Free The Black Book of Secrets by F E Higgins Page A

gradually become more solid in
the body, rather like a bull, and his thick hairless forearms
were shaped like two shanks of lamb. His skin was the
colour of hung meat, a sort of creamy blue, and of similar
texture. His face was long and his nostrils flared and his
brown eyes surveyed his surroundings with mild interest.
The tips of his fingers were thick and blunted; for a man
who made his living working with knives he was surprisingly
careless.

    Horatio wiped his bloodied palms on his greying striped
apron and greeted Joe with a pleasant ‘Good afternoon’ and
a nervous smile. He nodded in the direction of the fleeing
children.
    ‘I should make sausages out of them,’ he joked, theblades of his knives glittering in the lamplight. Outside
Ludlow shuddered at the sight.
    Joe laughed politely. ‘Let me introduce myself,’ he said.
‘I am Joe Zabbidou—’
    ‘The p-p-pawnbroker,’ interrupted Horatio.
    Joe responded with a small bow.
    ‘You’re up in the old milliner’s shop. I hope you do
better than Betty P-p-peggotty.’
    Joe raised his left eyebrow quizzically.
    ‘She made hats,’ continued Horatio, blowing on his
huge red hands. The temperature in the shop was only
marginally higher than outside. ‘Very expensive, mind.
P-p-peacock plumes, ostrich feathers, silk flowers and all
that sort of thing. Not to my taste. Too fancy. Me, I like a
p-p-plain hat.’ He touched his white butcher’s cap proudly
and left specks of gristle on the brim.
    ‘So I see.’
    ‘She couldn’t make any money so she went to the City,
to run an alehouse, I believe.’ He secured a piece of pork to
the counter with the heel of his hand and hacked at it
absent-mindedly with a knife.
    ‘Wrong location, see. Too far up that cursed hill. No
one goes up that end these days unless they’re laid out in abox. Even then they have to be p-p-pulled up. Takes six
horses. And the noise of that coffin on the cobbles! Would
wake the dead.’ He stopped, knife in mid-air, to laugh at his
own joke.
    ‘They come up to me,’ said Joe.
    ‘So I’ve heard. Well, maybe you’ll have more luck than
she did.’
    ‘Jeremiah Ratchet thinks not.’
    Horatio spat with contempt into the sawdust.
    ‘Didn’t take him long to stick his oar in.’
    ‘He said he was a businessman.’
    ‘P-p-pah!’ exclaimed Horatio. ‘That slimy toad. I’ll
wager he’s made a deal or two with the devil in his time.
He lives off the backs of the p-p-poor. Lending money,
then taking all they have when they can’t p-p-pay it back.
Throwing them out of their homes for the sake of a few
days’ rent. He’ll bleed this village dry. No wonder he got
on so well with my father; they were cut from the same
cloth.’
    He brought down his knife with a tremendous crash,
sending a huge pork chop spiralling into the air and over the
counter. Joe caught it with lightning speed.
    He looked straight into the butcher’s sad eyes andthough Horatio wanted to look away, for some reason he
couldn’t. His ears filled with a soft noise, like wind through
trees, and he felt his legs go weak. His deadened fingertips
seemed to have developed pins and needles.
    ‘You sound like a man who needs to get something off
his chest,’ said Joe quietly. ‘Come up to the shop tonight.
Maybe I can help.’
    ‘I doubt it,’ replied Horatio slowly, mesmerized by Joe’s
gaze.
    Joe was insistent. ‘After midnight, so no one knows.’
    ‘Perhaps.’
    ‘Excellent,’ said Joe smiling broadly and breaking the
spell. ‘Until then.’
    ‘What about my p-p-pork chop?’
    ‘I’ll have it for my supper,’ said Joe. ‘I’ll pay you later,
when you come up.’

    The church bell sounded midnight as Horatio pulled his
coat closer and raised his fist to the door. The pale half-moon
watched quietly as he dithered, in two minds
whether to knock. He hadn’t meant to come and he didn’t
really understand why he was here, but as midnightapproached his restless feet had taken him out of the door
and up the