Horatio Lyle Read online

  Horatio Lyle

  CATHERINE WEBB

  Hachette Digital

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  CHAPTER 1 - Thief

  CHAPTER 2 - Elwick

  CHAPTER 3 - Body

  CHAPTER 4 - Tate

  CHAPTER 5 - Carwell

  CHAPTER 6 - Night

  CHAPTER 7 - Fruit

  CHAPTER 8 - Slum

  CHAPTER 9 - Stone

  CHAPTER 10 - Wakings

  CHAPTER 11 - Encounter

  CHAPTER 12 - Bray

  CHAPTER 13 - Awake

  CHAPTER 14 - Tseiqin

  CHAPTER 15 - Justice

  CHAPTER 16 - Bailey

  CHAPTER 17 - Escape

  CHAPTER 18 - Magnet

  CHAPTER 19 - Blood

  CHAPTER 20 - Siege

  CHAPTER 21 - Hand

  CHAPTER 22 - Cathedral

  CHAPTER 23 - Storm

  CHAPTER 24 - Dome

  CHAPTER 25 - Fall

  CHAPTER 26 - City

  Catherine Webb was just fourteen when she wrote her extraordinary debut, Mirror Dreams. With several novels already in print at nineteen, Catherine has quickly established herself as one of the most talented and exciting young writers in the UK.

  By Catherine Webb

  Mirror Dreams

  Mirror Wakes

  Waywalkers

  Timekeepers

  Horatio Lyle

  CATHERINE WEBB

  Hachette Digital

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  Published by Hachette Digital 2008

  Copyright © 2006 by Catherine Webb

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

  retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

  without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor

  be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover

  other than that in which it is published and without a

  similar condition including this condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those

  clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  eISBN : 978 0 7481 1112 1

  This ebook produced by Jouve, FRANCE

  Hachette Digital

  An imprint of

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DY

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  INTRODUCTION

  Murder

  1864, London

  In the west, the sun is setting.

  It is orange and yellow fire, the sky sooty grey and brown smudge. The sky is full of chimneys and asthmatic birds. The fog is rising off the river, all the way from Greenwich to Chiswick, crawling up past Westminster and hiding the ravens sitting on the walls of the Tower, who blink beadily, waiting for something interesting and edible to happen in their lives. The fog is grey-green - grey from the water suspended in it, green from the things floating in the water.

  In the west, the sun has set.

  A man is running through dark and silent streets. He knows he’s going to die, but still feels that if he’s got to die, he might as well die running. In the world in which he moves, this is all a man can wish for, and tonight he has already seen his death mirrored in the death of another. The streets he runs through are silent and empty, their inhabitants either behind dark shutters hunched over their work by candlelight, or out, or asleep, or trying to sleep. He keeps running. A black bag bounces against his shoulder as he moves. He wonders how he ended up this way, and tries not to think of emerald eyes burning in his skull, the heavy weight of the body as it fell into his arms, or the blood now seeping through his fingers.

  The rigging on the ships creaks as they rock slowly back and forth in the docks. The water that slaps around their long wooden hulls is brownish and just a little too thick for comfort.

  And though he ’s running, he can’t hear anyone following him. For a second he wonders if he ’s made it, if he ’s escaped, and knows that it’s not that far to the Bethnal Green rookery from here, to the maze of shadows and cellars where anything and everything could disappear without a trace, knows that he could get there, knows that he won’t. He half-turns to see if he’s still being followed, bent almost double over the gaping knife wound across his belly, and stares straight into a pair of bright green eyes, burning emerald eyes, and a thin, slightly satisfied smile. He chokes on blood and steel and slips down into the shadows, clawing at the fine black sleeves of his attacker, of his killer, blackness that smells of dead leaves in a dying forest and burning wood and salty iron and black leaves falling on to a black floor like a black rain from a black sky and . . . and . . . and don’t look at the eyes . . . He looks. The man holding the knife starts to grin, razor-sharp teeth, like those of a fish, bright green eyes, almost glowing, almost dancing with satisfaction and anticipation. The body slips to the ground. The bag falls off its shoulder and lands on the cobbles with a faint clank of heavy metal shifting inside.

  The theatre halls of Shadwell are draining out in crowds of girls and boys cackling and clinging on to each other’s arms. The fat man has reached the end of his song about the glory of Empire, Britain’s majesty and amorous flirtations in barnyards. This latter aspect is what appeals most to his yelling, swaying audience. Down at Haymarket, the fat woman is dying to the mild applause of the bourgeoisie, top hats on their laps for the men; opera glasses held daintily in white gloves, and huge dresses spread like a map of the known world for the women.

  A carriage rattles down a street, then stops. A door opens. A couple of horses stamp their hooves against the old cobbles, the sound muffled by centuries of rubbish and dirt, softening into a brown, thick sludge, through which the grey stones are rarely perceived. A voice says, very quietly, ‘Mr Dew?’ It sounds like black leather would, if it could speak. A man with bright green eyes stirs in the shadows and carefully wipes blood off the tip of a very long, slightly curved and highly ornate hunting knife.

