Page 14 of Molly Boys
Jack shook his head.
“What did he look like?” Archie pressed.
“Told ya, big fella. It was too dark to see his face. He wore a big overcoat an’ a hat.” Jack answered with a belligerent scowl. “He came ashore, dumped the man, and left.”
“Did you see which direction he came from? Upriver or down?”
Jack shrugged. “Dunno.”
“Alright then.” Archie released a breath as he let go. He went to give the coin to the boy, but knowing he’d scarper as soon as it pressed into his palm, he once again pulled it back out of the boy’s reach, then glanced up at the sky thoughtfully. “You got someplace warm to sleep tonight, boy? Snow’s coming. You’ll freeze to death if you sleep out here.”
“I ain’t going to the workhouse, I’d rather freeze.” Jack’s eyes narrowed as he glowered at Archie for withholding his penny.
Archie sighed and pulled out a small handful of coins. He counted a few out and slipped the rest into his pocket.
“Get yourself a hot meal and someplace warm to sleep tonight.” He handed them to the boy.
Jack took a step back and looked down in confusion, his fist tightening protectively around the coins. He glanced up at Archie as if he were trying to figure something out. Giving up, he turned to leave but he’d barely taken two steps before he hesitated.
“What?” Archie asked.
Jack’s gaze slid back toward the river. “He ain’t the first,” he muttered.
Archie frowned. “What?”
“He ain’t the first,” he repeated, but before Archie could open his mouth to say anything, Jack spun abruptly and took off down the nearest alley.
Swearing under his breath, Archie ran after him, dodging carts and barrels and people. The boy disappeared around a corner as Archie pushed his legs faster, his breaths coming in fast rasps and his heart pounding as he tried to keep up. He flew around the corner and nearly collided with a man pushing a handcart. Archie skidded around him, clipping his hip on the cart’s edge. He winced and slowed at the sharp pain but tried to keep the boy in his sights.
But as Jack jumped up onto a nearby barrel and skipped lightly along the row of barrels lined against a wall, Archie slid to a halt. His sharp gaze followed as Jack leapt up and grabbed onto a low overhang, pulling himself up onto a tin roof.
Archie leaned over, bracing his hands on his knees. His hip still smarted from the collision with the cart as he tried to catch his breath, knowing there was no way of catching Jack.
He watched as the nimble boy stood on the roof, gripped the window ledge above his head, and scrambled up, then reached across to shimmy up a pipe. Once he’d hauled himself over the edge, he took off across the rooftops and disappeared from view.
No wonder he was called Jack Lightfoot. The boy was as quick and agile as a circus monkey. Shaking his head in annoyance, Archie straightened up and reached into his pocket for the small dented brass fob watch his father had given him.
A sour realisation curdled in his stomach when his hand frantically searched for the object and came up empty. He glanced up at the building where Jack had disappeared and cursed.
Thieving little shit. But even as his temper boiled at the loss of the only thing of value his father had to give him, the boy’s words still churned in his mind.
He ain’t the first…
* * *
It was late afternoon heading into evening by the time Archie arrived at the mortuary. Unlike some of the other mortuaries and dissecting rooms frequented by the medical students, Dr Shaw ran a tight ship and for that Archie was grateful.The last room he’d been forced to endure during the course of a previous investigation was disgusting. Archie had a strong constitution but what he’d seen in that room had turned even his cast-iron stomach.
The walls had been strewn with straw intended to soak up the blood and bodily fluids from the cadavers but had then been left to putrefy, and the fireplace burning in the room to fight off the winter chill only seemed to speed up the decomposition of the corpses being hacked to pieces by gleefully fascinated medical students.
Thankfully, there was nothing like that here. The room Archie entered was tiled and scrubbed ruthlessly clean, with windows in the roof above them that were opened a crack to allow air to circulate and could be manipulated at will by a clever system of rigs and pulleys.
A deep sink stood in the corner and in the centre of the room sat a table containing the body they’d retrieved from the banks of the Thames. Neatly organised rows of medical equipment and bottles of chemicals were lined up on a long table situated against one wall, and a thin metal trolley stood beside the covered body.
“Ah, there you are, Inspector. Right on time.” Dr Shaw looked up at Archie’s entrance. “The body’s now thawed out sufficiently to begin the autopsy. I was just waiting for my new assistant.”
“New?” Archie replied. “What happened to the last one?”
“He got married and moved on, was offered a position at a hospital in Leeds.” Shaw scratched his jaw. “I’m now mentoring a medical student from the university. His father’s an engineer and a friend of mine back in my own student days. He’s in India with his wife and daughters, supervising the extension of the railway between Bombay and Calcutta, so I agreed to take the boy under my wing.” Shaw chatted away amiably as Archie nodded. “Ah, here he is now.”