Horatio Lyle

 
 
 

 
Horatio Lyle

 

 
CATHERINE WEBB

 
 
Hachette Digital

Table of Contents

 

 

Catherine Webb
was just fourteen when she wrote her extraordinary debut,
Mirror Dreams
. With several novels already in print at nineteen, Catherine has quickly established herself as one of the most talented and exciting young writers in the UK.

Mirror Dreams
Mirror Wakes
Waywalkers
Timekeepers

 
 
 

 
Horatio Lyle

 

 
CATHERINE WEBB

 
 
Hachette Digital

 
Published by Hachette Digital 2008

 
Copyright © 2006 by Catherine Webb

 

 
The moral right of the author has been asserted.

 

 
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor
be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a
similar condition including this condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

 

 
All characters and events in this publication, other than those
clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

 

 
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

 

eISBN : 978 0 7481 1112 1

 
This ebook produced by Jouve, FRANCE

 

 
Hachette Digital
An imprint of
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DY

 

 
An Hachette Livre UK Company

INTRODUCTION

Murder

 

In the west, the sun is setting.

It is orange and yellow fire, the sky sooty grey and brown smudge. The sky is full of chimneys and asthmatic birds. The fog is rising off the river, all the way from Greenwich to Chiswick, crawling up past Westminster and hiding the ravens sitting on the walls of the Tower, who blink beadily, waiting for something interesting and edible to happen in their lives. The fog is grey-green - grey from the water suspended in it, green from the things floating in the water.

In the west, the sun has set.

A man is running through dark and silent streets. He knows he’s going to die, but still feels that if he’s got to die, he might as well die running. In the world in which he moves, this is all a man can wish for, and tonight he has already seen his death mirrored in the death of another. The streets he runs through are silent and empty, their inhabitants either behind dark shutters hunched over their work by candlelight, or out, or asleep, or trying to sleep. He keeps running. A black bag bounces against his shoulder as he moves. He wonders how he ended up this way, and tries not to think of emerald eyes burning in his skull, the heavy weight of the body as it fell into his arms, or the blood now seeping through his fingers.

The rigging on the ships creaks as they rock slowly back and forth in the docks. The water that slaps around their long wooden hulls is brownish and just a little too thick for comfort.

And though he ’s running, he can’t hear anyone following him. For a second he wonders if he ’s made it, if he ’s escaped, and knows that it’s not that far to the Bethnal Green rookery from here, to the maze of shadows and cellars where anything and everything could disappear without a trace, knows that he could get there, knows that he won’t. He half-turns to see if he’s still being followed, bent almost double over the gaping knife wound across his belly, and stares straight into a pair of bright green eyes, burning emerald eyes, and a thin, slightly satisfied smile. He chokes on blood and steel and slips down into the shadows, clawing at the fine black sleeves of his attacker, of his killer, blackness that smells of dead leaves in a dying forest and burning wood and salty iron and black leaves falling on to a black floor like a black rain from a black sky and
. . .
and
. . .
and
don’t look at the eyes . . .
He looks. The man holding the knife starts to grin, razor-sharp teeth, like those of a fish, bright green eyes, almost glowing, almost dancing with satisfaction and anticipation. The body slips to the ground. The bag falls off its shoulder and lands on the cobbles with a faint clank of heavy metal shifting inside.

The theatre halls of Shadwell are draining out in crowds of girls and boys cackling and clinging on to each other’s arms. The fat man has reached the end of his song about the glory of Empire, Britain’s majesty and amorous flirtations in barnyards. This latter aspect is what appeals most to his yelling, swaying audience. Down at Haymarket, the fat woman is dying to the mild applause of the bourgeoisie, top hats on their laps for the men; opera glasses held daintily in white gloves, and huge dresses spread like a map of the known world for the women.

