Free Mayhem by Sarah Pinborough Page A

proceed.
    ‘We’ll come back this evening and continue,’ he said, gruffly. The dog, his job done, was now more intent on getting his master’s attention than digging further. ‘But we will conduct the search in secret, do you understand?’ He glanced at Waring. ‘That is as much for you as them. No news reporters drawing attention to us, and I want none of the workmen to know we’re here. Our killer might be among their number.’
    ‘The fog will hide us,’ Andrews said. ‘And I’ll keep the number here to a minimum.’
    ‘Good,’ Moore said. Not that they needed a minimum; all they needed, it appeared, was the bloody dog.

12
    London. October, 1888
    Dr Bond
    I was not in the best of spirits on arrival back at the Scotland Yard worksite, but the strangeness of my own mood was only enhanced by the atmosphere I found there. It was eerie: when people spoke, it was only in hushed whispers, and through the thick night fog the few policemen Moore had with him moved like ghosts, here and there and gone as they let Charles and myself into the unformed building.
    Candles lit our way back down to the vault and in that oppressive underground room those spread against the walls and in the corners seemed only to exacerbate the darkness of the shadows. I shivered, and not entirely from the cold.
    ‘This is the dog, then?’ I asked. It was a pointless question, but I felt the need to break the silence with something other than a whisper.
    The small terrier was pacing a little, his tail down, and I wondered if he too felt that the air tonight was somehow unnatural. He looked up at us and whined, and then growled.
    ‘I don’t think he likes the dark,’ Moore said. ‘He’s notas confident tonight.’ He leaned down and patted the creature’s head, a gesture I found surprising, having never taken Moore for an affectionate man. There was something essentially practical about him. He was by all accounts an excellent detective, but I doubted he was ever personally affected by the cases presented to him. Or perhaps that was too sweeping a judgement. If he were emotionally affected, then I felt he dealt with such reactions far better than some – myself included, of late.
    The dog whined again, and Moore released him from his lead. ‘Let’s see what you can find this time,’ he said. ‘Bring me the head and you’ll be an inspector by morning.’
    Moore’s gruffness was soothing in this strange environment which hinted constantly at things just out of sight. I couldn’t help but remember the strange vision I had had under the influence of the opium, where there had been something looming in the darkness. I shook it away, not only for the vision itself, but for the opium itch it brought with it.
    ‘Here he goes,’ Charles muttered as the dog wandered here and there, his nose to the ground, his short legs trembling slightly. Charles seemed unaffected by the almost supernatural atmosphere we stood in, and I wished I could be as sanguine as he, and shake off my own personal exhaustion and melancholy. The past week or more had been busy – we’d had the inquest for the torso which had beenrotting unnoticed so close to where I now stood, and then the wasted time of the boiled bones found on the railway tracks – at first they had looked like evidence of further gruesome murder, but once I had had time to examine them I was left in no doubt that they were clearly those of a bear. The reporters had been disappointed at that news, and I found myself wondering at the feverish excitement for blood that had filled the streets of the city this year.
    The dog reached Charles’ feet and growled slightly, jumping back.
    ‘These feet are very much not what you’re looking for,’ Charles said, as he stepped back towards the wall to give the dog more space, and a flutter of a laugh passed around us all. At Mary’s insistence I had dined twice more that week with Charles and his family, and had been glad to find my friend in much