The God of the Hive - Laurie R. King [139]
“Gotcher.”
“Open the door.”
Buckner found the key, worked the lock, and stood back. Nothing moved from within. Adler had not been very comfortable the previous evening, when he was dragged from the back of the lorry that had brought him from Holland (telephone calls, again—when would people learn that a string of trunk calls to a number under surveillance could lead back to the source?) but he’d been well. Food, drink, and a night’s rest should have restored him somewhat.
“Mr Adler, I have come to take you to your family,” West called.
No motion. West sighed. “Buckner, kindly bring our guest out—alive and conscious, if you please. Wait: Give me your gun first.”
Buckner dug out the weapon and handed it to West, then hunched his shoulders and barrelled into the dim space. Damian Adler was waiting for him, but with no weapons and a bad arm, he was no match. Buckner bounced him against the wall and shoved him out of the door to sprawl at West’s feet.
West held out a set of police-issue handcuffs, which Buckner slapped on with a relish that could only come from a man who was more accustomed to being the recipient of the treatment.
By the time they got Adler cuffed and on his feet, the younger man was sweating—with pain, not fear. He glared furiously at his masked captor. “Who the hell are you, and what have you done with Dr Henning?”
“I have done nothing with your companion, Mr Adler. And you do not need to know who I am. Up the stairs, if you please.”
The prisoner backed away and Buckner grabbed his arms, which brought a grunt of pain. “Mr Adler, please cooperate. I am giving you back to your family.” Most of it. Albeit temporarily. “Now, up the stairs.”
They got him up the stairs, into the yard, and seated in the front of the motor. West had Buckner loop a rope around Adler to keep him from making some kind of heroic attempt at the controls, then drop a sack over the man’s head—the selfsame one Adler’s late uncle had worn, twelve days before.
Symmetry.
West tugged at his mask, wishing it weren’t quite so suffocating, and climbed into the back behind the driver. He stretched his hand forward with Buckner’s gun. “I’d suggest you put this in the door pocket instead of about your person. You don’t want it to go off by accident.”
“Righto,” Buckner said, and pushed the starter.
It was ten minutes past two in the morning. He had given Buckner the first stages of directions earlier: Wind through the streets of Southwark and cross the river on the Vauxhall Bridge before circling back east. At twenty minutes after the hour, he began to give the next set of directions that would take them onto Westminster Bridge.
The fourteen-foot minute hand of the great clock stood just before the half hour when the motorcar went under the tower.
“Stop here for a moment,” West said. He opened the door and stepped onto the roadway to study the bridge.
At this hour of the night, little stirred on London’s pavements. Mist hung over the Thames, and the smell of decay neared its turn. The Houses of Parliament stood beside him, toes in the water; at his back lay all the machinery of empire. Somewhere, a horse-cart clopped, sounding tired.
The roadway was deserted, the pools of light along its noble length pushing back the darkness. West started to get back into the motor, then stopped. What was that at the far end, half-hidden by the almost imperceptible curve in the roadway? Rubbish? Or—a child, at this time of night? No, it had to be a man, but even from a distance he could see the figure was too small to be the Holmes brother, or even the American wife.
“Is that someone sitting on the footway?” Buckner asked.
“It is.”
“What’s he doing?”
The figure was hunched over, looking at something on the ground. No, not just looking: He was doing something, his hunched shoulders