Downtime (42 page)

He nodded and we left as requested, not slowing to a fast walk until we reached the street. Then we kept going until Ezra, upon looking back, could report that our pursuers had given up. Whether they were protecting their territory or had just exhausted their energies, I didn’t know. I was just relieved to be free of them. And I wasn’t the only one. Ezra slumped against the door of a closed shop and exhaled a grateful breath. “Thank you, Morgan. They would not be reasoned with.”

“Mob mentality. Not a whole lot you can do, unless you can get your hands on a fire hose. Not that it would have done us any good in this instance. You think he might have shown up? And set them off somehow?”

“Perhaps. She was there, but they were around her, shielding her.”

I sighed. “If she couldn’t give us his name, an accurate description would be good. Even some unique physical detail. Everything we’ve got so far, it’s too vague. Brown hair, moustache, more or less respectable appearance….” I shook my head. “That covers almost every guy walking the street.”

“Sidney,” Ezra said.

“Yeah, Sid, and Jem if you slapped a moustache on him. Hell, even I fit the description to a degree—”

Ezra grasped my arm, to shut me up I figured, then gestured down the street to the corner where a familiar figure was climbing into a cab. He was dressed even more soberly than we’d seen him at the Ten Bells, right down to a black armband and an uncharacteristically glum expression. I snorted. “He gets around, doesn’t he? You think he knew Liz, too….” I trailed off as a possibility that had never occurred to me swept into existence so rapidly I could hardly catch my breath. Sidney Dasset. Shallow, simpering, harmless Sid. I might be able to believe all that was an act, but sleeping with men wasn’t part of the act—was it? No, Sid was gay. I was sure of that. But the inescapable fact that gay serial killers virtually never killed women gave way to a gut feeling that demanded investigation.

Ezra seemed to have reached his own epiphany. “They weren’t chasing us from the graveyard. They were hurrying us!”

“Goddamn. Come on.”

Unfortunately, the way was hampered by a line of black-draped carriages heading past. By the time we reached the corner, Sid’s cab was deep in traffic. “Ez, you got any money?”

He got out his wallet and shuffled through a few bills and coins. “Twelve, eight and—”

I plucked a five pound note out of his hand. “That’ll do.” I flagged the closest cab and motioned Ezra into it. Hopping on after him, I waved the note at the driver. “The cab ahead of us, the one driven by your colleague in the red shawl? There’s a fiver in it if you stick with him to his destination, no questions asked.”

Ezra grabbed a handful of my coat. “Dear God, Morgan, don’t—”

Our cabbie gave an unintelligible shout to the horse, snapped the reins, and took off like a shot, leaving me to hang on to the cab roof for dear life. Ezra dragged me down beside him—which became on top of him as the cab careened around a corner. Only when the cabbie caught up to Sid’s cab did he slow down and stick to a relatively sane pace, at least until the traffic threatened to take the other cab out of sight. Then he took off in a fashion that would have left New York cabbies in admiring awe.

Sid appeared to have haunts all over town. The dizzying ride came to an end in a quiet street lined with middle-class homes. Climbing out, I looked around to get my bearings and saw the dome of St. Paul’s in the distance. We were still a ways from home, but the environs had improved. Ezra looked a little motion-sick and rested a hand on my shoulder while he caught his breath. I grinned. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“We’re still alive. I shall count that a success and hope you’ve learned the folly of overpaying cabbies.”

He’d be loads of fun on a rollercoaster. “Hey, it was worth it. There’s our boy.” Several yards down the street, Sid emerged from his cab and ascended to the door of a house. We were halfway across the road when Ezra grabbed my arm to keep me from proceeding another step. At my questioning glance, he shook his head. “You don’t want to go in there. Nor do I. Let us wait until he comes back out.”

“Why? You know who lives there?” The uncomfortable twist of his mouth piqued my curiosity. “This isn’t some deep, dark secret from your past I haven’t heard about yet?”

“Dear fellow, I beg of you. There’s a cafe down the street where we can wait.” He tried to hold on to me as I wriggled out of his grasp and moved closer to the house. It looked the same as all the others on the street, but for the closed drapes keeping out what little late afternoon sun still shone.

Then it hit me. The drapes weren’t closed to keep out the sun. “It’s a brothel?”

He seemed to realize he wasn’t protecting me from anything I hadn’t seen before. “It does provide that sort of accommodation, yes.”

“Well, I don’t want to wait for him to come out. God knows how long that’ll be.”

Ezra, after a moment’s hesitation, agreed to go with me. My knock at the door was answered by a white-haired gentleman in a coat, tie, and gloves. He mildly gave us the once-over, then let us in with a short bow. As dusky as it had been getting outside, it was a whole lot darker inside, the gas turned so low that we had to stand a minute in the foyer to adjust. The butler showed us to the parlor, where the inhabitants lounged around what was probably a perpetual get-acquainted tea—only most of the guests appeared well past the stage of acquaintance. Two men exchanged lazy kisses as they slumped comfortably in front of the fire. Two others sat at the piano, plinking out a halting rendition of a now-familiar waltz, something in the top ten of 1888, I guessed.

