A Coldblooded Scoundrel Read online

  Right at that moment, Freddie Lewis was in a pub, but not the sort of pub that Devlin might have imagined, and it wasn't doxies he was chasing. Well, Freddie admitted, he wasn't chasing anyone tonight, which wasn't like him - he wondered if he had lost his touch. No, he thought, as he brought his cigarette to his lips, it wasn't that - his mind was entirely on Inspector Devlin.

  The inspector hadn't been himself today, and Freddie wondered what that had to do with, or whether Devlin was sick, or merely tired and overworked. The warm brown eyes creased with tender mirth as Freddie imagined myriad ways of making his dear inspector feel much better - things Devlin had probably never thought of, much less heard of.

  "Freddie, you raddled old whore - all alone tonight?" Dennis Dalziel tapped him on the shoulder as he went past, in company with an elegant man that bore a certain resemblance to the solicitor, Reginald Harker - but it couldn't be. The older man turned and gave Freddie a wink, and a delicious smile, before disappearing into the evening with Dennis. Thank God for the Peacock, Freddie thought, not without chagrin, for no one of his persuasion was truly safe in London these days, not since the Act. He shuddered, stubbing out his cigarette with an expression of distaste. Even the Peacock Club could, on times, be a most unsavoury venue for a young man who simply wanted the company of his own kind....

  He wondered if Devlin was sleeping. Probably not. He checked his watch: a quarter to midnight. Was Devlin asleep? And if so, would it be utterly criminal to wake him? Freddie sighed aloud - what in God's name would he say, once he'd got to Devlin's house? 'I was sitting in this club I go to, called the Peacock? It's a sort of molly house - and I kept thinking about you and I wondered if you'd mind a little bit of Bob's-your-uncle before bedtime....' Christ. Not bloody likely.

  What would it be like, though? He knew he shouldn't torture himself with fantasies about what he could never have, but - Freddie rationalised it to himself this way, as he reclaimed his coat from the cloakroom - thinking about Devlin was so delicious in itself that he could hardly refuse to indulge. He'd start with kissing Devlin - taking the inspector's face into his hands and capturing his mouth, kissing long and slow and deep until Devlin's toes curled. He wanted to unbutton Devlin's clean white shirt and lave the warm skin of his chest with his tongue...he wanted the full body press, right there on the floor, on the sofa, on Devlin's or anybody's bed....

  Freddie sighed, and slipped out of the Peacock Club, carefully unseen.

  In his rooms elsewhere in London, Devlin fell into a fitful sleep, and dreamed of Old Brassie's hefty daughter who had breasts like Easter hams. Towards the middle of the dream Freddie Lewis rescued him, dressed in the scarlet uniform of some illustrious Foot battalion - Freddie put Devlin up on his horse and they clattered out of sight.

  Devlin turned over in his sleep, and smiled.

  Somewhere beyond his rooms, the Bow Bells chimed the hours, and the traffic of the London underworld moved slowly through its accustomed paces. Nothing touched him in his cocoon of sleep, as he rode with the dream of Freddie Lewis on his ridiculous white charger, looking like Sir Lancelot or some impossibly beautiful officer of the Foot battalion. He rode with Freddie out of London, past the suburbs whose names he knew only slightly, and into the countryside. Time folded in upon itself, as it often does in the elastic language of dreams, and Devlin was lying on the grass, gazing up through oak leaves at the sky. His shirt had somehow contrived to become unbuttoned, but he didn't mind, because the warm air was delicious on his skin, and someone - it didn't matter who - was slowly, gently stripping him of all his clothes and running their warm hands over him, and in his sleep Devlin arched his back, his lonely flesh seeking the caress of the unseen hands. Perhaps a whimper escaped him, but he didn't know, and he would never know, because the loveliness of the dream evaporated into the dingy walls of his bachelor flat -

  "Sir."

  Devlin blinked, desperate to clear his vision. He saw that he'd thrown the blankets off himself, and he wondered just how much writhing he'd had to be doing...and where the hell had Freddie Lewis come from?

