Laura Lee Guhrke (37 page)

Mick opened the file and began to read it as he crossed the room to the table. “This is the Clapham case from, ’85.”

“Exactly.” Henry followed Mick to the table, and as Mick pulled out a chair and sat down, Henry moved to stand beside him. “Remember that suicide case Munro brought you? fane Anne Clapham, the woman who jumped off Tower Bridge? Her husband was Henry Clapham.”

“Yes, yes, I remember. Richard reminded me of that case when we were in the morgue with Mrs. Clapham’s body.”

“But do you remember this case?”

“I don’t. It was ages ago.” He glanced up at the man beside his chair. “What makes you think that the Henry Clapham case is pertinent to the murders of Jack and Richard?”

“It involves all three of you, and the motive of vengeance makes sense. Read the notes on that case.”

Mick scanned the file, reading aloud some of the notes he had written twelve years ago, as Thacker leaned over his shoulder to read along with him. “Clapham ran an opium smuggling operation out of a group of storage warehouses in Isle of Dogs. He was a ruthless man, and anyone who betrayed his trust was killed by his command. The Yard knew of at least seven men who had been murdered on his orders. Jack and I were assigned to work with Richard and the other River Police on solving the murders of those he killed and destroying his operation.”

Mick stopped reading the file. The case was coming back to him as he spoke, and he began remembering the details. “Jack, Richard, and I got involved in his operation, pretending to be opium dealers, and over the next six months, we got a great deal of information about how he smuggled the opium into the country. When we had the evidence we needed to make arrests, we raided the warehouses, and during that raid, the three of us found Clapham himself hiding in one of the buildings. We were able to finally overpower him. He was arrested, tried, and convicted. He was hanged.”

“I’ve been doing some investigating of my own about this Clapham fellow’s wife and family. Read my notes.”

“You really do want to make detective, don’t you, Henry?” Mick scanned the report the sergeant had written on the background of Jane Anne Clapham, who had drowned herself in the Thames not long ago. “Jane Anne and Henry Clapham, had a luxurious house in Crooms Hill, and a plentiful income from his ill-gotten opium. She lost all that when her husband was hanged. They had one son. . .”

Mick’s voice trailed off as he read the next paragraph of Thacker’s report, a short biography of Henry Clapham, the second, who had gone into the navy and had supposedly drowned at sea, but whose body had never been found.

He’s connected with you
.

Sophie had told him that, and he had refused to believe it.

Mick slowly put down the file as he realized the truth. It all came together in his mind like the pieces of
a jigsaw puzzle, but before he could even move, Mick felt the cold muzzle of a gun pressed against the base of his skull, and he heard the hammer being pulled back.

“You see, don’t you?” Thacker asked eagerly. “I had to lead you by the hand the whole way, but at last you see the truth.”

“I see perfectly,” Mick murmured, wondering how the hell to knock the pistol out of Thacker’s hand without getting his head blown off. “You changed your surname when you left the Royal Navy. You lied on your application to join the Metropolitan Police. You requested a transfer from division to be a CID sergeant at the Yard to get closer to Jack and me. You murdered Jack and Richard.”

“Exactly so. And now I’m going to kill you, Micky boy. I never forget a betrayal. Like father, like son, you know.”

Twenty
 

Sophie came to her senses to find she was lying on the carpeted floor of her room. She was in her nightgown, and she’d clearly been getting ready for bed. She knew she had blacked out, but she had no idea how long ago that had been.

Her head ached terribly, but she could recall the vision she’d had in vivid detail, as if it were a photograph burned onto her mind. She was standing in the doorway of Mick’s flat. She could see Mick sitting at the table and another officer standing behind him. Both men were in profile to her, and Sophie could see a gun at the base of Mick’s skull. She could also see, for the first time, the killer’s face. She didn’t know him, she had never seen him before, but she knew he was about to kill Mick.

“Oh, my God.” She threw back the covers and
jumped out of bed, tugging off her nightgown as she crossed to her armoire. She yanked on a shirtwaist and skirt, then grabbed a pair of evening slippers. She wasn’t going to waste any time with high-button shoes and button hooks now. She grabbed a shilling from her jewelry box for cab fare and dropped it into her pocket, then raced out of her room, down the stairs, and out the front door. She was halfway down the walk before she felt a hand grab her by the arm, yanking her back. She turned, and in the moonlight, she saw the young and serious face of Constable Fletcher.

“Steady on, miss,” he said, relaxing his grip once he realized it was her. “Now where do you think you’re going in the middle of the night?”

“Constable, I’ve never been so happy to see anybody in my life.” In her panic, she had forgotten she had Scotland Yard right at her door. This time, it was her turn to grab his arm. “Come with me at once. We have to go to Mick’s flat.”

“What, now?” The young man, who was much stronger than Sophie, did not move, no matter how hard she pulled at him. “Miss, it’s the middle of the night.”

“I know, but we have to go at once. Mick is there, and he’s in danger.”

Fletcher frowned at her, unmoving.

They were wasting precious time talking about this, but Sophie also knew he wasn’t going to let her go alone. She struggled for patience. “Constable, please listen to me. I know Mick is in danger, and we have to go to his flat now. Right now.”

“I’m ordered not to leave my post, Miss Haversham.”

“Yes, but your purpose is to guard me, is it not? If you’re with me, you’re guarding me.”

“I also have a responsibility to guard the others in the house.”

Sophie drew a deep breath, trying not to lose her temper. “There are two of you here. The other constable guards the house, too, so you come with me. Let’s go.”

She turned and started down the walk again, but she wasn’t even able to take a step before the constable once again seized her by the arm. “For heaven’s sake!” she cried, jerking free. “We don’t have time to argue about this. Mick could be killed at any moment. I know it, I feel it. We have to go now!”

