“Look at it—don’t show it to anyone—and put it back in the deck.”
The lady obeyed, and the magician began shuffling the cards. As he did, a man on the other side of the crowd caught Derek’s eye. The boy barely recognized DI Hamilton—he looked terrible. His face was drawn and haggard, and there were dark circles under his eyes. His right cheekbone glistened with a bright purple bruise, and his face bore other cuts and gashes. Next to him stood Sergeant Dickerson, blue eyes as bright as ever, his ginger hair vivid even under the bleak Edinburgh sky.
Both men were attentively watching the performer, but Hamilton’s gaze wandered long enough to notice Derek. The boy frowned, as if to say, “What are you doing here?” but the detective just shook his head.
Puzzled, Derek looked back at the magician, who had turned the deck he was handling upside down, so the face of the top card was visible. A chill shot through Derek as he saw the dancing skeletons on the face of the card. His jaw dropped open as the magician’s eyes met his. The smile slid from the man’s handsome face, replaced by the most murderous look Derek had ever seen. Without warning, he slipped the cards back into his pocket, and, to the astonishment of the crowd, abruptly bolted.
Derek heard Detective Hamilton’s voice above the clamor of the market-day crowd. “Stay where you are—Edinburgh Police!” That was followed by a shrill blast from Sergeant Dickerson’s police whistle. Two constables at the far end of the Grassmarket heard the call and gave chase.
But the magician had already taken to his heels, running toward the center of the square just as a drover was leading his flock of black-faced sheep into it. Skirting the front of the herd, the fleeing man managed to clear it and get to the other side of the Grassmarket. Following in hot pursuit, Ian and the constables were not so lucky, finding their path blocked by a bundle of bleating white bodies.
Derek took in the situation and headed straight toward the herd. Falling to his hands and knees, he scrambled beneath the animals, through their legs. The fit was tight and the smell was horrid, and he wasn’t entirely successful in dodging either the kicks of the skittish sheep or the piles of manure, but he managed to reach the other side, emerging just in time to see the magician head toward the maze of tenements on the other side of George IV Bridge. Gulping a lungful of air, Derek took chase, weaving nimbly past shoppers and tradesmen. As he cleared the shadows thrown by the overhanging bridge, Derek heard a low whistle coming from behind one of the stone arches. He spun around just in time to register a sharp blow to the back of his head. He fell to his knees, stunned, as a pair of strong hands grasped him around the throat. He struggled for breath, but blackness descended upon him like a thick fog.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Ian Hamilton watched helplessly as the magician disappeared into the tumbledown neighborhood known as Little Ireland. He had no choice but to weave through the dense congregation of sheep, grabbing their thick, oily coats in an attempt to shove them out of the way. But sheep like to huddle against one another, and it took all his strength to push through them.
He reached the other side and looked around for Sergeant Dickerson, who was still floundering through the thick herd of fluffy white bodies, followed by the two uniformed officers, both of them madly blowing their whistles. Unfortunately, the sound panicked the animals, and they pressed together even more tightly. The newspaper ruse had worked—Wright was arrogant enough to think he had given them the slip—but Ian was astonished at the magician’s audacity to perform in public.
He ran east on the Cowgate, beneath George IV Bridge, and into the gloom of the streets below. In front of him stood a blacksmith shop, its sign reading “Wm. Dyers & Sons.” A grime-encrusted smith in a leather apron with the shoulders of an ox pounded iron into submission with his hammer, sparks flying. The embers in his forge glowed red as the flames of hell.
“Did you see a well-dressed man run past here?” Ian shouted, keeping a safe distance from the shooting sparks.
The man looked up from his anvil, eyes shining fiercely blue through his blackened face. Lifting his hammer, he pointed it toward the center of the huddle of tenements. Ian took a deep breath and plunged into the maze of buildings, where families were stuffed in cheek by jowl, and right angles were rare as hen’s teeth. It was as different from the stately esplanades and lavish mansions of Princes Street as it was from the rolling hills and vales of the Highlands.
The rain of the past weeks had lifted; clothes fluttered on laundry lines strung between the buildings as housewives beat their rugs from open windows, dust flying, borne away on the greedy west wind. Children and dogs darted in and out of alleys, staring up at Ian curiously as he searched the streets frantically. Venturing deeper into the web of wynds and alleys, he reached a dead end between two moldering buildings. There was no sign of life—no skittering children or pets, only shuttered windows and the slow drip of water from overhanging eaves.
He had turned to leave when he heard a sound—not a loud noise, just the shuffling of leather soles on cobblestone. But there was something furtive about the way it ceased abruptly when he stopped to listen. He looked at the sign nailed to the crumbling mortar of the building nearest him: “Skinner’s Close.” He crept around the corner, stepping over a dead rat next to a rain barrel before creeping cautiously down the darkened alley. The feeble February sun had dipped behind a cloud, and the narrow passage lay entirely in shadow, sandwiched between two tenement buildings.