  "Sir - Old Brassie sent me over here to rouse you. We've had another letter - it's bad this time." In the pale morning light, Freddie's features were shadowed, haunted by a grievous shock. Devlin knew it was as the constable had said - judging by the expression on Freddie's face, it had to be very, very bad indeed.

  Devlin set his bare feet upon the floor, dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his eyes with his palms. "How did you get in?"

  "Your landlady let me in - she said you'd been up and pacing the floor till two this morning, so you were probably still sleeping." Freddie moved about Devlin's sparse lodgings, peering into the wardrobe and the dresser drawers, collecting articles of clothing with an appearance of great industry. He withdrew Devlin's shoes from underneath the bed and laid them out, selected a necktie from inside the wardrobe.

  Devlin watched this performance with a feeling of immense irritation. "Freddie, since when have you become my personal valet?" He was still tired, and his night-shirt hid the vestiges of a stubborn erection, courtesy of that damned dream - how in God's name could he stand up and let a younger constable see the precise tilt of his yardarm?

  "Sorry, sir - only Old Brassie said it was urgent." Freddie's mouth wasn't quite smirking, but Devlin wasn't fooled.

  "Well - go out on the landing while I get dressed, for God's sake." His dressing gown was within reach on the end of the bed, and Devlin caught it to him, belted it securely round his lean middle. "If you want to make yourself useful, go ask Mrs. Taylor for some breakfast - I take it you've already eaten?"

  Freddie sniffed, clearly wounded. "I wouldn't mind a muffin and a cup of tea," he said. "I've been up since five-thirty and you know how Dobbin makes the tea - "

  Devlin didn't wait for him to finish: he knew the litany as well as anyone. "- like a whore's piss on a February morning: steaming, cold, and yellow." He caught hold of Freddie's shoulder and steered him gently towards the landing. "Run along and chat with Mrs. Taylor, there's a good lad." With any luck, Mrs. Taylor would sequester Freddie in her kitchen and rattle his lugs off with discussions of the spider veins along her nether parts. It was a description Devlin had already heard, and one he didn't care to hear again.

  "His throat's slit - nearly took his head off." Freddie Lewis straightened up, his mouth compressed so that it was nearly invisible. "Bastard."

  "How long?" Devlin spoke through the handkerchief pressed against his nose and mouth.

  "Couple of street arabs found him this morning, round about four-thirty."

  Devlin removed the handkerchief long enough to grin. "So that's why Old Brassie knocked you up so early?"

  It was hard for Freddie Lewis to contain his smirk, but the effort was, Devlin had to admit, admirable. "He said you older fellas need your rest."

  "Mmmm." Devlin circled the body, his methodical mind carefully noting pertinent details. "I've seen hogs butchered neater than this," he remarked. "Obviously he's got a taste for serrated instruments - nothing tidy about him."

  "There's something else, sir." Lewis bent and deftly flicked the corner of the sheet away from the lower half of the dead man's body. The smell of charred flesh struck Devlin full in the face and he staggered backwards. I'll burn the little bitch! " He tried to cover up his tracks, he did - figured he'd burn the body. Only for the rain we had last night - "

  Devlin's distraught mind seized upon this mundane fact and used it to wrench him back into the present moment. "It rained last night?"

  Freddie blinked rapidly, as if he hadn't heard Devlin correctly. "Yes, sir - poured buckets round about two o'clock. There was puddles on the street this morning when I got up."

  "Puddles."

  "Yes, sir." Freddie peered at Devlin. "Are you alright, sir?"

  Devlin impaled the constable with a glance. "Cover him up." He gestured at the body, indicated that Lewis should follow him; Devlin was already climbing the stairs and Lewis, for all hi
s youth, was having difficulty keeping up. He could just imagine what a tiger Devlin must be in bed - here he suppressed another smirk - considering how physically adept the inspector was. Freddie's gaze followed the outline of his superior's body through the thick Donegal, resting on Devlin's well-shaped backside. Despite the chill of the morning, and the necessary coldness of the police morgue, Freddie was sweating.

