When the Devil Drives (20 page)

‘Show her, Becky.'

Still without looking up, the woman took off her jacket and began to undo the buttons on her bodice, slow and fumbling. It fell open, revealing the red silk chemise. Tom turned away. She hesitated, looking up at Codling.

‘Go on,' he said.

She froze. He stood up and drew the chemise down, baring her bosom over the top of her stays and her left shoulder. She gave a gasp of pain.

‘That,' Codling said.

Just below the collar bone, the white skin was hatched with a series of shallow knife gashes, beaded with blood at the edges.

‘See what it is?'

I didn't at first, too horrified. Then I made out horns and the profile of a bull's head, rough and angular as a thing must be when drawn with a knife blade, but unmistakeable.

‘You're saying the men in the chariot cut that on her?'

‘Yes. That right, Becky?'

She just managed a nod, trembling. As carefully as I could, I drew the chemise back over it, re-buttoned the bodice for her and put the jacket back round her shoulders.

‘Miss Blade, may I ask you something?' I said.

She looked at me but I'm not sure she was seeing me.

‘She's not up to talking much,' Codling said.

‘Are you sure it happened inside the chariot?' I said. ‘There's not much room inside one, is there? With the four men and you struggling, in the dark as well, I don't understand how they managed to do that to you.'

Her dull eyes slid away from me towards Codling.

‘Perhaps they pulled her down on the pavement,' he said. ‘You can't expect the poor girl to remember every detail.'

‘It's quite a big detail, isn't it? What about those policemen? The story said you were too badly shocked to go to the police.'

‘She was,' Codling said. ‘When they couldn't get any sense out of her, they just went off and left her there. Anyway, you don't think they'd take any notice of girls like her, do you? Girls have been murdered and they don't care.'

‘And when was this?' I said.

‘Monday before last,' Codling said promptly.

I looked at the woman. ‘Is that right?'

No answer.

‘Her nerves are so torn up, she doesn't know what day of the week it is,' Codling said. ‘You're just making things worse for her.'

Sharp creature, he'd picked up how much I was hating this. I couldn't bear to look at her sitting and shivering and go on coolly asking questions. I spoke to her. ‘This man's got five guineas in his pocket that should belong to you. Get them off him, if you can. If you need help, ask for Miss Lane at Abel Yard.'

But I knew that even if she were hearing me, she wouldn't remember. I stood up.

‘Two last questions for you, Mr Codling. How much were you paid for printing that story and who paid you?'

I waited in case there were answers, but I didn't expect them and didn't get them. So I walked away, Tom following with Tabby close behind. While we'd been talking she'd moved to the neighbouring table and had probably heard and seen everything. I looked back as we left the gardens. Codling was sitting beside the woman. He was holding what was left of the gin to her lips, but it would be cold by now.

‘I'm sorry,' Tom said. ‘If I'd had any idea what he was really like, I shouldn't have let you within a mile of him.'

‘He made it up, didn't he?' I said. ‘Or somebody else did and got him to print it.'

‘Why would anybody do that? Besides, his isn't the only paper running the story. It's all round London.'

‘Then perhaps other people have been paid as well.'

‘I hope you don't think I was.'

‘No. But the further the rumour goes, the stronger it gets, and whoever's spreading it is relying on that.'

‘It was a good point you made about not much room in a chariot,' Tom said.

‘Something more than that. Did you manage a close view of those cuts?'

Tom blushed. ‘Enough to make out what it was.'

‘According to Codling, they were done nearly two weeks ago,' I said. ‘The cuts weren't much deeper than scratches. They'd have scarred over by now and they wouldn't still be bleeding.'

Tom looked puzzled. ‘I reckon he was speaking the truth, for once, when he said she doesn't know what day it is,' he said. ‘She looked drunk to me, and probably drugged as well.'

‘I expect she was,' I said. ‘She'd have needed to be when Codling was cutting her this morning.'

‘What?'

The two of them stopped walking and stared at me.

‘You mean
Codling
put those cuts on her?' Tom said.

‘Yes, or possibly some accomplice, but certainly with his knowledge. Those cuts were made only a few hours ago, some time after he agreed to see us.'

‘The red thing she was wearing,' Tabby said suddenly. ‘It was red so it wouldn't show she'd been bleeding on it.'

‘The chemise, yes. He'd have to agree to pay her something, I suppose, but I don't suppose she'll get more than a guinea in her hand.'

Tom started walking again. ‘So if I hadn't asked to speak to him . . .'

‘It was my fault, not yours. But, yes, he did it because he wanted to back up his story. I'm sure it wouldn't have mattered so much to him on his own account, so he probably got word to whoever paid him in the first place and was told what to do.'

‘But why?'

‘I only wish I knew.'

We walked back together to Abel Mews, where Tom parted from us. Before he left, he stared at the bundles of
The Unbound Briton
, stacked under the stairs.

‘I'd like to tear off those back pages, but then the front ones would go as well and we can't afford the paper to reprint.'

I told him not to worry because his retelling of the story wouldn't make matters any worse. The devil's chariot was out and about and the important question was what it was going to do next.

Tabby sat down on a bundle of newspapers. I settled on another one, weary and sick with myself.

‘It's not a coincidence,' I said.

‘What's a coincidence?'

On the walk back, one of the things going round in my mind was how much to tell Tabby. I didn't understand what was happening but whoever was responsible wouldn't hesitate to kill an urchin girl who asked questions in awkward places. Then I thought she was in too deeply in any case, so the best protection was to tell her everything.

‘For instance, if your birthday and mine were on the same day, that would be a coincidence,' I said.

‘I don't know what day I was born.'

