Chapter Five
Half a mile away, Damien Carter sat with his hands clasped around a warming pint of stout, the poster beside him now slightly damp.
He took a sip, green eyes affixed upon the drawing in front of him, the intensity of the woman’s gaze marred only slightly by the droplet of water beginning to turn the paper from an off-white into a pooling grey.
He couldn’t go and see her. That would be madness. It would be more than madness – it would be breaking every rule he had, and for what? Just to answer some question that had been rattling around his brain for the last decade?
Not ‘some’ question, said the quiet voice in his mind, the one that often sounded like his father, but that today sounded more like him. ‘The’ question.
He took another sip of stout, wiping the foam from his top lip.
The trick to his lifestyle was never making an impression.
Never causing ripples. And walking up to someone’s door, and saying ‘Yes please, root around in my mind for whatever is rotten, whatever has made me bad,’ was not just a ripple, it was the equivalent of throwing a great big bloody rock into the ocean.
It was foolish. It was a foolish idea, which was why he knew he should crumple the poster into the palm of his hand, and squeeze and squeeze until he couldn’t see her face any longer, until he couldn’t see those eyes staring up at him, asking the same question, over and over again:
But wouldn’t you like to know, Damien? Once and for all?
His father’s voice came to him then, as it often did in these moments, his scratched tone: You already know, it said. Deep down, you know. Bad things beget bad things, Damien Carter. And you are a bad thing.
He drained the rest of his glass, standing.
There was a group of men in the corner playing cards – though from the looks of their weathered slacks and patched jackets, they didn’t have a shilling between them.
The other man though – sitting alone at the bar – had a fine, silver pocketwatch that he kept pulling out, and checking.
Damien rapped his knuckles against the sticky wooden bar for the innkeeper.
‘Another,’ he said gruffly. When he met the bartender’s unamused expression, he reluctantly added: ‘Please.’
‘You were in here last night,’ said the bartender, taking a new glass from the shelf above him. ‘I heard you cheated Old Man Harris out of almost a pound.’
Damien raised an eyebrow. ‘We played a fair game,’ he said firmly. ‘And that’s that.’
‘You a tourist?’ asked the bartender, tilting a new glass beneath the tap, filling it with the dark, clouding liquid. ‘Don’t sound like you’re from around here.’
Damien shook his head. ‘Just passing through,’ he said casually. ‘I’m bound for New York.’
‘New York?’ said the man, setting the glass to one side so that the clouds of brown foam could settle and separate. ‘I’d get there before one of the Harris sons finds you, then. They don’t like no one cheating their father.’
‘We played a fair game,’ Damien repeated firmly.
‘S’not me you’ll need to convince,’ the bartender said. ‘Why New York then? You got family there?’
‘No,’ said Damien, placing two pennies upon the bar, and sliding them over. Which was exactly the point. It would be a fresh start. A new beginning.
The bartender looked up, reaching to tweak at the edge of his blond moustache. ‘S’meant to be nice, New York. Bit dangerous, though, if the papers are to be believed.’
‘The same as everywhere, then,’ said Damien, his gaze flicking back to the woman’s face, the water droplets sinking through the ink.
Dangerous.
Yes, that was what agreeing to this woman’s help would be.
Dangerous.