Chapter Ten

C hapter Ten

“Y ou’re telling me a man is living in the sewers?”

May was walking at a fast clip along Carmelite Street the following morning, Josef trotting at her heels. He’d spotted her leaving the station and pounced before they reached the office. “Not a man.” He was breathless from running to catch up. “Well, he was a man once. But he’s been changed, dehumanised. I don’t know how—electric shock therapy, perhaps? Or poison gas? His brain must have been altered or—”

May turned abruptly, and Josef almost bumped into her. “Joe, stop.” She put her hand out, touching his chest. Her expression was grim. “I think—Joe, perhaps you need to rest and stop thinking about everything you’ve seen. The photographs, the pamphlet. They can wait. You’re—”

“They can’t wait! It’s down there right now. It attacked me last night, and it’s killing people. Eating them, perhaps? I don’t know. Beaumont knows, but he’s not saying. Well, he’s saying it’s goblins. Or ghoulies. But—”

“Josef.” Her cold hands cupped his face, and he was astonished to see her eyes shining overly bright. “Please, stop. You need to rest. Let me take you home.” One thumb brushed his cheekbone. “When did you last sleep?”

“I’ve not gone mad,” he said, pulling back. “Is that what you think? May, it’s real . I know what I saw. I have bruises. My head—” He pulled off his cap, turned around so she could see the cut. “I hit it when the creature pushed me down the stairs.”

“Oh, Joe, you hit your head?” She pulled him back around. “You should see a doctor.”

“I can’t afford a doctor.”

“You could have a concussion.”

“May—” He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Listen. The government is … is altering men, turning them into monsters. Beaumont said so—he said it had been altered. They’re turning men into weapons of war. Imagine an army of them tunnelling under no man’s land.”

She closed her eyes. “All right,” she said. “All right, Joe. Listen. Go home, write it up, and bring it in tomorrow. We’ll look at it together.”

They wouldn’t, though. He could see that in her face. Dropping his hands from her shoulders, he stepped back, dismayed. “You don’t believe me.”

“It’s an extraordinary allegation.”

It was—of course it was. He could hardly believe it himself, and he’d seen it with his own two eyes. “What if I get proof? A photograph.”

“Well… all right. But, Joe, don’t go back into the sewer. Promise me. Monsters aside, it’s not safe down there.”

“I promise.” And he wasn’t lying; the thought of returning to that claustrophobic darkness filled him with horror. But that didn’t mean there weren’t other ways to investigate. “I’m not letting this drop, though. I’ll find the truth, and when I do, you’ll have to publish it because it’ll be the biggest story the Clarion’s ever had. Or any paper.”

She didn’t respond, just watched him with sad and steady eyes until he turned and walked away.

Well, let her think he was shell-shocked or driven mad by the war. He knew better. What had happened last night would haunt him for the rest of his life if he didn’t get to the bottom of it, Alex and his lies be damned.

Avoiding the tube—if he ever went underground again, it would be too soon—Josef took an omnibus to St. Thomas’s hospital. Rattling along on the top deck gave him time to think, and his thoughts turned back to last night and the horror that had attacked him in the dark.

But then, irritatingly, he found his heart skipping as he remembered Alex and his friend coming to his rescue like knights of yore. No, not like knights; he refused to romanticise them like that. If anything, they were more like zookeepers desperately trying to keep their escaped tiger from mauling the visitors. Because Josef had no doubt that they were responsible for the man—if he was still a man—prowling the sewers.

Still, no amount of rationalisation could keep his mind from drifting back to Alex’s mansion flat and those few moments of connection, even intimacy, they’d shared while Alex had tended his wounds.

Before he’d thrown it all away with his offensive lies.

Josef was still furious. Baffled, in fact. What had Alex been thinking? There must be a hundred plausible lies he could have spun. Why mock him with one so ridiculous? Although now he thought back on it, there had been no mocking in Alex’s tone. For whatever reason, he’d delivered the lie with utter conviction—as if it had been a genuine attempt at deception.

As if Josef would ever believe such nonsense.

He considered, briefly, that Alex might believe it. Was he the sort of spiritualist fanatic who harboured delusions about ghosts and ghoulies? No, that couldn’t be true. Alex had been at the front, actively involved with whatever the government was testing in the salient. And he’d stolen Josef’s bloody camera to keep it secret.

He had, however, returned Josef’s boots.