The moment the words were out of her mouth, she knew they were the wrong thing to say. Fletcher’s grip on her arm tightened, and the derisive skepticism in his expression was plain. “What is this?” he demanded. “Did you have a vision?” Without waiting for an answer, he began pulling her back toward the house. “Come along, miss. Go on back to bed. Go on, now.”

She wanted to shout that she could leave her own house if she wanted to, and that she wasn’t some recalcitrant child throwing a tantrum, nor was she some insane woman who needed to be locked up in an asylum, but Sophie went back inside the house, pretending meekness and obedience. The second the front door closed behind her, she was running through the pitch black house toward the conservatory.

Once inside, she went to the French doors that led outside, slipped into the garden, and closed the doors quietly behind her. She ducked down behind some tall
rhododendrons as Harper, the second constable watching the house, passed by, and the moment he was around the corner on the side of the house, she ran for the fruit trees at the back corner of the garden.

She climbed up into the low, sturdy branches of a plum tree at the very back. She was over the stone wall into the Sheltons’ back garden in an instant, and five minutes later she was on Brooks Street a few blocks away, flagging down one of the hansom cabs that circled Claridge’s Hotel at all hours of the night.

When the cab reached its destination in Maiden Lane, Sophie was out of the carriage in an instant. She tossed the driver the shilling in her pocket and raced for the front doors of Mrs. Tribble’s lodging house. To her surprise, the landlady had not yet locked her doors for the night, and Sophie was able to slip inside the dark foyer without being seen.

She started up the stairs as quietly as possible, her sense of foreboding increasing with each step. He was here, with Mick. She could feel it. She could feel his hate in the air, his hate and his rage. See it, smell it, taste it. She closed her eyes for a moment, fighting not to black out again, gripping the stair rail as she continued up to the first floor.

At Mick’s door, she paused. From inside, she heard a man’s voice say, “Like father, like son, you know.”

She did not recognize the voice, but she knew the man had killed Jack Hawthorne and Richard Munro and now he had a gun pointed at the back of Mick’s head. What should she do?

Even as she asked herself that question, a strange and unexpected sense of calm came over her. Any feeling
of faintness vanished, and though she was frightened out of her wits, her hand did not shake as she reached for the doorknob. She knew just how to help Mick. For the first time in her life, Sophie was truly grateful for the gift she had been given.

She turned the knob slowly, then she eased the door open without making a sound, thankful that Mick’s methodical personality had impelled him to keep the hinges of his door well oiled. She pushed the door wide.

The scene before her was the same as her vision, an exact duplicate in every detail. Both men in profile to her at the table across the room, Mick seated, with the other man standing behind him, holding a gun to Mick’s head. Strangely, Sophie’s sense of calm did not dissipate at the sight.

“Hullo.”

The sound of her voice caught both men off guard, but it was Mick who reacted first. He turned around in his chair and hit the other man’s wrist, trying to dislodge the gun. Though Mick’s assailant managed to hang on to the weapon, it went off, making a popping sound like a bottle of champagne being opened, as the bullet sank into the wooden floor.

Mick was on his feet in an instant, and the two men faced each other with about eight feet between them. The killer cocked the gun again, pointing it at Mick’s chest.

Sophie glanced at the papers on the table, and she knew everything she needed to know. “Henry, Henry,” she said in a chiding voice that sounded unfamiliar
to her own ears, “you mustn’t be so impatient. You know how I hate it when you get impatient.”

Henry looked at her, then back at Mick. She could see the sweat break out on his face, and she knew her ploy was working. She had to keep talking.

“Remember what I always said, Henry. Keep that hate inside. Hide it from everybody, then when the time is right, you can use it. The time isn’t right yet. Not yet.”

“Stop it!” Henry screamed, but he did not look at her. “You’re not my mother. She died. She jumped off Tower Bridge and killed herself because of her grief.” He lifted the gun a bit higher. “And it’s all his fault. Him and Hawthorne and Munro. They killed her, and they killed my father.”

Mick stood perfectly still and said nothing.

“Henry,” she went on, “I am your mother. I’m talking to you through this woman. She’s a medium; it’s the only way I can talk to you now. I know I always told you those policemen killed your father. They hanged him. As you were growing up, I put all my hate into you, knowing you would get revenge on the men who killed your father. But I shouldn’t have done that. It was wrong.”

“It wasn’t wrong!” The hand that held the gun began to shake. “They deserve to die, all of them. They killed Papa, and they killed you.”

“No, Henry. I killed myself because I knew what you were planning to do, and I blamed myself. I raised you wrong. I raised you to hate, and that’s not right.”

Sophie took a deep breath, knowing now was the
moment for the biggest risk of all. “I’m in heaven, Henry. With your father. The Lord has forgiven us both, and we know he will forgive you, but only if you stop killing people.”

“Stop it!” Henry turned on her, pointing the gun straight at her heart. “You’re not my mother. She’s dead. Stop playing these parlor tricks!”

Mick jumped forward, tackling Henry to the floor. The gun went off again, but Mick had deflected the other man’s arm, and the bullet sank into the wall at least six feet from where Sophie stood.

Henry, a small man, was no match for Mick, who easily overpowered him and took his gun. He cuffed Henry’s hands behind his back and sat astride him, with the weapon now at the back of Henry’s head. “Sophie,” he said without taking his eyes from his captive, “are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’m not taking any chances with this weasel, so there’s something I need you to do. You remember where Bow Street Police Station is?”

“Yes, about three blocks from here.”

“I want you to run over there and tell the sergeant on night watch that I’ve caught the man who killed Jack and Richard, and I’m requesting reinforcements. Go. And when you’ve done that, I want you to go home.”

“But I don’t want to leave you—”

“Don’t argue with me. Go.”