Come on, dummy, one stick’s just as good as another.
Yes, tomorrow morning Sean would get the ball rolling and return to Julian with a firm offer within a day. They needed to be quick. Whilst there was a good working relationship between them, he was certain Julian wouldn’t walk away from a better offer, elsewhere. After all, money’s mon Watson yelped.
‘Watson? Here boy!’ Sean called out.
It was silent across the manicured lawns, except for the rustling of a light breeze through the branches and dry leaves, and the distant rumble of traffic around the three distant sides of the common.
‘Watson?’ he called out with a sing-song timbre that usually brought the daft dog to him. ‘Here boy!’
Nothing.
Sean felt a prickling of concern. Watson never, ever ignored him like that. He half walked, half jogged over towards the edge of the spinney and looked inside for the telltale flash of his chestnut-coloured coat in amongst the foliage.
There was no sign of him.
‘Watson?’
He took several quick steps forward, off the well-clipped grass onto a thickening mat of dead, crispy leaves, twigs, acorn husks and conker shells. Sean wasn’t terribly keen on stepping too much further inside. He turned to look back out at the common. There were a few people around; a couple roller-blading along one of the tarmac paths, another two or three dog owners walking their dogs, a group of teenagers chatting on a bench several hundred yards away.
He wasn’t exactly alone, but in the gathering gloom of early evening, he might as well be.
‘Watson! Dammit! Come here!’
Shit.
It was on Wimbledon Common not so long ago that a woman had been stabbed to death by a care-in-the- community type, a lost and tormented man who’d been convinced that every blonde-haired woman was an agent of Satan, coming to extract his soul and take it down to the underworld.
Sean instinctively reached down and fumbled for a twig big enough to call a branch and grabbed hold of it. It felt reassuring in his hand.
Just in case.
Emboldened, he advanced further in, pushing through a thorny bush that effectively obscured him from view to those few people out on the common. Something must have happened to Watson if he wasn’t answering. Perhaps he had found a rabbit hole and taken a tumble, or run headlong into a tree trunk and stunned himself; he was that stupid a dog.
Or maybe he’d found a bitch willing to take the silly old bugger on.
‘Watson!’ he called out again.
There was a rustling to one side of him and the dull, muffled crack of an acorn underfoot — it sounded very much like someone shifting weight from one foot to another.
‘Okay, who the fuck’s in here?’ Sean called out, hoping his polished boardroom voice sounded more menacing than it did to him.
The rustling ceased immediately, but somehow that made it seem a million times worse. Sean sensed that this was the moment he ought to back quietly out of the trees, past the bush and onto the common and walk away without his dog.
‘Watson!’ he called out once more, ‘I’m going, you stupid hound!’ He had turned round to head out of the undergrowth towards the open green when he heard movement in front of him.
His eyes picked out a dark silhouette against the edge of the spinney and the darkening grey sky beyond. Any further detail was lost to the last of the early-evening light, but unmistakably it was a man wearing a hood.
‘Yes?’ he said, and then as an afterthought, ‘Can I help you?’
The silhouette remained perfectly still.
‘You after some money?’
‘No,’ a dry voice answered.
Stay calm, Sean cautioned himself. Control the situation.
‘My dog came in here. Did you see him?’
The man advanced a step forward. ‘You spoke with someone I’ve been watching.’
Sean shrugged. ‘I’ve spoken to a lot of people today.’
‘You spoke to him about a story in America.’
Playing dumb probably wasn’t going to help. ‘How do you know about that? Who are you?’
The silhouette was silent. ‘What the hell do you want?!’
‘I’m here to tidy things up,’ said the man.
CHAPTER 49
25 October, 1856
This morning, for the first time, I sense the others looking at us with distrust. I don’t know whether they have collectively discussed who or what killed Dorothy, Sam and Mr Hearst, and decided it is one of us, or whether they each privately harbour that suspicion, but I can see it in the quick, wary glances, the shortest possible exchange of pleasantries with us.
Keats spoke of Mr Larkin, their butcher, not wanting to work alongside Mr Bowen. And visiting Emily’s shelter this morning, I was silently watched by a group of five men gathered around their breakfast fire; watched intently. Moments after entering and talking with Mrs Zimmerman, Mr Vander stuck his head in and made it clear I was to check on her as quickly as possible, then leave.
I do wonder whether A buffeting wind shook and rattled the creaking wooden framework of their shelter, whilst the flap over their entrance, tied down against the gusting wind, rustled and whipped, complaining like a tethered dog. A blizzard was coming down almost horizontally, small, dry, sand-like beads of ice that stung against bare skin.
Above the rumpling thud of wind, he heard a muffled voice.
‘Mr Lambert?’
He recognised it as Preston.
‘Yes?’
‘A word, if you don’t mind.’
‘Uh, yes, of course.’ Ben closed his inkpot and put away his journal before readying himself to step outside.
‘I’ll come in,’ said Preston. Ben saw fingers work on the tie, and a moment later the wind whipped it open. Snow hurled in, chased by a vicious, biting blast of freezing air. Preston stooped down low, pushed his way through the flap and settled down on his haunches inside, securing the flap once more.
‘Are we alone?’ he asked quietly, squinting in the dark interior.
‘Mr Keats and Broken Wing are foraging for wood with some others.’
‘Good. I wished to speak to you in private.’
Ben felt his skin run cold, realising he was alone with someone who might just be capable of violent murder and barbaric mutilation.
He’d not do something to me here, now, surely?
Unlikely as that was, he found his hand subconsciously reaching for the handle of his hunting knife, tucked away under his poncho in his belt.
‘What do you wish to talk about?’
‘I… find the discomfort of my injury is continuing to be unbearable and I would like to take with me a complete bottle of your medication, that I need not keep bothering you to personally administer it.’
‘Well, it is no bother,’ Ben lied, his mind recalling the openly hostile glances he had drawn earlier this morning, approaching the Dreyton shelter.
‘That’s as may be. However, there are those amongst my people who would rather your party remain, from
