Military Romance Collection: Contemporary Soldier Alpha Male Romance (144 page)

Ruby rolled her eyes, and then brushed her hair back off her shoulder with one hand in a self-conscious manner.  “I can smell your breath from here,” she remarked dryly.  “Come on, then – come inside, before anyone sees you.  And then people really
will
talk.”  She stepped aside and waited for him to make his way over the threshold.  With an impatient sigh, Ruby gave him a little push between the shoulders to propel him along before darting inside after him.  She closed the door again and turned to face him.  “Quietly, now,” she warned in a low voice.  “Ginny is still asleep.” 

They made their wait to the drawing room.  Ruby guided Logan to a red velvet chaise lounge with a scrollwork back and ball and claw feet of dark mahogany.  He dropped down onto it with a grunt.  Ruby folded her arms under her bosom and looked down at him expectantly.  “Now,” she said, “what’s this about a ritual?”

“The murderer,” he said.  “Earlier, you said the killer would sodomize his victims before inserting the branches.  But Peabody said he found no trace of semen on the Cotton boy.  What if he was using an object, something shaped like a phallus, like...” He looked around the room, trying to think of something, when his gaze stopped upon a candelabra standing atop a pianoforte.  He pointed.  “Like that.  A candle.”  As soon as the words left his lips, he frowned.  Something in his mind was stirring, fighting its way through the murky whiskey haze.  “He’s using something like that to perform the sacrifice, the virgin sacrificeProfessor Chetham told us about.  It’s part of his ritual, the ceremony he performs.  But it’s not part of some spell.”  He looked up at her, his vision blurring but his thoughts now keenly focused.  “It’s because it was done to
him
.”

“That
is
a possibility.”  Ruby frowned and tilted her head, auburn waves of hair falling around her face.  “How did you come to such a conclusion?”

“It was something Chetham said, about the
priests
.  He was referring to Pagan religions – but for our murderer, I think it pertains to Christianity.  More specifically,
Catholic
priests.”  Logan heaved a deep sigh, letting his breath rush out of his lungs as he dropped his gaze to the floor and passed a forked hand through his short hair.  “I remembered something…something I had witnessed, long ago, when I was around eleven, maybe twelve years of age.  There was this otherboy; an odd, quiet lad.  Rarely spoke to anyone.  There were whispers around the village that his mother had been a witch, and how he had lived with her in the Killarney woods until by some mystery she had died.  He had been taken in by his mother’s sister, who lived in town.  Shehad decided he should become a server at the altar.  The new parish priest, a young man by the name of Father Joseph, had agreed to take the lad on and train him.  He would often make the boy stay after mass, sending all the others home, to give him special attention.”

As Logan talked, Ruby took a seat on a hassock, adjusting her garments before folding her hands in her lap.  “What happened to this boy, to make you remember him like this and tonight of all times?” she asked softly.

Logan shook his head again.  The whiskey had both clouded his thoughts but at the same time gave his memories the clarity of fine crystal – only with sharp, jagged edges that threatened to slice into the emotions he fought to hold in check.  Somehow, he had to find order amidst the chaos and put it into words.  He pressed on.  “Every Sunday after supper, my grandmother would send me back to the church with a plate of food for Father Joseph.  Shewould say how he had reminded her of her younger brother who had died from consumption shortly after going into the priesthood.”  He paused and frowned, his gaze drifting to the patterned rug on the floor beneath his boots.  “It was a lovely day, early spring…just before Easter, as I recall.  Some mates of mine wanted me to join them for a game, but I had to make the delivery.  I saw this man with a cart and asked if he would give me a ride to the church, to get me there faster.  When I arrived, I went inside, looking for the father.  I could hear his voice, coming from the sacristy.  I remember him saying, quite clearly,
‘This must be done in order to drive out the devil.’
The door was open just a wee bit so I peered through the crack, and – I saw them.”  He gulped, the images springing fresh to his mind as though he could see the scene playing out before him right now.“Father Joseph had the boy bent over a table, still in his vestments, his trousers around his ankles…and he was buggering him with a large, white candle, like the ones lit every year at Easter – the Paschal candle.”  Tears stung Logan’s eyes and he swiped them away quickly with the heel of his hand.“The boy was crying, begging Father Joseph to stop, but Father Joseph, he just kept saying he had to do this, that the boy had to undergo this ‘rite’in order to becomean angel of the Lord, and that it was all ‘part of God’s plan.’”Logan choked on those last words, anger and remorse welling up inside him. 