  Back upstairs, in Devlin's office, Freddie took himself off to make tea while Devlin pored over the crime scene photographs. His skin had gone icy cold, but for all that, he was sweating as if he'd just run a mile behind a drover's cart. Tried to burn the body, Freddie had said...but it couldn't be. Surely Whittaker had learned his lesson, even if he'd got off on a technicality - surely to God he hadn't come back for another go at it, just on the matter of some sick principle, or to take another slap at Devlin.... It was comforting to think that maybe Whittaker had forgotten, had mellowed in his years away from London, and seen the error of his ways. Devlin had heard the little bastard had been farmed out to Australia by his parents, both of whom understood the principle of money talking and shit, therefore, walking. Devlin reflected sourly that it was always the way with these cases - a toff murdered some dockyard floozy with a chip on his shoulder, and nobody thought twice about it.

  He looked up as Freddie arrived with the mugs, laid a steaming cup of the fragrant brew down in front of Devlin. "What time is it?" Devlin asked. He could have pulled out his watch and checked for himself but he felt tired beyond his years, and heavy as lead.

  "Half-eleven, sir." Freddie reached into the filing cabinet, rummaging for a biscuit tin. "Still too early for a drink." He cast a grin at Devlin, who responded reluctantly, but in kind, and sat down in the chair opposite Devlin's desk.

  He'd hated travelling to Brixton to wake Devlin at the ungodly hour that he had - he understood, if no one else did, the kind of strain that the inspector had been under lately, even if Devlin didn't understand it himself. If it were up to him, Freddie reflected, he'd have let Devlin sleep till the afternoon, and made some suitable excuse to Old Brassie as to why the inspector was so late to his post. Besides - here Freddie savoured a tiny frisson of pleasure - Devlin looked so damned cute when he was asleep.

  "It can't possibly be."

  Freddie glanced up from his tea. "Sorry, sir?"

  "Whittaker - you ever hear of Whittaker, Constable?" Devlin reached into the filing cabinet and pulled out a thick, rather imposing-looking folder and dropped it onto the desk. It made a thick, rather imposing thud and disposed some smaller pieces of paper into the region around Freddie's shoes.

  "The original, you mean." Freddie darted a glance at Devlin from underneath his eyebrows, opening the file and paging through it as though he'd seen it all before. Devlin had to admire the lad's sang froid. He'd seen what was in there - he'd written most of the reports himself - and it was hardly what the literate population of the Yard would term light entertainment. "The one this killer is copy-catting."

  Devlin permitted himself a mirthless laugh. "Perhaps."

  "You don't think this is Whittaker's work?" Freddie thought for a moment, his warm brown eyes holding Devlin's gaze. "Is he stupid enough to come back to London and try this again?"

  "You tell me."

  Freddie closed the file and sat back heavily. For long moments there was nothing in the room but the sound of their breathing - Freddie's: contemplative, even, and Devlin's: ragged, tense. "Came back to finish the job?" Freddie knew it had to be said, and figured he ought to be the one to say it.

  Devlin nodded. "Yes. You see, it's me he's really after - it's me he's always been after - "

  " - then tell old Snowman that you want a month or two of leave, and by God, cut and run! I know some people in the Hebrides - "

  Devlin had no doubt that Freddie did, indeed, know 'some people' in the Hebrides, but whether they were of the human variety was not entirely sure. "No." He laid one hand flat on the desk between them. "I won't, Freddie."

  " - but if he's - "

  "That wasn't a request, Constable!"

  Freddie subsided into silence, his fingers toying awkwardly with the handle of his cup. "I see. Sir."

  "No, you don't bloody well see, Constable - Freddie." How in the name of God to frame it so that someone as young and stupid as Lewis could understand? Devlin wasn't even sure he understood it himself.

  "So you stay in London and wait until he comes and finishes you off?" Freddie rose, laid the mug down on Devlin's desk with an audible thump, rage grooming in his eyes. "Just hang about until he turns up - is that it?"

  The back of Devlin's neck prickled and his face flushed. "Why the hell should you care?" he snapped.

