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It was cold on the bridge, with the wind coming off the water. The railings were cold too, enough that Ben's fingers were growing numb where he gripped the metal.
The water would probably be even colder. He wondered if he truly had the energy to find out.
"Oi! You there!"
Ben twitched his head up at the shout – but the copper's voice wasn't directed at him. It came from the streets behind him, and as he listened, it was followed by a louder bellow, the syllables familiar in his exhausted ears.
"Stop! Thief!"
That got Ben's attention as nothing else could have. Adrenaline slammed into him. Jonah. If he was here – if they caught him again –
More shouting. Lanterns bobbing in the street. Then there was a burst of footsteps, and a man came running full pelt across the bridge.
Ben had just barely enough time to register, not Jonah, before the man passed him and was off into the darkness. "After him!" came another cry from behind, and Ben's body jerked into life like a galvanised frog, his legs giving chase on pure stupid instinct, a policeman's reflex that his months of disgrace had failed to eradicate. There was no room in his overwrought brain for thought. He simply ran, feeling his lungs burn as he skidded around corners, letting the harsh physical sensation scorch through the numbness.
The man he was chasing was fast. They outstripped the two policemen easily, and his quarry clearly had a knack for back alleys, making breakneck turns through the maze of dirty warehouses. It was pure bad luck for him that he tripped on a piece of scrap metal as they rattled round another corner. He stumbled – just long enough to miss a step and swear – and then Ben was on him bodily, sending them both crashing into a wall.
"Stop," Ben wheezed, and then paused. He wasn't a police officer any longer. Could he arrest this man, or even detain him? "You're caught. Give up."
The thief gave a vicious twist in Ben's grasp. Ben dodged, wrestled the man's arms behind his back, and held on grimly.
"Give up!"
"Go fuck yourself," the man said. He sounded much less out of breath than Ben did, which was enraging. "Let go, or I will make you regret deciding to play the upstanding citizen. Actually, I'll make you regret ever setting foot in this town in the first place."
Ben already regretted ever setting foot in Reading. At least maybe if he helped to catch a thief he'd have done some good here. He took deep breaths of the river-sour air, not letting himself be baited, focusing all his attention on the arms he had pinioned.
"Your funeral," the man said, savagely. Before he could continue, more footsteps echoed wetly in the darkness. Ben tightened his grip as the two policemen pounded into view. They stopped short in the mouth of the alley, staring at Ben and the thief with unfriendly eyes.
"I've got him," Ben said.
"That's him," the first copper said. But he was looking at Ben, not at the thief. "That's Spenser. I told you."
"But the other one's not right. That's not Spenser's friend."
"I dare say they're all accomplices. Take them in together."
"But – wait," Ben said, or tried to. He felt dizzy, sick, and the words didn't seem to cooperate.
The thief let out a long, weary sigh. Then he shrugged dramatically, yanking his arms out of Ben's slackened grip as he did so and taking a few long steps out of lunging distance.
"All right," he said. His voice was almost pleasant, a baritone with a razor edge to it that set the hairs on Ben's neck prickling. "I can tell when the game's up. I'll come quietly."
He held out his arms contritely in front of him. The gesture looked like an insult. If it was, the coppers didn't appear to feel it. They moved forwards, pulling handcuffs from belts, and Ben felt a sinking sort of inevitable dread, as though he was watching men trample merrily towards an active landmine.
"Here, wait a moment," the thief said, as the policemen came within handcuffing distance. "Before you do that, I suppose you'll be wanting the necklace back?"
He reached a hand into the deep pocket of his coat as he spoke. The coppers – idiots, Ben managed to think past the pounding of his heart in his ears – made no move to stop him, craning forwards as though they truly expected to be handed a fistful of jewels.
There was a loud crack. The first copper hit the ground, something black in the darkness trickling from his temple, and then the thief's elbow went into the second man's gut and the crowbar came down on his skull with a sickening thud, and then it was just the two of them, Ben and the thief, standing in a dark alley over the unconscious – please, God, just unconscious – bodies of two policemen.
There was a second's silence. The thief shook out his hand, stretched his shoulders, and stepped very deliberately around the bodies towards the mouth of the alley. Ben blocked his way.
The thief moved to go around him. Ben stepped sideways and blocked him again.
His eyebrows were striking, Ben noticed, even in the feeble moonlight. They winged upwards at a dangerous angle, satanic on his shadowed face. Beneath them, the eyes that stared at Ben were dark and unreadable.
"Right," he said at last. "Spenser, wasn't it? What's your game? You're obviously not a policeman." That was a little sting, even now, like the burn of a spark from a bonfire landing on Ben's skin. "And you're clearly not rich, so I doubt I'd have stolen from you. In fact, I fail to see how I can have wronged you in any way. Care to explain why you're being such a fucking nuisance?"
