He had stumbled into a space the size and shape of a sentry box, with no obvious way forward. He was about to step uneasily back out into the fog, when the wall to his right swung open.
He took a pace into a larger room lined in wooden tongue-and- groove panelling with a table and chairs and a dim oil lamp. The ceiling was also wood, as was the floor. Despite this it didn’t smell of wood, or the oil in the lamp. It smelled of wet clay. All in all, and maybe because of the loamy smell, it had a distinctly coffin-like atmosphere. He shivered.
“Go on in,” said a calm voice behind him.
“Nah,” he swallowed. “Nah, you know what? I think I’ve made a mistake—”
The hot churn in his guts had gone ice-cold, and he felt the goosebumps rise on his skin: he was suddenly convinced that this was a room he must not enter, because if he did, he might never leave.
He turned fast, banging the girl on the doorpost, her yip of pain lost in the crash as the door slammed shut, barring his escape route with the sound of heavy bolts slamming home.
He pushed against the wood, and then kicked at it. It didn’t move. He stood there breathing heavily, then slid the girl from his shoulder and laid her on the floor, holding her in place with a firm hand.
“Stay still or you shall have a kick, my girl,” he hissed.
He turned and froze.
There was a man sitting against the back wall of the room, a big man, almost a giant, in the type of caped greatcoat that a coachman might wear. It had an unnaturally high collar, and above it he wore a travel-stained tricorn hat of a style that had not been seen much on London’s streets for a generation, not since the early 1800s. The hat jutted over the collar and cast a shadow so deep that Ketch could see nothing of the face beneath. He stared at the man. The man didn’t move an inch.
“Hoi,” said Ketch, by way of introduction.
The giant remained motionless. Indeed as Ketch stepped towards him he realised that the head was angled slightly away, as if the man wasn’t looking at him at all.
“Hoi!” repeated Ketch.
The figure stayed still. Ketch licked his lips and ventured forward another step. Peering under the hat he saw the man was brown-skinned.
“Oi, blackie, I’m a-talking to you,” said Ketch, hiding the fact that the giant’s stillness and apparent obliviousness to his presence was unnerving him by putting on his best bar-room swagger.
The man might as well be a statue for the amount he moved. In fact—
Ketch reached forward and tipped back the hat, slowly at first.
It wasn’t a man at all. It was a mannequin made from clay. He ran his thumb down the side of the face and looked at the brown smear it left on it. Damp clay, unfired and not yet quite set. It was a well made, almost handsome face with high cheekbones and an impressively hooked nose, but the eyes beneath the prominent forehead were empty holes.
“Well, I’ll be damned…” he whispered, stepping back.
“Yes,” said a woman’s voice behind him, cold and quiet as a cutthroat razor slicing through silk. “Oh yes. I rather expect you will.”
CHAPTER 2
A WOMAN IN BLACK AND THE MAN IN MIDNIGHT
She stood at the other end of the room, a shadow made flesh in a long tight-bodiced dress buttoned to the neck and wrists. Her arms were folded and black leather gloves covered her hands. The dress had a dull sheen like oiled silk, and she was so straight-backed and slender – and yet also so finely muscled – that she looked in some ways like a rather dangerous umbrella leaning against the wood panelling.
The only relief from the blackness was her face, two gold rings she wore on top of the gloves and her white hair, startlingly out of kilter with her otherwise youthful appearance, which she wore pulled back in a tight pigtail that curled over her shoulder like an albino snake.
She hadn’t been there when Ketch entered the room, and she couldn’t have entered by the door which had been on the edge of his vision throughout, but that wasn’t what most disturbed him: what really unsettled him was her eyes, or rather the fact he couldn’t see them, hidden as they were behind the two small circular lenses of smoked glass that made up her spectacles.
“Who—?” began Ketch.
She held up a finger. Somehow that was enough to stop him talking.
“What do you want?”
Ketch gulped, tasting his own fear like rising bile at the back of his throat.
“I want to speak to the Jew.”
“Why?”
He saw she carried a ring of keys at her belt like a jailer. Despite the fact she looked too young for the job he decided that she must be the Jew’s housekeeper. He used this thought as a stick to steady himself on: he’d just been unnerved by her sudden appearance, that was all. There must be a hidden door behind her. Easy enough to hide its edges in the tongue and groove. He wasn’t going to be bullied by a housekeeper. Not when he had business with her master.
“I got something for him.”
“What?”
“A screaming girl.”
She looked at the long sack lying on the floor.
“You have a girl in this sack?”