Free Snow Hill by Mark Sanderson Page B

stood in a doorway, had a spit and draw, then you came along. Didn’t know it was you, of course. Thought you were a sneak thief. After a bit, when you didn’t come out, I thought I’d better investigate.”
    “Didn’t you see anyone else leave?”
    “No.”
    “Then where’s the person who shut me in?”
    They looked round anxiously. Johnny’s teeth would not stop chattering.
    “Here.” Matt produced a hip-flask. “It used to be my father’s. Only thing that gets me through nights like this.”
    “Don’t get caught.”
    Commissioner Turnbull of the Metropolitan Police had recently sacked two frost-bitten constables forhaving a cup of tea in the street. Turnbull thought he was God and acted accordingly. While his men could be fired for “idling and gossiping”, rumour had it that Turnbull himself got away scot-free after he threw scalding water over his long-suffering wife to “teach her a lesson”.
    “Don’t you worry about me. Stay here. I’ll go and have a butcher’s.”
    “Ha, bloody, ha.” The whisky burned its way to his stomach. “Matt, don’t go. There’s something you should see here first. A porter called Harry Gogg’s been murdered. He’s in there.”
    Matt turned on all the lights in the freezer and, glancing back to check that he was not being had, crossed its threshold. He did not trip as Johnny had.
    Johnny remained shivering on the stone floor and took another sip. He heard Matt take three tentative steps on the duckboards then stop. He did not say a word.
    Johnny pictured the scene back in St Bartholomew-the-Great just twenty-four hours earlier, saw Harry grinning at his frustration, his brown eyes sparkling with life; his brawny body radiating health. Now he was just so much dead meat: his own balls stuffed in his mouth.
    Anger surged through him. Johnny clambered to his feet, wincing at his stiffness, and hobbled over to the door.
    Matt was staring at the corpse. He was no stranger to death: year in, year out children were crushed bycartwheels, workers were mangled by machinery, floaters were fished out of the Thames and tramps found frozen to the ground. Murder, though, was different. It had its own gruesome glamour.
    “Matt?”
    He turned round. Instead of being pale and calm as expected, he was flushed and excited.
    “Did you touch him?” His voice was shaking.
    “Not bloody likely.”
    “Good. You better get out of here now that you can stand on your own two feet. I must report this right away. Should be worth a few brownie points. I can’t believe my luck. My first murder case!”
    “Matt, the boy’s dead. It’s hardly a cause for celebration.”
    “I know that. You don’t have a monopoly on compassion. I’d given up nicking the poor sod. He spent more time in the toilets under the market than he did in it. Being sorry won’t help him now. I want to find out who killed him—and who tried to kill you.” Johnny was shocked. The rent-boy had been nothing like the nancies he usually saw snivelling in the dock.
    “He and an accomplice were paid to take a body to Bart’s early on Sunday morning,” said Johnny, realising for the first time that he had lost his only lead. “He was going to tell me everything. It must have been the dead cop.”
    “Well, you’re wrong there,” said Matt with barely suppressed irritation. “The wolly who got transferred to the Met is called George Aitken. He’s a fine chap—fromAberdeen, I think.” Men were often recruited from outside the capital: farm-hands and soldiers had better lungs than those who had grown up in the Smoke. “We were in the same tug-of-war team. He called me yesterday afternoon to say goodbye. I did warn you that the tip-off sounded dodgy. Just drop it: someone’s pulling your leg.”
    Johnny was surprised—and disappointed. He had been so sure he was on to something.
    “Whose body was it then? Why has someone choked Harry with his own cock?” The very idea made his gorge rise. “And why did