‘When we were looking for Miss Tilbury we happened to hear about the young woman who fell off the Monument. Hearing about it wasn't really a coincidence because we were looking for a young woman so we had to find out if she happened to be our young woman. So the two things were connected. Are you following me so far?'

‘Yes.' She was watching my face, concentrating hard.

‘The young woman who came off the Monument had wet hair and an unusual kind of ring that didn't fit her very well on her wedding finger. It was exactly the same with Miss Tilbury at the Achilles statue – wet hair and a ring that didn't fit, too large in her case and too small in Miss Priest's. I've found out that the two rings were the same design. It was a man with a bull's head.'

‘Like the bull head on the woman's shoulder?'

‘Yes.'

Like, too, the signet ring on the contessa's dressing table. I wasn't ready to tell Tabby about that yet.

‘Another thing,' I said. ‘Janet Priest went missing on the tenth of October. When the man who called himself Mr James came to us, he said Dora had been missing since the previous Thursday. That was the same day. Is that a coincidence?'

‘So the people with the devils' heads and the chariot killed both of them,' Tabby said.

‘Whoa. That's galloping on too fast. We haven't proved any connection between the two women being killed and the chariot.'

‘But it was there both times. Is that a whatdycallit?'

‘There are people claiming to have seen it near where the bodies were discovered, but a few hours before. And we've already proved that people are being paid to spread stories about it, so we don't know what's true and what isn't.'

Tabby thought about it for a while then took a button out of her pocket, showed it to me and rubbed it between her palms.

‘Choose one.'

She held out her two clenched fists to me. I tapped the left one. She opened it. Nothing. She opened the right one. Button. She got me to try it twice more. I was wrong each time.

‘So?' I said.

‘I was with a cove once did the pea and thimble trick. When you know how, you can make people choose wrong.'

It struck me that it was one of the few fragments of autobiography Tabby had ever given me. Also, that I must get her to show me how, one day. For the present, the surprising thing was how closely her instincts matched mine.

‘Looking at the similarities, does anything strike you about where the two women were found?' I said.

‘They was both places where a lot of people would see them.'

‘Exactly! The Monument and the Achilles statue are two of the best known landmarks in the whole of London. A body found in either place would attract much more attention than in a back street somewhere. So that's four similarities: the places, the rings, the day they disappeared and, yes, probably appearance of the chariot.'

‘So it's the same people?'

‘Yes. I think our working assumption must be that they were both killed by the same person or group of people.'

I hesitated about going on to the next thing I needed to tell her. It was so odd and dark that it seemed an unfair burden for a girl of fifteen. But a lot of her young life must have been dark and odd.

‘I was thinking as we walked back, why should it be a bull's head?' I said. ‘I think I've guessed.'

It had come to me as I'd glimpsed the Achilles statue in the distance and shuddered at the memory of it towering apparently in triumph over the dead girl at its base. In my imagination, the head of the statue became transformed from handsome demigod to rampaging bull, a creature from the wildest shores of myth. Jimmy Cuffs had recognized it.

‘There was a story a long time ago about a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull,' I told Tabby. ‘It was called the Minotaur. It lived in the middle of an underground labyrinth—'

‘A what?'

‘A kind of maze, you know, lots of twisty paths where people get lost. Anyway, this bull-monster ate people. There was a city called Athens—'

‘Is that further away than France?'

‘Yes. Listen, every nine years Athens had to send seven young men and seven young women to the island of Crete where the bull-monster lived, as food for it.'

‘Why didn't they all get together and kill it?'

‘Because the old stories don't work like that. They had to wait for a hero. He turned out to be a man called Theseus. He had himself sent to Crete as one of the young men who were supposed to be eaten, found his way to the middle of the labyrinth and killed the monster.'

Tabby nodded her head in approval, but was clearly waiting for me to come to the point.

‘I think there may be some wicked club,' I said. ‘Like the old Hell Fire club, only worse. Those rings on their wedding fingers are the club's mark. We know about two of them, but for all we know there may be others.'

‘And the bullheads on the devil's chariot are all part of that?'

‘Yes.' I admitted it reluctantly. ‘I don't understand how it's linked, but it's all part of the same horrible game. The people involved must have a lot of money to spend.'

Power too, I thought, if they were able to have inquests adjourned indefinitely.

‘So isn't anybody trying to stop them?' Tabby said.

‘I think somebody may be.'

‘Who?'

‘The man who doesn't exist. Our client Jeremy James.'

From her look, Tabby was wondering if I'd gone mad. ‘But if he doesn't exist . . .?'

‘Not in the name or address he gave us. But suppose he'd somehow found out about this club, perhaps even been a member of it, and wanted to stop it. He couldn't go to the police without accusing himself and if the other members found out, he'd be in danger. So he invents a false name for himself and a girl and gets us to investigate. But . . .'

I stopped talking, seeing a snag. Our so-called Mr James had come to see me a week before ‘Dora's' body was found at the Achilles statue. Everything about this case was like trying to grasp handfuls of mist.

‘It doesn't fit. Where was she all that time?'

‘Perhaps they were keeping her shut up somewhere,' Tabby said. ‘The other one too.'

Kept like animals, ready for killing. It fitted. If there were some foul club, with regular meetings, perhaps they did choose their victims in advance.

‘What about their hair?' Tabby said.

Unerringly, she'd picked on the detail that sickened me most.

‘I wonder if there's some horrible ritual involved . . . some sort of ceremony. In the old days, when people sacrificed animals, the poor creatures were supposed to be clean and perfect.'

The picture was in my mind of a scared, helpless girl being forced to bath and wash her hair, having a ring forced on her finger. Tabby nodded again.