Page 43 of Word of the Wicked (Murder in Moonlight #5)
D rayman and his companions lurked in the shadows surrounding the Crown and Anchor, which was far too lit up for his liking.
There were no streetlamps in this dingy corner, but since the murder, there were two lanterns and a policeman placed on the rubbly little square of waste ground to the side of it.
The policeman paced miserably, occasionally thumping his hands together for warmth.
Drayman nudged his companions. “Take him inside and make sure he stays there. Then come back out.” He already knew Johnny was not inside the pub, for he’d already been in to look. He’d no intention of allowing Johnny over the door either, for there should be no witnesses but his own to this murder.
Draymen’s companions grunted and brushed past him, emerging into the faint light emanating from the Crown and Anchor. They did a fair job of pretending to see the peeler for the first time.
“Here, mate, what you skulking over there for? Freezing yourself to death!”
“Duty,” the policeman said with a large sniff. He already had a cold.
“Ain’t right, is it? Come on inside for five minutes. What’s going to happen in that time? Come to that, what good’s it doing the poor bugger what croaked here to have you watching the place now? You’ll learn more inside. We’ll help.”
The man held out, but not very convincingly and not for very long.
He was soon whisked inside the pub with his solicitous companions.
Drayman didn’t much care if they slid a knife between his ribs while he was in there, though it might be better if they didn’t, considering Johnny was meant to be the murderer around here.
There were other ways to keep a man inside a public house against his better judgment.
Drayman let a man walk past him and out of sight. Then he darted to the waste ground next to the pub and quickly doused both lanterns.
*
Solomon, having abandoned his hackney, approached the Crown and Anchor on foot.
He almost didn’t see it, for the sky and the air were murky and only the faintest of lights emanated from the public house’s windows.
He had rather hoped for the presence of a policeman on watch, whom he intended to speak to on his way inside, but he must have been taken off duty.
Still, Solomon doubted the police had given up on the case.
From Omand’s visit to David earlier today, they were still very much looking for Drayman.
And if Constance had succeeded, there were already several stout plainclothes policemen waiting inside. Like the night at the gaming club where he had first seen Constance…
Mind on the task, Grey, he chided himself, for he needed to be sharp now and aware of every inch of his surroundings. Twenty policemen couldn’t save him if he let Drayman creep up too close behind him…
Instinct caused him to give the patch of waste ground a wide berth—rightly so, for surely a patch of the darkness was blacker than the rest, just in against the wall of the building?
A man-shaped figure loomed forward. “Johnny.”
Damnation . This was not how he had planned it.
Solomon stopped and gazed at the man, who seemed to be dressed in similar fashion to himself. “Drayman.”
“Don’t stand over there bawling my name to all and sundry.”
“Let’s go inside, then. Bloody freezing out here.”
“That your thin African blood complaining again?” Drayman mocked.
“Yes.” Solomon walked on toward the door.
“There’s a rozzer in there,” Drayman remarked. “It’s now or never, Johnny. Want the watch? Or not?”
The best laid plans of mice and men … There was nothing for it but to swerve toward the waste ground, though Solomon moved slowly, trying to keep to David’s more relaxed posture while his senses reached out, searching for the trap.
His skin prickled. He could smell tobacco and humanity—but how many men?
Drayman was confident enough to have come alone. It was how he’d faced Chase and killed him. Johnny, though younger and fitter, was probably not known as a violent man.
Solomon halted several feet away. “Show me.”
“Can I trust you, Johnny?”
“I keep my word. I just need to be out of this country. You can understand that. Show me.”
In the darkness, Solomon could make out the other man’s movement, fishing in his rustling pocket. Slowly, he drew out something that actually glittered. A watch on the end of a chain.
“It’s engraved,” Drayman said, holding it out to him. “But you can melt it down.”
Throw it, Solomon wanted to command, but he didn’t, because he needed to be close enough to Drayman to catch him. Where the devil were Constance’s policemen?
As he took a wary step forward, the back of his neck tingled.
Someone was behind him. He stepped aside, trying to avoid the trap for as long as possible.
In the distance, some kind of riot seemed to be going on, because he could hear muffled shouts of song and galloping hooves.
Hardly the saviors he was looking for. Rather, a distraction for the police that could ruin everything.