"You're a criminal." The words came out leaden.
The man grinned. It was a singularly unpleasant expression to behold.
"Aren't you? These two" – he gave the body of the policeman at his left a little kick, unconcerned – "were on the lookout for you. Knew you by name, which is more than they know about me. I've dealt with them for you, which I shall consider my good deed for the year. You can thank me by pissing off, and letting me do the same."
Ben got in his way again, feebly. "I can't."
He wasn't even sure why he was fighting on this. The man was dangerous, and it wasn't Ben's job to catch criminals any longer. But if he let him go, let him slip away into the darkness, then the interlude would be over, which meant that Ben would have to figure out what came next – and that prospect was even more terrifying than the man in front of him.
"So much for honour among thieves," the man said in disgust. "Or… what precisely did our friends here want you for?"
That was an impossible question. Ben couldn't, wouldn't answer it. But he thought about it, for a split second, because he couldn't help himself, and quite suddenly found that he couldn't stand up any longer.
The man took a quick step towards him as he staggered. Ben flinched, but the crowbar had vanished back into some pocket or other, and the hands that grabbed him under the elbows were steady and reassuring.
"Christ, what a mess. That's it. All right, come on."
They walked. Ben couldn't have said where, or how, or for how long. It was like moving in a fog, half-marched and half-hauled by the unflinching grip of the man at his side. There was a door, a back corridor, some stairs. The grip on his arm slackened, and he breathed again, and blinked. They were in a small room that looked like nothing so much as the anonymous bedrooms of the inns where Ben had used to meet men, before Jonah.
He looked over at the thief, startled. The man raised an eyebrow.
"Public houses are closed, and you look like you need a drink. Or several months' rest cure at the seaside, preferably with a nerve specialist in attendance, but a drink is the best I can manage. Here."
Ben sat on the bed. He wouldn't have done if he'd had any other options, but there wasn't a chair in the room, and he didn't think his legs would hold him. The thief handed him a glass of wine, along with a quiet litany of reassurances: poor chap; get that down you; call me Jeremy. He didn't sit, but lounged against the wall, his sympathetic aspect utterly at odds with the cold man who had left two police officers bleeding in an alley. Ben couldn't care. He sipped the wine, mechanically.
"You're having a hell of a time, I can see that much," the thief – Jeremy – said. "Tell me all about it."
That was, very obviously, a terrible idea. Ben opened his mouth to tell the man to leave him alone – and out it all came, in a reckless breathless tide, inadvertent and unstoppable, like a man saved from drowning who has no choice but to choke up lungful after lungful of water. He told him everything: magic, murder, betrayal. His and Jonah's relationship, too, in every detail, right down to that last appalling encounter, so stained with shame that he could barely think about it. He didn't look at Jeremy as he spoke, barely needing the man's keen attentiveness to spur him on: once he'd started, there was no stemming the flow of words. He came right up to his failure to find work in Reading, the police, the bridge. Then, finally, he stopped.
There was a long moment of silence.
"Well," said Jeremy at last. He pushed himself away from the wall, and Ben looked up from where he'd been staring unseeing at the tawdry floorboards, startled. Every trace of sympathy and reassurance had vanished from the man's voice.
"What do you mean, well? Is that all you have to say?"
The man lifted one shoulder, a fractional twitch of a shrug. "More or less. You're in a shitty situation, some, but not all, of which is your own fault. To be honest, I'd assumed the police were simply after you for gross indecency. Best of luck with it all."
"But –" Ben said before he could help himself, incensed. He hadn't wanted to spill his soul to the man. Now that he had done so, it seemed intolerable that he should simply brush it off and leave.
"If you wanted confession, you should have found a priest," Jeremy told him. "A role for which I am singularly unqualified."
"What did you bring me here for, then?" Ben snapped, and felt himself flush at the reminder of the room's usual purpose. Jeremy looked almost amused.
"Information," he said. "I needed to know who you were, and whether you would be any threat to me in the future. Now I know you won't be, and we can both go on our merry ways."
"I could still turn you in to the police."
"Try it," Jeremy said. "Evening, Johnny. I stood by while this man knocked out two of your colleagues, and then went with him to a men's assignation house. You'd go back to prison yourself, of course. And you'd bring down your man. Quite literally."
"I know that," Ben said thickly. "I still ought to. It's the right thing to do. It's the law."
"All due respect to your former profession, which is none, the police are as much a pack of bastards as everyone else in this bloody country," Jeremy said flatly. "And as for this justiciary… if your man's done wrong, handing him over to them won't mend matters. It's a game: we fuck them over, until we get caught, and then they fuck us over in vengeance. Right and wrong don't come into it. Just angry men taking it out on angry men."
