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“Told you I’d be back,” the first rain-coated man announced.
“So you did,” Nathaniel Jago said calmly.
“And that there’d be a reckoning.”
“As I recall.”
The gunman frowned. Tall, with a cadaverous face, a faint bruise was visible below his left eye.
“God save us, Shaughnessy,” Jago said softly. “I might have grey hairs but they ain’t affected my memory. Talking o’which, you remember what I said to you last time?”
A thin smile formed on the Irishman’s face. “Said you’d kill me if I showed my face.”
“Offer still stands.”
The gunman’s eyes flickered. The grin faded. “Think you’re king of the castle, don’t you?”
“An’ you got plans to the contrary, I take it?”
“Do it, Patrick,” the second gunman urged; the brogue as strong as his companion’s. “Bloody do it now.”
“What’s up, Declan?” Jago’s gaze flickered to the speaker. “Arms gettin’ tired?” He moved his gaze back. In the second it had taken to divert the first gunman’s attention, he’d already braced himself. His hands cupped the edge of the table.
“Going to enjoy this,” Shaughnessy gloated.
Made for close-quarter combat, the blunderbuss was a fearsome weapon and capable of inflicting appalling damage. From where Jago was standing, the muzzle looked as big as a howitzer. He wondered if the table top would absorb any of the gun’s load and if he’d be able to move in time. Unlikely, but it was worth a try. At this stage, anything was worth a try, to avoid the murderous hail that was about to be unleashed in his direction.
But it wasn’t Shaughnessy who opened the bidding.
As the Irishman’s trigger finger tightened, a sharp grunt and a clatter from the direction of the taproom stairs drew everyone’s attention. Shaughnessy pivoted, in time to see his companion sinking to the ground, hands clasped about his throat, blood spurting from between his fingers. As the body toppled, another figure moved into view. The Barbar, Shaughnessy saw, had changed hands.
With a curse, he turned back and fired.
The roar from the gun was deafening. A woman screamed. Downstairs, the music trailed off and the fiddler’s dog let out a shrill bark of alarm.
But by then Jago was already hurling himself aside.
Having anticipated the move, Del and Ned were also flinging themselves backwards. As the table went over, dominoes, coins of the realm, alcohol and broken glass flew in all directions. The table top did absorb a lot of the charge but it wasn’t enough. Jago, still travelling, felt the impact as shot scored across his right shoulder. The window took the rest. He heard the panes shatter as he hit the floor. And then he was rolling, or trying to.
Around him, panicking customers, undeterred by the second gunman’s threatening stance, were throwing themselves behind tables or towards the back stairs and sanctuary.
Jago’s legs were caught up in Ned’s abandoned chair. He kicked it away. His shoulder felt as if it was on fire. He looked up. Shaughnessy stood over him. The Irishman had drawn the back-up pistol from his belt. He levelled it, eyes black with rage.
Christ, Jago thought wildly.
The second gunshot was as loud as a whip crack.
Jago flinched and then watched in disbelief as Patrick Shaughnessy’s head snapped back, the air misting red as the body fell away.
Declan, who’d already turned to face the new threat, bellowed an obscenity at seeing his comrade cut down and brought his own gun to bear.
Which was when Jasper, who was still half-prone, rammed the edge of his boot heel into Declan’s left knee. It was enough to send Declan’s aim wide. Shot slammed into the rafters and then there was another ferocious roar and Declan went over backwards, the discharged weapon falling from his grip. Something warm and viscous landed across Jago’s left cheek. Wiping it off hurriedly, he stared down at his hand and the ragged piece of flesh adhering to it. His sleeves, he saw, were flecked with blood. Flicking the offending gobbet on to the floor, he raised his head cautiously as the echo from the guns died away.
It was hard to make out details. The room was filled with dissipating powder smoke and the sulphurous stench of rotten eggs, while the scene was more reminiscent of an abattoir than a public house. Around the room, people were slowly regaining their feet, transfixed by the carnage. Astonishingly, from below there came the screech of a fiddle starting up, indicating that, to the downstairs clientele, who’d only heard the gunshots and not witnessed the effects, it had sounded like just another drunken night in the Hanged Man.
