Day trained his Colt Navy on the center of the hole and March sat at the edge of it, swung his legs around, and descended slowly down the stairs. When he was out of the way, Day followed him into the shadows below. He felt barely a twinge at the thought that he was breaking his promise to Nevil.
30
Claire gritted her teeth and closed her eyes and held on tight to the thin sheet that covered her belly. Each contraction lasted a little bit longer than the one before it. They were stronger now and they were coming closer together. Claire wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do, whether there was something she could do or not do to make the cramps less painful or to make them more productive somehow. She wanted the whole thing to be done with, her baby healthy and in her arms at last.
When it was over, she lay panting, waiting for the next contraction. She didn’t know when it would come or how long it would last. She tried to remember the things Dr Kingsley had told her to expect, but it was hard to concentrate on that when she knew he’d be coming to help soon. He would tell her what to do. If he arrived in time.
She knew that Constable Winthrop was somewhere downstairs, but that didn’t reassure her. He was nice, but seemed a bit hopeless about practical matters. Much like her husband sometimes was. She thought of Walter and hoped he was safe. She hoped he would come home very soon and hold her hand and simply be there with her. There was nothing he could do to help her, but he could be there. That would somehow be enough.
She rolled onto her side and sat up at the edge of the bed. She felt like some wild animal in a trap, a fox with the dogs at her heels. The lamplight hurt her eyes and so she closed the shutter. She stood and tottered the four steps to the window and opened the shade. Just enough light filtered through to illuminate the room, but it was diffuse enough that it didn’t make her headache any worse. She got back into bed and breathed a sigh of relief. Then the next contraction hit.
Eventually, she opened her eyes again and lay there, drained. She wondered how she could be so limp and tired and yet so tense. It didn’t seem possible.
Outside, a cloud moved in front of the sun and Claire watched the shadows on her wall flow. They contracted and then expanded, moved smoothly along the top of the baseboards and danced around the corners of the room. She wondered about the baby inside her, about what shapes and colors it would see with its new eyes.
She reached for her diary and the pencil on the table beside her and, using her belly for support, scratched out the fruitless lines about skipping rope. She began to write a new poem for her future child.
The door is closed, the candle snuffed.
Hear Mummy’s footsteps in the hall.
Claire stuck the point of the pencil in her mouth and sucked on it while she thought. It was good to have something to puzzle over besides the workings of her own body.
Something moves, but nothing’s there.
It’s just a shadow on the wall.
She decided she didn’t like the first two lines and crossed them out, thought a bit, and added more. She worked out the verse in her head and smiled as she rearranged the words on the paper, building couplets as she went.
Distracted, she only paused long enough to ride out each new contraction, and she didn’t fret about the passage of time. She didn’t notice the room grow darker and the shadows on her wall begin to converge.
31
The wagon had not yet reached HM Prison Bridewell when the cannibal had a seizure. Napper’s eyes rolled back in his head and the handcuffs kept his hands restrained, but his right shoulder rotated forward and his right leg twisted up and across his left leg and he curled down and toppled off the bench onto the floor of the police wagon.
Watching this from the other side of the wagon, Hammersmith immediately drew his truncheon from his belt, but didn’t otherwise move. He had no way of knowing whether Napper was tricking him, trying to get him to come closer, or if something was actually wrong. Hammersmith could hear Napper’s teeth grinding above the sound of wheels on the cobblestones outside. It occurred to the sergeant that Napper might swallow his own tongue, and so he dropped down and knelt beside the cannibal, his truncheon at the ready. Napper made no move on him, but seemed to be breathing, and so Hammersmith eased back on his haunches, his spine resting against the front of the bench behind him, and waited. At last Napper’s limbs relaxed and his eyes closed. A great streamer of thick drool escaped from his mouth and ran across the toe of Hammersmith’s boot. Napper’s breath steadied and slowed and he appeared to sleep.
Hammersmith put his truncheon away and made a halfhearted attempt to lever Napper back up onto the bench, but the prisoner was limp and unhelpful. Finally, Hammersmith gave up and kept a watchful eye as Napper slept.
Several minutes later, Napper’s eyes opened to half-mast and he spoke. The words were slurred, and Hammersmith leaned marginally closer.
“What?”
“Not just us,” Napper said. But Hammersmith thought he said not justice.
“Never mind justice for you,” he said. “What about your victims, huh?”
“No,” Napper said. “More than us now.” This time Hammersmith heard him correctly.
“What does that mean?”
“You might catch us, but you’ll never catch him.”
“Catch who? Either make some sense or shut up, you.”
“Somebody set the Devil free and it’s too late to put him back,” Napper said. Then he closed his eyes and began to snore.
Hammersmith frowned and settled back against the bench. Outside, a cloud drifted in front of the sun and the interior of the wagon went darker and colder. The lantern’s light seemed to dim. A shiver scurried up the sergeant’s spine, and he felt the hair at the base of his neck stand up. He shook off the feeling, but he tightened his grip on his truncheon and fastened his eyes on the slumbering cannibal.
32
The crude staircase ended at a tunnel that led off in either direction, farther into the city and farther away from it. March argued that the prisoners would have run as far away from London as possible, but Day disagreed.
“These men were all scheduled to die in prison,” Day said.
“Precisely why they would want to get far away from it,” March said. “They would be heading north, toward open country.”
“That’s what you or I might do. We’re rational people. But these escapees are the worst specimens London has to offer. They’re animals, predators. I think they’ll go looking for prey.”
“Surely not right away. Surely they’d hide first. They’d want to be certain they wouldn’t be caught.”
“No,” Day said. “They’ve been forced to deny their true natures for months and years. They’ll be hungry. They’ll want to experience a kill. They’d go where they can find the densest concentration of people. Of victims.”
“There are people to the north of us.”
“We don’t know who’s down here, if anyone is. But if Cinderhouse made it this far, if he’s down in these tunnels, he’ll want a child. I know this man, I captured him once before, and I know that he’ll go looking for a child. He would go south.”
March argued his point for a few more minutes, but finally gave in and followed Day into the tunnel going south.
As they walked, smaller tunnels branched off to either side of them, black mouths in the rough stone walls, only barely visible in the glow of candlelight. At first they would stop and advance a few feet into each of these offshoots, examining the ground for any sign that a person might recently have passed over it. But eventually they stopped bothering with the smaller tunnels and stuck to the big main passage where they could see occasional scuff marks in the dirt. Someone had used this tunnel. The same someone who had opened up the church floor.