It was quite dark inside the cell and almost suffocating with no outside window, in the event that a prisoner might attempt to claw and scrabble his way through thick stone walls, and then escape.
Furnishings were at a minimum, so as not to provide the prisoner in question anything that might be used as a weapon. What appeared to be a metal frame bed was attached at one wall,and was nothing more than a rack with a thin blanket that was still folded. A shallow basin had been attached at the opposite wall. Food, untouched, sat on a metal plate at the floor.
I caught the movement from that bed, and then a hoarse sound that I wouldn’t have recognized if the constable hadn’t checked the‘guest register’as we arrived and confirmed that this was in fact where Brodie was being held.
I then heard the distinctive sound of chains...as he slowly emerged from the shadows in one corner of the cell.
Knowing Abberline...knowing his obsession with Brodie, I had tried to prepare myself for what I would find. Nothing I had imagined could have prepared me for what I saw.
He wore the trousers and shirt from the day before, however, the shirt was torn and stained with dried blood.
My first thought was that he must have been wounded as the police entered the smoke shop. There had been that one gunshot. But it seemed that it was Morrissey who was dead. Then I looked at his face.
His hair was tangled and matted, a cheek badly swollen and bloodied above the dark beard, and he shuffled forward in a way that had little to do with the chains on his ankles.
He moved like a very old man, bent and stooped, one arm held against his mid-section.
I had seen injured people before, even bodies in the course of our inquiry cases. But nothing compared to this. He had been beaten and quite savagely.
“Brodie…?” I almost didn’t believe that it was him—didn’t want to believe it.
“Wot…!” he said, in a thick rasping sound, “are ye doin’ here!”
I gathered my thoughts and my emotions. It would have been so easy to become hysterical at what I saw...and I was not a hysterical person. But this was Brodie, and as with everythingelse about the man, everything I had known before went right out the window. Still…
It would do neither of us any good to give into what I was feeling, and I was fairly certain that he would have made some disparaging comment if I were to fall into a weeping fit.
It was ridiculous to ask how he was or how they were treating him. That was obvious.
“I’m here to see you…”
He cut off anything more I would have said.
“I dinna want ye here!”
“I can help you...”
“I dinna need yer help!”
“I might argue that...There are things that can be done, people who can assist. I’ve already contacted Sir Laughton…”
“No!”
There was something of the old Brodie in that angry response that brought on a fit of coughing. I held onto that, having dealt with it numerous times in the past.
“If you know anything that might be helpful, if Morrissey said anything before...a question you asked that he responded to before Abberline’s men broke into the shop…”
“I dinna want ye part of this.”
“That would seem moot at this point. I am part of it…”
“Mikaela!” The effort it took to speak brought on another spasm of coughing, and he looked as if he might drop to the floor.
All my resolve disappeared, and I went to him, holding onto him...holding him up. I didn’t care about the blood or the bruises…
I could only imagine the strength it took as he pushed away from me. When I took a step toward him, he only shook his head.
“Abberline has waited ten years for this. I willna have ye part of it. Will ye once do as I say? Stay away!”