“How truly terrible,” Ruby whispered, her face drained of all color and one hand pressed over her heart.

“Do you know what the worst part of it is?”  Logan looked up at her.  “He saw me.  The boy saw me at the door.  Our eyes met, and I could see him pleading with me to help him.”

“What did you do?”

“For the boy?” The inspector shook his head again and turned his face away in shame.  “Nothing,” he rasped.  “For myself – well.”  He let out a short, bitter laugh.  “I ran.  Left the plate on the front steps and never went back.  I would always find an excuse not to go to service.  I never wanted to set foot in that church again.  Whenever I would see Father Joseph around the village, I would walk the other way.  And whenever I saw that boy…”  Logan’s throat tightened again.  “I could never meet his eyes, knowing what I knew.  I often wondered how I would have fared, had such a thing happened to me.  I wondered why he had not fought, why he had allowed himself to be subjected to such pain and humiliation.  I thought him weak but also I pitied him.  In the end, I was also too ashamed of myself for not doing something, anything, for him.”

“What became of this boy?”

“A year passed.” Logan ran his suddenly damp palms over the knees of his trousers.  “His uncle found a job in Liverpool so the whole family packed up and moved away.  I put the boy from my mind completely after that.  I even made myself forget his name.  Until this night.”

“What was his name?”

“Bolt,” Logan said.  Speaking it out loud felt like something breaking loose inside him, crumbling away like an eroded hillside.  “Oliver Bolt.”  He leaned back dragged his hands down over his face, and sighed.  “I should have helped him.  I should have done
something
.”

“Stop.”  Ruby swept off the hassock and knelt on the floor beside the settee.  She peered up into Logan’s face.  “What could you have done?  You were just a boy, yourself.  What you witnessed was an awful, horrible thing, an event so profound it changed your life.  Yes, it drove you from the church – but I believe it did something else, something far greater, putting you on a path which would one day lead you to your destiny.”

“And that would be?”

“Becoming a policeman,” Ruby answered firmly.  She smiled, and it was like sunshine coming out from behind clouds on a bleak winter’s day.  “Whether or not you realize it, the crime you saw perpetrated upon that child compelled you to seek out a profession where your life’s work would consist of helping others and delivering to justice the evil men who would inflict harm upon them.  Don’t you see?  As a boy, you may not have been able to save Oliver Bolt from his torment – but as a man, as Inspector Logan Tummond of Scotland Yard, you have saved
countless
lives.”

“I could not save those children,” Logan said, the admission bitter on his tongue.  “If I cannot find the monster who is preying on these little ones, now, I am no better now than I was as a lad, watching through a crack in a door as a priest sodomized an altar boy!”

“You are doing everything you can,” Ruby assured him.  “But you continue to forget one very important detail.”

He looked at her.  “And that would be…?”

“
That you have me.
”  She reached out, gathered up one of his fists where it lay balled upon his knee, and held it between her soft, cool palms.  “Logan.  We
will
find this murderer, and we
will
stop him – together.  You should not doubt yourself, but if you do, know that you are not alone in this fight.” 

She brushed her thumb across his knuckles and he winced, letting out a soft grunt of pain.  Ruby frowned.  Looking down at his hand, she turned it toward the light and gasped when she saw the recent cut.  “What’s this?” she asked. 

“Just delivering a bit of justice,” Logan said with a wan smile.  He did not want to go into detail, that he had received it while defending her honor against a mouthy constable.  “You needn’t concern yourself with it.”

“Nonsense.”  She climbed to her feet again.  “Sit right there and do not even think of leaving.” 

