“Or a tavern?”
Mr. Dooley nodded. “Burke’s misfortune to cross the man’s path. Most likely a typical robbery after a game of dice. A pity, although the man had a poor reputation about London, with the scandals and bribes he wrote about.”
It was easy enough toassumethat it might have been robbery. It happened often enough. But Burke was the sort who was wise to the ways of the street. His pursuit of that next story about a scandal could take him into the worst corners of London.
Burke boasted that he carried just enough coin to acquire information from his ‘sources.’ It was rumored that some of those sources came from inside the MET, a constable eager to make extra money in exchange for information. Dooley was aware of the rumors.
“Could it have been someone within?” Brodie saw the way Dooley’s expression shifted. “If certain information became known in one of the man’s articles?”
If caught, the constable or inspector was immediately released and could be brought up on charges. But it was a situation where passing information or the outside ‘job’ was lucrative enough to cover the possibility.
“Before you ask, there’s no one at the Yard fits that description,” Dooley had replied. “That doesn’t account for others though, particularly any who might have been passed over for promotion or demoted in the outlying areas,” Dooley added.
“I’ve got two of my people discreetly making inquiries.”
Brodie nodded. If the man who had attacked Burke was from the ‘inside,’ he would eventually be found out, exposed, and the matter settled.
If the man were from the streets, it would be that much harder to find him. Unless he was the sort who needed to make certain thejobthat he’d been hired to do was, in fact, finished.
“The man disappeared quickly enough according to wot ye told me,” Brodie commented.
Dooley nodded. “Like his tail was afire, according to the man, Fitch.”
“And there’s been no word put out by the MET or the newspapers yet about Burke’s murder,” he pointed out.
“If the man was scared off, there might be some doubt that Burke is dead. Where was the body taken?”
“I had it brought to the Yard under a John Doe. I thought it best until we have a lead on the murderer. I doubt that Burke is in any condition to protest. What about yourself?”
“I have inquiries I want to make on the street, then I’m for the Old Bell and perhaps a conversation with Mr. Fitch when he arrives.”
“I’ll send along a couple of the lads in their street clothes.”
Brodie shook his head. “I thank ye just the same.”
Dooley frowned. “I suppose there’s no need to say it.” Then he did.
“Be careful out there. You have a few that would like to even the score from the old days. I’d not want to have to explain toLady Forsythe that she’s just been made a widow. She has a bit of a temper.”
“Aye, that she does.”
“Do ye still carry the revolver and that knife in yer boot?” Dooley asked.
After his meeting with Dooley, he slipped back out onto the street filled with the usual sounds and smells from the river with its refuse, garbage, and its secrets as he left the Yard. Along with the cold that had a way of burrowing under a man’s coat, leaving that hollow feeling deep inside.
It was always there, waiting to pull him back...to places that he’d left behind not once, but twice.
Edinburgh, with a different cold that could freeze the flesh on a young lad who had gone hungry until he stole his next crust of bread or picked that next pocket.
Then afterward, London with a different kind of cold. The kind that reminded ye that ye were just another lost soul among others, with no importance except to yerself.
There had been another, like himself. They had watched each other’s back, scraped, clawed, and bled for survival. Someone he trusted—Munro.
He was in Edinburgh, yet if he were there now, he would go to people he knew from the whisky trade he handled for Mikaela’s great aunt for a name of someone who might know someone.
Brodie had his own sources. Faces with names they’d invented. He kept them at a distance with the work he did now—private inquiries—and for other reasons that had everything to do withher. Those who frequented the taverns and pubs, but had once walked the streets as he had.
He caught a ride on a tram with a route toward Holborn. Once there, he found a carter who provided a ride in the back of his cart for two pence. The address was familiar, along with the woman who swept the steps.
