A Coldblooded Scoundrel Read online

  A Coldblooded Scoundrel

  JoAnne Soper-Cook

  Introduction

  Scotland Yard Inspector Philip Devlin's past comes back to haunt him when a series of gruesome murders unsettles Victorian London, and most especially the Yard. Why does the killer single out Devlin for his game of cat and mouse? Is his killing spree something personal?

  Interwoven into the suspense of this story is a generous dose of humour, provided by the warm-hearted Devlin himself, as well as his motley group of assistants, amongst them a charmingly inept, infatuated constable, a pair of elegant graverobbers and a couple of free-thinking sapphites, all of whom have a colourful history and personality of their own.

  Join JoAnne Soper-Cook's eccentric characters on the killer's trail through clammy London streets, wild clubs, secret societies and country inns.

  One

  It never got any easier. Inspector G. Phillip Devlin, standing with his head bared to the pouring rain, tried to remember - not for the first time - why he was here. Of course it was tradition, and a custom of his, almost a punishment of sorts, that he turn up here every year on this date and reflect upon her grave, to remember. It was ten years since the fire - since she fell to her death trying to escape the flames, the certainty of her own mortality. Ten years, and every year he made himself come here and remember her, even though it nearly killed him. If only he'd been quicker, if only he'd done more to save her, if only he'd been able to dissuade the other one, the one who'd doused her clothing in alcohol spirits, the one who swore he'd 'set the little bitch afire.'

  Of course Devlin had failed, and Elizabeth Hobbs had died - another victim of another crime, all in a day's work for a police inspector, yes, yes.

  He still saw her face in his dreams, and relived the occasion of her death in his nightmares. He would never be free of it - it was his fault that she had died, because he hadn't been enough of a policeman to stop the deadly cycle of events. He could never forgive himself for that, for the gross omission of his duties.

  He put on his hat, knelt down as he usually did and pressed his lips to the cold, cold stone. "I'm sorry." He could hardly force the words past the lump in his throat, and even though he was alone in the cemetery, he was grateful for the driving October rain that effectively hid his tears. Anything, he thought, was easier than this. Anything at all.

  He hailed a cab just outside the cemetery gates and climbed inside, his mind curiously empty of sensation. His gloved hands lay in his lap, nerveless, and his dark eyes gazed openly at nothing at all. For the duration of the ride back to Scotland Yard, he deliberately concentrated on the sense of emptiness - he knew if he didn't, he would weep again, and that would never do.

  "Sir?" Constable Lewis stood a respectful distance from Devlin's desk - as thick as he was throughout, even Lewis knew that Devlin was not himself today, and he hesitated to push where he knew he was not wanted. He cleared his throat and began again: "Sir?"

  "Yes?" Devlin had been staring at the pile of paper on his desk for half an hour, willing his mind into activity, but so far he'd had no luck. He felt old today - old and tired, worn out and used-up. He'd have to stop going to the cemetery, he thought - it wasn't doing him any good, and it certainly wasn't doing Elizabeth Hobbs any good, seeing how she'd been in the ground this ten years and her murderer gone free on a technicality because of his aristocratic blood and his family's goddamned money.

  "I thought you'd like some tea, sir. Bloody wet and cold out there today." Lewis laid down a thick mug of the steaming brew and stood back again. The inspector still hadn't moved so much as an inch, was still occupied with his internal considerations, whatever they were. Lewis hoped to be an inspector himself, someday, and he wondered precisely what sorts of things men like Devlin were wont to think about - but Lewis was a mere twenty-two to Devlin's thirty-five, and could have no real idea.

  Devlin blinked, seeming to draw himself back from a great distance, and stared at Lewis as if he'd just then materialised from out of the floor. "What?" He scratched his head in a distracted manner, further disturbing his hair which, when wet, tended to arrange itself into astonishing cowlicks and curlicues which were not at all germane to the habitual dignity of a Yard inspector.

