The Red Door Read Free Page B

misunderstanding over the dice.
    They swore on their mothers’ graves that it wouldn’t happen again. Rutledge pointed out that one of their number was still in hospital and that more serious charges would be brought if he suffered any lasting harm.
    Properly chastened, the Irishmen promised to say an Ave for his swift recovery. The Englishmen were all for assuming the cost of his care.
    After speaking to the desk sergeant, suggesting that the offenders be held for another twenty-four hours until the doctors were satisfied that the injured man would make a full recovery, Rutledge left the station.
    He had a strong suspicion that Bowles had sent him to Brixton out of pure spite, and that feeling was confirmed by Sergeant Davis’s commiserating grin when Rutledge finally walked back into the Yard.
    “Wild geese are the order of the day, sir. Chasing them, that is. Inspector Mann is in Canterbury on much the same errand. And Chief Inspector Ellis is on his way to Chichester. Idle hands and all that. It’s been a week of quiet, you see. That rubs the Old Bowels on the raw.”
    Free to leave at last, Rutledge was too tired to go home, and too angry to rest once he got there. Instead, late as it was, he had taken to the streets, trying to walk off his own mood and finding himself beset by Hamish at every turn.
    He watched the last of the summer light fade from opal to rose to lavender and thence to darkness as the stars popped out above the blackness of the river. The streets around him emptied of pedestrians and wheeled traffic alike, until his footsteps on the pavement echoed in his head and kept him company.
    It occurred to him at some point that today had been the anniversary of his return to the Yard. A year ago . . .
    It had been a long and difficult twelve months.
    Finding himself at the foot of Westminster Bridge, he went along the parapet and leaned on an elbow, watching the dark water swirl far below, mesmerized by the motion as it surged and fought its way through the arches that struggled to hold it back.
    Lost in thought, he came to the conclusion that the past year was in some fashion comparable to the battle he was watching between river and stone. The implacable stone was the past, anchored forever amid the torrent of his days, redirecting, obstructing, thwarting, and frustrating him at every turn.
    Hamish said, “Ye canna’ resign. Ye ken, before a fortnight was out, ye’d be back in yon clinic, sunk in useless despair.”
    And that was the truth of it. He wouldn’t be able to live with his own failure.
    Or with the voice that was in his head. Hamish lay dead in a French grave. There was no disputing that. Nor did ghosts walk. But putting that voice to rest was beyond him. Working had been Rutledge’s only salvation, and he knew without it, the only escape would be drinking himself into oblivion. Hamish’s victory then. His own lay in the bottom of his trunk, the loaded service revolver that was more to his liking, swift, certain, without disgrace. He’d learned in France that a good soldier always left himself a sure line of retreat.
    Without conscious awareness, Rutledge had registered the footsteps passing behind him—a man on crutches, a woman hurrying in shoes too tight for her tired feet, a dog trotting purposefully back to his side of the bridge. But he had missed the soft footfalls of someone creeping toward him, half hidden by the dark, jutting islands of the lamps.
    Hamish said sharply, “Hark!” and Rutledge was on the point of turning when something sharp dug into the flesh of his back.
    A muffled voice said, “Your money. Any other valuables. Be quick, if you want to live.”
    Rutledge could have laughed. Instead he said quietly, “I won’t give you my watch. It was my father’s. But you can have whatever money you may find in my pockets.”
    The point of the knife dug deeper, and he could feel it pulling at his shirt.
    The man said, a nervous anxiety in his voice, “I’ve told