CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

They sat across from each other at a table, Mango's hand stroking the stubble on his jaw and Bucks draining a glass of gin. As soon as he put it down Bucks's hands started shaking again.

"This'd be the best place to hide. It'll only be for a couple of days." Bucks's teeth were chattering, making his words fresh and wintry. "You said once I could —"

"Damn what I said once. That was before. You can't stay here, I say now. You want every copper in the docks on my small arse?"

The rising sun streamed in through thick dust motes. Bucks looked down at his hands. "Jesus! There's more!" He spit on his fingers and frantically rubbed them against a rag from his pocket, then flung the rag on the floor. "You talk as if you had nothing to do with it."

"I wasn't even there, Bucks."

Bucks pulled in a deep ragged breath. "I don't believe this. It was you and me together. If you hadn't been so damn late —"

The door to the pub opened and Bucks jerked around. His shoulders sank when he saw it was just the owner with a broom in her hand.

"You two still down here?" She hardly looked at them.

"What if we are?" said Mango. "I ain't heard of you closing down. I pay my rent.

"Just askin." She began sweeping and approached their feet, stooped for the rag. "Filthy thing." She picked it up like a dead mouse, between thumb and forefinger, and tossed it into the stove.

She started washing glasses behind the bar, holding them up to the window, checking for streaks.

Mango resumed his whisper. "If I hadn't got there when I did, you would have just left him there. No use at all."

"And why'd we have to move him? To that pump? We could have been off by now if that hadn't took so long. The plan would still have worked. We could have made the boat."

"You still don't understand, do you? That he's trying to get Snow out of the way? There's no time to explain again. Like I said, you can't stay here."

"I'll go home then."

"They're watching your place already."

Bucks's lower lip quivered. "I can't put up with this, Mango. I keep seeing him. And the way his head sounded. Like breaking open a melon. How could I know there'd be so much blood? None of the others ever bled with the shovel like that. And I never had to do the job myself, not once. I can see him now, brains everywhere."

"Well close your eyes then. And shut up. I need to think." Bucks's eyes dropped again to his hands and he began examining his fingernails carefully. He took out a pocket knife and started cleaning them, then stopped. "Do you think Canty really would have talked to Snow? Maybe we didn't have to do it."

"If you hadn't bungled the job with Snow you could have saved yourself trouble."

"I bungled it? Who's the one who was supposed to be scaring him off? Who's the one said he would cut his throat last night, put him out of the way? I'm surprised the man's still around. I think you must have slipped, yourself. Besides, if they're this cut up about a nobody like Canty, think what Snow —"

Mango looked like he wasn't listening. "I never saw a face like hers," he said, his voice low. "That's what stopped me. I never let myself think what my life would have been if I'd been big, never. But sometimes..." He shook his head. "I don't think I can kill him, not now. Not with her in the picture."

Bucks paid no attention, but kept on with his nagging. "We'd be well out of it now, you said. Off in France, living it up."

Mango, serious again, held out an impatient hand for silence. "Did you bring the charts Canty had?"

Bucks pulled a roll of paper as long as an umbrella from behind his chair.

‘‘Let me see them."

Bucks obediently unrolled them. Sewer plans. Huge, they covered the top of the table and hung down over the sides. The stack of sheets was an inch deep. Mango studied the top one. Blue, black, and red lines crosshatched each other over and over. Countless pencil markings scrawled on top of everything. They were as vague as cave paintings and their only clue was an occasional street name or the round dark marking of a sewer outlet.

"And you say these were the only ones? No copy?"

"Right." Bucks rolled them up again.

The dwarf lit a match and held it out to Bucks, who hesitated a moment and then put the edge of the roll to the flame. There must have been some combustible chemical in the paper, for it burned like a torch. In two seconds he had to drop it on the floor.

"Hey! See here, you can't do that!" shouted the owner, but by the time she got over the flame was out. She kicked at the ashes with disgust and went to get her broom again.

"The sewer tunnels," whispered Mango. "That's where we'll take you. Right under their bloody noses." The dwarf hopped off his chair and headed for the door.

Bucks shook his head, his eyes shut. "I swore I'd never go back down there. My old grandad's ghost might be lurking somewhere, waitin' for me. That's where he died." His right hand started to shake again, and he held it steady with the left. "And what about you?"

"One of us has to stay above, to keep in touch. You're the one they're looking for, not me. It was you who wrote the note to the MP, wasn't it?"

"But you delivered it."

"That's not the way I remember it at all. We better get going."