The Darkest Walk of Crime Read Free

here,” Foster said at
once and prepared to move on, but Restiaux placed a heavy hand on his shoulder.
    “Wait. Somebody will know,” he
advised, and raised his voice: “We’re looking for Thomas Blake!”
    Mendick flashed the lantern
across the chaos, catching a poisonous eye, a scarred back, a tangled mess of
lousy hair or the slender curve of breast or buttock.
    “Who?” the man in the suit
asked, blinking as the light focussed on his face.
    “Flash Tom,” Restiaux said. “You
know him.”
    When the man shook his head,
Restiaux sighed. “Remind him, Constable.”
    “Yes, Sergeant.” Pulling his
staff from its pocket, Mendick stepped forward, ignoring the squeal as his
nailed boot thumped on the leg of a teenage draggletail.
    “No!” The clerk cowered
backward, seeking sanctuary from companions who seemed only too eager to allow
him all the attention of the police. “I don’t know him at all!”
    “I’m afraid I don’t believe
you.” Mendick pressed the rounded edge of his staff, with the VR lettering in
faded gold, hard against the clerk’s chin. “Where is Thomas Blake?”
    “I don’t know,” the clerk said,
but for a second his eyes flickered toward a door at the far end of the room.
    “Thank you,”Mendick kept
his voice dry as he stepped over the cleric. “This way, Sergeant. You too,
Sergeant Foster, if you will.” He treated the Scotland Yard detective with
cautious respect.
    “I hope Flash Tom kills you
both.” Covering herself with what looked like a handful of rags, a woman
pointed a long-nailed finger at Mendick. “I hope you die squealing, you Peeler
bastard.”
    “If there is any trouble from
you or anybody else in this room,” Restiaux told her quietly, “you’ll be in the
Bower before this day’s finished.”
    The woman closed her mouth and
sat down with a thump, her eyes screaming hatred.
    “Right, Constable, lead on.”
Foster glanced over his shoulder as a cacophony of curses came from the room
behind them. “Christ but I hate this job.”
    They plunged through the door
into a short passage, scented with sewage and punctured with three dark
openings.
    “Which one?” Mendick allowed the
beam of the lantern to linger over each doorway in turn.
    “The nearest,” Restiaux said and
barged in the door. They thundered into another room reeking of human misery as
huddled children stared up from their rags. One boy, his eyes ancient and evil
as Hades, spat at them. The next room held more filth, more destitute people,
more sorrow, but no Thomas Blake.
    “We’re wasting time.” Foster
sounded worried.
    Restiaux shoved the last door.
“Locked,” he said laconically, and again resorted to his boot. The door
shuddered once, twice, and finally gave with a mighty crash. The lantern probed
ahead, revealing more steps, spiralling upward.
    Foster swore foully. “This place
is a maze.”
    “Tom! Tom Blake!” Restiaux’s shout
echoed endlessly in the dark. Feeling his way with care, he began the ascent,
pistol held ready to fire. Mendick followed, aware of the clinging dankness and
the sudden alteration in atmosphere. The foetid stench had metamorphosed into
something much worse. He could sense danger, as if unformed evil was hovering
above.
    “He’s up there,”he
whispered, touching the butt of his pistol. Years of experience in the back
slums of London had heightened him to the importance of instinct. If he felt
that something was wrong, then something was wrong.
    Restiaux nodded. “I know.”
    Restiaux was the expert on the Holy
Land. He knew every slithering alley, every crumbling building, every half-human
denizen of the ten rat-run acres that huddled between the soaring spire of St
Giles and the bulk of St George’s church in Bloomsbury. The name Holy Land was
a mockery, taken from the proximity of the churches, but although there were
worse rookeries in London, there were few that gave such easy access to the
more privileged areas of Leicester Square, Regent