“Nervous, Johnny?” Drayman said. “You was always highly strung, as the captain put it.” He spat on the ground.
“I was ill. Talked a lot of rubbish, so they tell me.”
“Seems you still talk too much. Do you want this or don’t you?”
It was why he was here. But some witness, preferably a policeman, had to see Drayman giving him the watch.
“What’d you kill him for, anyway?” Solomon asked, for it had suddenly struck him that the presence behind could be the police he was waiting for. Or not.
“Revenge,” Drayman said. “He was supposed to be dead already. I should know. I paid for it. That, and I didn’t like him. Never liked you much either, Johnny.”
Solomon took a step nearer.
Two more shadows emerged from the wall, on either side of Drayman. Outside of Solomon’s field of vision, the riot seemed to be coming closer, the horses’ hooves growing louder, along with the rumbling of wheels. Bizarre…
But the knife in Drayman’s other hand focused his mind. The two accomplices, large and exuding considerable experience in violence, moved forward and to the side, trying to hem Solomon in. He was running out of time.
“You’re trying to palm me off with the brass watch,” Solomon said. “He’d never have brought the gold one to this place.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Johnny-boy. Finish it, lads. I’m cold.”
All three of them advanced on Solomon now, forcing him to step back and adjust his position so he wasn’t encircled. He tensed, ready to meet the attack—and a movement behind caused him to spin to deal with that attack first.
The darkness was almost impenetrable, and yet Solomon knew immediately. No policeman, no thug. Just his brother. Just as it used to be.
“Idiot,” he breathed, facing the onslaught.
“Looby,” David returned.
It had given their attackers pause, but only for an instant, for the fight was still three to two in their favor. They charged.
Drayman came straight for him, wielding the watch like a mace and the knife like a sword.
Solomon sidestepped the blade and kicked him in the stomach, narrowly missing the flying watch that whizzed past his ear.
The other man barged into him and they both staggered backward.
David and the third man were swaying together like wrestlers. Or dancers.
Solomon recovered his balance, took an agonizing blow to his side, and crashed his fist into the man’s chin.
He dropped like a stone, but Drayman was on him again, seizing him by the throat, knife raised for the kill.
Solomon lashed out, landing a punch, but he couldn’t quite hook his foot around the man’s ankles to bring him down.
He had to grab Drayman’s wrist to prevent the blade plunging into him.
And then the riot swerved around the corner in a blaze of light and noise.
The vignette of the fight outside the squalid building was lit up like a stage.
A huge cheer went up from the newcomers, some of whom seemed to be wearing silk hats as they spilled of a hackney carriage and two Black Marias, only one of which seemed to be driven by a uniformed and confused policeman.
This strange army, wielding canes and leather flasks with monogramed gold plaques, charged toward them, led by Constance Silver, her skirts billowing as she flung herself into Solomon’s arms with such force that she knocked him out of Drayman’s weakened hold, and they fell together.
There was an instant when she stared into his eyes, her own shining with fear and…fun?
“Are you hurt?” she whispered, which at least galvanized Solomon into action.
“He’s got a knife!” Solomon yelled in warning to the men who seemed to be burying Drayman beneath them.
“No he hasn’t,” said the confused constable, who stooped and picked the fallen weapon off the ground. Drayman must have dropped it in shock as Constance cannoned into them.
Solomon rolled to the side and jumped up, dragging Constance with him, and reached for David, who stood on his other side, panting, but dusting off his hands as though pleased with a day’s work.
Solomon gripped his shoulder, and David answered with a nod. Both Drayman’s thugs lay sprawled and semiconscious on the ground. The heap of young men, stinking of alcohol, were grinning at each other. The one at the top waved an open flask.
“Who the devil …?” Solomon began, just as a third Black Maria sped around the corner, spilling out uniformed policemen with clubs, even before it stopped.
“Or-der!” Constance yelled at the top of her lungs, and to Solomon’s amazement, the men on top of Drayman began to untangle themselves.
The policemen, finding no resistance, skidded to a halt and lowered their clubs, staring as the young men dragged themselves upright and moved aside, gradually revealing the clearly winded figure of Abel Drayman clutching the chain of a still-attached watch that glinted in the lantern light.
“Ruffian was attacking the lady’s friends,” one of the young men said.