The Colours of Corruption by Jacqueline Jacques

Author:Jacqueline Jacques
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook, QuarkXPress
ISBN: 978-1-906784-79-9
Publisher: Honno Press
Published: 2013-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

He crossed the road quickly, dodging puddles of melt water and steaming piles of dung.

He hadn’t been home since Monday and any light he might inadvertently have left burning would have guttered and gone out long since. The only other person with a key was his landlord. Perhaps Bob was up there, having a look around before he went home, assessing the damage after the dinner party last week. It was all right – they’d scraped the candle wax off the floor and got the wine stains out of the rug. Or perhaps Bob had let Ida in, or Kitty, in Archie’s absence, before heading off home. Perhaps he’d left a note …

Archie opened his front door and closed it quietly behind him, climbing the stairs with tired legs and a shiver of apprehension. No sound. He turned the handle, not knowing what to expect. The breath left his body.

The light came from an oil lamp on the mantelpiece. Its beam, reflected in the mirror, shone out over a wreck of a room. Cupboards were flung open, paintings and rolls of bare canvas strewn about, sketches and posters were torn off the wall, screens and chests overturned, bedclothes were ripped from the bed, and a wad of paper was burning in the grate, floating page by page up the chimney. His drawings of Mary!

‘What the hell!’

The door to the back stairs was open and a gale was blasting through, creating a small snowstorm of pillow feathers. As he went across to shut it, he thought of Streeter. Had the gangster rumbled the cause of his arrest? Was this wreckage to pay Archie back?

A crunch of glass made him whip round. The intruder moved into the light and Archie realised he knew this swaggering bully boy in his brown buttoned suit.

‘Where is she?’

Archie couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. ‘What? Who?’

‘You know who.’

Oblivious whether he was treading on tubes of paint, packets of flour or butter, the man smacked a thick iron cudgel into his left palm as he advanced. He meant business.

‘If – if you’re talking about Mary Quinn, I don’t know where she is.’ Archie backed away, his heart pumping wildly as he cast about for a weapon of his own. ‘I’d like to help you but I – I’ve been looking for her myself.’ He slapped his pockets. Where was his damned penknife? ‘I was in the middle of painting …’

The iron bar smashed down on the table, making Archie jump. ‘I’m not come to play games, Mister. You know right enough or what’s this doing here?’ He snatched from his shoulder what Archie realised, to his horror, was not a scarf but Mary’s dirty old wrapper. It had been on the bed. Archie’s blood boiled. The bugger recognised Mary’s wrapper. He knew it, knew it was hers. Christ Almighty! A hundred implications milled through his mind. He could almost see the thug’s cloddish fingers on Mary’s bare flesh.

‘Put that down, you bastard!’

But the bully made an insolent face and twirled the wrapper round his head.

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