Page 99 of Corpse in the Canal

Hope considered. He took what appeared to be a toothpick from his pocket and began to dig inside his mouth. He removed the pick. “So he did. But who told you?”

“Can’t remember,” Janey said. “Thing is, nothing happened to this gent round here, where you might expect it. We know he went home to the country. And we think someone might have followed him there. Don’t suppose it was your people?” Deliberately, she gave him a fiction to latch on to, of an overzealous underling. She doubted it would save them, but it was worth a try.

Hope had another go with his toothpick before he pocketed it. “It was me,” Hope said. “Cove owed me, see? So I followed him to a dull little place called Channing. Where I discovered over two pints of ale that he owed everyone else too. Dead men don’t pay, and since I found out where his family lived, I had a threat to force his hand.”

“Did you use this threat?” Lenny asked.

“No point till he got the readies from his devoted da, wouldn’t you say? I walked back to the town and stepped on a boat right back to the Regent’s Canal and London. Smooth, pleasant way to travel.”

His story made sense. The fact that he’d troubled to tell it to them didn’t.

Lenny said, “Good enough. We’ll see you’re not bothered further by our people on this matter.”

Hope showed his teeth again. This time, he seemed genuinely amused. “Very decent of you. Thing is, my curious friends, you’re bad for business. Good night.” And he simply walked away into the swirling, evil-smelling fog. His muffled footsteps faded.

The man in front of Janey seized her wrist before she could swing the bag. The hulking man lunged at Lenny, the blade in his hand suddenly visible.

This is it. We’re going to die here. Desperately, she grasped for Lenny’s hand, and his fingers closed around her. It was all she needed. They wouldn’t go down without a fight.

A metallic click, easily recognizable, sounded unnaturally loud in the shrouding fog, paralyzing everyone.

“No one move, or I’ll shoot.” A man pointing a pistol at Janey’s attacker stepped out of the mist. “Police.”

He wasn’t in uniform, but he carried a lantern, brighter than the one now abandoned on the road, and it dimly lit the tableau before him. The knives clattered to the ground. And, with some amazement, Janey recognized their savior.

One of the more unpleasant detectives from Scotland Yard—Napier was his name, and he was no friend of Silver and Grey.

He jerked the pistol, his hard little eyes unwavering, and the two thugs melted into the mist.

“This way,” Napier said. “Fast.”

Did he know he had made the only safe move? If he had fired the gun or tried to arrest the thugs, the whole street would be alive with desperate, murderous people… Janey and Lenny stumbled after the striding policeman, who led them around the corner into a broader street. They sped, semi-blind, along to the end and around another corner, up some steps toward where the fog was better penetrated by street lights. Napier kept his pistol in his hand until they reached the top of the steps.

“What the devil were you doing there?” he demanded furiously. “Don’t you know better than to be asking questions in a place like that? With no protection?”

“You’re not exactly with a large force yourself,” Janey retorted.

“I have the protection of the law and the Metropolitan Police,” Napier said with dignity.

“No you ain’t. You got the protection of that gun,” Janey said. “And we’re grateful for it. Thanks.”

Napier blinked in the light of his own lantern. For once, he looked flummoxed.

“Were you after the same cove?” Lenny asked.

“Part of our investigation,” Napier said reluctantly. “What’d he tell you?”

Constance was all in favor of fostering good relations with the police, so Janey obligingly told him.

“You do know,” Napier said, “that he only revealed that much because he meant his men to kill you?”

“Yes,” Lenny said. “That’s why we believe him. We owe you, sir.”

It might have been the sir that flattered him, or the tight situation they’d all escaped together, but Napier neither insulted them nor told them off, merely nodded curtly and muttered, “Go home, you pair of lunatics.”

Janey gave him a cheery wave until she could no longer make him out. “Bloody hell. I’ve never seen him so human before. Normally, he hates us.”

“Why?” Lenny asked.