While we’re in the basement and I can’t see a window, the activity level tells me it’s well into the morning hours. Footsteps overhead double and then triple. Someone comes to collect a prisoner and mentions the “procurator fiscal’s office” and I mentally pounce on that, remembering it’s what they call the crown prosecutor here. I am overly delighted with myself for recalling that, which proves my grip on reality is slipping.
A constable collects the drunk woman, saying her husband is here. She howls that she doesn’t want to go and tries to cling to me as she’s draggedout. I try to ask if anyone’s notified Dr. Gray, but passing officers don’t even glance my way, as if I’m one of the ranting inmates, screaming nonsense.
Soon I’m envisioning another night in this hellhole. No one is going to contact Gray or McCreadie. Or they have, and Gray has washed his hands of me, like a stray dog abandoned to the shelter.
Then I hear Gray’s footsteps, as preposterous as that sounds. Recognizing footsteps? Like that dog hearing her master? It is ridiculous and revolting, and yet I am instantly on my feet, smoothing out my dress.
Then I see him, and my guts twist.
I’ve come to get a better sense of Gray since I woke in his house. At first, he’d been clipped and cool, either bristling with annoyance or grim with determination. That facade had melted as he relaxed around me, passionately discussing his work or cheerfully examining murder wounds or blissfully digging into a cream pastry. Yet even at his stiffest, it was hard for Gray to fully inhabit the role when he had ink speckles on his cheek, one sock forgotten, or his hair tumbling uncombed over his forehead.
The man who strides into the prison today is different. He is spotless in his attire, as impeccably dressed as McCreadie. Wavy dark hair tamed and styled. Clean-shaven and cold-eyed. The last is the worst. Even when he’s only half present, there’s a glitter in Gray’s dark eyes, a sign that his brain is spinning in twenty directions. Now his gaze is shuttered, and he walks purposefully alongside a young constable.
At a noise, I glance down the hall to see two more officers, both in plain clothes, standing outside their offices, watching. Another clomps down the stairs and hovers there. They’ve come to see the spectacle. Only the spectacle isn’t me. It’s the doctor who cuts up corpses and calls it science, but we all know what it really is, don’t we? Sick bastard.
I see it in their stares, as cold as his own. In the curl of their lips. I want to snarl at them that, someday, men like Gray will change their entire profession. The work of men like him will help the police catch criminals who’d otherwise remain free. It’ll let them convict criminals who’d otherwise walk free. And, just as important, it’ll let them exonerate those who should be free, the innocent fingered by circumstance and released by evidence.
“This her?” grunts the officer leading Gray to my cell.
“It is,” Gray says.
The constable opens the door, and I walk forward with as much dignity as I can. Before I can leave, the constable stops me with a raised hand.
“Are you sure you want to go with him?” he asks. “You don’t need to. You might find this cell more to your liking.”
His gaze cuts in Gray’s direction.
“I would like to leave with Dr. Gray, please,” I say.
“Well, then, come on out. I hear some girls fancy that sort of thing. Got a bit of the ghoul about you, too, I’ll wager?” His gaze goes to the blood on my dress. “Take care the doctor does not run out of corpses to practice on. You’d make a pretty little cadaver for carving.”
I expect Gray to say something. That underestimates how accustomed he is to this treatment and how well he’s learned the futility of rising to the bait. His expression remains neutral, as if the constable is bidding me a pleasant farewell.
When I join Gray, he doesn’t even look my way. Just turns on his heel to go.
“Uh-uh,” the constable says. “We still have some papers to be signed. You’ll wait in there.” He points to another room.
Gray heads through the open doorway, crosses the room, and stops at the other side of it, ignoring the chairs and standing ramrod straight.
When the constable is gone, I say, “I did ask for Detective McCreadie, sir. I hoped he could resolve this.”
“He did.” Gray’s words are brittle and sharp, his gaze on the door. “He convinced them that, as you had been attacked before, carrying a knife in the area was a reasonable precaution. The fact that the man fled made it a very difficult case, and the procurator fiscal chose not to pursue it.”
“I think it was the raven killer, sir. He was dressed in black, from a mask to a cape. He had a piece of rope like the one found with the first victim. When we fought, he dropped a peacock feather. He took it before he left.”
I expect this to get his attention. I’ll see a ripple of life beneath the ice, his interest snagged. Instead, his look is long and it’s careful, and when he pulls back, his mouth sets.
“You think I’m lying,” I say. “Because I was there when Detective McCreadie said a witness described a black cape, and I saw the rope in your laboratory.”
“At this moment, it doesn’t matter what I think. The point is that you are free. The police contacted Detective McCreadie, who convinced them not to lay charges.”
“Then he left without having them release me?”
“He tried. They insisted I come and take charge of you myself.”
My mouth opens. Then I snap it shut.
I’m sorry.That’s what I want to say.I am so sorry, Duncan.