Logan found it difficult to deny her, even when she wasn’t giving him orders like an army general.  “Yes, Miss.”  He watched her leave the drawing room.  He felt tired, bone-weary, his head swimming from alcohol and dark memories.  He needed to get home and to his bed.

Ruby returned with a pan of water and some folded white linens.  She placed the pan on the floor and sat down beside Logan on the chaise lounge.  Dipping one of the cloths in the water, she wrung it out before turning to Logan.  “Give me your hand,” she said. 

Obediently, he offered it to her and she took it.  She dabbed carefully at the wound.  He hissed softly and she paused to look up at him.  “Are you really so sensitive to a small cut on your hand?  Is this the same man who told me he had been stabbed three times in the line of duty, shot once, and who broke his arm after falling from a second story balcony?”

“It stings,” he said simply.  “And it was four times.”  He held up the fingers of his free hand, thumb tucked against his palm.  “Four.”

“I see.”  Smirking, she went back to tending his injury.  She reached into the pocket of her dressing gown and pulled out a pair of tweezers.  “And what of the man you struck?”

Logan frowned, and started to ask how she knew.  She tossed her head and held up the pincers, holding between them a tiny fragment of something yellowish and stained with blood.  “What is that?”

“That,” she said, “is a chip from someone’s tooth.  A smoker, from the discoloring of the enamel.”  She dropped the tooth into the pan and smiled.  “Someone certainly got you riled this night.”

You, for starters,
he thought, but held his tongue.  He watched as she pulled a glass bottle from her other pocket and popped out the cork.  “Carbolic acid?” he asked.

“Yes.”  She soaked another cloth in the antiseptic and began applying it to the cut.  “The human mouth is a dreadful breeding ground for germs.  We wouldn’t want you to get sepsis, now, would we?”  She finished cleaning his hand, and then reached for the final cloth.  A longer strip of linen, she used it to wrap around, covering his knuckles completely, and tucked in the end.  “There we are.   Just leave that on overnight.”

“Thank you,” Logan said, and smiled at her – until overcome by a jaw-cracking yawn.  “Forgive me.  It’s the drink, and the lateness of the hour…I should be going.”

“I have reservations as to your ability to find your way home, in your present state.”  Ruby gathered up her medical supplies and stood.  “You are more than welcome to sleep here tonight, Inspector.  There is a cot in my study where I often nap whenever I wish to rest but not stray too far from whatever research I find myself engrossed in.  When the door to that room is closed, Ginny knows not to enter, so you will be able to go unnoticed.”  She smiled again.  “We shall just have to find a way to smuggle you out without drawing attention from the neighbors.  Although given the number of scandals to which my name has been attached for my political leanings, it could hardly hurt to add one more, this time about a handsome Inspector caught sneaking out of my rooms after passing a night under the same roof as not one but two unwed young ladies.”

“I will be discreet,” Logan promised.  He staggered down the hallway toward the study.  A low lamp burned on the table.  Logan found the cot against one wall in the corner, already made up.  It looked far more inviting than a musty pillow and blanket on the floor of his office, where Victor had wanted him to kip.  He sat down and as an afterthought decided to remove his boots.  It felt good to stretch out.  He turned his head and breathed in the scent on the pillow.  He knew it in an instant, like hyacinths and lavender, the oils in Ruby’s bath water.  Logan’s eyes drifted shut as a sense of peace slipped over him.  He thought he heard Ruby’s voice, whispering to him.  As he drifted off, he saw her swimming naked in a cool lake, auburn hair fanned out around her face like a crown of autumn leaves.  She crooked her finger at him and beckoned him to join her.  Logan stripped off his own clothes and dove in, swimming to her.

That beautiful dream carried him down into the depths of slumber.

***

“Inspector Tummond.  Wake up.” 

Logan groaned and burrowed deeper into the pillow.  A moment later, a hand shoved his shoulder.  Instantly, he roused, one hand snapping up to grasp the wrist of the person who had touched him.  He opened his eyes and blinked several times.  Ruby stood over him, eyes wide, looking startled.  As soon as he remembered where he was, he loosened his grip.  “My sincerest apologies,” he mumbled. 

