Sweet Revenge Read online

  “Not a sign,” Scratch promised. He placed a firm hand under Augustus’s elbow. “You won’t last the summer at this rate,” he remonstrated. “Why don’t you come with me to—?”

  “No!” Adamant, Augustus jerked free. The movement unbalanced him. He stumbled into the desk but remained upright. “I have to see this through. The Rag Man killed my grandson. He’ll burn for that. And I fully intend to light the flame.”

  Chapter Seven

  “She got Tristan off, you know.” Keiran and Torbel walked companionably toward the dockyard. “I’d have thought you’d be pleased.”

  Torbel fought a snarl—and a sharp pang that shot straight to his loins. “She lives a tidy little life in the West End of London, Keiran. The Stepney jails shocked her. She should go back where she belongs and hire an upscale detective to protect her. What time is it?”

  “Three-ten, and you’re snapping.”

  “The hell I am. I’m pissed off at Street for being too hung over this morning to talk. If the prat doesn’t show today, I’ll break his neck.”

  Keiran chuckled. “He’ll show. Hey, Boots, how’s it going?”

  Boots’s wrinkled face broke into a smile. “Lots of lolly, Keiran.”

  Not normally prone to conversation, Boots had been known to gabble at length to Keiran. Torbel paused.

  “Pretty, dark-haired lady you was with this morning, Torbel,” Boots remarked. “Looked like a Gypsy. Heard someone’s out to kill her, and you, too. Not Lenny, though, no sir, not him.”

  Torbel studied the man’s suddenly serious face, then crouched down. “What do you know, Boots?” he asked in a somber voice.

  Boots tapped his temple. “People say I’m top, but I got eyes and ears like you an’ all. Me mind works differently, but I know what’s what. Lenny, he got a note just like your pretty lady.”

  “What did Street’s note say, Boots?”

  Boots’s ring, his ill-gotten gift from Tito, flashed in a shaft of late-afternoon sun. “Not sure, but it rhymed. Find Lenny. He’s prowling the docks now. I can see him in me head. I see lots in me head these days, Torbel. Sweep it clean, that’s what me dreams told me last night. Sweep all the soot away.”

  Keiran stuffed a pound note in his top hat. “Sounds like your head needs a good cleaning, Boots.”

  The old man chuckled. “Lots of cobwebs in there, right enough. It’ll be like that for you someday, Torbel. You got the magic in your blood. Powerful combination, that, Welsh and Irish. Your mam was—” The statement ended at the look Torbel cast from under his lashes. Boots shrugged, then grinned again. “Sweep it clean, Torbel. Sweep all the soot away.” With that, he stood, picked up his black case and tottered off toward the storehouse.

  “He’s getting worse,” Torbel noted in his wake.

  “Maybe,” Keiran agreed. “He’s eighty-two.”

  “I believe it. He was old when I was born.”

  Keiran slanted him a humorous look. “I didn’t know you had Welsh blood. Thought that temper of yours was pure Irish spit.”

  “It’s pure enough.” Torbel started off. The dockyard loomed under the arch of the train bridge. A murky atmosphere prevailed on this part of the waterfront. The Thames flowed green and slow, and everything was covered in grime. A group of street performers practicing their sleight of hand provided the only visible splash of color.

  “Watch this, Torbel,” a boy with spiked silver hair called out. He whipped three cups around on the stone street. “Where’s the ball, then?”

  Torbel grinned. “On your left, Needles.”

  “Damn. How’d you know?”

  “He saw it in his mind,” Keiran teased.

  “Shut up,” Torbel ordered without rancor. “Has anyone seen Lenny Street?”

  Needles, so nicknamed because of his pointy hair, nodded. “He went dockside ten minutes ago with a brown paper bag in his jacket.”

  Torbel swore, thinking back. Hungover in the Stepney jail today, Street had mumbled a disjointed tale of a threat he’d received early last night. What that threat entailed hadn’t been clear—and never would be if Torbel didn’t catch his former associate before he drank himself senseless.

  “Torbel?”

  Her voice more than the sound of his name brought his head around with a surprised jerk. His features darkened ominously. “What,” he demanded of a faintly breathless Victoria, “are you doing here?”

