“Perhaps mother and son shall meet again soon.” Crimson, who was obviously unimpressed by their visitor, spoke up at last.

  Mrs. Rees shook her head. “No. My mother was a good woman, and my brother…” The tears trickled again. “He shan’t reside in heaven. I want him to have this. And another, a reminder of what he once was—what he’s lost.”

  She managed to hand over the other picture. A young man in a tight-fitting dark suit stood, hands resting on a chair, not quite smiling—those full lips were pulled into a smirk.

  But there was something, perhaps the way his brown eyes looked past the photographer? Carl decided this man was mocking himself.

  “Dez,” he said, and allowed himself a few seconds to examine the face, the slashing brows, the strong nose, the chin that might show strength or petulance. Carl longed to know which. This picture, that almost-smile, put the seal on his interest. Carl Reis was hooked by his peculiar need to don imaginary armor, and by something more—an interest that went deeper, which he tried, and failed, to ignore.

  He looked up at Mrs. Rees, who actually met his gaze.

  Her eyes, red-rimmed, were rather pretty—like Dez’s? She said, “If you’d be so kind as to make sure he gets these, please do mention that I forgive him. It would not have been possible to forgive if our mama had suffered because of him. If he’d given her such sorrow and disappointment, not matter that I am a Christian…” She shook her head. “Yet she was sick for many years, and I managed to keep the truth of his scandal from her before she died.”

  She closed her bag and squeezed the leather handles. “In the last two years, I have lost my dear mother, my husband, and now this. I can’t. I simply cannot see him again.” She made excuses for her weakness, of course. Over her shoulder, Crimson rolled her eyes.

  Carl might well be ruthless, but he had no need to make this guilt-ridden woman feel any worse. He picked up the pictures and gravely nodded at her. “I’ll tell him you’ve forgiven him, and I’ll see that he gets these pictures.”

  Her brow furrowed. “You’ll write to him for me?”

  “I’m going to go see him.” He had to now. He’d already sent a letter saying he’d bring along the sister, and that wasn’t going to happen.

  His heart beat a little faster at the thought of seeing that cocky boy in person and witness how he’d grown into a man.

  Absurd. Carl knew where his thoughts now strayed. He had little time or patience for such matters. He’d had sexual encounters before, once in a train station on a trip to York, another time in a private room in a pub. His hand and imagination suited him well enough.

  To connect physical attraction to his…hobby. He wasn’t sure he approved. The disparate parts of his life were tidied away in separate boxes.

  But that smile. The letter. He gazed down at the picture again, at the near-smile, and startled when Mrs. Rees grabbed his hand.

  “You are a saint.” Mrs. Rees gasped and began to cry. Behind her, Crimson broke into silent laughter. At his glare, she mouthed the word saint.

  *

  “Ever hear of this bloke? Carl Reis?” One of the few guards who passed the time of day with the prisoners shoved an envelope at Dez.

  “Carl Rees was my sister’s husband. This must be from her.” Dez caught a whiff of glorious tobacco and fresh air. It came from the papers in his hand.

  “Naw, this isn’t anyone’s sister.”

  The envelope had been opened and the contents read, of course. The letter was from someone whose name was almost exactly the same as his dead brother-in-law’s. For a long moment, he puzzled over why this man would write to him. And then Dez realized his letter to Lucy had fallen into the wrong hands.

  A bitter disappointment filled him. He’d hoped to see her one more time.

  “Well. Go on and read,” the jailer ordered. “Only, listen, if it’s the head of Reis and Company, he’s got fingers in all sorts of pies. If you knew him, why, you should have written him sooner.”

  “I don’t know him,” Dez said and pulled the single sheet out. “God almighty,” he said and gave a snort of laughter.

  “Well?” the jailer demanded.

  “He’s going to bring my sister here.” Try to bring her, the letter said, but he grabbed hold as if it were a fact. He wanted a few facts to go his way.

  The guard laughed too. “He better hurry, then.”

  So bleeding funny—the hanging was scheduled in two days, and the jailers did love to remind him of that.