Jago stood groggily, ears ringing. He stared down at the bodies and then at the two men who’d come to a halt beside him.
One was the former occupant of the far table who now held a discharged pistol. The second man, whose hands gripped the still-smoking Barbar, was taller and might have been mistaken for an associate of the dead men, for he, too, was dressed in a long military greatcoat. The difference was that he wore no hat, which, now that he had drawn closer, rendered his features visible, in particular the powder burn below his right eye and the two ragged scars that ran across his left cheek.
Jago stared at him. The other man gazed back, a grim smile on his face.
“Can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?” he said.
Several seconds passed before Jago found his voice.
“Nice to see you, too, Officer Hawkwood. It’s been a while.”
2 (#u9bc2c893-a59f-50c2-9ea5-dc6435b02e3e)
“So who were they?”
Hawkwood looked down at the body being hauled unceremoniously towards the back stairs by the boot heels, Del and Ned having taken a leg each. A trail of blood, black in the candlelight, marked their passage across the uneven floorboards.
Jago followed his gaze. “That one’s Patrick Shaughnessy. The one missin’ half ’is brains – good shot, by the way; those things have quite a kick – is his younger brother, Declan, who didn’t have that much reasonin’ power to begin with. The one who had the drop on Micah, I don’t know; never seen him before. Ne’er-do-well cousin, I expect. They tend to hunt in packs. Christ, go easy, Padre!”
The former physician’s name was Roper. His manner and the way in which Jago had summoned him to tend to his wounds indicated to Hawkwood that this probably wasn’t the first time his services had been called upon. There had been a faint tremor in the man’s hands as he’d helped Jago remove his bloodied shirt, which either suggested he was fearful of his patient or else he had an over-fondness for the Genever, which might have gone some way to explain why he was reduced to performing crudely lit examinations on the floor of the Hanged Man rather than by chandelier in a set of well-appointed consulting rooms in Berkley Square.
Jago winced as a pea-sized nub of black gravel was prised from the meat of his shoulder and deposited with a plunk on to a tin plate by his elbow. The physician was extracting the projectiles using a pair of tweezers he’d taken from a black bag that had been resting beneath the table he’d recently vacated. Some pieces of shrapnel had gone in deeper than others and among the paraphernalia set down were several rolls of lint bandage, two scalpels, scissors and a collection of vials with indecipherable labels which could have contained anything from laudanum to cold elderberry tea. If Hawkwood hadn’t known any better, it looked as though the former doctor had come prepared for surgery.
The room was gradually coming to order. Chairs and tables had been righted and free drinks dispensed. Conversations had resumed, albeit warily and with startled glances whenever somebody coughed or scraped a chair leg inadvertently. It was plain that around some tables nerves were still a tad jittery.
Despite the air of jumpiness, Hawkwood couldn’t help but consider the way in which most of those present seemed to have recovered from the shock of having had their evening’s drinking so startlingly interrupted. He knew the ways of the capital’s rookeries, of which there were several – nurseries of crime, as the authorities had christened them – and had meted out his own form of justice in their diseased enclaves often enough. Even so, the speed with which equilibrium had been restored in this particular hostelry spoke volumes for the manner in which the inhabitants of the rookeries went about their daily lives: their casual attitude towards death and summary justice, and their complete lack of faith in anything approaching legitimate authority; not one person had suggested calling the police. In this place, any support there might once have been for the forces of law and order had evaporated a long time ago.
Hawkwood studied the body of the second Shaughnessy brother, which wasn’t yet on the move. The shot from the Barbar – also loaded with gravel, he guessed – had torn into the dead man’s upper torso as effectively as grape cutting through a square of infantry. Death would have been close to instantaneous. If the brothers had just woken up together, either in Hell or Purgatory, they’d be wondering what had hit them.
“They seemed a tad annoyed,” Hawkwood said.
