Blood Royal Read online

  Gallowglass forced his body to move. He wasn’t concerned with saving himself, he knew that wasn’t an option – in fact it hadn’t been an option since he had quit his Belgravia townhouse. As soon as he had set out that night he had known that he wouldn’t be returning.

  Pulling back his arm, he prepared to hurl the bag into the sludgy black waters of the Thames.

  With a renewed burst of hysterical giggling, dripping blood and gore, the thing pounced.

  Blood sprayed dark as port wine. The bag landed at the edge of the jetty, its clasp open. And the phials of blood it contained tipped out of it.

  “Slice and dice,” the thing gurgled with macabre delight.

  Gallowglass said nothing. Blood bubbled from the clean cut across his throat.

  As the scissoring fingers opened him up and extracted his pancreas, Gallowglass saw not the hideous acid-etched, dagger-sliced flesh and steel face looming over him but the face of his wife Marie. He tried to call her name, but no sound other than a grim gurgle emerged from his mouth. And then his thoughts turned to his dear daughter Miranda and he knew then that, by his actions that night, he had made sure she was safe at last.

  As the dissection of Doctor Victor Gallowglass continued, the phials of blood rolled away across the jetty. One rolled to the end of the pier and became lodged in between two boards, while the other two tumbled end over end into the river, there to be swallowed by the sludgy black waters.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Blood’s the Thing

  THE MORNING AFTER, the Smog hung over London like a stale fart. The sky was grey, the pollutant cloud a faecal smudge above the city, the skyline a forest of barbed wire and hastily erected barricades. It wasn’t the city Ulysses Quicksilver knew and loved anymore.

  He climbed down from the cab and, having paid the driver, set off for the police cordon at the end of the road.

  A number of police vehicles were pulled up across the end of the street in front the jetty, helping prevent the onlookers from getting onto the wharf and contaminating the crime scene. A pair of robo-peelers had been positioned on the nearside of the stretched tape to reinforce the point.

  A slight sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as he considered what he might find awaiting him, Ulysses approached the police line. He had come along, having left Gallowglass’s daughter in the company of her governess and Nimrod. The only company he had had on the journey had been his own musings concerning the contents of Gallowglass’s letter. Take care of the child, it had said, and trust no-one.

  Even as the nearest automaton policeman was raising its truncheon to signal him to stop, the dandy investigator whipped out his leather cardholder and flipped it open.

  “Good morning, Mr Quicksilver,” the droid said in a tinny voice, having scanned his credentials.

  Ulysses glanced at the name plate on the front of the droid. “Good morning, Gladstone. Is the Inspector around?”

  “Inspector Allardyce is over there, sir,” the robo-Bobbie replied, pointing towards the throng of people gathered at the end of the jetty.

  Ulysses caught sight of a shock of ginger hair and clapped eyes on the trench-coated policeman for the first time since the two of them had worked together to defeat the crazed industrialist Josiah Umbridge. He also saw the dark brown stains of blood surrounding a sheet that was covering what was undoubtedly a body.

  “If you would be so kind?” Ulysses indicated the tape.

  “Of course, sir,” the droid said, cheerily, lifting the tape.

  Ulysses made his way over to the huddle of human policemen and the lab-coated forensic team.

  He could see the shape of the body more clearly now. It was stretched out in a near cruciform shape beneath the peaks and troughs of the sheet. Whatever had done for the dead man had made a complete mess of him, that much was obvious. Blood had pooled around the body and run down between the boards of the deck over quite some area; so much so in fact that Ulysses wondered if there was any blood left within the body.

  “Quicksilver,” Inspector Allardyce said, with grudging politeness.

  “Good morning, Inspector,” Ulysses returned. Things had changed between them since their adventures on the moors of Ghestdale. “So, what do we have here then?”

  “What does it look like?” the police inspector retorted.

  “Ah, that’s a relief,” Ulysses said. “I was worried for a minute there that somebody had replaced the real Maurice Allardyce with an imposter, a mandrake perhaps.”