  While he had light enough to see, Dez read the note again and again, particularly a line about we hope to help in any way we can. What could that mean? We? Help? Any way?

  Dez wasn’t sure he liked this little squirm of hope, not at all. And what sort of a maniac would help a man he knew nothing about—well, nothing other than the fact that Dez, the man in question, was an admitted murderer.

  He was looking a magical gift horse in the mouth. And since there was no such thing as magic, that was fine. But that night, he lay awake, staring into darkness and listening to the scurry of the rodents. “Carl Reis,” he said. “Carl. Carl Reis.” Funny to hear his brother-in-law’s name with so much interest and possibility attached to it. Poor old, dead Carl had the same interest in men as Dez—he’d tried to sneak into Dez’s bed one night soon after the wedding. Dez had kneed him in the bollocks, and then promised never to speak of the matter to Lucy.

  Dead Carl Rees was too conventional to ever admit such an attraction to the wide world.

  “Carl Reis,” Dez said. He conjured stories for himself in the dark. Perhaps he’d brought his sole surviving relation some consolation after all. If his sister married this man, she wouldn’t have to change her name much at all. And what a step up for her—from a clerk in a shipbuilding firm to some kind of wealthy pie-fingerer who used lovely paper. Dez held the letter to his nose again, and managed to fall asleep breathing its scent.

  He dreamed about fucking his brother-in-law, who slipped a noose around his neck. He woke as he climaxed. He hadn’t had such a dream in years. His stupid body wasn’t giving up on life yet.

  We hope to help in any way we can.

  *

  The day of his execution, Dez begged for a change of clothes and a barber.

  He got the barber and the clothes they’d caught him in, still unwashed. He eyed the splotches of blood from the man he’d slammed into a wall. Perhaps it was some kind of justice to die wearing the bastard’s blood. And maybe some of the blood belonged to the girl the man had been slashing about the face—the girl who’d vanished into the night and hadn’t reappeared even when Dez wheedled a newspaper reporter into begging for her to come forward.

  The barber’s hand trembled—probably he didn’t shave many murderers—so he sliced Dez’s neck. Would that cut chafe when the rope touched it? Not for long. Still, the barber made Dez look and feel more like a human than he had in weeks. He thanked the man.

  “Will you sign this?” the barber asked. He placed a blank piece of paper on the platform of a bed and fished a pencil from his tunic.

  Dez picked up the pencil. “Will the prison need it to pay you? Can’t the turnkey see my shiny face and short hair as proof enough?”

  “No, no. It’s just that some folk pay a penny for a hanged man’s signature. ’Specially a man who’s attracted the attention that you have of late.”

  “Ah.” Dez nearly threw the pencil at the barber, but why not? He signed the paper three times. “There’s thruppence for you.”

  After the barber left, Dez sat on the bed alone and waited in the chilly, damp cell. By some miracle, he’d managed to avoid contracting lice, but the fleas bit, and he had their welts on his skin to occupy himself. If only he had more paper—he might write another letter. This time he might tell Bill he was sorry he hadn’t tried harder to make their time together something more than a simple lark.

  Carl Reis hadn’t managed any miracle after all. Dez felt a moment’s rage at the man. But he hadn’t promised anything—and maybe Dez’s sister waited for him outside.

  Unlikely, but Dez didn’t have much more time, and he wouldn’t spend it in anger or in regretting a moment of his life. Too much drink might have led him to that dark street at the wrong time, but he’d moved along from dwelling on that time.

  Funny, it wasn’t the drink he’d missed in prison—once the shaking and headaches had passed. He’d had plenty of hours to consider the other days and nights of his life. The list of what he missed was simple. The wind on his face as he drove, huddled in his greatcoat, the half-wild creatures hooked to the carriage, the bugle and call of the yards as he steered the animals in, knowing a good meal waited. Those were the parts of life he’d mourned losing. Oxtail soup. Hot tea. Waking in a bed with someone else and using that person’s bulk as a shield against the world and cold. Warm beds. Oh yes, warm beds. The touch of another person, smiles, a good laugh.

