City of Darkness

Chapter FORTY-SIX

8:34 PM





Thanks to shouted orders of Davy Mabrey, nearly every bobby in the East End was on hand to fish Micha Banasik out of the Thames. Emma’s final lunge had managed to knock him off balance and the two had gone tumbling into the water below the pier. Trevor dove in a few seconds later and reached Emma just as she was breaking the surface. He had pulled her to the stones where Davy had gone scrambling down the bank to help them both back to land.

John had found Leanna sprawled on the dock, the back of her hair blackened with blood and for a horrible moment he thought she was dead. But then he heard her cough. “Don’t try to talk,” he said, bending over her, straining to see the marks on her throat in the shadows. “Lie still,” he whispered. “I’m here. We all are.”

Trevor stumbled up with Emma in his arms and simply said “Doctor?”

“She’s alive,” John said. “We need a coach.” He unclasped his cape and gave it to Trevor to wrap around Emma while Davy sprinted off in search of the Scotland Yard carriage.

Tom, who had not only been limping but who had been further delayed by slamming right into a man with a mustache who’d come fairly flying out of an alley, finally stumbled up as well. At the sight of the two girls lying side by side on the dock, he burst into deep racking sobs.

“They’re all right,” John said hoarsely, for he felt like weeping himself. “Leanna’s got some nasty bruising and we don’t want Emma to get hypothermia. We need to get them to Geraldine’s as fast as possible. You too, Welles. You’re drenched straight through.”

But Trevor had turned away, was staring toward the bobbies collected around Micha.

“The carriage is just here, Sir,” Davy said quietly.

“Tell the doctor,” Trevor said, just as quietly. Within minutes John had Emma, Leanna, and Tom loaded in and the coach rumbled off in the direction of Mayfair.

Micha was equally battered and wet but not so well-attended. He coughed and sputtered while it took three men to get his dead weight lifted into the back of the wagon. As it rolled away, a shout of glee went up among the bobbies. They would all someday tell their grandchildren of the night they single-handedly collared Jack the Ripper.

Trevor and Davy were standing off to the side.

“Not the man we expected him to be, is he Sir?” Davy said.

“No,” Trevor answered shortly. He was beginning to feel the cold.

“Not the man at all,” Davy confirmed, and Trevor shook his head. They had caught a brute to be sure, but he knew in his heart the clumsy beast inside the wagon wasn’t the Ripper. He had known it while he was falling through the air, heading towards the knife-cold water of the Thames, had known with a kind of finality that had felt like his heart being cut from his chest.

He turned. People were trying to talk to him. More than one of the men offered to buy him a beer. Reporters were arriving, flashing their cameras and shouting questions. He couldn’t see, couldn’t think. Would they not all face away and leave him alone? But he did note that the police had roped off the area, that they were holding the press back while they combed the pier for fibers and hairs, chips of mortar, the remnants of the struggle. His legacy to the Yard. That’s something, he thought. Maybe it’s enough.

“An ending, but not a conclusion,” he said aloud.

“Beg your pardon, Sir?”

“Nothing. Get me my pipe.”

Davy nodded and went back to where Trevor’s coat lay. The detective must’ve known they would end up in the water, Davy thought, else why would he have pulled off his coat while he was running? He extracted Trevor’s battered notebook from a pocket and gazed at it for a moment, sadly. Then he went to the next pocket and found the pipe and tobacco. Returning to the shadows, he handed both to his boss, then waited to give him his coat. But Welles was already walking back toward the pier.

Poor Leanna and Emma, he thought, they had been on foot for an hour but had managed to get, in all their circling, no more than ten blocks from where they had started. “We’ve never gone as far as we think,” Trevor informed a gull, who gazed at him meditatively, then took flight. Trevor sat down on the pilings and lit his pipe, surprised that his hands did not shake in the effort. Inhaling deeply, he looked out at the water, which, deceptive in the moonlight, was almost lovely. He exhaled, and the puff of smoke escaped into the fog.