the inevitable gin palace. An oasis. Hawke’s mouth filled with saliva and his skin pulsed hot in spite of the prevailing chill. He plunged a hand into his pocket, groping for the hard metal of Ruthven’s coins as he peered through the small window. As he laid fingertips on the money, he found himself staring into the reflective glass, at the gaunt, pathetic face gawping back at him. He felt more sick than ever.

A figure, pale and diminutive, flashed in the reflection above his shoulder. He turned on his heels. Studied the far side of the road. Examined each doorway and the openings of every narrow alley that cut between shops and homes. Had he been followed? He could see nothing out of the ordinary, but something in the way the fleeting figure had moved - and how quickly it had vanished - seemed furtive, and made him uneasy. He rubbed his eyes. They ached, the pain lancing right out to his temples, and he supposed his stewed mind must be playing tricks. He walked twenty paces up the street, then, as another carriage rolled past, shrank under the porch of a tenement block. He waited and watched. Nothing moved.

Hawke cursed again, upbraiding his own senses for the deceit. The spell of the gin palace had broken, however, and he resolved to press on with his unwanted duties. He moved more swiftly now, hugging his coat tight as he came to the tavern at High Holborn that was his true destination. He went inside, stepping into a high-ceilinged foyer of dark-painted wood, and was immediately hit by the warmth from the main taproom’s raging hearth. It was a welcome sensation, but he veered instead towards a wide staircase that led to the upper floor lodgings.

Hawke made hard work of it, scaling the worn steps as if they were the sheer face of a jagged cliff. He paused in the stairwell at the first-floor landing, gathering himself, clutching the alarmingly loose handrail as a wave of nausea surged through his stomach. There was a small window, unglazed, at his eye-line, and he peered through. The parish of St Giles spread out far below. The wind had swept away the morning mist, but the tenements and streets were yet wreathed in a thin skein of dirty smoke.

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