  Lewis allowed himself the hint of a smile - he liked it when Devlin allowed himself to become just that little bit disarranged, because, truth be told, Lewis fancied his superior and thought that Devlin was, if not exactly handsome in a conventional sense, one of the most attractive men he'd ever had the privilege to know. But he'd never repeat this to Devlin - it simply wasn't done for constables to mingle with their superiors, and anyway, there remained the thorny problem of the Act. There was no getting round that, and who wanted to end up in Reading Gaol for the price of a weekend bit of slap-and-tickle with a fetching police inspector...a police inspector who looked younger than his thirty- five years and whose dark hair held an auburn gleam when the light was just so, and whose deep brown eyes with their long lashes were, well, quite lovely. Lewis sighed gently.

  "Something wrong, Constable?" Devlin picked up the tea and examined it intently before bringing the mug to his mouth and sipping it with great enjoyment.

  "No, sir." Lewis withdrew a piece of paper from underneath his left elbow and passed it across the desk to Devlin. "Thought you might want to see this, sir."

  Devlin took the paper and examined it carefully. "I am down on whores," he read aloud, "and I shan't quit ripping them - " He tossed the paper onto the growing pile at the front of his desk and treated Lewis to a look of utter contempt. "For the love of God!" he said. "The Ripper case has been done, Freddie!" It behooved Devlin, at a time like this, to use the diminutive of Constable Lewis's first name. "Where did you dig this up, eh? Been foraging in the rubbish bins again?" He sat back and pressed his fingers against his eyes, still sore and gritty from a sleepless night.

  "It's not left over from the Ripper, sir - course not, that was two years ago." Lewis shifted his not inconsiderable weight to his other foot and regarded Devlin with a weather eye. "Just came in this morning. Young lad brought it round, he did. Said to give it to Inspector Devlin."

  Devlin was too old and too experienced to allow himself the luxury of a wide-eyed expression of shock - but something deep inside him recoiled from the cold, blunt fist of anguish that always struck him whenever he remembered the Ripper. He fumbled in his desk for his cigarettes, struck a match with rather more of a flourish than was strictly necessary, and hoped Lewis didn't notice the overt shaking of his hands.

  But Lewis had. "You alright, sir?"

  Devlin treated him to a withering look. "Of course I'm alright, Freddie!" He drew hard on his cigarette. "Didn't sleep well last night," he muttered.

  Of course, Freddie Lewis reasoned, Devlin had been sleeping alone, in his admittedly mean accommodations, with no one to comfort him...no one to take him into their arms at night and hold him, trace the lines of his lean face with love and compassion and perhaps, just as dawn was lightening the inspector's rooms, coax him into a little bit of the old rumpy-pumpy. It was to Freddie Lewis's credit that his internal dialogue still retained more than a passing familiarity with his working-class origins. He'd have never called it "making love" or even "fucking", the way Devlin was wont to do. Such talk would have been giving himself airs.

  "Sorry to hear that, sir." Lewis refused to meet Devlin's eyes, and fixed his gaze stolidly on the worn carpet between his feet.

  "Mind your own bloody business!" Devlin snapped, and instantly regretted it. "Look, Freddie - " He sighed noisily, allowed his gaze to rest upon the tall young constable. Freddie Lewis looked like something off a Peak Freans tin, if you caught him in the right light, or else an hyperbolic illust
ration of "The Glories of the Empire". Freddie Lewis was a shade over six feet tall, with long bones that in another man might have been lanky and ungainly. His hair was a particular shade of curly blond, lighter at the ends, as if he'd just now got back from a holiday in the South Seas. His eyes were brown, but not the deep, nearly-black of Devlin's own - Freddie's eyes were the colour of warm hazelnut cream, and his careful mouth always managed to retain the hint of a smirk. In another set of circumstances, Freddie might have felt at home in the crimson uniform of one of the Foot battalions - he had that sort of bearing. Devlin had no idea how Freddie had managed to become a Peeler.