They’d been delivered early that morning, cleaned and polished, along with his laundered clothes. No note. Not that Josef had been expecting a note, nor wanting one either. But it meant he now had a set of Beaumont’s clothes, including the rather cosy cardigan he was currently wearing, that he needed to return. That thought sent irritating silvery feelings fluttering through his chest. Not exactly anticipation, but something like it—an agitation he couldn’t quell.

It was enough to make him jump to his feet to dislodge the thought and make his way along the swaying aisle to the stairs, trotting down to stand on the rear platform and gaze out as they crossed the foggy river.

The army had commandeered hundreds of LGOC buses, and their drivers, for the war effort and used them to transport men, ammunition, and casualties to and from the forward lines. Once, Josef had stumbled across the corpse of one lying half on its side in a muddy ditch by the side of a shelled-pocked road. All skin and bones, with its London General Omnibus Company name still displayed on the front. The poignancy had closed his throat and made him reach for his camera.

It was disorientating to be riding one back in London. Everything was disorientating, as if the world had been picked up and shaken and nothing was where it should be anymore.

When the bus slowed in heavy traffic just after Westminster Bridge, he jumped off and hurried to the hospital, hands sunk deep into his pockets. He tugged the long sleeves of his borrowed cardigan down over his hands too, for a little extra warmth.

St. Thomas’s was quieter today than last time he’d been there. No Red Cross vehicles—hot cross buns, they’d called them in Flanders—queued up to unload their sorry cargo, and that suited him just fine.

He walked around the back of the old red-brick Victorian building, in the direction he’d seen Vi and Lottie drive when they’d taken their body to the mortuary. His new camera sat snugly in his coat pocket, and his plan was to look for the soldier who’d been found dead in the sewer. Vi had said that was Tuesday morning, so he hoped the poor bugger would still be there. With luck and daylight, he’d get a better picture. Proof—of what, he didn’t yet know. But of something, at least.

Josef had never been inside a hospital until he’d reached the salient, and St Thomas’s was quite different to a field hospital. Long hallways infused with the stinging scent of carbolic soap echoed with the sober clip-clip-clip of footsteps on tiles, occasionally the distant wailing of a child or the slamming of a heavy door.

Nothing like the organised urgency of medicine on the front line.

Pulling off his hat, he attempted to look like he was meant to be there as he strode along purposefully, casting discreet glances at the signs pointing him in the right direction. The mortuary was in the basement, down a set of chilly, poorly lit stairs. It was colder still below, and Josef was suddenly gripped by clammy panic, the hair on his arms and the back of his neck rising, heart thumping and legs less stable than he’d have liked. He was no coward whatever his father might think, but what had happened to him last night… Well, it had shocked him, no getting away from that fact.

Mouth dry, his boots scuffed on the stone floor at the bottom of the steps. A stark electric lightbulb illuminated the space, and ahead of him extended another long corridor, lights spaced at intervals along its institutional length. A small sign saying ‘Mortuary’ pointed down the corridor, and, about a quarter of the way along, he saw another sign jutting out from the wall.

Mortuary Services

Right. He clenched his fingers and found they were ice cold despite the added warmth of Alex’s cardigan. Nerves, he supposed. His blood was pumping hard enough—his heart certainly was—but the blood didn’t seem to be reaching the ends of his fingers and toes. Stupid, to feel this…frightened. What did he think would happen in the middle of the day, in the middle of a hospital? The creature from last night was hardly going to jump out from around the corner.

‘Course it bloody wouldn’t.

“Get a hold of yourself, Joe.”

His voice echoed in the empty corridor, tense and rasping. It didn’t reassure.

Still, he’d been in stickier situations than this. Last night was one, and ten months under the German guns, stealing photographs beneath the nose of the army, was another. He could bloody well walk along this corridor and into the mortuary without cringing like a schoolboy.

And so, he did. He forced his legs into motion just like he’d done on those endless, exhausted nights driving backward and forward from dressing station to clearing station.

When he reached the door to the mortuary, he found it cracked open. After a moment’s hesitation, he pushed it wider and poked his head inside. It was a large space, again lit by glaring electric light.

A man in a white coat was rising from a desk next to the door, and he looked at Josef in surprise over the rims of his wire spectacles. “Can I help you?” he said shortly.

Josef felt a stupid rush of relief to find another living, breathing human being here. But what had he expected? A room full of dead bodies? However, it meant he now had to think on his feet. “The police sent me,” he said, pulling out his camera. “I’m to photograph the body of the man brought in on Tuesday. Private Andrew Sykes.”