Jago grunted as another piece of gravel was levered out. “They were annoyed? State of my shirt; I’m bloody livid. Ruined my game, too; ’specially as I was up.”
“What were they mad about?”
“Idiots had ideas above their station. Thought they could work their way around the natural peckin’ order. I had to set them straight. They didn’t like being chastised. Patrick in particular.”
“Newcomers, I take it?”
St Giles was often the first port of call for the poorest of the Irish immigrants who came looking for a new start in a new city. Those inhabitants who’d failed to welcome the influx with open arms referred to it as Little Dublin.
Jago nodded. “They were warned. They didn’t listen.”
“There could be more of them.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. The buggers breed like rats. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
“Be interesting to know how they came by the guns,” Hawkwood said, eyeing the three blunderbusses that were taking up space at the other end of the table. “These look like Post Office issue.”
“You askin’ as a police officer or a concerned citizen?”
“Both.”
The blunderbuss was the weapon of choice for mail coach guards, who were the only Post Office employees allowed to carry firearms. Designed to protect the cargo from interception by highwaymen, they had served their purpose well. There hadn’t been a serious attack on a mail coach for more than two decades.
“Money talks,” Jago said. “How many villains you know have been caught carryin’ an army- or navy-issue pistol? Bloody ’undreds, I should think. Scatterguns ain’t that hard to get hold of, you know the right person.”
“And you’d know that how?” Hawkwood said.
Jago grinned and tapped his nose with his left forefinger and then said, “Shit!” as another bit of gravel was extracted and dropped on to the plate.
Hawkwood counted them up. Five tiny olive-pit-sized fragments occupied the platter, while a couple of puncture wounds had yet to be probed.
Still, he thought, Jago had been lucky.
“You were lucky,” Hawkwood said.
Jago looked up at him. “Really? An’ how do you work that out?”
“You’re still here. You should be as dead as Shaughnessy, the range he fired from. I’m wondering if his powder was damp. Either that or it was low quality.”
“Tell that to the bloody window,” Jago said. “From where I was standin’, I’d say it was dry enough.”
“Nah, your man’s right. The bastard should’ve taken your head off. Good job you moved when you did.” Del, who’d arrived back with Ned, jabbed a thumb at Declan Shaughnessy’s lifeless corpse. “Else you’d’ve ended up like ’is nibs.”
“You’re a real comfort, Del,” Ned said. “Anyone ever tell you that?”
“Only your missus,” Del retorted, grinning.
“There,” the physician announced. “Done – or as far as I can tell.” Putting down the tweezers, he cut off a length of lint. Taking one of the vials, he removed the stopper, soaked the lint with the contents and proceeded to dab the wounds, much to his patient’s further discomfort.
“Keep the area as clean as possible. If the wounds become inflamed, you know where to find me or else get another doctor to take a look. I’ve done the best I can but I may not have got them all.”
Using the rest of the lint, the physician began to fashion a bandage around Jago’s shoulder. His hands, Hawkwood saw, were now perfectly steady and the dressing was expertly applied. Roper was clearly no quack. The man may have lost his standing among his former peers and patients and been ostracized by the more reputable areas of society, but from what Hawkwood had seen, if he was now using his medical skills to aid the less fortunate in London’s back streets, the people of the rookery were lucky to have him.
Hawkwood watched as the physician restored his equipment to his bag before moving to attend to those customers who’d been caught in the crossfire. Thankfully, there weren’t many. Serious peripheral wounds had been prevented as most people had used the tables and furniture as cover. The majority of the injured were suffering from the effects of flying splinters and glass fragments rather than gravel pellets.
The landlord, a dour-looking character whom Jago had addressed as Bram, was already nailing boards over the broken window. He’d looked ready to take someone’s head off when he’d first inspected the damage, but a look from Jago and a promise of financial restitution had cooled his ire, as had an immediate contribution to the restoration fund following a search of the dead men’s pockets.