  " - I'm not sure what we've got, exactly," Devlin managed to say. He took another sip of his tea - by God, how did Freddie know he liked it just this way? A hint of sugar, generous amounts of milk - and wondered when the throbbing in his skull was going to subside. "You've got to keep an eye out for these kinds of copycats - every man-jack on the docks fancies himself some sort of dark character, if only for the pleasure of his own vanity." It was one of the longest speeches Devlin had ever made, and it exhausted him.

  "Beggin' your pardon, Inspector - " Devlin's pardon was effectively begged by a very junior constable from downstairs, with startling orange hair and a veritable blizzard of freckles. " - the Chief says he's wantin' to see yer in his office, like."

  "Did he say what it was about?" Devlin could have bitten off his tongue - here was this morning's first breach of protocol, following hard on the heels of a hellish beginning in the cemetery. Of course this urchin had no idea - how could he?

  "No idea, sir. Said for me to fetch you." The lad sketched a quick glance at Lewis and scuttled away down the corridor like a startled land crab.

  "Think it's about the note?" Lewis shot a look at Devlin. "Or perhaps Old Brassie's got his knickers in a twist again."

  "Constable - " Devlin sounded a warning note: he, like all the others, knew Sir Neville Alcock's nickname among the force, but that didn't mean he had to countenance its use among the junior officers. " - don't let me hear you say it again." The term 'Brassie' had been coined by some semi- literate wag in Special Branch, who thought that a man with a surname like 'All Cock' must have a nether member made of brass. Of course the name had stuck, to the merriment of all concerned, and even those youngest of the constables who were just entering the service were necessarily briefed on its proper uses and abuses. Devlin paused to straighten his necktie and attempted to smooth down his hair with the aid of his palms, but to no effect. He glanced at himself in the small shaving mirror mounted over his filing cabinet: tired eyes, face too pale from lack of sleep, shoulders already sagging even though it was barely eleven in the morning.

  "You look fine, sir." Lewis appeared behind him, smiling gently. "Perfectly alright." Privately, he remarked to himself that Devlin needed a good sleep, a hot bath and a hot meal and then a bloody good rogering, not necessarily in that order.

  Devlin's eyes met those of the constable in the mirror, and for a moment something indefinable passed between them, something wistful and sweet. "I should be about an hour, depending - " Devlin tossed this off over his shoulder as he flew out the door. "Make another pot of tea!"

  Freddie Lewis grinned, and set about doing just that.

  Sir Neville Alcock was huge - not plump or merry or even well fleshed, but huge, enormous, a vast rolling bulk of a man with a belly the approximate size of some larger species of barrel. His hands were little, fat and doughy as suet, and his head sat atop the great mound of his body like a Jack-o-Lantern. All in all, he seemed to be composed of several intersecting spheres, rather like a snowman. "Devlin."

  Devlin sagged visibly. Sir Neville could manage to fit more disappointment into the two syllables of the inspector's name than most people did; surely this couldn't be good news. "Sir?" He took the glass of brandy that Sir Neville offered, took care not to quaff it too hastily, and sat down at Sir Neville's indication that he should do so.

  "The Ripper." It was another feature of Sir Neville's not-inconsiderable personality that he flittered out bits of news in short, staccato bursts, rather like burps - or, as Freddie Lewis was wont to say, like hen farts. Devlin made a mental note to speak to Lewis. "We've had strange happenings of late, Devlin."

  "Like what, sir?" Devlin gazed into the brandy, warming the glass between his palms. Odd how, in certain light, the glossy liquid retained the colour of flame -

  I'll set her on fire! I'll send the little bitch to Hell! You see if I don't do it! Devlin jerked backwards so violently that some of the brandy sloshed onto the leg of his trousers.

  "Devlin, are you quite alright?" Sir Neville was staring at him, irritated that his monologue had been so interrupted.

