The Obsidian Dagger (Horatio Lyle) (12 page)

‘Sir?’

‘Yes?’

‘Where did - I mean, how did . . .’

‘It was in Captain Fabrio’s room, with Mrs Milner. Clearly this Father Caryway was expecting to take delivery of the coffin - and its inhabitant - but Stanlaw interrupted things.’

‘Who’s Father Ignatius Caryway?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Oh.’ After all that drama, Thomas felt this was a bit of a let-down.

‘But I think I know where we can start looking.’

 

Tate sleeps by the fire and dreams of ginger biscuits and a soft silent step in the night, and scratches an ear contentedly, and wonders how long until the others work it out.

Lyle carries Tess silently up to her room, pulls the blanket up to her chin and blows the candle out, closing the door and creeping away to leave her dreaming of a light burning in the darkness and little ideas forming together into something that might almost be called knowledge, or might almost be called hope. A rhyme tickles through her mind and sings,

Thomas lies on his side and dreams of flying away from it all, of making the sky his world, the clouds his cushions, a kingdom far below to call his own, a home in the winds and above the lights, of escaping to another and a better place, of watching the land drop away and seeing possibility spread, inviting, all around; and he smiles, and rolls over in his sleep to dream again.

And Horatio Lyle lies in his bed and stares at the sky, and does not sleep, and does not dream, but instead feels the cold terror of uncertainty in his heart, and knows with the crudity of instinct and surmise that something is wrong, something that cannot be explained away with logic or science, something terribly irrational, cruel and real. And though he tells himself that there is no proof to give credence to his fears, nothing on which to base the instinct which says that everything about this is wrong, from the merest fact that Lord Lincoln was involved, to the stone coffin that contained a living being which scratched at the stone with sharp nails and
had no air holes
- though he tells himself all this, Horatio Lyle lies awake, and is afraid of what the morning may bring.

 

And somewhere, where the windows are high and the walls are thick, and nothing but stone and iron decorates the plain walls, Lord Lincoln turns from his contemplation of the city, puts his hands, fists down, on a large, round iron table and says quietly, ‘Where is he?’

‘We are still investigating.’

‘
You
are investigating,
xiansheng
.
You
are investigating, father. The whole police force is investigating, my agents are investigating, Lyle is investigating. So I ask myself, with such powers at our disposal, where is he? Why haven’t we found his grace yet?’

There is an embarrassed silence.

A nervous voice chirrups, ‘It’s possible that
they
are helping to hide -’

‘They are weak. Their power in this city was damaged when they were defeated at St Paul’s. I do not fear the Tseiqin’s involvement at this time and, besides, his grace threatens their welfare just as much as ours. If he finds Selene, and if he finds the blade, his power will extend beyond all measure. They would not risk freeing his grace from Isalia. It is a madman’s ploy. Why have we not found a madman yet, gentlemen?’

‘Lord Lincoln,’ says a voice heavy with a foreign accent that isn’t happy with English sounds, ‘we know that it would take a priest to have authority to free his grace from Isalia. And priests are easy to find.’

‘We have already investigated that possibility, Mr Lingdao. If a priest has indeed so broken with his masters and his covenant to free his grace, he must have a powerful friend to hide him from our eyes.’

‘My lord, I fail to see -’ the weak voice, the kind of voice that always meant to take exercise, but kept on losing its socks on the way out ‘- why this is such a threat. Perhaps he can control part of the city; but without the blade the ultimate power remains beyond his grasp. As we still have . . .’

A sharp interruption from Lord Lincoln - the anger of an intelligent man impatient with a fool. ‘He can destroy the city without the blade, father. You made the stone coffin that held him, you should know his power and
why
we have always dreaded the day he was set free. London is the heart of Empire. If this city falls, it will be as though the Empire falls, and everything we have been working towards will be as if for nothing.’

‘Wars encourage progress, my lord, and this Empire is old -’

‘It is also the future, father. A future your people have been reluctant to embrace.’

‘Forgive me, my lord. I spoke out of turn.’

Lord Lincoln turns his attention elsewhere, with an almost audible snort of displeasure. ‘Mr Lingdao?’

‘Lord Lincoln.’ The foreign voice of a purring tiger.

‘What is your agent doing?’

‘Trailing Lyle.’

‘Why?’

‘Lyle finds things. But he does not necessarily report his findings. I know he was useful in opposing
them
when they tried to take control at St Paul’s. But I have often stressed how unreliable he is, how unpredictable, and I feel that -’

‘You have a better suggestion,
xiansheng
?’

‘There are other options. Havelock, I believe, is willing to -’

‘Havelock is a useful associate, but lacks Lyle’s professional flair. We take a risk on Lyle, and hope that Lyle finds his grace before his grace finds us or the blade.’

‘My lord.’

‘I have nothing more to say to you. Find his grace. Find the Marquis. When you do, spare no effort in his destruction.’ Lord Lincoln’s voice is edged with ice. ‘I will
not
have all that we have worked for threatened by this man. Not any more.’

 

And last, in the side of a large house, shrouded in the darkness of night and cold and fog, a small door opens and a woman sidles out, breathing deeply the cool night air. By her clothes she is a cook, and she is accompanied through the kitchen door by a blast of hot air that disappears at once in the freezing night. She leans against the icy wall of the house for a long minute, breathing deeply of the night air, and sighs. Inside, someone calls out, ‘Ellen? Damn it, where is Ellen?’