“The police?” The doctor frowned down at his desk, shuffling papers. “I was expecting Inspector Lakeman in half an hour.”

“Really?” Shit, that was a bit of luck. “That is—the inspector’s been called away on, er, urgent business. But he asked me to come along instead. I hope it’s not too inconvenient, me coming a tad early?”

The doctor pulled out his pocket watch and frowned at the time. “I’m afraid it is, rather. I’ve a meeting with Dr Collins in ten minutes, and my assistant is at lunch. Can you come back?”

“That would be difficult,” Josef said, which had the benefit of being entirely true. Snapping his fingers, as if coming up with a splendid idea, he said, “Why don’t you point me towards the unfortunate private? I’ll get my photograph and be gone before you get back. How about that?”

The doctor hesitated. Josef could see his gaze darting to his watch.

“I’ve done this plenty of times,” Josef assured him. “I don’t need any help.”

“Well, it’s not exactly orthodox…”

Josef shrugged. “We’re not living in orthodox times, are we?”

That provoked a brief smile. “No, I suppose we’re not. All right. Sykes is in drawer thirty-two.” Gesturing to the far end of the large room, he said, “I warn you, though, there’s a…pungent odour. Don’t keep the drawer open long.”

Grimacing, Josef said, “Yes, I’ve been warned about that.”

“Very well. I’ll leave you to your business and get to mine.”

Josef waited until the doctor had gone and then closed the door firmly behind him before walking around the desk and into the rest of the mortuary. There were drawers on either side of both long walls, a narrow window high up at the end—at street level, he supposed—and in the middle of the room sat two metal tables, each of which had a drain beneath.

A year ago, that might have turned Josef’s stomach, but he was inured to gore these days. At least the bodies on those tables would already be dead. It was far worse when they were screaming.

His footsteps echoed as he paced to the end of the mortuary, looking for drawer number thirty-two. Before he opened it, he pulled out his camera and adjusted the aperture for the light levels. He wanted that drawer open for as little time as possible and took the precaution of wrapping his scarf around his mouth and nose to keep out as much of the stink as possible.

Death no longer shocked Josef. He did not fear the sight of a man’s mortal remains—it was only so much meat, in the end—but opening that drawer and sliding out the shelf within had his pulse racing. Perhaps it was the fear of being caught, or the dread familiarity of the stench, or just the memory of last night’s attack. Whatever the reason, his heart hammered, breath harsh in the silence of the mortuary as he walked to the head of the body beneath its shroud.

Vi had told him that the man’s arm was chewed up, and there was no mistaking that stink. Worse, he could see a dark stain beneath the sheet, as if the rot had infected the white fabric even after the man’s death. Was that usual? He didn’t know, nor did he want to look. The very idea of pulling back that stained sheet filled him with horror.

Why, he couldn’t explain, but his skin crawled as he reached out to draw back the shroud, dismayed to see a tremor in his hands as he plucked the sheet back to reveal the man beneath.

The first shock was that the body was naked. Death, in Josef’s experience, always came uniformed. But here, the man’s clothes had been removed. His nakedness revealed a narrow-chested, spare-bodied youth, white and waxy in death. Livid bruises marred his alabaster skin, and Josef might have thought the fall into the sewer explained them had he not seen the unmistakable evidence of shrapnel injuries radiating across the boy’s torso. Not old wounds, either. Fresh lacerations. Inexplicably, it looked as if the lad had recently taken the brunt of a Rum Jar exploding at close range.

Which was impossible.

And then there was the black rot on the boy’s arm, extending down to his curled, misshapen fingers and up across his bony shoulder. The stink was intense, and Josef gagged, but he swallowed hard and pulled out his camera—the distance provided by looking through the lens helped him cope with anything. Beneath the bright electric light, and as much misty daylight as the high basement windows admitted, he began to photograph that terrible wound. He had a new film in his camera, so he had eight shots, and he planned to use each one wisely.

He was concentrating so hard on the lad’s rotting arm and the inexplicable shrapnel wounds that it wasn't until his fifth shot, when he stepped back to photograph the whole body, that he noticed the boy’s face.

Slowly, Josef lowered his camera.

A boy’s face with fine, mousy hair and cracked lips—sixteen or seventeen, perhaps. Josef’s skin prickled, lungs seizing as he froze in soundless shock. Impossibly, inexplicably, he knew that face. Alone among all the dead men he’d seen, this one was burned into his memory. Because he’d stroked that fine hair back from his forehead, put his own canteen to those cracked, blue lips and offered what comfort he could as this boy breathed his last breath.

