Doktor Glass Read Free Page A

saw a small boat slipping through the Canning Half-Tide Dock gate around four this morning. Mind, he’s been hard at the liquor.”
    The disheveled sailor clung to the iron lamppost like a shipwreck survivor with a piece of driftwood.
    “Do you have his statement?”
    “Aye, the gist of it, sir.”
    “Then send him to his ship. We’ll talk to him tonight, after he’s slept off some of the drink.”
    As the stoker lurched toward the King’s Dock gate to the south, Langton took a final inventory of the scene. The man could have been murdered anywhere and his body dumped in the water from boat or carriage. Or simply hurled over the side of the docks.
    And the motive? Langton had encountered so many in his career: greed, hatred (for as many reasons, both real and imagined, as man could devise), love, and fear. Or madness, the most difficult to fathom since it relied on its own perverse logic. Robbery was the simplestexplanation but the wrong one here; the victim’s thick gold watch chain, earrings, and rings would not have survived.
    And thieves would have no reason to slice off the man’s features.
    “Sir, is there anything else?” McBride went toward the swing bridge leading to Gower Street.
    “Return to the station,” Langton said, “and ask Doctor Fry to check the man’s body for any more tattoos and scars, especially around the chest and stomach. This is not just another murder, Sergeant.”
    McBride seemed about to ask a question, then nodded and walked toward the steam car parked on Gower Street well out of the lanes of passing horses and carts.
    “One thing, Sergeant,” Langton said. Then, as McBride turned around, “Why did we get this call? We’re not on the duty roster this week.”
    McBride shook his head. “I never asked why, sir. I just did what the Chief told me, and came to collect you. Did I do wrong?”
    “No. I’m sure he has good reason,” Langton said, still wondering why Chief Inspector Purcell should want him on this case. Perhaps the Chief wanted to distract him, although Langton had never attributed compassion to the man. Perhaps he had misjudged him.
    Leaving a constable at the scene, Langton crossed the east swing bridge into Salthouse Dock and walked its perimeter until he reached busy Wapping Road. The cold November air would clear his head and help him think. It might help him to remember what those tattoos signified; back in the Transvaal, he’d been adept at reading the enemy’s intricate body art. No design was redundant—all had a special meaning. And he had no doubt the man was a Boer. The tattoos confirmed it.
    Why would a Boer veteran, an enemy of Britain and all its dominions even after the Bloemfontein truce, work on the Transatlantic Span?
    *  *  *
    L ANGTON REACHED HIS office after nine and hung his Ulster by the coal stove. He warmed his hands for a moment before peering through the sash window to the bustling traffic of Victoria Street below. A tram shouldered its way through the carts and horses, blue light arcing between its pantograph and the suspended cables. The sounds of street-organ music drifted through the fogged panes.
    Although a leaning stack of paperwork awaited Langton in his tray, he ignored it and opened a new case file for the dead man. As he searched his drawer for a pen, he found a framed monochrome photograph of Sarah smiling up at him from a summer three years gone. Langton rested his fingers on the chill surface and traced her outline. He closed the drawer as if it too were made of glass.
    After ten minutes of precise writing, he looked up at the sound of knuckles rapping his frosted glass door. Harry, the office boy, leaned through the gap. “Begging your pardon, sir. Chief Inspector would like a word.”
    As the boy went to leave, Langton called out, “Wait a moment, Harry.”
    He found a pad of telegraph forms and scribbled a few lines. “Send this to the Labor Department at the Transatlantic Span Company offices at the Pier Head.