  “Very funny.”

  “But no, I see that all is right with the world.”

  “Not quite.”

  At a nod from the inspector, the white-coated, forensic-scientist still crouched beside the body pulled back the sheet.

  Ulysses was unable to stifle his gasp of shock, his hand tightening his grip on the bloodstone-pommel of his sword-stick. He had seen such horrors before, but the obviously violent nature of the man’s death wasn’t what had drained the colour from his cheeks.

  “I take it you know him.”

  “Yes,” Ulysses said, in a small, quiet voice. “Yes, I know him. I mean, I knew him. His name’s Gallowglass – Victor Gallowglass.”

  “An old friend of yours then.”

  “Yes. Something like that.”

  Myriad shocked thoughts crowded Ulysses’ mind. Who could have done this? What was he going to tell Miranda? What would happen to the wretched child now? “I hadn’t seen him for a while – a number of years, in fact – but he got back in touch again only recently.”

  “And why was that then?” Allardyce asked. “Why now?”

  “He...” Ulysses caught himself. He couldn’t trust anyone; that was what Gallowglass had written in his letter. The dandy’s guard was back up in a second. “It was a personal matter.”

  “In trouble, was he?”

  Ulysses was silent for only a moment as he marshalled his thoughts.

  “What’s all this about, inspector?”

  “This here gentleman has been murdered.”

  Ulysses found himself unable to tear his eyes from the expression of terror frozen on Gallowglass’s face. “You don’t say.”

  Gallowglass’s torso was a savage mess of open wounds and, without looking too closely, it appeared as though some of his internal organs had been removed.

  For a moment Ulysses wondered if this killing had something to do with the locusts he had encountered in St Paul’s, but he quickly dismissed that idea. The wounds were savage but clean-cut; they had been made with a blade of some kind, not a serrated claw.

  “Have you found a murder weapon?”

  “Looks like all sorts was used on him; flick-knife, scissors... All blades, but we haven’t found any nearby. Made a nice mess of him.”

  “Yes, thank you, inspector, I can see that.”

  Had Gallowglass known that something like this might happen to him? Was that why he had given Miranda into Ulysses’ care? Thinking of the child, he wondered how he could even begin to explain what had happened to her father.

  “So,” Allardyce said, “any ideas?”

  “What?”

  “Any ideas, who did it? You always seemed to have plenty of ideas about past cases and, I have to admit you’ve been right sometimes too. So, when I saw our friend here, I thought I’d get you in from the start to save time.”

  “Oh. I see,” Ulysses said. He had not been expecting such a confession from a hardened member of the proletariat.

  But there was something else going on here, more than simply Inspector Allardyce’s change of attitude towards him. And Ulysses needed to find out what it was, if only for the little girl’s sake. For, until he managed to fathom what was going on, he surely had to consider her at risk as well.

  “Do you mind if I take a look around?” Ulysses asked.

  “I wish you would,” was Allardyce’s blunt response.

  Stepping past the body and the forensic examiner, Ulysses followed the trail of blood. That wasn’t hard; ther
e was so much of it. Well at least he knew he wasn’t dealing with a vampire. He had never run into one himself, but he knew that such things existed on the continent. Although whether they were the supernatural monsters of legend some believed them to be, or the legacy of some dark experiment in the past, he didn’t know. But he was confident that a blood-sucker was not responsible for Gallowglass’s death just the same. A vampire would have taken as much blood as it could and not wasted a drop.

  There were bloody marks all across the pier, like sticky footprints, but if that was indeed what they were, they were like no footprints Ulysses had seen. They were almost like hooves or the points of crab claws. A killer with hooves that cut up its victim with a blade. Ulysses knew of none like it, but he couldn’t help recalling the memory of an article he had read in the paper only a matter of weeks ago.

