Chapter 60
Sebastian took a hackney as far as Burr Street, then worked his way on foot toward the river. Crowded by day with seamen and stevedores, the wharves after dark were a dangerous labyrinth patrolled by the river police and private guards hired by ship owners and trading companies desperate to control the swarms of thieves who could empty a warehouse or a ship’s hold in a night, and slit a man’s throat for the coat on his back.
But tonight Sebastian seemed to have the riverfront to himself, moving through fog foul with the stench of salt and river sludge mingling with the odors of the nearby tanneries and soap factories. He could hear the slap of the incoming tide and the occasional muffled boom of distant fireworks from Tower Hill and the Bridge, but the thickness of the fog brought its own special hush to the world, magnifying the sound of his breathing until it grated loud and harsh in his ears.
The warehouse he sought lay midway down a row that loomed before him from out of the gloom. Two stories high and built of rough stone, it butted to the south against another warehouse, while to the left an alley just wide enough for a cart separated it from the next row of buildings, ancient relics of soot-darkened brick.
As he neared the row, Sebastian could see a faint glow of light shining through the Prosperity Trading Company warehouse’s ached, brick-faced windows, but they were set high in the thick stone walls, too high for anyone to look through. In the center of the wall facing the narrow lane, a set of double doors sturdily built of thick planks gave access to the warehouse’s ground floor. The door’s heavy padlock hung dark and undisturbed against the peeling painted wood.
The padlock was both an acknowledgement and a mocking warning, Sebastian thought; it was Wilcox’s way of saying,
Sebastian knew the price of arrogance. It was his own arrogance, after all—his belief in his ability to catch Rachel’s killer—that had led Kat to this deserted warehouse and the terrors she must now be facing as she waited, live bait in a monster’s trap. But he kept telling himself that however arrogant Wilcox might be, the man was no fool. He would know he needed Kat alive if he were to have any hope of surviving the confrontation to come.
Looking up, Sebastian scanned the windows on the upper floor and found them barred, like those of the ground floor, with stout iron grills. But there would be another set of doors, he knew, on the water side.
Soft footed, trying to control even the rasp of his breathing, he slipped down the side alley, toward the water. As he passed a pile of empty packing crates and broken barrels, a rat scuttled, squealing before him.
He stopped, his ears straining to catch any hint of sound, any indication that Wilcox, waiting within the stone fastness of the warehouse, had heard. A faint breath of air heavy with the scents of the sea lifted off the basin, its heaving black waters all but obscured by the freezing fog that hung low and thick. The high dark hulks and swaying masts of the ships that lay anchored there were mere shadows in the night, quiet and ghostlike.
Treading carefully over the rough weathered planks of the open dock, Sebastian crept toward the waterfront doors. They bore no padlock, but then, they were normally barred from within anyway. Reaching out, he applied just enough pressure against the first panel to tell him what he had already guessed: these doors, too, were locked.
He could hear the slap of water beneath him, for the warehouses here, as along so many of the basins and canals lining the river, were built over the water. There would be a trapdoor in the planked floor of the warehouse to give direct access to lighters and barges. A way of entry, perhaps, but one which would give too much of the advantage to the man waiting within. Sebastian needed to find some approach that would give him a visual advantage. He needed to come in from above.
A second set of loading doors opened from the dock to the upper floor, where a stout beam thrusting out from the wall could be used to hoist goods. But the beam was bare now of both winch and pulley, and Sebastian had no rope to climb up to it. A nearby pile of crates virtually blocked the wharf ahead of him, but they were neither near enough to the door, nor high enough to enable him to reach it. He had to find another way in.
Retracing his steps to the front of the warehouse, he scanned the building’s flat roofline. The warehouse beside it was older and larger, but of roughly the same height. Its door, like that of the Prosperity Trading Company, was padlocked.
Sebastian retrieved one of the broken barrels from the alley. Even empty, the iron-banded oak weighed some forty or fifty pounds. Heaving it over his head, he brought the iron edge down on the padlock once, then again, smiling grimly as he felt the lock sheer away from the door, hasp and all.
In the stillness of the fog-shrouded night, the resultant clatter sounded unnaturally loud. Sebastian paused, his breath coming in pants as he listened to the slosh of the incoming tide against the wharfs.
Slipping between the heavy doors, he paused again, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. It was true he could cope better than most men with the darkness of the night. But his eyes still needed some light to see, and the dense fog obliterated all hint of moon and stars, even the reflected lights of the city around them.
He inched his way across a floor crowded with crates and barrels that perfumed the air with the heavy scents of their contents: tea from India, sables from Russia, baled cotton from the Carolinas. A faint glow showed him a central well some eight to ten feet square, faintly lit from above by a grimy skylight and edged along one side by a steep, straight stair.
He climbed the steps in a light-footed rush that brought him to an upper floor crowded, like the one below, with packing cases and bales. Overhead, the skylight showed only as a dark gray square against the black of the ceiling. There would be tools, he knew, kept here on the upper floor by the warehouse crew. Precious minutes ticked by as he searched, first at the top of the steps, then along the unrailed edge.
He found them at last in a wooden crate left near the front wall. Tossing aside hammers, lengths of chain, and a coil of rope, he grasped a small pry bar, which he thrust into the waistband of his breeches. Then, by shifting some of the crates, he was able to climb within an arm’s reach of the skylight.
Set into a large raised wooden frame, the skylight was made up of some half-dozen sections hinged so that they could be raised for ventilation. Feeling along the edge, Sebastian located the clasp of the section above his head and carefully eased it open.
Thick with the smell of sulfur and coal smoke and the scents of the sea, the night swirled in around him. Grasping the edge of the frame, Sebastian levered himself up through the small square opening and onto the roof.
He lay still for a moment, his breath showing white as he listened to the distant boom of fireworks lost in the night. Slowly, he rolled to his feet and crossed the slate expanse to drop lightly down onto the roof of the adjoining warehouse.
Here, the skylight glowed with a faint golden light. But as he inched toward it, he saw that the glass was too clouded and grimy to show more than the vague shapes of the objects below. There was always a chance, he knew, that Wilcox awaited him here on the upper floor. But most men feared the dark, and the source of light from within the building obviously came from the ground floor, site of the warehouse’s two main entrances and the water door.
Slipping the pry bar between the skylight’s frame and base, Sebastian applied a gentle pressure and felt a slight give as the inner catch began to loosen. He tried again, increasing the pressure, and heard the rending timbers whine in protest.
He immediately eased up on the bar, the night air cold against his sweat-dampened face. Sitting back on his heels, he considered his options. Impossible to break the skylight’s frame or shatter the glass without announcing his arrival. But besides the trapdoor leading up from the water, there remained only one other entrance to the warehouse: the dockside doors to the upper floor.
His gaze focused on the crumbling chimney of the fireplace used to warm the warehouse’s small counting office. He stared at it for a moment, then retraced his steps to the adjacent roof. Dropping lightly through the open skylight, he retrieved one of the coils of rope he had seen there, along with a stout length of iron.
He was conscious, again, of the relentless passage of time. Lashing one end of the rope to the chimney, Sebastian wound the other end around his waist and lowered himself carefully over the warehouse’s back wall, the rough planks of the dock some twenty feet below lost in the mists swirling in from the water. Straightening his legs
