Free Horatio Lyle by Catherine Webb Page A

They always work together.’ He straightened up and looked down sadly at the body. ‘Get it to the mortuary - and make sure only Nurse Marie is allowed to touch it, all right?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘And . . . ’ Lyle hesitated, then shook his head. ‘No.’
    ‘Sir?’
    ‘You might want to think about searching the rest of the river.’
    ‘Why’s that, sir?’
    ‘As I said, Gordon Carwell never worked alone.’
    A little later, Lyle climbed back up from the river looking weary, and at the top stood slowly dripping damp mud from the bottom of his trousers on to his filthy shoes. For the first time he seemed to become aware of this. He gave a deep sigh, then put a hand on Tess’s shoulder and on Thomas’s and said, ‘Come on.’
    ‘Where we goin’ now?’
    ‘The Bank broken into and Carwell dead in the river? Too much of a coincidence.’
    ‘So where are we goin’, Mister Lyle?’
    ‘To find a blood trail.’
    The crowd opened around Lyle, Tess, Thomas and Tate without a care, the living not as interesting as the dead, and closed again behind them, absorbing them without a thought. Tate wove through a forest of shoes and feet, aware that his ears were in peril, his nose twitching nervously, overwhelmed by the smell of the river, the fish in the wharves, salt and tar and soot and coal and, oddly, just a touch of ginger biscuit.
    It took a good five minutes to find a cab, Lyle protesting all the way that there’s never one when you want one, and things weren’t like that when he was a lad. The inside of the cab smelt of old leather, battered wooden seats and too much time in stables, until, finally, the tired cab horse raised its head, turned, and they rattled away from the almost heedless crowd.
    Almost heedless, because it takes just one exception to disprove a rule.
    Someone watched them go.

CHAPTER 5
    Carwell
    It took them forty minutes to find what Lyle was looking for, in a quiet side-street near the church of St Anne. In the middle of the road, too narrow for the press of traffic that swarmed around St Paul’s, and overshadowed with bakeries and tailors competing for space to serve the local merchants’ hall, Tate suddenly stopped and began to bark. Lyle picked his way through the horse manure that liberally littered the centre of the street, and smiled when he saw what was causing Tate so much dismay. ‘Here it is.’
    Thomas scurried over, eager to see. He looked at the cobbles and saw only a darker brown stain that reminded him of spilt cough mixture. ‘What is it?’
    ‘Blood,’ said Lyle with some satisfaction.
    Tess sniffed suspiciously. ‘Could’ve come from the meat goin’ to market up at Smithfield, Mister Lyle.’
    ‘Good thought, if unwelcome,’ he sighed. ‘I can prove it, though.’ He squatted carefully next to the stain in the street, while passers-by gave him looks of deep mistrust. Thomas started to feel uncomfortable, hoping that no one in this mixture of hawkers, and merchants going to the halls, would recognize him or, worse, report him to his father.
    The thought of his father brought a brief pang of guilt, followed by a sharper pang as he realized this was the first thought he’d had of his father since he ’d followed Lyle. For a second he wondered if he would ever see his father again, or if he was going to be kidnapped, dragged down to the docks and sold into slavery or murdered for his wealth or replaced by an evil twin who would steal his fortune while he was condemned to a life of servitude and . . .
    ‘Thomas, you might be interested in this.’
    Lyle had produced from his pocket a small handful of tubes. He chose one that looked no different from the others, except for a small red dot on the top of the glass, shook it vigorously, thumbed the cork off the top and carefully tipped a few drops on to the brown stain. Immediately, the cobbles beneath it started to hiss. A thick, smelly white smoke rose up from the ground and all three backed off quickly as it