  It seemed a crime that he would leave this life without feeling warmth again. Although perhaps hell would be warm enough.

  “Nearly time.” The turnkey was at the bars. “We generally do this work at dawn. Sorry for the delay.” He grinned.

  God, these people and their awful jokes. He forced himself to grin back, because screaming or ranting would be worse.

  They’d offered him a portion of rum, but he’d turned it down. His new sobriety, the only gift prison gave him that he appreciated, wouldn’t last long—though he would be sober the rest of his life, oh ha-ha, and wasn’t that a joke worthy of the jailers.

  He picked up the letter again. In the two days he’d had it, the paper had turned grimy and lost all its pleasant scents. But as talismans went, it wasn’t half-bad. He tucked it into the side of his trousers. Someone had made an effort for him, even if it was to write a passel of lies. Someone had given him hope and a sense that he wasn’t entirely alone.

  “Come on, then, Moore. Hands forward, time for the shackles.”

  Dez rose to his feet slowly, hoping his knees wouldn’t give way in fear. He remembered an execution he’d witnessed—the man had fallen and wailed on the walk to the gallows. The crowd jeered and laughed.

  He hadn’t joined the mocking crowd, but that didn’t lend him much comfort at the moment.

  They manacled his hands in the front with heavy cold irons. Then the leg irons that made him shuffle.

  Two men walked with him, one tall and stout, and the other taller and stouter. Every second seemed to take far too long, even as time moved too quickly. At the door to the yard, they were met by the clergyman who’d visited him. The old man looked anxious and pale, which didn’t go well with his pure white hair.

  “Hello, Father,” Dez said, glad of a friendly face.

  He tried to ignore the noisy crowd—so many people gathered to watch—and concentrated on the feeling of sunlight on his face.

  Good morning, Sun.

  Good-bye, Sun.

  “Fine morning for it,” said one of the guards. Oh, they did love their stupid japes. Dez wanted to ram his foot down on the man’s instep. Instead, he forced his mouth into an imitation of a smile. Because he would not allow these people to recall him and think coward.

  And why did he care at all what they thought? Why was he wasting his last precious moments on this absurdity?

  “Are you making your peace with God, my son?”

  Hardly. The rotter hadn’t come through for Dez. “I’m still working on making peace with myself.”

  The men laughed. Even the vicar smiled.

  “What’d he say?” Shouts came from the front of the crowd.

  “A funny fellow, is he?”

  “Not for long.”

  “Take down his last words. They’ll sell well,” one of the guards said to the vicar. “I’ll sign off that they were true too.”

  “That’s not why I’m here. The newspapermen are here for that,” snapped the old man. Wasn’t he supposed to be concerned with Dez’s soul and not his own dignity?

  They climbed the wooden stairs to the platform slowly because of the irons on Dez’s ankles. At the top, Dez looked around at the upturned faces.

  “Has anyone seen my sister?” he asked.

  Someone laughed, but then the cry went up, and all around, people turned and gazed at each other, and the mutters rippled through the crowd. Sister? Where is the near-dead man’s sister? He has a right to see his sister. He watched the heads twist side to side.

  Rather nice that they searched for her too. The final kindness in his life.

  He hadn’t really expected Lucy to come. She hadn’t even sent word of their mother’s death—he learned about that from a reporter.

  But he would have liked to say farewell to her or Bill, or anyone he knew before That Night—the night he’d murdered a man.

  Only now, he was being pulled into place in the middle of the trapdoor.

  “Hood?” asked a man. Dez stared at him, unable to form words.

  “No, then?” the man said.

  Dez nodded, not sure if that meant he wanted a hood or not. He hardly cared. He was concentrating on the thump of his heart. His heartbeats could be counted out now, so few left, and he wondered if he’d reach fifty before the beating stopped. Counting. That was a reasonable occupation for his last moments. Better than weeping or begging.

  “Any final words?”

  He thought of the barber and the guard, thinking to profit from his death.