“You have amazing reflexes, Inspector,” Ruby remarked, and rubbed her wrist.  She was dressed in dark trousers and a light colored blouse.  “I am sorry to disturb your sleep, but it’s nearly five o’clock in the morning, and Ginny will be up soon.  I thought this would be a good opportunity for you to slip away unnoticed.”

“Ah.  Good thinking.”  Groaning, he sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the cot.  He stretched and yawned before leaning down to retrieve his boots.  The movement made his head throb.  “Mm.  I may have had too much to drink last night.”  He glanced up at Ruby.  “And I’m an Irishman.”  He gave her a wide smile.

“All the same, you may appreciate this.”  She walked over to the table and picked up a glass of water and an envelope.  “Acetylsalicylic acid,” she announced.  She dumped the contents of the envelope in the water and gave it a stir with a spoon before passing the glass to Logan.  “That should help with the headache.”

“Thank you.”  Logan drank down the bitter liquid, grimacing at the taste.  Handing back the empty class, he finished pulling on his boots and stood up.  “I need to go home,” he said.  He took a moment to unravel the bandage she had wrapped around his hand last night and examined the wound, which had already begun to heal.  “After that, I will be at the office, looking into this Bill Dabs fellow Imogene told us about.” 

“Right.  Let me know if you find anything new.” 

“I will.”  

She walked him to the door and, after checking to make sure no one would see, allowed Logan to leave.  While no one would think twice about a man leaving a woman’s house, society would not be kind to Ruby for keeping company overnight with a bachelor – especially one many might deem to be below her class.  With all their recent public meetings, he wondered how long it would take before their names appeared in the gossip column of the daily papers. 

And what would happen, once they solved this case?  They only pretended to be courting so they could work together. 
I should like to ask her to accompany me on a proper date,
he thought, as he made his way from the residential area.  He wondered what it would take to make Ruby Waterbrook fall in love with him.  Right now, he knew the only way he would be able to continue spending this much time with her, would be to include her in all his investigations. 
I would not mind that at all.
  She had the ability to bring out the best in him.  Last night, he had opened up to her about something that he had carried around for nearly twenty years, a burden that weighed heavy in his mind and heart no matter how deeply he had tried to bury it.  Having told her seemed to have strengthened him. 
She is good for me.  I must find a way to win her heart.  Whatever it takes.

He returned home where he had a wash, shaved, and donned a fresh suit of clothes.  He arrived at work to find Victor curled up on his office floor, asleep.  Logan gave the sole of the sergeant’s boot a light kick.  “Oi.  On your way!”

MacCulloch stirred.  Bleary-eyed, he sat up.  “What time is it?” he mumbled.

Logan pulled a pocket watch out of his waistcoat and checked.  “Just after seven,” he said.  “I need you up, Sergeant.  I have a lead on that Thomas Cotton case.  There’s a man, name of Bill Dabs.  Ever heard of him?”

“Dabs?  Sounds familiar.”  Victor ground the heel of his hand into his eye.  “Used to manage a small brothel some years ago…got a bit rough with some of his girls so they left him for other houses.  Not sure what happened to him, after that.  But I can get the word out, see if we can ferret him out.”

“Good man.”  Logan moved around behind his desk.  After a moment, he raised his eyebrows at Victor.  “Sergeant?”

Victor lifted his head, peering at Logan over the edge of the desk.

“Up,” Logan told him.  He jerked his head toward the door.  “And out.”

“Right.”  Dragging himself to his feet, the diminutive Scotsman shook out his legs and thumbed his bracers back up onto his shoulders as he wandered out of the office and into the station house. 

Later that morning, as he polished off his third cup of coffee, Logan looked up from the latest reports from his constables to find a breathless MacCulloch knocking at his door.

“Found ‘im,” Victor said, blue eyes bright and nostrils flaring. 

