any name they might be interested in ever came up, their own most of all.
“But that business with you getting turned off the force, and then the Assembly Rooms… aye, I might have played a wee part in all of that, but I broke with them after, Quire. I swear to you, I wanted nothing more to do with them after that. It was all getting too rich for my blood, and I never thought it would come to such a pitch. Taking a man’s profession and living away from him, that’s not right, not right at all.”
He waited with held breath to see the effect of his confession upon Quire. The result was not precisely what he had hoped for.
“Except you didn’t, did you? Break with them. You’ve been taking Isabel Ruthven to see William Hare in the Calton Jail, haven’t you?”
Quire made to bring that cruel-looking pistol down, and Rutherford flung up his arms to protect himself against what proved to be a feint. Instead, Quire bent down and punched him hard in the stomach. Rutherford coughed, and curled himself over, clutching his midriff.
“You were there tonight,” Quire said, calm and level. “I know it, so don’t deny it. All you need to do is tell me what she wants with Hare, and what you’ve been up to tonight. Tell me that, and we’re done.”
Rutherford recounted to him in great detail the events of the evening. He could see nothing in the business with Hare that could outrage Quire any more than the injuries that had been directed against his own person, so there seemed only gain to be had from trying to keep the brute happy.
“In the West Bow,” Quire said with unusual precision and clarity. “Through a short arched passage into a yard that looks like it’s not had a scavenger go through it in years. An empty apartment, at the back of the yard, foul and falling down. You’re sure of all that?”
Rutherford nodded.
“And someone waiting in there, for you and her to bring Hare?”
“Aye. Never saw who it was, and it was only Hare came out, like I said. He was acting a wee bit odd, right enough, but he’s not exactly what you’d call an ordinary man, is he? Can’t be, to have done the things he done. Look, can you let me up off these steps, Adam? It’s a damned uncomfortable bed you’ve got me lying on.”
“How do you mean, odd?” Quire asked. “What was odd about Hare?”
“I don’t know,” muttered Rutherford, almost as much irritated as afraid, now that the ardour of Quire’s violent passion seemed to have cooled somewhat, to be supplanted by a thoughtful intensity. “He was fiddling about with strange gloves he’d got from somewhere. Talking a bit different. Still a cocky bastard, mind. He just sounded different, like he’d changed his accent or something. All right?”
Quire at last tucked that pistol into his belt, and Rutherford felt a wave of relief washing through him. If he got out of this with a split lip and a bruise on his belly, he would count himself blessed.
“And you put him on the coach,” Quire said.
It did not sound like a question, but Rutherford chose to make it such, eager to display his compliance.
“Dumfries, that’s right. He’s gone to Dumfries, on the mail. I put him on the coach, in Newington.”
And then suddenly Quire’s fists were darting in again, both of them one after the other, battering Rutherford on either side of the jaw. Quire took hold of his hair, and lifted his head by it, pulling so hard that Rutherford feared a handful of it would be torn from his scalp.
“The thing of it is,” Quire murmured with chill contempt, “you’ve cost me more than I can easily pardon, Sergeant Rutherford. My employment’s bad enough, but it’s not the worst of it. You told them I was going to the Assembly Rooms, and by that telling you put a good friend of mine in a great trouble of deal. Trouble that’s still got him walking about with a stick. I don’t hold much with forgiveness, Rutherford. Not these days.”
Rutherford heard what was coming in Quire’s tone, and kicked out at his crotch. Quire was too alert for that, and turned to take the blow on his hip, then batted Rutherford’s leg aside and closed down upon him in a flurry of blows.
XXXIII
The Annan Road
There was rioting in Dumfries when Quire staggered out, aching and stiff and weary, from the black coach that had brought him south. It had done so at remarkable speed. Remarkable, and punishing for any passengers, of which Quire had been the only one. His conveyance was the well-appointed funereal coach of the Widow, Mary Coulter, and it was as comfortable as any of its kind might be, but the road was rough and long, and no coach could make that a pleasant experience. He did not feel himself ready to confront the raw vigour of a mob run wild, but that was what he found.
Dumfries was not a large town, nor one with a reputation for much in the way of trouble. Despite that, Quire guessed there were well in excess of five thousand people besieging the jailhouse when he stepped down on to the main street. They were waving sticks and flinging stones at the windows and the gaslights. As Quire watched, a stone went through the hood of one of the lights, and it shattered and went out with a snap. Half the windows of the courthouse and its jail were already put in.
Quire pulled the big, heavy bundle off the seat of the coach. It was wrapped in many layers of sacking, and was cumbersome enough to test even Quire’s considerable strength.
“You’d best wait for me back at that coach inn,” Quire said to the driver who had brought him south in such haste.
Fleck, the Widow had told Quire his name was, and the very sole of discretion. So much so that he had hardly uttered a word to Quire in all the journey, and his expression never varied from one of sour repose. But he knew his way about a coach and horse, Quire had to concede that.
Fleck now turned the black coach about in the road and went trundling off. Quire gave his attention to the great mass of irate townsfolk that blocked off a long stretch of the high street. It was as febrile a mob as he had seen in a long time, and a big one for a town the size of Dumfries. Whatever had brought so many furious folk here, it had brought them from far afield.
A hundred or more local militiamen were arrayed across the front of the judicial building, armed with canes and staves and batons. They watched the surging crowd with uneasy, tense expressions, many of them turning their weapons in their hands, or tapping them upon the ground. Quire had an idea of how these things worked. If men were sent out with guns, as often as not they were for show, meant to cow the mob into order; if men were sent out with batons, as often as not they were meant to be used, and they usually were. The chaotic scene before him had the clear feel, in his estimation, of impending violence.
He needed to find out what was happening before that storm broke. Shouldering his ungainly bundle, balancing it there with one arm, he managed to separate a man, more composed than most of his fellows, from the fringes of the throng. He was composed, true enough, but he had paving cobbles in his hands that he had torn up from the street. Quire ignored that, and played the ignorant visitor.
“What’s the cause of all this?”
“They’ve got Hare in there,” the man said, a little breathless, a little ruddy-cheeked. It was an invigorating business, riot. “The Edinburgh murderer,” he continued. “The one who killed all they folk and got away with it.”
“You sure it’s him?” Quire asked, looking towards the jailhouse.
Those militiamen were pushing back against the encroaching, bellowing mob. They laid about them with their sticks, and there were yelps of pain mixed in with the shapeless rumble of anger the crowd gave out.
“Aye, sure.” The man was watching events at the front of the crowd as closely as Quire, as if anxious not to miss out on anything. “He was recognised on the mail coach. One of the other passengers knew him, from the trial. A lawyer. There’s some ill luck for the evil bastard, eh? Getting put on a coach with a man who chanced to know his face.”
“Nobody ever did deserve more in the way of ill luck.”
He was not sure what he himself had done to deserve such good luck, either, but he would gladly take