  ‘Yes, my lord?’

  ‘He is dead?’

  ‘Yes, my lord. He has joined his brother.’

  ‘Very well. Give me the bag.’

  The clang of heavy metal moving inside the bag, as it is passed into a hand gloved in white silk and attached to a body clad in black velvet. The rattle of hands digging through metal. The faint glow of a lamp catches against gold. The rattling stops.

  ‘It’s not here?’

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘I said, it ’s not here!’ And now, if the voice sounded like black leather, then that leather had just found itself driven through with nails, and wasn’t pleased.

  ‘He . . .’ A little breath, steadying against fear of those burning green eyes, above a tight smile that makes sharks seem sympathetic, staring with the hardness of granite on a dark night. ‘He said he had it, my lord . . .’

  ‘And you killed him before he’d given it to us, killed them both?’

  ‘I wanted to save . . . inconvenience?’

  ‘If we cannot find it, you will pay. They will not tolerate further delay; her ladyship has already been sent here once asking questions!’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Hide the body! Find it!’

  The thieves are hiding in the shadows un
der the bridges, waiting for their prey, fingers drumming on their knives. The policemen are trudging through the streets, rattles duly sounding as they whirl them around and announce the hour, long blue coats slapping against their white-clad knees. The horses are bedding down in the mews of Mayfair. The street-walkers are plying their trade in the gutters of St Giles, all false white faces and falser red smiles.

  A dark carriage clatters away down a dark street, fading into the thick, choking green-grey fog that rises off the river and from the factories into an itchy soup in the air. It leaves behind nothing, except a dying gas lamp and a small red stain of blood, seeping gently through the cobbles and into the mud below.

  The gas man is putting his ladder against the side of another black pillar along Green Park, and wondering whether his career prospects really do his talent justice. The girl has sold her last little bag of nuts and is going home with her few pennies of profit for the night. The master of the cress market below Shoreditch is laying out his trestle tables for the night’s trade. The mechanics are wiping dirt from their faces as they walk away from the seething railway yards of King’s Cross, with dirty hands rubbed on dirtier hankies.

  And in the darkness of the carriage, a still man with a black leather voice carefully inspects his white gloves by the light of a bouncing lantern, observes a tiny speck of red blood on the tip of a finger, pulls the glove off a long, white, elegant hand, and sighs. He drops it on to the floor of the carriage for someone else to worry about. He sits back, and thinks very quietly to himself, Soon, we will rise.

  As the driver pushes the carriage on into the night, he puts a hand inside his coat and feels for something to eat. He finds nothing but an immaculately intact knobbly peel from a small fruit, and a single round stone. He curses internally. He tells himself that he shouldn’t have eaten the lychee, and throws both peel and stone away into the gutter. After murder, littering isn’t really a priority. At least, it isn’t tonight.

  Almost five miles away, something went click in a darkened house. A window opened a few inches, sliding up from the sill. A hand slithered inside, checked carefully on either side of the window, found nothing of interest except a pair of faded curtains, and pushed up the window a little more. The hand wormed further inside. It was followed by a scantily clad arm, a head, a pair of shoulders and, in due course, the remainder of its owner’s body. The shadow dropped on to the floor, and very slowly started to walk. Halfway across the room it hesitated. It squatted down and gently ran its hand across the floor, until it touched a tile which sank, ever so slightly, under its pressure. It moved forward stealthily on hands and knees, avoiding the tile, and the five others its gentle probes detected. When it reached the door, it stood again. It ran a slim blade carefully down the side of the door, felt nothing, and opened it.

  In the corridor beyond, a single candle burnt on a table. Nothing else here to give any sign of ownership. The curtains at the far end were drawn, one side slightly singed. The figure moved forward cautiously, and for a moment could be seen by the dim candlelight, before darting back into shadow.

  It was short, had no shoes, wore a shirt and trousers that might once have been white, but which now would shame even the most scruffy of scarecrows. It had a tangle of dark brown curls sticking out in every direction from its head, and a pair of intently squinting and blinking grey eyes. It was, in fact, a girl, still young enough to get away with pretending to be innocent, but old enough to be very, very guilty indeed.

  Halfway down the corridor, she hesitated, head slightly on one side. She looked up at the ceiling. She looked down at the floor. Then she went back the way she had come, past the door, to the end of the corridor and tried a different door in the opposite direction. It was locked. This didn’t cause as much consternation as an innocent observer might have expected. The girl pulled out a small bottle from the deep recesses of a padded jacket favoured by shepherds the world over. There was the sound of something liquid. A smell rose up in the corridor, and a gentle hissing. A little click from the door, which was pushed gently open. In the room beyond sat a huge table, sagging under the weight of apparatus: bottles, strange flasks, tubes, candles, prisms, wires, tools.

