needed a secret card to play.
Needed him badly.
Though now that secret was somewhat compromised.
However, even that she could use to advantage.
The Countess took a thin, crumpled piece of paper from her pocket and placed it before Binnie.
‘This was delivered to me this morning from a trusted source. You are discovered, Mister Binnie.’
He slowly unwrapped the paper to find a crude likeness of his own face staring back.
‘When you poured the acid, you were witnessed,’ she informed him, with a malicious edge. ‘Tut, tut.’
Alfred said nothing but his professional pride was hurt. His speciality was the unseen strike. A witness; that was bad. The drawing was a complication but that proved nothing. The witness was another matter.
‘Who saw me?’ he said quietly.
‘A deaf mute, I am told. Lily Baxter. One of Jean Brash’s impaired whores.’
A slow nod, the eyes blank.
‘She can’t live.’
‘That will be part of the plan. But from now on you must lie low, only out in cover of darkness, no cutting bellies in taverns, no defenestrating.’
A sudden glint of merriment once more in the dark beady eyes; she would keep this little monster close to hand like a dog on a lead.
But now it was time to grease the palm. Was that the phrase? English was such a slippery tongue.
‘Put out your hand,’ she commanded.
‘Which one?’
‘Which do you favour?’
‘The left. Always.’
‘Extend the same.’
An evil little grin spread across the face of Alfred.
‘Are you going to punish me, Countess?’
She said nothing. He extended the hand, and she produced a small leather bag from which she extracted ten gold coins which she dropped one after the other into his upturned palm. A sensuous smile appeared on his face; next to death this was his best pleasure, large women came a poor third at the races.
‘That much again awaits,’ she promised, herself excited by the quickening in her own being. ‘When we have executed what is in my mind. This night.’
Alfred caught her bloodlust, you could almost taste it; pity she was such a scrawny type.
‘This seems acceptable,’ he said chastely.
‘You will be a good boy till then?’
‘You have my word,’ he replied, as he pocketed the coins, ‘but tonight, I will be a very bad boy.’
They sat and stared at each other like two perfect embodiments of evil intent until the Countess smiled over a random thought of impending destruction.
‘Do you enjoy long, slow suffering?’ she remarked.
‘If there’s blood involved.’
That response brought a slight frown to her face and she was moved to more precise definition of their objective.
‘The most exquisite torture is in the mind. We may throw in a bit of blood to keep you happy.’
‘I like being happy,’ he replied simply.
For a moment she gazed at him with a curious fondness.
‘You are most valuable to me, Mister Binnie. I shall take
‘I don’t like Scotch beer.’
‘I shall find you another kind.’
‘And I like
‘I will search out such a magnitude.’
‘Then we have an agreement, Countess,’ said Binnie with solemn gravity.
‘We have an agreement, Mister Binnie.’
They each then retreated to their thoughts, his of the victim’s surprise and fear, hers of the delights to come.
21
I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition.
SAMUEL PEPYS,
(13 October, 1660)
James McLevy had seen some messy corpses in his time but this one took the biscuit.
Strangely enough the trunk and limbs were untouched save for the fragments of gore and splinters of bone that had spattered over the respectable garmentation.
The body encased and covered in a heavy suit as custom demanded, the shoes shiny, though dull red drops had given birth to thin rivulets which trickled down until they had been arrested by the edging sole of a solid brogue.
Everything was fine until you got above the neck.
Then it was as if someone had dropped a huge blancmange, the flesh split, and the bones crushed to a pulp.
It was hardly recognisable as a human head and so far the inspector had hardly been able to find an eyeball that he could call his own.
Constable Ballantyne, thrilled at being included in his first murder investigation, though merely there to stand and watch, stood, watched, and then bolted outside to boak his breakfast up all over the street.
The other two young green-faced constables had been dismissed to join Ballantyne lest they spewed precipitously and obliterated evidence.
Mulholland, who had looked but not boaked, was in the higher reaches of the house in search of forcible entry because nothing indicated such below.
It was just how McLevy liked it.
Him and a corpse.
Plus the word.
Daubed in blood on the wall above the mantelpiece, the letters crude and misshapen but the word clear enough.
How that applied to the dead Gilbert Morrison was a mystery to be solved. He had been thus identified by Fergus MacLean through his clothing and a scar across the palm of his hand, the result of an accident on board a ship when a sharp metal shackle had broken free from the chain cable and cut the maister’s hand.
Long ago. But the mark remained.
Like that of Cain.
McLevy had known the man and hadn’t liked him. Avaricious, cruel-eyed, thin-lipped, a dry stick of rectitude.
None of that left now.