  “I saw you from my cab—taxi. I wanted to tell you about Tristan. Hello, Keiran. I got the charges—”

  “Dropped. I heard.”

  “From whom? Tristan’s been with me all day.”

  “News travels fast down here.”

  “Western Union should be so fast.” She swiped at a strand of silky hair that had tumbled across her cheek. “You’re welcome anyway.”

  “Your thanks will come in the form of a check,” Torbel told her, feeling out of sorts and uncustomarily edgy. “I don’t ask favors of clients.”

  “Well, this client doesn’t want a check,” she retorted. “My da didn’t raise any Scroogey old sinners. Now, what’s happening with our case?”

  Torbel’s eyes, and only his eyes, came up. “Our case?”

  She faced him, chin up, shoulders back, a challenging stance he gave her credit for pulling off. His mother had warned him as a child to use his stare with discretion. Turquoise ice had a power all its own—or so she’d insisted. Torbel had never been a believer in mysticism.

  He did, however, have a powerful stare, one that had intimidated more than its share of individuals, Keiran and Augustus Hollyburn excluded. Apparently Victoria Summers had joined that select group.

  Damn the woman for getting to him like this, though, for making the blood boil up hot and fast in his veins, for calling up visions of his mother and Ireland and Wales. Later memories of his grandparents in London had no bite, but the first eleven years of his life were a different story.

  “I’m going to meet Lenny Street,” he drawled at length, too aware of her for a fierce verbal spar. “Trust me, he’s not apt to say much in front of a stranger.”

  “If he’s in anything resembling this morning’s state of health, he’s not apt to say much at all. You think he’s behind this, don’t you? Do you also think he killed Robbie Hollyburn?”

  “No and no.” Torbel tapped his wrist at Keiran.

  “Three-fifty,” Keiran obliged. “Street’ll be halfway to ratted by now. We’ll find him faster if we split up.”

  Torbel gnashed his teeth. He wasn’t about to send Victoria off with Keiran, and all three of them standing there in the shadowy heat of the railway arch knew it.

  “All right,” he allowed reluctantly. “Let’s go.” He exchanged a look with Keiran that spoke of taking care, then cupped Victoria’s elbow firmly in his palm and nudged.

  Her skin felt like hot silk against his callused fingers. A jolt of awareness so strong it made his breath stutter speared through him. Her hair smelled of roses and some other wildflower he remembered from Ireland. She’d removed her pin-striped jacket and now wore only a sleeveless white silk top with her slim-fitting skirt and high heels.

  Her hair was a riot of raven dark curls around her face and shoulders. He fought a sigh. Hair like that surrounding features like hers, so clear and delicately sculpted, should be a crime. It made men do crazy things—like allowing her to accompany them back to the docks, he thought dryly. God must be punishing him for a wicked life.

  “Hey, Torbel, you after Street?” A heavyset man in a cap and coal-smudged trousers flapped a hand at a collection of stone buildings near the worst part of the waterfront. “He’s in Myrtle’s.”

  What the hell was he doing in there? Torbel’s irritation must have transmitted itself to Victoria, for she glanced at him.

  “You look like a thundercloud. What’s Myrtle’s?”

  A brothel was what it was, loosely disguised as a dockside pub. He couldn’t take Victoria there. On the other hand, leaving her here would be even more danger
ous. He debated with himself, then said shortly, “Put your jacket on.”

  “But it’s too…” Her eyes narrowed. “Why? What is Myrtle’s?”

  “Likely what you think.”

  She sent him a look of distrust and annoyance and pulled on her jacket. “Men,” she said with feeling.

  He was sorely tempted to kiss her, but that would be a serious mistake right now. Let her be angry. Better for both of them that her guard remain intact. Myrtle’s had seen its share of violence, and his feelings for her were too volatile by half.

  The building had a beetle brow and doors that creaked as if they’d been hinged in the Middle Ages. Inside was a smoky den of sailors and dockworkers, women in skimpy outfits and a piano player dressed in rumpled, turn-of-the-century clothes: a striped shirt, black vest, cuffs and collar. On his head sat a black derby, gnawed and dented in more than a few places.

  Victoria ventured a sardonic “The stage is for stripping, I presume.”

