“Sharpe he is. Lives up to his namesake. An ancestor who fought in the Napoleonic wars. His great-grandfather or some other fought ferociously for the Crown and won honors in battles in Spain and France, but he didn't come from nothing like royalty. It's partially why he and Boulte can never get along.”
“I see, I think.”
“Richard's just your ordinary British blood, bom of common stock as they say, which isn't bad, really. Richard himself was bom within the sound of Bow Bells.”
“Isn't that where the first victim was found?”
“Aye, true enough, Doctor.”
“Just coincidence, like this…”
“Beggin' your pardon, mum-Doctor?”
'Tonight… being so close to Sharpe's home, and-”
“Former home,” Copperwaite corrected Jessica as if defending his partner.
“-and that first killing being in the sound of Bow Bells, so close to home-Richard Sharpe's home, I mean.”
Copperwaite suddenly stared quizzically at her. “Whatever are you gettin' at. Doctor?”
Jessica shrugged. “Oh, nothing really. Just funny how coincidental things happen in life, and how small the world actually is, even in an enormous city like London.”
“Coincidence… occurrences. I could tell you scores of stories about my uncle Thomas that would curl your hair for the coincidence in that man's life.”
She smiled at this. Then the sound of a siren signaled an end to her crouching over the body in the cooling evening, in the now dense fog of Hyde Park.
Somewhere out over the Serpentine, a swan bellowed a mournful cry, like some forlorn mother in anguish over a lost child. Other swans answered the first to call out. Soon, like dogs roused in a neighborhood late at night, a cacophony of swan calls exploded like fireworks all across the lake. The noise it made created a poor mimicry of the ambulance wail as the little automobile screeched to a halt, kicking up dust. Its siren went silent only when the driver came to idle, the spiraling red lights creating a mosaic of shadows in all directions.
The huge-shouldered driver, his shiny bald head reflecting the emergency lights, displayed the forehead of a Neanderthal where he stood after climbing from the cab and striking a match to light a cigarette. In London, smokers enjoyed their cigarettes everywhere, regardless of the known health risks the habit posed. So here the man stood, leaning against his meat wagon like a New York longshoreman, daring anyone to tell him what to do. So he rested, obviously not anxious to lift the ponderous cargo he and his partner had come to collect. The partner, unlike him, his opposite in fact-a petite, long-haired, blond female-raced to the rear of the van to enthusiastically haul out the stretcher on her own. At the same time she frantically searched about for the direction of the corpse, until seeing Jessica, who waved them over.
Jessica didn't see or hear again from Inspector Richard Sharpe until the following morning while at autopsy over the latest Jane Doe. “Still no word on her identity,” he whispered in Jessica's ear. Most people whispered around dead people, as if speaking quietly were a requirement, some sort of Miss Manners rule number seventy-nine that stated, “Thou shalt be tranquil and silent in the face of death.” Perhaps they thought that to go into rancor at it would only upset the demons. But Sharpe's serenity seemed greater than the usual silence about the morgue and crime lab. He appeared genuinely refreshed, as if anxious to attack the problem of the Crucifier as never before.
“How are your girls?” she asked.
“Gonzo, actually. Lovely creatures, the both of them.” Sharpe had a disposable cup filled with black coffee in his hand, the steam caressing his cheek. “Does you well to see them, I can tell. You look refreshed.” She wondered if he'd gone to bed with his ex-wife and had gotten himself into a totally relaxed state this morning. It did seem so, she silendy mused.
“Absolutely, yes. Seeing the children, well it's like taking a drink from that fountain of youth everyone throughout the ages has searched for.”
“Perhaps there is where it lies, in our children.”
“Have you any? Children, I mean?”
“ 'Fraid not.”
“Pity. But then, you're young and have time.” He sipped at his coffee.
She smiled, thought of Jim Parry and his wish for children and wondered if men felt as much a need to have children as did women. In the sense that they wished to carry on their DNA, to make little clones of themselves, perfectly suited to the male ego.
Jessica returned her attention to the dead woman on the slab before her. Schuller's young assistant, Dr. Al-Zadan Raehael, remained all the help she had. He seemed capable and a good deal more at ease knowing that Dr. Karl Schuller would not be barreling through the door at any moment. Called back from his day off, he appeared sullen. “I've found nothing to distinguish her,” Jessica informed Sharpe, her eyebrows raised in mock supplication. “No birthmarks, no earlier fractures or sutures. Very little dental work has been done. It will be hard to ID the woman.”
“I've spoken with Paul Boulte. Fortunately, he never knew of my stepping off the task last evening. Copperwaite covered my bases, as you Americans are fond of saying.”
“Not all of us are fond of baseball metaphors, Richard.”
“I do wish to apologize for my behavior of-”
“Not at all.”
“-leaving you and Stuart in the lurch.”
“We managed just fine, as you can see.”
“Well, do accept my sincerest thank-you.”
“Accepted.”
“And should you care to see more of London, I do happen to be free this evening, say for dinner?”
“There's a great deal of the city I'd still like to see, and you have been so generous with your free time. Well, I'm both pleased and overwhelmed. You make a terrific guide.” Their eyes met and held for a moment, as they had the first time they met one another, back in Quantico, Virginia.
He smiled wide, his eyes flaring silver sparks from the deep green irises. “I'll take that as a yes, then.”
“Yes.”
“Another scare for Londoners,” Sharpe said, indicating the body before them.
“I saw the news photos. They must have paid the ambulance drivers. I never saw any press at the scene, nor at the crime lab when we got here.”
“Imagine the usual Geordie out there, opens his morning paper to find her dead eyes looking back up at him from his Gazette or Times,” ruminated Sharpe. 'To find a photo of the victim in death on the front page. Turns out that Stuart put the other victims' photos out there, and he likely did this one as well, to shake the tree, so to speak. It's a general call that's gone around, for anyone recognizing the woman to step forward, you see.”
“And you agree with the tactic?”
“Not altogether, no. Stuart and I had words about it.”
She nodded, biting her lip, wondering what “had words” in Great Britain meant. She certainly knew its American cousin. She finally said, “We're apt to utilize the press often in such cases in the States, but it's usually a step not taken lightly, much argument of the pros and cons with each case. You have to weigh everything in the balance, and often you weigh up all wrong anyway.”
“Press pressure,” he confided.
“Ahhh, yes, we've certainly got that in the States, too. It's a so-called legitimate duress.”
“Serial killers here are rare, so the press is all over it. Actually, it's becoming all too common, as if… as if… Well, I'm not a bloody philosopher, but as I said, the closer we get to 2001, as was the case with the year 2000 as well, the more madness and deviltry we find ourselves embroiled in and surrounded by. Course, you know more about that than I.”
The millennium? The madness? Or being surrounded and embroiled in deviltry?” she asked.
“Quite possibly all three. Oh, we have our share of terrorists, what with the IRA and Hamas and other organizations swom to destroy us. That's madness enough, but this sort of thing, someone killing a string of people out of some blind rage or cult blindness… No, I've not come across the like of this crucifying thing before.” He tossed his empty cup into a trash container. “Nor has anyone, I assure you. But you've faced monsters, human monsters, before, and that's what we're dealing with here. Not a man with a misguided political cause, but a man with a fantastic plan that boggles the mind and dares you to decipher the meaning.”