Jago grimaced as he eased his shirt back over his shoulder. “Wounds, my arse. Pin pricks more like. Typical bloody bog trotter. Had me in his sights and he still cocked it up.”
“Got the drop on Jasper, though,” Ned said, grinning. He lifted his chin. “Come on, Del. It’s Declan’s turn for the cart, and don’t forget his bloody hat.”
“Like you’d’ve fared any better,” Jasper countered. “Bastard crept up on me when I was takin’ a piss. I was distracted.” He watched as Del and Ned rearranged Declan’s ragged corpse into a manageable position for carriage before looking contritely towards Jago. “Sorry, big man; my fault they got up here.”
Jago shook his head. “Could’ve happened to any of us.”
“Not you,” Del said as he took hold of Declan’s right ankle. “If it’d been you in the pisser, he’d’ve shot you where you stood. You’d be dead and we’d be none the wiser as to who’d done it.”
“An’ you’d have split my winnings between you,” Jago said. “Right?”
Del grinned. “Too right. No sense in letting all that spare change go to waste.”
“Bastards,” Jago said, but without malice, as Ned and Del began to manhandle the second Shaughnessy brother towards the back stairwell.
“What’ll you do with the bodies?” Hawkwood asked.
Jago shrugged. “Give ’em to the night-soil men. Either that or feed ’em to Reilly’s hogs.”
Jago wasn’t joking about the hogs. Even though they sounded like something out of a children’s fairy tale, along with wicked witches, ogres and fire-breathing dragons, the animals were real. Reilly, a slaughterman with premises off Hosier Lane, housed the things in a pen at the rear of his yard, where, it was said, they were kept infrequently fed in anticipation of a time when their services might be required.
It was a prime, albeit extreme, example of the type of self-efficiency employed by the denizens of the rookery who over the years had devised their own unique methods for settling disputes and disposing of their dead. Admittedly, it was a practice frowned upon by law, but on this occasion, looking on the positive side, it did eliminate the need for an official report on the altercation.
A dull thudding sound came from the stairs. Hawkwood presumed it was what was left of Declan’s skull making contact with the treads as his remains were transported down.
Micah returned to the table. “Night-soil men said they’ll take them. They wanted the money up front.”
“You took care of it?”
Micah nodded. “They’re waiting on the last one.”
As if on cue, Del and Ned reappeared and moved to the third body, which was still lying at the top of the taproom stairs.
“Hope Bram’s got plenty of shavings,” Del muttered. “Makin’ a hell of a mess of ’is floor.”
Ned looked at him askance. “How can you tell? Years I’ve been coming ’ere, it always looks like this.”
“Just makin’ conversation,” Del said. “You ready?”
“Wait,” Hawkwood said. Kneeling, he withdrew the stiletto from the ruined throat.
“Wouldn’t want to forget that, would we?” Jago said sardonically as Hawkwood wiped the blade on the corpse’s sleeve before returning the knife to his right boot. “All right, lads. Carry on.”
Ned nodded to his companion and then caught Jasper’s eye as they set off towards the stairs, the body sagging between them. “Get ’em in, old son. We’re going to need something strong after this. And don’t give me that look. It’s still your bloody round. We ain’t forgotten.”
“Should’ve got the night-soil lads to do the liftin’ and carryin’,” Jasper grated.
“Then what’d the smell be like?” Del said, over his shoulder. “Don’t want them tramping their shit all over the floor as well. It’s bad enough as it is.”
“Jesus, it’s like listenin’ to a bunch of bloody fishwives,” said Jago. “If I’d wanted this much witterin’, I’d’ve gone to Billingsgate. Just load the damned things on to the cart. The sooner they’re off the premises and headin’ downriver, the better I’ll feel. And you, Jasper, get the drinks in; else I may decide they can take you with them. You’d make good ballast.”
Turning to Hawkwood, he shook his head in resignation. “Swear to God, it’s like herdin’ cats.” Buttoning his shirt, he eased himself into a comfortable position. “Right, that’s the formalities over. I take it you’re ready for a wet?”