Unless he had a twin, this was the boy who’d died among the dead at a forward dressing station a mile behind the line in Flanders.

With his own eyes, he’d seen it, and now here he was, lacerated with shrapnel, having been discovered dead after apparently falling into a London sewer.

Distantly, he heard the echoing clang of a slamming door. The sound roused him, jolting him back to the moment and his mission. Bringing the camera back up, he photographed the boy’s body, then focused more fully on his face. He clicked once more, rolled the film on, lifted it again and—

Stumbled back, almost dropping the camera in shock.

The boy’s eyes were open, pale blue and ghastly. Breath rasped in Josef’s throat, loud in the silent mortuary, heart thumping wildly.

Had his eyes been open before? They must have been. Josef just hadn’t noticed, that was all. Only—how could he not have noticed? The eldritch light in those dead eyes was all he could look at.

The silence grew deeper, as if the room itself had stopped breathing. Every muscle in Josef’s body tensed, poised as if frozen in a nightmare. He edged back a step, feet scraping over the tiled floor, his gaze never leaving the corpse. It didn’t move.

Of course it didn’t fucking move!

Another step back, another rasp of his boots. His camera, clenched in both hands, bit into his palms. He didn’t care. He just wanted to run, to put time and distance between himself and that terrible, impossible body. But he dared not look away, dared not turn his back. Scarcely dared move.

Afraid to wake the dead.

He took another hesitant step backward, and a hand touched his shoulder.

“Fuck!” Josef leaped out of his skin, camera clattering to the floor as he spun around to face—

Alexander Beaumont, tall and elegant with his unsmiling gaze fixed on Josef.

“Son of a bitch !” Josef gasped, scrambling to pick up his camera. “What the fuck are you doing...?”

He trailed off as Alex’s gaze slid past him to the corpse. Still rattled—well, that was an understatement; he felt more like someone had plugged him into an electrical socket—Josef turned to look as well. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find the body sitting up, but it was still where he’d left it, staring up at the ceiling with its dead, uncanny gaze.

Alex moved past Josef, the broad shoulder of his overcoat brushing Josef’s arm as he passed. Impossible that he should feel any warmth from that brief touch, nor draw any comfort from Alex’s presence, so he ignored the brief fluttering in his chest and, cautiously, followed. “It’s the same boy we saw die at the dressing station,” he whispered as they approached the corpse.

After a heavy pause, Alex nodded. “Damn. I’d hoped he’d be spared this…indignity.”

“Indignity? For God’s sake, man, he died in a pile of corpses. How is this worse?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

That was true if he was going to start wittering on about ghosts and ghoulies again. “You’d better give me the real truth this time, or I’m going to the police.”

And, from Josef, that was saying something.

Alex turned and met his gaze, dark eyes full of an emotion Josef couldn’t place. “Please don’t,” he said. Then his eyes fluttered briefly shut, as if in impatience, and he added more forcefully, “It wouldn’t end well, for either of us.”

Something about the way he spoke sounded wrong, like an actor speaking lines he didn’t believe. Josef wasn’t sure what that meant, but he was certain it meant something. He said, “Then tell me the bloody truth. Did you bring his body back here? Is it part of some grotesque experiment to—”

“I warned you to stay out of this business.”

Defiantly, Josef lifted his camera and took his final picture—Alex standing next to the body of the dead soldier. “And I warned you that I’d blow it right open. Don’t think I won’t.”

“You’re a damned fool if you believe—”

Behind them, the mortuary door opened. Josef spun around, alarmed, and found the doctor from earlier entering the room. He looked startled too, pausing in the doorway, and then visibly relaxed. “Oh, Inspector Lakeman. Mr Talbot said you’d been called away.”

A moment of confusion, before Alex said, “Doctor Wildsmith, good afternoon.” He exchanged a quick look with Josef, and there was no mistaking the gleam of amusement in his eyes. Josef felt it too, albeit unwillingly. “Yes, that’s right,” Alex went on. “Talbot kindly came on ahead to get started, but we’re finished now. Am I right, Talbot?”

Josef held his gaze. “Oh yes,” he said, “we’re certainly finished. In fact, I’d better get these photographs developed. People are waiting for them.”