A carriage rattles down a street, then stops. A door opens. A couple of horses stamp their hooves against the old cobbles, the sound muffled by centuries of rubbish and dirt, softening into a brown, thick sludge, through which the grey stones are rarely perceived. A voice says, very quietly, ‘Mr Dew?’ It sounds like black leather would, if it could speak. A man with bright green eyes stirs in the shadows and carefully wipes blood off the tip of a very long, slightly curved and highly ornate hunting knife.

‘Yes, my lord?’

‘He is dead?’

‘Yes, my lord. He has joined his brother.’

‘Very well. Give me the bag.’

The clang of heavy metal moving inside the bag, as it is passed into a hand gloved in white silk and attached to a body clad in black velvet. The rattle of hands digging through metal. The faint glow of a lamp catches against gold. The rattling stops.

‘It’s not here?’

‘My lord?’

‘I said, it ’s not here!’ And now, if the voice sounded like black leather, then that leather had just found itself driven through with nails, and wasn’t pleased.

‘He
. . .
’ A little breath, steadying against fear of those burning green eyes, above a tight smile that makes sharks seem sympathetic, staring with the hardness of granite on a dark night. ‘He said he had it, my lord
. . .
’

‘And you killed him before he’d given it to us, killed them
both
?’

‘I wanted to save
. . .
inconvenience?’

‘If we cannot find it, you will pay. They will not tolerate further delay; her ladyship has already been sent here once asking questions!’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Hide the body!
Find it!
’

The thieves are hiding in the shadows under the bridges, waiting for their prey, fingers drumming on their knives. The policemen are trudging through the streets, rattles duly sounding as they whirl them around and announce the hour, long blue coats slapping against their white-clad knees. The horses are bedding down in the mews of Mayfair. The street-walkers are plying their trade in the gutters of St Giles, all false white faces and falser red smiles.

A dark carriage clatters away down a dark street, fading into the thick, choking green-grey fog that rises off the river and from the factories into an itchy soup in the air. It leaves behind nothing, except a dying gas lamp and a small red stain of blood, seeping gently through the cobbles and into the mud below.

The gas man is putting his ladder against the side of another black pillar along Green Park, and wondering whether his career prospects really do his talent justice. The girl has sold her last little bag of nuts and is going home with her few pennies of profit for the night. The master of the cress market below Shoreditch is laying out his trestle tables for the night’s trade. The mechanics are wiping dirt from their faces as they walk away from the seething railway yards of King’s Cross, with dirty hands rubbed on dirtier hankies.

And in the darkness of the carriage, a still man with a black leather voice carefully inspects his white gloves by the light of a bouncing lantern, observes a tiny speck of red blood on the tip of a finger, pulls the glove off a long, white, elegant hand, and sighs. He drops it on to the floor of the carriage for someone else to worry about. He sits back, and thinks very quietly to himself,
Soon, we will rise.

As the driver pushes the carriage on into the night, he puts a hand inside his coat and feels for something to eat. He finds nothing but an immaculately intact knobbly peel from a small fruit, and a single round stone. He curses internally. He tells himself that he shouldn’t have eaten the lychee, and throws both peel and stone away into the gutter. After murder, littering isn’t really a priority. At least, it isn’t tonight.

 

Almost five miles away, something went
click
in a darkened house. A window opened a few inches, sliding up from the sill. A hand slithered inside, checked carefully on either side of the window, found nothing of interest except a pair of faded curtains, and pushed up the window a little more. The hand wormed further inside. It was followed by a scantily clad arm, a head, a pair of shoulders and, in due course, the remainder of its owner’s body. The shadow dropped on to the floor, and very slowly started to walk. Halfway across the room it hesitated. It squatted down and gently ran its hand across the floor, until it touched a tile which sank, ever so slightly, under its pressure. It moved forward stealthily on hands and knees, avoiding the tile, and the five others its gentle probes detected. When it reached the door, it stood again. It ran a slim blade carefully down the side of the door, felt nothing, and opened it.