Logan set down his cup.  “Dabs?”

“Aye,” said Victor, nodding.  “And it sounds like he’s back in business for himself.  Prostitutes.  Not just young ladies, either.”

“Men?”

“Worse.”

Logan felt his gut clench.  Only one thing could be worse.  His eyes narrowed.  “Children.” 

“Aye.”  Victor had that look about him, the one Logan had come to recognize, like a hawk preparing to pounce on a rabbit.  He set his jaw and slapped his palm against the door frame.  “I say we go fetch the bastard, bring him in, and have a wee chat before locking him away in a very cold, dark place for a long while.”

“I’ll get my hat.”  Logan pushed back his chair and stood, reaching for the bowler on the edge of his desk.

“Well, try not to take too long deciding which one,” Victor quipped.  He nodded to the one hanging on the hook beside the door.  “You left it here, last night, you were in such a bloody hurry to get somewhere.”  He squinted his eyes at the inspector.  “Just where, exactly, did you wind up going?”

“Where I had to be,” Logan replied, and refused to go further than that.  Setting his hat on his head, he smacked MacCulloch’s stomach with the back of his hand as he slipped past him in the doorway.  “Come on, then.  Show me where to find this prick.”

Word had it that Dabs was operating out of a small room on a dirty alley down in the seediest part of London.  As they picked their way through narrow passages littered with rotting garbage and stinking of piss and filth, Logan found himself thinking about what Myles Usherwood had said about mankind’s mistreatment of the world and the bleak future that awaited them all.  In a way, it also made him more determined to scrape as much of the scum off the streets as he could find, to lock them away and throw away the keys.

Dabs had a lookout posted, of course.  Logan and the teen saw one another almost at the same time.  The lad let out a shrill whistle before jumping down off the old barrel where he had been sitting and raced off.  “Go after him,” Logan told the two uniformed constables who had accompanied him and the sergeant.  They went off in pursuit of the boy.  Logan and Victor stayed the course.  Victor circled around to cover any alternate escape routes from the building.  Logan went right to the front door.  “Bill Dabs!” he shouted.  “Scotland Yard!  We would like a word with you!”

Dabs put up little resistance once he found himself surrounded.  As Logan handcuffed the stout, greasy-haired man, Victor did a quick sweep of the place.  He came back, looking pale yet angry.  “I just found a little girl, naked and tied to a bed.  She can’t be more than six years old.”  He turned to Dabs – and punched him in the nose.  Logan heard the crunch of cartilage and saw the blood begin to gush.

“My nose!” Dabs howled.  “Look what he did!”

“Be grateful that he hit you,” Logan said icily.  “Because
I
would be taking a blade to your willy.”

Members of the recently established National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children arrived shortly, and began the process of removing every child from the premises.  They bundled them up and whisked them off to the nearest hospital where they would be cleaned up, examined, and treated for any injuries and diseases.  They would all wind up in orphanages after that, but at least they would no longer be subjected to Dabs’ abhorrent abuse.

Leaving Victor to oversee the process, Logan hauled Dabs back to the station.  Once his constables had him processed and put in a holding cell, Logan paid him a visit.  “Do you recognize this child?” the inspector asked, holding up a photograph of Thomas Cotton taken just before the autopsy.

The chair creaked as Dabs leaned forward, hands still cuffed behind his back, to squint at the picture.  “Nah.”  He shook his head.  He sat back again and shifted around.  “Never seen him before in me life.”

“You certain?”  Logan traded that photo out for one of the boy found by the Thames.  “How about him?”  He watched Dabs very carefully. 

This time, the portly man seemed to pale a bit and he licked his lips before giving another shake of his head.  “Don’t know him, either,” he said.  A sweat began to break out over his forehead, little beads that ran down his temples to his fleshy, unshaved jowls.

Logan sighed.  He pulled out his credentials and showed them to Dabs.  “Do you see that?” he asked.  He tapped the card.  “Right there, where it says ‘Inspector?’  That title means I am very good at what I do, and one of the things I can do is spot a liar.”  He tucked his badge back into his pocket and shoved the photograph of the unknown boy into Dabs’ face again.  “You
do
know who this is.  You saw him before.  I think you might even be the piece of shite who killed him.”