“Hmm,” Alex said. Then, with a flourish, he flicked the shroud back over poor Private Sykes, sliding his body into the drawer and closing the door. “Thank you for allowing us in, Wildsmith. I do hope you and the lady wife are well?”

“Very well, thank you. All things considered.”

“Quite,” Alex said, affably, striding toward the door. “Do give her my regards.” Then, over his shoulder—and with a devilish look in his eye—he added, “Keep up, Talbot. We don’t have all day.”

Josef glared but didn’t dare argue in front of the doctor. Neither did he feel comfortable leaving him with…with whatever Sykes might or might not have become. “I’d get rid of that body as soon as you can, Doc. He doesn’t look right at all.”

The doctor’s eyebrows rose. “He’s dead. How did you expect him to look?”

“He—”

A firm hand closed on Josef’s bicep. “The poor fellow’s past caring now,” said Alex. “His journey’s ended.”

And what the hell did that mean?

Alex didn’t loosen his grip as he hustled Josef out of the mortuary and back along the corridor to the stairs. When Josef tried to shake him off, Alex’s fingers only tightened. Did he have his gun, too? Josef imagined he did.

“I’m not going to run,” he hissed as they marched up the stairs together. “I have too many questions for you.”

Grimly, Alex said, “Questions I won’t be permitted to answer.”

“You’re such a government stooge.”

“I’m not. There are things you don’t—”

“Understand. Yes, you’ve made that clear.” They were walking through the hospital corridors by then, but Alex quickly diverted them out through a small side door and into the cold November air.

Instinctively, Josef sucked in a deep breath and saw Alex do the same, dropping his grip on Josef’s arm. For a moment, they both stood there, breath condensing like smoke. Above them a low, pale sun made a perfect disk in the thinning mist, and Josef could almost imagine its warmth on his face. It was reassuring to know that the sun still shone despite the murk—both literal and metaphorical—swathing the earth below.

“Christ.” Alex’s heartfelt exclamation broke the silence between them. “What a bloody mess.” He pulled out a packet of gaspers and, to Josef’s surprise, offered him one.

They weren’t friends, and he didn’t want Alex thinking they were, but Josef wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Ta,” he said, helping himself. Bond Street—a cut above his usual brand.

When Alex lit a match and Josef leaned in to light his cigarette, their eyes met above the dancing flame. Met and held like they’d held a dozen times, as if magnetised. Alex had ridiculously beautiful eyes up close, dark as a midnight ocean but with a scattering of sea green around the pupils. Josef couldn’t look away.

And, for God’s sake, now he was waxing poetic. What the hell was wrong with him? “I liked you better in Poperinge,” he said, for the benefit of them both. “Before you nicked my camera.”

Alex’s mouth ticked up at one corner, but he looked a little melancholy. “Yes, I expect you did. That was a charmed evening.”

Charmed. Yes, it had felt charming, which only made the aftermath more deeply disappointing. Josef said, “I bet you say that to all the boys you seduce for purposes of larceny.”

“That’s not what I—” His cheeks pinkened beneath their wintery hue. “The two matters weren’t linked.”

Josef lifted a sceptical eyebrow. “Bollocks.”

“There are easier ways to pinch a camera.”

“But less pleasurable, I imagine.”

Another twitch of his lips, eyes smiling too. “Damn it, Shepel, why do you have to be so…so—”

“Irritating? You’re not the first to ask.”

“I was going to say likeable. But, yes, also irritating. And stubborn.”

Josef shrugged. “Born that way I suppose. Now tell me what I saw in there just now. The truth this time, no ghost stories. That boy… We watched him die two bloody months ago in Flanders—I swear we did.”

“Yes, we did.” Alex’s humour vanished. “He died but not before—hell.” He glanced around, as if expecting someone to be watching. “Come on. I don’t know about you, but I need a bloody drink. Let’s find a pub.”

A drink wasn’t a bad idea, all things considered; Josef was still feeling shaken, not that he’d admit it. “St. Stephen’s Tavern isn’t far from here.”

Alex made a ‘lead the way’ gesture, and they started walking.

“You can forget about pinching my camera, if that’s your plan,” Josef said. “Or seducing me, come to that.”

Alex cast him a sideways look. “As much as I should do the former, and should like to do the latter, I feel we’ve gone beyond the point of no return. There’s only one thing left to do now.”

“And what’s that?” he said warily.

“Tell you the full, unabridged truth, of course.”

“Which is exactly what I want to hear.”

“Hmm,” Alex said, hunching more deeply into his coat. “I very much doubt you will.”