  "Quite, sir. Please - go on." He willed his quivering nerves to still themselves, looked away from the brandy in his glass. It wouldn't do if he were to go to pieces after all this time, and it had been ten years...ten years since he'd stood in that empty flat in Crutchley Road and tried to bargain with a madman. See if I don't do it! The images presented themselves one after the other, a parade of mental photographs: Elizabeth Hobbs, fourteen years old and already habituated to the streets - a whore, a common doxy, procured long ago by someone who'd wanted a taste of virgin flesh and was willing to pay for it. She wasn't the first of her kind, and Devlin knew she wouldn't be the last - but here was someone with a specific grudge against her, a customer who'd paid his money and had his fun, but got something else in the bargain. Devlin wasn't sure how long it took syphilitics to die. Perhaps Elizabeth had already been so far-gone that her murderer had been doing her a favour - no, that was too easy. Devlin shook his head.

  "So you don't agree - that's good. I knew I could count on you." Sir Neville heaved his bulk up out of the chair and went to look out the window, feigning nonchalance.

  Devlin wondered what, exactly, he'd disagreed with, but the conversation was too far gone for him to start back-pedalling now. "Quite so, sir." He cleared his throat. "So I'll bring some of the constables into it, as well?"

  Sir Neville turned and glared at him. "Goddammit, man! Weren't you listening?" His fat hands worked awkwardly at the air directly in front of his chest. "I want to keep it quiet, I told you - find out where this letter came from and if it's genuine, or if some copycat in Chiswick or Brixton thinks to have himself some fun."

  Devlin sagged with relief. "Right," he said, with as much crispness as he could muster. "I'll get on it immediately, sir." He laid down the brandy glass and stood, eager to make his exit and grateful that he'd been able to effectively avoid any awkwardness over his small gaffe, his inattention. He was within blessed sight of the doorway when -

  "Oh, Devlin - "

  Devlin composed his face into appropriate lines before turning round. "Sir?"

  "Er...my wife is having a little tea dance on Saturday next - "

  Devlin stifled a groan by driving his teeth forcibly into his bottom lip.

  " - and she wanted me to invite you and young Lewis."

  Devlin had a momentary vision: being wheeled gracefully around the room in Lewis's grip, to the strains of a violin, a cello or two -

  "My daughter Phoebe will be there - she's been at her auntie's in Swansea these three months, and I know she will want to make your acquaintance." Sir Neville paused, wrinkling his walrus-like moustache. "Not, er...married, are you, Devlin?"

  "No, sir - that is to say, not yet." Devlin coughed - he was about as near to marriage as Gibraltar was to the South Pole. "But it's definitely in my future plans, sir."

  Damn!

  "Ah...well, you will want to meet my Phoebe, then." Devlin imagined what this paragon must look like: four feet tall and five feet wide, with great rolls of fat barely concealed beneath some hideous haute couture creation. Perhaps there was a way to escape what seemed to be his preordained fate - he might arrange to have Freddie Lewis push him over the Tower Bridge. The foetid water of the Thames would kill him instantly.

  "Thank you, sir." Dev
lin took his leave as gracefully as quickness would allow.

  At least old Brassie would see to it that Lewis had to suffer, right along with his favourite inspector. This in itself was enough to draw Inspector Devlin's lean face into a smile.

  Two

  I'm going to burn her like she's burned me! The sulphurous smell of the lit match, illuminating the small rooms - Devlin drew hard on his cigarette and went to push open one of his windows. Not sleeping again, he thought wryly - haven't slept properly for ten bloody years, now. At times like these, he was glad he lived alone, for there was no one to see or comment on his bizarre hours, or the fact that he sometimes started up out of a sound sleep, a scream of horror dying in his throat.

  He rubbed his hand over his tired face, his fingers scraping on stubble, and leaned against the windowsill. The night air was cold, but it was a good cold, and it helped to blow the nasty dreams out of his head, the ones that came just as he was falling asleep, when his ability to tell fact from illusory deception was deadened by exhaustion. He wondered what Freddie Lewis was doing, this time of night - the mantel clock said it was just gone eleven-thirty. Did Freddie have friends that he went out with, drinking in the pubs or chasing pretty little doxies in the Piccadilly Circus? It was hard to imagine him sitting at home, and yet Devlin knew that Freddie had a widowed mother and a younger sister entirely in his charge. What did a lad like Freddie do on cool October nights, when his daylight duties were all effectively discharged?