“It weren’t me!” Dabs bleated. 

“But you
do
know this boy,” Logan pressed.

“Yeah!” Dabs said, nodding.  “Yeah – all right – I knew him.  His name was Paul.  Just some urchin living on the streets.  I offered him a hot meal, roof over his head…”

“How charitable,” Logan said, with an unamused snort.  He walked around Dabs slowly.  “And what did you ask of Paul in return?  Did he know when you took him in that you would be selling his body for his room and board?”  He stopped behind the chair.  Dabs twisted his head, nervous, trying to see him.  Logan wanted him to be anxious.  He wanted him to be afraid.  He wanted Dabs to know what it felt like to be an innocent child whose trust was betrayed by someone in power.  Logan leaned down.  He ignored the greasy, unwashed stench rising from the larger man’s skin and worn clothing.  “You know who killed him, Dabs,” he murmured.  “Unless you tell me, I will see you tried for young Paul’s murder.  As of now, you are the last person to ever see him alive.”

“I don’t know his name,” Dabs said.  “He just showed up one day back in May, and asked if I had any boys ‘round Paul’s age.  Offered to buy him outright, not just rent for the night.  Offered me twenty quid, no questions, just the boy and my silence on the matter.”

“Twenty pounds sterling?”  Logan let out a low whistle.  “That is quite a lot of money.  So, you sold Paul to this man for twenty quid.”

“Actually,” Dabs said, “Paul weren’t with me, yet, so I gave him another boy.”

Logan was thankful to be standing behind Dabs so he could not see his reaction to that information.  His eyes widened and his heart skipped in his chest. 
Another boy,
he thought.
  In May.  The Taurus child!
  “What boy, Dabs?” he demanded, his voice suddenly rough.“What was his name?”

“Ah…James.  Yeah.  That were it.  James.”

“What happened to James?  Where is he, now?”

Dabs shrugged his big shoulders.  “Don’t know.  The posh gent came back a month later, said he needed another.  Said he ‘broke’ the last one.”

He meant “killed,”
Logan realized.  They had yet to find James, although he held out no hope given what Ruby had said about the murderer disposing of his ‘practice’ victims.  Finding Paul had to have been a fluke on their part.  “So you sold him another child.  You sold him Paul.”

Dabs hung his head and nodded.  “Yeah,” he said quietly.  “I had no idea he was gonna kill them.  I thought he would just, you know,
play
with them.”

Like a match to kerosene, those words set Logan’s blood aflame.  He swung around in front of Dabs, grabbed a handful of his face under the chin and jerked his head up.  Looking down into his prisoner’s frightened eyes, Logan snarled.  “Children are not
toys
for the pleasure of
grown men
.  These boys trusted you, and you betrayed that trust by selling them to a
murderer
.  The same goes for all the other children whose flesh you peddle like selling mince pies from a cart – how can you stand by and watch their innocence be
devoured
?” He leaned down, getting right into the other man’s stinking gob, and pitched his voice just above a whisper.  “I will find him, and when I do, I will see there are two ropes – one for him, and one for you.”  He dug his fingers in a little harder before shoving Dabs back and walking away from him. 

“Please,” Dabs sobbed.  “Please – don’t send me to the gallows.  What…what if I were to help you catch him?  I can describe him to you, so you know what to look for.”

Logan paused, his back to Dabs.  “You have the audacity to ask me for leniency,” he said, “when three boys are dead, all killed by the same hand?”  He shook his head.  “That’s not good enough.”

“What else do you want?”

“Your clientele,” Logan said stonily.  “In addition to helping to find the man who bought and killed Paul and James, I want your assistance to find and identify every person who has rented a child from you since you started doing business – starting with your repeat customers.  For that, you’ll get a nice, cozy prison cell instead of the noose.”  He turned to face Dabs again.  “Do we have an accord?”