  “I might have a few, but they’re for me alone,” he said, but politely. “Thanks all the same.” No reason to anger the man who’d be responsible for his death coming either quickly or painfully slow.

  Apparently, he’d declined the hood, because instead of darkness, he gazed out over the crowd that stared back even as the noose, thick and heavy, was laid with surprising gentleness around his neck. The breeze ruffled his newly shortened hair. Good-bye, wind and air.

  He wanted to close his eyes—and fought that childish urge to hide behind his lids. They’d be closed forever soon enough. Fifteen…sixteen…seventeen…heartbeats. And how many breaths? He held those too often to count.

  The warden, a man with silver hair, stood close by. He used an upper-crust accent Dez suspected he hadn’t been born to. “Not so swaggering now, are you? Not so brash, nor full of yourself.”

  Nor so drunk, Dez thought, and that might have been a mistake after all.

  The rope around his neck was harsh and yes, did scratch at the barber’s cut, a glorious tiny pain. He’d miss even those.

  The warden tilted his head back as if trying to find a scent in the breeze or look down his nose at the condemned man. “What are your final words, Moore? We are all waiting—in fact, we’re curious beyond all measure.”

  Dez stared back and thought but didn’t bother to say, I’ll just wager you are, you shite-for-brains. There, that was enough time spent on that waste of breath called a warden. Too many of his remaining seconds. He turned away and stared over the crowd.

  Twenty…twenty-one… The beats came fast with his fear. He might count to fifty after all. He might also puke.

  A sharp whistle rang out, especially loud because the crowd had grown silent listening for Dez’s final words.

  Everyone looked in that direction, but not Dez, because he desperately needed to count those heartbeats.

  Another shriek of a whistle cut the air, and enough stirring in the crowd made him twist on his heel with a drag and jingle of his shackles to watch. Three men and two women shoved their way through the crowd. Actually, only one man shoved—a large man in the front used his bulk and elbows to push people aside. The rest followed like ducklings after their mother.

  He stared at one of the women in the middle. His sister, Lucy, at last? No, this person’s hair was brown but pulled into some kind of braids-and-loops arrangement. The woman—lady, really—was far too elegant and tall to be Lucy. The other woman seemed vaguely familiar. As they drew closer, she lifted her face, and he saw red scar lines crisscrossed her cheeks. He thought of marks made by a knife in a dark alley. Her.

  He stopped counting.

  The bulky chap waved something white, holding it high, and directed it at the group on the platform.

  That looked like paper, but Dez was muddled, although he did notice that whatever the man waved or shouted made the warden curse.

  Dez concentrated but was too dazed and couldn’t hear or think well enough to drown the buzz in his head. Perhaps they had already dropped him through the door and this was a last dream of the world he’d just departed.

  He might as well take part in the absurdity. “Halloo,” he called out to the girl. “You’re a bit late.”

  He took a step forward, intent on catching her before she escaped into the thin air from which she appeared—perhaps if he went over the edge, he’d fly away or tumble to the next life. But the manacles on his hands jangled and the ones on his legs caught at him. He looked down, stumbled, and fell forward.

  The world went dark, and the last thing he felt was anger after all, a kick of indignation at God’s cruel joke to make Dez believe he’d been saved.

  Dez rose to the surface again. His throat hurt, and he lay on the platform, not in a grave.

  It was real.

  He wasn’t dead.

  Before he could ask what had happened, the world went black again.

  *

  If Carl heard the words “This is highly irregular” one more time, he might resort to violence—and he’d left his brawling days behind nearly a decade ago.

  No, no, of course he wouldn’t row here. He’d learned patience during his thirty years on this earth, and the main way he found to exercise it was to show nothing on his face and remain silent. That response drove people mad.

  The warden, three barristers, a judge, a solicitor, Wendell, Crimson, and Carl all jammed into the warden’s painfully neat office. Carl allowed his lawyers to explain it all one more time, while he examined the pictures of Penance and Guilt that hung next to commendations. Every wall in the office was covered with that nonsense.

 

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