A heavyset man with a prim smile almost hidden under a salt and pepper beard introduced himself as the lord of the manor, Mr. Bernsey, and invited us to make ourselves at home. Ezra eased past the smooching couple to perch uncomfortably on a nest of fringed sofa pillows. About to join him, I saw Sid bounce into the room, arm slung across the shoulders of a younger guy with a yellow thatch of hair and a bashful grin. Catching sight of me, Sid lit up and he tossed the smaller fish back, baiting his hook for something a little more challenging.

“My dear fellow! Have you run out of respectable sights to see already?”

I tolerated the hug, taking amused note of the annoyance in Ezra’s face as Sid looked me up and down with marked interest. Sid and I squeezed in between the smoochers and Ezra, who was studiously ignoring the come-hither smirks of a fellow sitting across from him. “Something stronger than tea is called for,” he murmured as I sat beside him.

I offered a wordless apology with a bump of my knee against his, which brought a reluctant smile to his lips. Sid handed me a cup of tea and, as I took it, brushed his fingers over my wrist. He wasn’t unattractive, but it was difficult to hold his gaze. It was too—ravenous. Lustful looks were one thing; Sid’s eyes burned with a primitive hunger too disturbing for my taste. He knew better than to pounce on me, though. He just watched me through heavy-lidded eyes, no doubt weighing what it would take to get me into bed.

“Not one for playing hard-to-get, are you?” I commented.

“Not a game I care to learn. I have a talent for several others, however.”

“Yeah? Pick them up from Jem?”

His smile faltered, then flared back to life. “Jem Montague has nothing to teach me. You, on the other hand….”

“I kind of suspect I couldn’t show you anything new.”

“Care to try?”

“Upstairs?” I suggested, putting down my cup.

Sid’s eyes widened. He hadn’t expected to land me so easily. “Indeed, yes,” he said with relish, and flung an arm around my shoulders. “Let us away.”

I threw a quick look at a worried Ezra and felt guilty for leaving him among the wolves. “Give me a few minutes,” I whispered to him as Sid all but lifted me bodily from the sofa and headed for the stairs in triumph.

The bedrooms were simpler than I anticipated, iron bedsteads with a curtain hung around for additional privacy, a wash basin with towels, and pegs along one wall for our clothes. I decided to keep mine on as Sid removed his coat and sprawled on the bed. “Charming, isn’t it? Like home.”

He patted the quilt, an invitation to sit. I sat, as out of reach as possible, with my back against the bedpost. “Home for you is Whitechapel, isn’t it? Where you got your start selling yourself for a living?”

“So brutally direct,” he murmured, leaning up on his elbows. “I do like that about you.”

“Can you be as direct?”

“What do you want to know?”

“I want to know if there’s a real Sid behind this voracious thing you present to the world.”

He laughed aloud and, rising to his knees, got into my face with a devilish smile. “And why do you bloody care if there is?” he whispered with the hint of his native accent. “Think you’d fancy him better?”

Gripping the post above my head for balance, he moved in to kiss me. I shoved him flat on his back and kept him there with an iron hold on his wrists. “I warned you about that, Sid, old boy.”

He didn’t resist, just smiled as if we still played his game. “What a delightful creature you are. So rough and tumble, so fearless.”

“Gentle doesn’t really suit you, does it?” If his tone hadn’t told me, the solid bulge pressing into my leg would have.

As I shifted away from that contact, he closed his eyes with a soft sigh. “When I was a lad, I didn’t care for cod liver oil.” Lashes lifted to give me a glimpse of laconic amusement. “I grew accustomed to the taste.”

“You’re saying you got started young?”

“Didn’t you?”

“Depends on whether you consider sixteen young.”

He chuckled softly. “What would you consider half that?”

The blood chilled in my veins. “You were eight?”

“Perhaps seven. Who can recall? Oh, but I was the manly little fellow. Dear mum convinced the gentleman I was older and he found me most delectable. He did as he pleased, after he’d paid his fourpence, of course, and we were properly introduced.”

The gentleman won’t hurt you much….

The memory of that cajoling voice slid cleanly and coldly into my mind. In the moment before he meant to kill me, Jack had whispered to me as tenderly as a mother calming a frightened little boy. Goddamn. I sucked in a breath, conscious of Sid’s steady gaze and the smile on his lips that couldn’t persuade me what had happened to him was anything but a nightmare.

He certainly didn’t linger over it. Extricating one hand from my loosened grip, he unbuttoned the top button of my waistcoat. “Dear mum, she presented my soul to the devil on a silver platter….” There was a sly glint in his eyes as the second button parted from its hole. “Now that we’re past introductions, what is there for us but to revel in our basest sin?”

Less a revel, it seemed, and more a compulsive reliving of the only kind of sex he understood. It brought fresh to mind a kidnapping case I’d handled; six years after his rescue, the boy was still in therapy and likely to be for years to come. But there was no therapy for Sid, except that he had created in the darkest, most desperate corner of his mind.

“Can I ask you something else?”