"Jonah's not an angry man."
"No? Then it'll hurt him all the more when he falls into their jaws."
"He deserves it," Ben said, with no idea whether he believed the words or not. "He's a thief."
"Ever ask him why?"
"What?"
"People steal for all kinds of reasons. You might find out what his are."
Ben didn't know where to begin with that. "What are your reasons?"
Jeremy's expression could have served for a stage prop, a mask of pure nightmare. "None of your business. Anyway, your Mr Pastern isn't a villain. A minor rascal at best. Believe me, there's much worse out there." He grinned. "I should know."
"I do know that," Ben said, irked. He'd seen worse men than Jonah in prison, and sent worse men to prison himself in his time.
"If I could fly, I'd have done things on a much more impressive scale," Jeremy continued. "But he's wasting a perfectly good talent, apparently for your sake." He looked Ben up and down. "I can't say I see his reasoning."
"Bugger off," said Ben, surprising himself with the rush of annoyance he felt.
"Love to. I suggest you do the same, or find somewhere to lie low. There'll be more cops about in the morning."
"I don't have anywhere to go." He didn't expect Jeremy to care, but he said it anyway, because he might as well.
"I don't take in strays. Especially not police dogs." Jeremy paused for a second. "The room's paid until morning. Stay if you like."
Don't thank him. Don't. "Right," Ben said awkwardly.
Jeremy gave him another considering look. "You're really a very ordinary man, aren't you?" It wasn't quite derisive. Dismissive, perhaps.
Ben almost laughed. "I'd like to meet the man you'd call extraordinary. Actually, no, I wouldn't. Christ."
"I shouldn't worry," Jeremy said. "I doubt he exists." He strolled over to the door. "Well, this has been charming. Thank you for a delightful evening. Try to forget you ever met me."
That seemed, to Ben's mind, exceedingly unlikely, which was a shame because he'd have liked nothing more than to forget the man's smile. It was the sort that gave one nightmares.
"My advice, Mr Spenser –"
"I don't want your advice!"
"Hard luck," said the man, equably. "My advice is, cops and robbers isn't your game. It never was. Stick to rugby, or something you can be good at."
Ben gaped, almost too staggered to be angry. He'd been a good policeman – or, at least, he'd always done his best, and believed in what he did. He'd grown used to the ache of his fall from grace. Now this nightmare-eyed crook had the temerity to tell him it hadn't even been a fall, and the words struck a different sort of pain, a jabbing knife slipping into the old bruise.
"You don't know anything about it," he said furiously. "You don't understand."
"You tried to play by the rules, and found out too late the game is unfair, and now you're angry," Jeremy said. "Believe me, I understand perfectly. But you're angry with the wrong people. You'd have betrayed your job eventually, with or without Pastern's help. Or if you hadn't, you would have betrayed your lover instead, or yourself. Either way, you lose. If you ask me, Pastern did you a favour."
Ben didn't want to hear this; couldn't bear to ask for it to stop. The knife was twisting, chipping at all of his aggregated self-deception, all the hypocrisy he'd never allowed himself to face.
"I went to prison," he said, reminding himself as much as Jeremy. "My life was ruined."
"And now you know what you are. Which is incompatible with what you used to be, and it's meaningless to whine. Learn to live with it, or go back to the bridge." Jeremy rolled his eyes. "For heaven's sake, you're a queer and an accomplice to petty theft, not a murderer. If you want to live a life of decent domesticity with your man – which sounds intolerably tedious to me, but each to their own – you have every right."
It hurt. It felt alien, utterly incomprehensible, the opposite of everything that Ben had ever believed to be true.
"How can you say that?" he managed. "After everything I've…"
Jeremy shrugged again. "Learn not to be sorry."
That was appalling, and more so because it was tempting. Ben shook his head. "I can't. And even if I could, we've parted ways. I left him on that train. I doubt I'll ever see him again. Doubt he'd want to see me."
"I wouldn't be so sure." Jeremy glanced behind Ben, slanting an eyebrow in the direction of the window.
It was a trick. It had to be. Ben was no better than the policemen earlier, leaning in to catch the glimmer of diamonds in a liar's pocket. He broke anyway, stumbling to the window without thought, his stomach somersaulting as though he were falling out, rather than merely squinting through warped panes.
There was a man moving down the street, looking up and around, searching. The moon caught the streak of white in his dark hair, the suppressed rise to his gait, as though the earth could barely hold him down.
When Ben looked around again, the room was empty. The thief had gone, as completely as though he'd never been.