  Torbel regarded the dusty blue velvet curtains and shrugged. “It’s nondiscriminatory. Oswyn worked here once.”

  “Oswyn’s just a boy. He couldn’t possibly have…” But of course he could have, and she knew it. Her denial trailed off. “That’s sick.”

  Keeping a tight grip on her arm—and a tight leash on his mounting desire, Torbel guided her through the sea of sweating bodies toward a booth next to the stage. “He wasn’t a rentboy, Victoria. Don’t be so judgmental.”

  “A cat burglar who works strip joints on the side doesn’t have to be judged. His actions speak for themselves—and I’m not a prude.”

  “I never said you were.” Torbel spotted Lenny, hunched over a glass of ale with a paper bag beside him. “Stop squirming. Pretend you’re with me, and no one will bother you.”

  Lenny’s eyes, bleary from drink, raked Victoria from head to toe. A smile lit his scruffy face. “Wah-hey, pretty lawyer lady. Have a seat, and we’ll compare notes.” He dangled his glass over the table. “Go away, Torbel. Me and the lady got things to discuss. Things in common, we got.”

  He was drunk and getting drunker by the minute. Torbel made no move to leave. “Show me the note, Lenny.”

  “Can’t be showed,” the man slurred, and flicked at a pile of ashes on the table. “Burned it.”

  Torbel was on him in an instant, dropping Victoria’s arm and forcing Street up against the side of the booth. “You stupid idiot. Why?”

  He heard Victoria’s hissed “Torbel! People are staring.”

  Once aroused, however, his temper was difficult to assuage. And desire for Victoria had only heightened it. Ignoring her, he focused on the man huddled against the wall. “What’d the note say, Street? Tell me what it said and where and when you got it.”

  Street’s flinty eyes held the distant light of rage. But he answered in a grudging mumble. “I found it on the table at Gooseberries last night.”

  “What time?”

  “Going on seven o’clock.”

  Near the time they’d left for Victoria’s flat. “What did it say?” Lenny’s head bobbed, forcing Torbel to shake him. “Wake up, Street. Tell me what the note said.”

  “Don’t remember,” Lenny said fuzzily. “’Bang, you’re dead’ or something.”

  “Did it rhyme?” Victoria asked. Torbel spared her a sideways glance. She was kneeling on the wooden bench opposite Lenny. “‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star’—that sort of thing?”

  Street blinked in vague recognition. “Not that—the other one. ‘Star bright, star light.’”

  “Yes, go on,” Victoria urged.

  Torbel shook him again to keep him conscious. “Think, Street. You have a photographic memory, for Christ’s sake.”

  Street’s head lolled, but he cracked a canny eye at Torbel “I do know, actually,” he slurred proudly. Torbel released him as Lenny’s face screwed up in concentration. “’Bang, bang, bang,’” he began. “No, it was ‘Bang, stab…’ I better write it down.”

  Victoria hunted through her purse for a paper and pen. Lenny took them and began to scrawl tiny, illegible words.

  “How much for an hour?” a voice boomed out.

  Torbel closed resigned eyes. It was bound to happen, he supposed.

  The man slobbering over Victoria had a beer belly and jowls like a Saint Bernard. “She’s not…” Torbel began, and would have said “a prostitute,” had Victoria not inserted a swift “available.”

  The man emitted a disbelieving snort. “Who’re you with? Not Street, that’s for sure. And not Torbel, ‘cause he don’t do it with Myrtle’s ladies. Got his own at Gooseberries, eh, Torbel?”

  Did he know this git? Since he couldn’t summon a name, Torbel said simply, “Sod off,” and reached for Victoria’s hand. He could have been gentler when he hauled her out of the booth and tucked her in beside him, but too soft and even a git would catch on.

  Whether this one caught on or not, Torbel never knew. Nor did he see the meaty fist coming at him from the side. He heard a grunt, then the man’s knuckles planted themselves in his cheek. Around him, the pub tilted precariously. The last thing he recalled was Victoria shouting his name and the man’s tooth glinting gold in the flickering bar light.

  “YOU SON OF A…” Victoria’s accusation ended on a startled “Ooomph” as the man, using his elbow, knocked her roughly out of the way.

  “I’ll get to you later,” he promised.