  He walked to the end of the jetty and gazed out over the sluggish Thames. What had driven Gallowglass to come here of all places? Ulysses looked from the coke-burning tugs moored across the river, to the wharf-side warehouses, to the grey shingle beach, to the boards of the pier.

  He froze, eyes locked on the warped wood at his feet. There, lying wedged between a pair of planks was a test tube. It was sealed with a rubber bung and, as he bent down and gently worked it free of its resting place, Ulysses saw that it was filled with what looked like a sample of blood.

  “What have you found there?” Allardyce asked, joining him at the end of the jetty.

  “Take a look for yourself.” Ulysses passed the inspector the stoppered glass tube.

  “Blood?”

  “That would be my guess, but of course we won’t know for sure until it’s been tested.”

  “I’ll get the lab boys onto it.”

  “With all due respect,” Ulysses said, “if we want the results before next week, I’d rather send it to an acquaintance of mine.”

  The inspector scowled.

  “He is completely trustworthy, I can assure you.”

  Allardyce hesitated a moment longer, before cautiously handing the test tube back to Ulysses. “Just so long as you let me know whatever it is your acquaintance uncovers the instant you know.”

  The dandy smiled – “But of course, inspector.” – and dropped the recovered piece of evidence into a jacket pocket.

  Returning to the shrouded body, Ulysses said. “There’s just one last thing I need to do before I’m done here.”

  “And what’s that?” Allardyce asked.

  “You don’t happen to have a clean handkerchief on you, do you?”

  “Of course, Mrs Allardyce insists on a clean handkerchief and a clean shirt every day.”

  “Well, that’s good. Where would Magna Britannia be without standards? Lose those and we’re no better than Mr Darwin’s monkey’s uncle. Can I borrow it?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Ulysses took the proffered handkerchief and crouched down beside the body.

  Lifting the corner of the sheet with one gloved hand, taking care not to reveal Gallowglass’s rictus-locked grin, Ulysses selected a suitably deep cut and poked the balled handkerchief inside.

  “Bloody hell! What do you think you’re playing at?” Allardyce said.

  “Taking samples.”

  “But the missus’ll scream blue murder when she sees the bloodstains on that.”

  “If it will allay any marital discord, I’ll buy you a new one. A new set, in fact.”

  “You could have warned me that’s what you wanted it for.”

  “Look, if you didn’t want my help, you shouldn’t have asked for it.” Placing the inspector’s purloined handkerchief inside a clear plastic specimen bag, Ulysses got to his feet.

  He turned and set off back along the blood-smeared jetty.

  “I’ll be in touch as soon as I have anything concrete,” he said, giving the inspector a cheery wave. “But for the time being, I have an appointment with Dr Methuselah.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Bad Tidings

  STANDING AT THE door to the study, Nimrod watched as, holding the child’s hands in his, his employer broke the news of Victor Gallowglass’s death to the dead man’s daughter. He saw the pale expression of shock shape her face. He saw the tears spring from her unblinking eyes. And he saw the wide open look of utter disbelief become an agonised grimace of abject grief.

  She was, in some small measure, like the dandy adventurer himself. Her mother long dead, and now her father dead also, she too had become an orphan. The older man watched as the girl pulled her hands free of Ulysses’ – withdrawing from the devil who had brought her such dire news, who had shattered her small world with his cruel revelation – and turned immediately to her governess for comfort, sobbing into the folds of the woman’s skirts.

  “I am so sorry, my dear,” he heard his master say again. “So very, very sorry.”

  The scene was so familiar; it was as if the devoted family retainer was watching a moment being replayed from his past. Another man, a younger man, crouched before two scared-looking boys, their hands in his, telling them that their father was dead. It had been all he could do at the time to hold his own emotions at bay as he watched the boys break down.

  Nimrod turned away. He had seen too much of the grief of children.

  His footsteps ringing from the tiled floor of the hallway, he returned to his own quarters below the back stairs.