  The figure moved forward quickly, then stopped. Under the table a dog lay sleeping. It lay on its back, feet in the air, paws folded over, enormous nose twitching slightly, long brown and white ears sticking out either side of its head along the floor. It had the belly of a spoiled animal and the wagging tail, even in sleep, of a very happy one. It had the nose of a creature designed for hunting down prey at great distances, and the girl guessed that somewhere below the huge nose, there were teeth to match.

  She watched it for a long while, cautious. Then, very slowly, when it was clear that this animal would wake for nothing (except, perhaps, food and affection), she shuffled forward, half-turning to keep it in her sight, moving a toe at a time. She went past the table to a row of cupboards hanging above a desk, in a corner. She opened them, started digging through, but found only notes, reams and reams of paper covered in an almost unintelligible hand and even less intelligible drawings. She frowned in exasperation.

  Not having found what she was looking for, she headed to a side door in the room. This too was locked. She drew out her tools again, inserted the first one, and instantly something inside the lock flashed bright blue, a big fat spark leaping from the door to the ground. Somewhere above the door, something embedded in the ceiling went thunk. Something slow and ponderous began to turn. There was a sound like a marble running downhill on uneven ground. The girl tugged at her tool wedged in the lock, and heard a snapping sound. Pulled away, the end had boiled down to nothing. Not hesitating, not even bothering to waste time on thought, the girl turned and ran towards the other door, bursting out into the corridor, running along it for the window at the far end. At the point where before she had turned back, she ran on, and under her the floor shrieked, making her head shake sickeningly. Somewhere there was a hissing sound and hot steam exploded in a white cloud from the room she had only just left. She reached the window; a dog started howling, barking; she dragged the curtains back, heaved the window open, looked up, looked down.

  There was the street twenty feet below, a gas lamp burning steadily outside, cobbles glistening in the rain. The girl leant out, saw a lead drainpipe, reached for it, grabbed hold and dragged herself out of the window until she dangled, feet scrambling against the wet metal. Clutching with hands and feet, she started to ease herself down. There was a long, screeching sound, like a banshee with indigestion.

  The section of pipe she clung to lurched, started to bend away from the wall. Where it joined the section below, an unseen tube of linked metal plates started to bend, so that as the pipe fell back, it leant away from the wall like an arm. There was a snap and a long coil of rope, wound into a tiny cubby-hole in the red brickwork itself, started to unwind. One end was tied to the pipe. It fell back slowly, the girl still clinging on desperately. It bent forty-five degrees away from the wall before the length of rope snapped tense. It stopped moving, and dangled there, the girl holding on to it with every fibre of strength in her thin, unprepared arms, as she wondered what the hell to do.

  Around the street, she could hear people stirring, distant dogs barking, carriages being pulled to a stop, breaking their rhythm towards the corner at the end of the road. The window she had dropped from lit up a dull orange. Silhouetted against it was a dark shadow that might just have resembled a man. There was a long silence. Finally the shadow said mildly, ‘Are you all right up there?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, sir.’

  ‘You sure? It looks like quite a long drop . . .’

  ‘Really, sir, it ain’t nothin’ to be botherin’ about.’

  ‘Oh.’ He looked slightly surprised, and frowned. ‘It was you trying to break in, wasn’t it? Only if there ’s been some kind of misunderstanding . . .’

  She gulped. She could feel her hands slowly slipping on the smooth metal pipe. Falls see
med further when you were short, she reasoned. ‘Oh no, no, no, sir! Can’t think what you’ll be meanin’. But since you happen to be mentionin’ this pipe, sir . . .’

  A front door opened on the other side of the street. A woman exploded out like a runaway train. She was carrying a meat cleaver, had blonde hair which trailed down her back, and wore a determined expression of bloodthirsty vengeance. The girl on the post shrieked and tried to climb higher. The man in the window blanched. The woman in the street screamed, ‘Police, police!’, saw the man in the window and gasped, ‘Horatio?’

  Horatio Lyle, who knew that manners were an essential social glue and that society was a fascinating phenomenon that deserved study and thus, preservation, smiled uncomfortably. ‘Yes, Miss Chaste?’

  ‘Horatio, are you all right?’ In that split second, her voice had dropped an octave and become as soft as springtime rain, which was clearly disconcerting to Horatio Lyle, who began to reconsider the benefits of society after all. The girl clinging on to the drainpipe tried not to boggle at her.

  ‘What in heaven’s name is happening here?’

  ‘Just a little . . .’

  On the dangling pipe, the girl, who had been watching all this with keen attention began, ‘’Bout this pipe . . .’

  ‘Horatio, is this another experiment? Only I do know that the last one went so terribly . . .’

  ‘No, no, I was just ascertaining whether this young lady was or was not . . .’

  ‘Oh, the young lady!’ Miss Chaste’s voice rocketed an octave, and two hands flew to two cheeks, as if they might burst with appalled indignation. ‘She looks in such terrible danger, so distraught! Oh, good Horatio, you must . . .’