  She landed in someone’s arms, a slender man covered with soot. “Sorry,” she mumbled to the chimney sweep into whom she’d stumbled. He merely thrust her upright and pushed his way through the crowd to the door. “Same to you, pal,” she muttered at his departing back.

  It took her several nerve-racking moments to locate Torbel on the floor, for the simple reason that he was no longer on the ground. The creep with the blackberry eyes and saggy jowls was sprawled like a felled giant in his place.

  “Let’s go.” She was seized by a hand and spun around before she could object. But Torbel’s touch in all things was unique and inimitable. “Lenny,” he barked in the direction of the booth.

  The fight gained momentum behind them; Victoria heard a chair crash over a table, followed by the sound of breaking glass. How, she wondered in amazement, could the piano man keep playing through such a ruckus? He didn’t pause, just kept pounding out his off-key reel.

  “Did I start this?” She looked back in amazement. “Hey, that’s my foot,” she said crossly as Lenny Street banged into her.

  “Watch it,” Torbel snapped.

  “Something pricked me,” Street defended.

  Victoria caught the sickly sweet odor of rotting flowers. To her shock, a theatrically made-up woman flew past, landing hard in a sailor’s lap. In the most bawdy pub of her da’s acquaintance, she’d never witnessed a brawl. It was fascinating, if not entirely pleasant.

  Lenny scribbled as he staggered into the night. “‘Bang or stab,’” he mumbled, too intoxicated to be afraid. “‘Don’t look now, Street’…”

  He finished with a proud flourish, held the paper out, then promptly collapsed onto a half-closed rain barrel.

  “It’s a threat, you know,” he said in a blurred voice. “I’m gonna d-die.”

  He flexed stiff fingers in consternation. Cigarette smoke wafted from Myrtle’s, along with numerous shrieks and crashes.

  “I…” A look of sudden alarm swept over his saturnine face. His mouth moved like a fish. “Torbel,” he gasped, “I—I can’t…breathe. I—I…” His hands went up to circle his throat.

  “Street?” Torbel looked over. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “He’s hyperventilating.” Victoria shook the man’s thin arm. “Calm down, Lenny. There’s no one here. It’s only a note.”

  “Can’t…” He stood, thrashing his arms as he fought for air. “Torbel-help me!”

  Torbel caught him as he pitched forward. With Victoria’s help, he laid Lenny down on the cracked pavement. Victoria loosened his collar to no apparent avail. If
anything, Lenny’s breathing grew increasingly ragged.

  “What is it?” Fear shot through her. “Does he have a bad heart?”

  Torbel’s features were grim. He pumped Street’s chest with the heels of his hand. “It isn’t his heart, Victoria. Call an ambulance.”

  She scrambled to her feet. She would have returned to Myrtle’s, but he motioned her away. “There’s a call box at the end of the pier. Get the police while you’re at it.”

  “I—Okay.” Did she have money? She scrabbled through her purse as she ran, abandoning her shoes halfway to the booth.

  Ambulance first, then police.

  The sergeant at the local precinct house told her to stay put, an officer would be dispatched at once.

  When she returned to Torbel, winded and hot, he was crouched beside Lenny Street’s supine form, staring blank faced. “He’s dead.”

  Deflated, Victoria sank to her knees. “I don’t understand. Dead how? He wasn’t shot. He isn’t bleeding, so he wasn’t stabbed.” Very slowly logic began to creep in. “He couldn’t breathe.” She questioned Torbel with her eyes. “Poison?”

  “Probably. Did you call the precinct house?”

  “They’re sending someone.” She hesitated, then asked quietly, “What kind of poison? Fast, slow? In his beer? What?”

  “I don’t know.” Torbel regarded the paper at Lenny’s side, the one on which he’d scrawled the threat. His brow furrowed as he read:

  Starlight, star bright,

  No star for you tonight.

  Bang and stab in back or head.

  Don’t look now, Street,

  Bang, you’re dead!

  MUCH TO DO. The sweep hastened through a press of bodies to his underground lair. A quick wash and change, check the new mirror for details and away.

  The heat lacked no punch for the absence of the sun. A high haze continued to blanket London and the Thames. The sweep unpocketed the dart gun and peered into a cluttered alley. Ten rubbish bins…No, better still, the junkyard.