  LATER THAT DAY there came a knock at the study door and, at Ulysses’ behest, the child’s governess entered.

  “Miss Wishart,” Ulysses said, smiling kindly and rising politely, inviting the woman to take a seat opposite him.

  She sat uncomfortably at the edge of the chair, her hands in her lap, a balled up hankie in her hands, her eyes cast down.

  “Thank you for coming to see me.”

  “It’s the least I could do,” Miss Wishart replied, obviously trying hard to put a brave face on things. “You have been such an accommodating host.”

  “How is she? How is Miranda?”

  “She is sleeping now.”

  “Of course. Probably for the best.”

  An awkward silence descended between them.

  “If there’s nothing else...” Miss Wishart said, making to rise.

  “This must be a very hard time for you too,” Ulysses said. “First the business with the kidnap and now... this.”

  The woman’s knuckles whitened as she tightened her grip on the damp cloth in her hands.

  “Yes. Yes, it has.” And then it all came pouring out of her, in a cathartic flood. “The poor child. She has been without a mother for so long. Dr Gallowglass was her only kin. She meant the world to him. And now this... I mean what’s to become of the poor wretch? Where are we to live? Who will support us now? If I had known something like this might happen I would have begged him to come with us, on my knees!”

  Miss Wishart suddenly looked up, meeting Ulysses’ concerned gaze for the first time.

  “I mean, what was he doing in the East End anyway?”

  Ulysses studied her features, her almond eyes, her high cheekbones, her pursed rosebud lips, her dark hair, tied back in a tight bun, but highlighting her wonderful bone structure.

  “That question has been troubling me too,” Ulysses admitted. “Tell me, Miss Wishart, do you know what Dr Gallowglass was working on before he died?”

  “I... I don’t know,” she replied, blinking in surprise. “I mean, obviously you know that he was a highly regarded haematologist but beyond that...”

  “But you have no idea which particular mystery of the workings of the blood he was struggling with at the time?”

  “No... None.”

  “Had anyone been to see him recently? Was he working for the government or a private client, or was he conducting his own research? What was so secret that even you, living under the same roof as him, wouldn’t have any idea what he was working on?”

  “Mr Quicksilver! Why would you presume that Dr Gallowglass would share his top secret resea
rch with his paid staff?”

  “Of course. I apologise. I didn’t mean to suggest that there had been any impropriety.”

  “Dr Gallowglass was a very private man,” Miss Wishart said, stiffening. “And besides, it was not my place to pry. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.”

  “No, no. It’s not your fault. I’m the one who should be sorry.”

  But it didn’t change the fact that the old school friend he hadn’t seen in years had been found savagely murdered half a city away from where he lived and worked, in a place that Ulysses wouldn’t have imagined he would have been seen dead in. He only hoped Dr Methuselah’s lab tests would give him some clue as to what it was that had led to the doctor’s death.

  He had one last thing to try.

  “Miss Wishart, I am sorry to keep probing but do you know of anyone who might have wanted to cause Dr Gallowglass harm, or even, heaven forbid, want him dead?”

  “No! Not a one. He was a kind and gentle man, a philanthropist who only sought to make the world a better place through hard work and dedication.”

  “But I would beg to disagree, Miss Wishart,” Ulysses said, the smile gone from his face. “I would say that the recent kidnapping would suggest otherwise.”

  “No, I won’t have it! Those damnable blackguards were mere opportunists, greedy wastrels who saw an opportunity and took it.”

  The woman’s ire was up now; a red flush had come to her cheeks. Ulysses looked at her patiently and took a deep breath, before continuing.

  “But Miss Wishart, there was no ransom demand, was there?”

  The governess’s shoulders sagged.

  “No,” she said.

  “Then I would suggest someone was using the abduction of his daughter as leverage. Those kidnappers wanted something other than his money. They sought to influence his actions in some way, would you not agree?”

  This time the governess said nothing at all.

  “What was he working on? Do you have any ideas? This is very important”