  "I - " Freddie's mouth opened and closed like a dying carp. "Never mind," he said quietly. He snatched his coat from the hook beside Devlin's office door. "I'll see you later."

  For once, the obligatory 'sir' was absent.

  Devlin decided to let Freddie sulk awhile, perhaps burn off some of his irritation in the Sergeant's room below - it would do him good, and besides, Devlin wasn't up to explaining his motives to Freddie - or to anybody - just now. He spent his time pulling every piece of information that he had on Whittaker, poring through files long since archived in the dusty attic storage room that was, and always had been presided over by Jack Melville. Melville had retired from the Force long before Devlin's time, but was so dedicated an archivist that, when he finally shuffled off the earthly pile, his last will and testament included instructions that his preserved, taxidermied remains be forever interred in the same room he had so long occupied in life. He therefore occupied the space just past the door, preserved in all his withered splendour in a glass box built especially for him. Devlin stopped and gazed in at him, as he always did when venturing into the archives; it might have been his imagination, but he felt old Melville had shrunk a bit in height these last few months. Probably the dryness of the summer, Devlin supposed.

  He found what he was looking for in some boxes toward the back, albeit with much sneezing and cursing (no one dusted the archive room or old Melville) and a painful wrench to his left elbow.

  I'm going to burn the little bitch. You see if I don't.

  Devlin's head snapped up, every nerve taut and quivering. He could have sworn - no, his mind was probably going, in that case. And anyway, there was no one here except himself and the dried remains of old Jack Melville, who couldn't possibly have spoken through the mortician's prongs that held his lips together. He allowed himself the indulgence of a mental shrug and returned to burrowing through the boxes.

  Send the little whore to Hell where she belongs.

  He was sweating now, and not from any excess of heating in the archives room: his fingertips left several wet places on the papers he was sorting, and his collar was suddenly too tight. He reached to unbutton it, gave himself another mental shake. Damned room was giving him the willies...

  Burn you too, Devlin. Just see if I don't.

  He'd pulled out the original reports, all signed by him - he remembered bashing them out on the weathered old typewriter in the downstairs office, one painful letter at a time. Whittaker, scion of an old English family, obscure as his Saxon roots and just as bloody...he hadn't taken down any other tarts except Elizabeth Hobbs...and he'd pursued her across the breadth of London...

  Devlin had been a stripling constable in those days, proud of the uniform and the fact that he was manly enough to fill it. He'd been assigned to the Complaints desk the first day she'd come in, just off the day shift at the woollen mills, smelling of lanolin and steam. Man chasing her, she said - she kept seeing him loitering in the street outside her lodgings. Did she ever take home gentlemen in the evenings? Devlin had phrased it to her as politely as he knew how, expecting that she would demur, protest that he was casting aspersions on her virtue - but no. She owned up to it, the brazen little doxy, said she often found a john or two amongst the toffs, who liked a bit on the side now and then. Especially a bit
from down around the docks, a girl who knew all the proper tricks and still looked like she'd just come up to London from the country. Didn't give him no call to follow her around, she said, "interfere with her." Devlin wondered where she'd got that phrase - certainly not in the woollen mills, or on the streets.

  The worst thing was her loveliness, her wide blue eyes, her golden hair, and the skin so pale as to be almost translucent. She seemed a thing made for light to pass through, wholly pure - and even then (though Devlin could not know it) she was in the tertiary stage of syphilis, dying by degrees.

  Burn the little bitch.

  Devlin grasped the file tightly and willed the shaking in his hands to stop.

  He had to admit he liked watching Inspector Devlin. Especially now, when he was lying at the mercy of whatever he'd found in the archives, whatever sordid things were contained in the Yard's old files. Devlin in the midst of mental concentration was a sight to behold, with his collar button undone and his hair falling over his forehead, his long fingers twitching through the pages, oblivious to whatever might be lurking just beyond the door or even in the very room, for God's sake. For someone with as much experience as Devlin, such openly careless behaviour was practically an invitation to disaster. One would think Devlin would understand the kinds of dangers that existed even in this place.