The cook rolls her eyes and slips away from the door, sliding like a thief into the darkness. She walks idly through the night, picks up a handful of snow, rolls it into a ball and throws it against the wall with a sense of childish glee, enjoying the security that the dark offers. Turning to pick up another handful of snow, she stumbles against something, unseen in the dark, stubbing her toe. With a hiss of pain, hopping clumsily, she sits down heavily on the unseen something, which is hard and slightly warm under her; unlikely in the cold. She runs her hand over it, feels stone under her fingers. Frowning, she feels around her, fumbling in the dark. Her hands brush dusty sandstone, hard, smooth marble, worn Portland stone, sticky clay, dusty clay, rough granite, cracked limestone. Her fingers pause, running over the edge of the stone. Each one is carrying an impression, roughly the same in each material. She feels each mark with the pads of her fingers, the cold suddenly starting to bite down to her bones. She runs her fingers along it, then down, brushing every indentation. She starts to shake. From the distant doorway, a voice rolls out. ‘Ellen? Ellen, where are you?’

She kneels down in front of the nearest stone and tries to see in the dark, squinting at the shadows. She tells herself that it’s clearly the work of some deranged carver, that her imagination is getting the better of her.

‘Ellen? Ellen, when I find you, you are in so much trouble!’

She stands up, turns and runs back towards the house, suddenly pale and shaken. Behind her, the stones sit as they had sat before, piled up loosely against the wall, the regular teeth marks in each one all but invisible to the naked eye, unless it already knew that they were there.

Below, but not that far below Ellen’s feet, a man who weighs sixteen stone if you can trust the depth of impressions a bare foot leaves in snow, is at least six foot three by the length of his stride and may just be almost unnaturally strong, considers the taste of stone in his mouth, and closes his eyes, and tries to hear a sound that only he can hear, something ancient, just on the edge of perception. He tilts his head like a man with water in his ear and hears it, for a moment, strains to catch the sound again, remembers the taste of the city, the press of the city in his mind, the smell of it, the sound of it, all the old songs of the city, and for an instant is aware of every footfall tapping against stone, every skulking barefoot child and every nail-heeled collier, every iron-shoed horse and every clattering wooden cart, and maybe, just maybe, a humming that might have run,
London’s burning, London’s
burning, Fetch the engines, fetch the engines,
before the feeling is lost.

He sits, and doesn’t care. It will get stronger soon; he knows this from experience. Until it does, he will sit and listen and wait. He is very good at waiting.

CHAPTER 7

The knock on the door was short and quick. The open door revealed Constable Charles, red-faced and breathless, standing in three inches of fresh snow. ‘Horatio,’ he gasped between wheezes, ‘what’s the worst thing you could imagine?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t begin a greeting like that, Charles. It fills my mind with thoughts of falling from great heights on to hard surfaces, and things that go bang in the night. Why don’t you offer a suggestion, and I’ll tell you whether I could have imagined it?’

‘Have you seen the morning papers?’

‘No, I was woken up instead by someone knocking on the door.’

‘Someone talked to
The Times
about the case. The papers are carrying every detail, from time of death to possible witnesses.’

‘Have you stationed constables at the scene?’

‘It’s already too late for that.’

Lyle saw the look in Charles’s face, then turned white. ‘How were they killed?’

‘She was. Neck broken. We’re still looking for Edgar. No witnesses. No footprints - the snow was falling too heavily. Single blow to the neck.’

‘I want to see the body. Now.’

 

‘Thomas?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Thomas, come on, wake up.’

Thomas blearily opened his eyes. ‘Father?’ He opened his eyes a little bit further. ‘Mister Lyle?’ He opened his eyes all the way. ‘Why are you in your coat? Is something the matter?’

‘I’m just nipping out for a bit. No - don’t get up. I want you to look after Teresa and Tate while I’m gone. You know where the breakfast things are. Will you be all right?’

‘Where are you going?’

‘It’s not important.’ Then, slightly more uncertainly, ‘
Will
you be all right?’

‘Yes, Mister Lyle.’

‘Good. Now go back to sleep.’

‘Yes, sir.’

 

It took almost half an hour to reach the morgue. Three bodies were lined up next to each other in the ice-cold basement, which smelt of formaldehyde, soap and something horrible and sharp which Lyle didn’t want to speculate about. He walked past Captain Fabrio, Stanlaw and Mrs Milner, and said not a word on his processional. Charles, hovering in the background, opened his mouth several times to speak, then saw Lyle’s frown of pained concentration. Outside, a large and rather out of place grandfather clock ticked on through the hour. Lyle leant in until his face was inches from the white mask of Mrs Milner, studying it, hands tightening up into fists at his side, the only sign of anger that managed to escape him. He looked at her wrists, her hands, her fingers, then finally, under her nails. He dug into his pocket and came out with a thin metal file. He ran it under a nail and peered at the substance that came with it. ‘Clay,’ he murmured to himself absently. ‘White clay.’ A frown began on his face, a little thought trying to be heard.

Footsteps were heard outside. The grandfather clock ticked on. The door opened. Inspector Vellum stood in the doorway. ‘Mister Lyle.’

Lyle straightened up, but didn’t turn to look at the Inspector. Something hard and tight settled over his face. ‘Inspector Vellum.’

‘I see you’re still playing detective, Mister Lyle.’

‘This,’ snapped Lyle, indicating the bodies, ‘is a stupid, pointless, humiliating travesty.’

‘I concur.’

‘Since when, Inspector, was it the policy of the Metropolitan Police to reveal to
anyone
what witnesses there were to a crime?’

‘Come now, Mister Lyle, it hardly seems a matter of great difficulty; the Captain’s housekeeper was well known. The murderer clearly waited at the scene and observed who the police talked to, and who
you
talked to, Mister Lyle, and when they were alone, killed Mrs Milner in the night.’