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“Why?”
“Because more of their kind will know where to find you,” he whispered. “It is best to remain silent, and out of sight if you can. If we get split up, just find a huge stone to sit behind in the farthest corner of the graveyard and wait for me to find you. Don’t look up, don’t move, and don’t panic. Stay exactly where you are. They aren’t likely to bother with you all that much, and will most probably think you have left the graveyard because you are squeamish. I will find you, Marguerite, I promise.”
Marguerite stared at him in dismay. She had no reason to doubt him but did doubt that she could stay in such a god awful place on her own. It was bad enough being in Kensal Green Cemetery by herself in the daytime but in the fog, it was a thousand times worse. It was dark, eerie and full of dead people.
“I want to leave,” she whispered.
“We will, but we can’t go that way.” He pointed to the stone pillars they had just passed through, to the tall, darkly garbed man standing directly in between them.
Marguerite gasped. Her stomach fell to her toes as she studied that macabre sight. The man didn’t move or even twitch but merely stood sentry-like, blocking anybody’s entrance or exit.
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Joe studied the graveyard they had to traverse to get out of there. While at the time it had seemed like a good idea to come here, he realised now just how stupid he had been. Of course, someone like Sayers would pre-empt him. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that the gravestones were perfect objects for anybody to hide behind, especially if they were trying to avoid detection, or were being chased.
Shaking his head at his own stupidity, Joe sighed. There was little he could do about it now. They had to go deeper into the cemetery because he suspected that the man blocking their exit had several gunmen waiting nearby.
“What are you doing?” she whispered when he pressed the handle of the cold metal gun into the palm of her hand.
“You have to have this. Don’t be afraid to use it. Put your finger on the trigger like this.” He explained how to cock it and shoot it should she need to. “But make sure you know the man you are shooting is a stranger. I don’t want a bullet in me before we get out of here. Don’t, under any circumstances, shoot wildly at anybody who appears before you.”
“I can’t use it,” she protested trying to hand it back to him, but he refused to take it. She didn’t want the thing in her hand. It was evil and as cold and horrid as the cemetery they were in.
“You have to keep it, and will use it if you need to. Look, I don’t have the time to argue with you about this. We need to get out of here. Our chances of doing so alive reduce the longer we stand here discussing it.” He made no attempt to keep the impatience out of his voice and waited, albeit briefly, for her to argue.
Although his face betrayed no sign of his growing concern, he furtively watched a solitary figure appear from behind one of the headstones and scuttle across the graveyard to stand behind a large obelisk. He turned in time to watch a second figure dart through the stone pillars they had just passed through, straight past the sentry keeping guard.
Mentally plotting the layout of the cemetery, Joe eyed their surroundings. There were several paths here and there, but most of them led back to the main road which ran from one end of the cemetery to the other. It would be better if they just stuck to the main road, but then that was undoubtedly what Sayers’ men were hoping.
“We need to keep off the main road, but move far enough back so that we pass by the men lining the road watching out for us.”
“Are they?” she squinted through the darkness but couldn’t see anything.
In spite of herself, she had to wonder if he was being honest with her. She couldn’t see anything unusual apart from the man in the entrance but what was to say that he wasn’t waiting for someone? When she looked at him more closely, though, the gun he held in his hand became evident. Her gaze dropped to the gun she held loosely in her own hand. She knew then that it was better if she kept it.
“We have to avoid an ambush,” he murmured.
If they were ambushed, he would be as good as dead, and Marguerite would be left to the not so tender mercies of the iniquitous Sayers.
“Brace yourself,” Joe murmured. “We need to go that way but, whatever you do, don’t speak.”
With his colleagues, he would now resort to using hand signals. It was impossible to do that with Marguerite, so he pressed a finger to his lips in silent warning before he ushered her quietly around the man crouched behind a crypt. He saw Marguerite’s eyes widen at the sight of him, but thankfully, she didn’t say anything. Instead, she sidled closer to him and stayed close behind as they ventured deeper into the graveyard.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Because the cemetery was in the middle of London, it was littered with gravestones and crypts which loomed out of nowhere and threatened to trip them up if they didn’t keep a wary eye out. They carefully picked their way in a seemingly random direction from one gravestone to another, using the fog and stones as cover. Marguerite’s heart was hammering so wildly that she wouldn’t have been surprised if it popped right out of her chest. She couldn’t hear anything beyond its wild tattoo, but she suspected Joe felt every tremor. He, meanwhile, appeared completely unperturbed by the entire fiasco.
“Rest for a minute,” Joe whispered when they had reached what appeared to be a crossroads.
The silence within the graveyard was strangely sinister now, and it had nothing to do with the fog. There was an air of expectancy about that warned her everything could change in a second if someone made one wrong move. Rather than being the final resting place full of peace and tranquillity, it had rather dangerous undertones which were faintly alarming.
“How many of them do you think there are?” she whispered when the flurry of movement captured her attention to her left.
It was a long way off and heading in the opposite direction, which was reassuring, but she suspected it wouldn’t be long before they began to draw closer.
“I don’t know. It is hard to tell in this smog. We need to keep moving.”
“Where to?” she demanded.
