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scrawled in scarlet on it
was instantly recognizable:
     
    SODOMITE!
     
    With his stomach heaving towards his throat,
Nestor stumbled around to where the victim’s head should be. He
eased back the collar of the cloak. The head was there all right,
squashed down against the gravel and pressed sideways. Nestor felt
the bile bubble into his throat. The socket where the right eye
should have been was nothing but a bloody pulp.
    The killer had plucked out the Yankee
lawyer’s eye.
     

SIX
     
     
     
    Less than half an hour later, Chief Constable Wilfrid
Sturges (nicknamed “Sarge” in honour of his stint in Wellington’s
army), Dr. Angus Withers, the coroner, and constables Rossiter,
Brown and Wilkie reached the gruesome scene. But it was Horatio
Cobb who had been the first to arrive, having been fetched from his
patrol by a street urchin dispatched by Simeon Galsworthy, the
jeweller. The message had been garbled but alarming enough for Cobb
to have the lad carry on to the police quarters to rouse the Chief
and whoever else might be needed. Between keeping the throng away
from the victim – and from any clues that might lie in the vicinity
– and questioning an uncharacteristically reluctant and befuddled
Nestor Peck, Cobb had been kept busy until Chief Sturges popped up
behind him. And gasped at what he saw in the alley.
    “Jesus, Cobb. I ain’t seen nothin’ like this
since my days in Portugal.”
    “You ain’t seen the worst of it,” Cobb said,
indicating Dougherty’s maimed face.
    “And Nestor here found the body?”
    “He did. And I’ve got everythin’ outta him
we’re likely to get.”
    Sturges took out a coin and placed it in
Nestor’s still-trembling hand. “You go an’ get yerself somethin’ to
eat or drink,” he said. “Then come down to the Court House this
afternoon. Gussie, my clerk, will need to record a statement of
what you saw. An’ we may have some more questions fer you.”
    Rossiter and Dr. Withers came into the alley
just as Nestor was making his way through the crowd, wondering if
he would ever eat anything again and beginning to think of how –
when he stopped shaking – he might turn this horror to his
advantage at The Cock and Bull or The Crooked Anchor. Ewan Wilkie,
the last of the regular constables to show up, was put to work with
Rossiter and Brown restraining the crowd, while Cobb and Sturges
set out to interview any of the neighbouring shopkeepers who might
have been up early enough to spot the killer lurking about. It
seemed that the entire west end of the town had been roused. But
none had been able to get close enough to ascertain any of the
horrific (and usable) details. That the victim was Dougherty was
self-evident, as was his fate.
    Angus Withers finished his initial
examination of the body, and came up to Sturges and Cobb. “Six stab
wounds in the back with that vicious dirk – short handle, long,
thin blade. Pirate’s special. Any of those thrusts might have been
fatal, as they went through the lungs, but the deepest one seems to
have penetrated to the heart from the rear. I rolled him over just
enough to determine that each thrust entered from the back. They
are all jagged and wide, indicating that the attacker was in a
frenzy, plunging the blade in, yanking it out, then plunging it
back in again.”
    “But the poor bastard fell diagonally into
the alley,” Sturges said. “How would the killer get him in there
and then manage to knife him from behind?”
    “There’s a nasty-looking bump on his right
temple. I’d speculate that Dougherty – for there’s no doubt it is
he – was walking east along his usual route when the assassin
stepped out of the shadows here and clobbered him with something
solid, like a rock. As the big man staggered under the blow, he
could have been pushed or manhandled into the alley, where he
toppled right here, facedown. After which, with the victim
unconscious, the killer went about stabbing him – in some sort