The boy screamed, letting Rutledge go, and then kicked out viciously with all his strength, grazing Rutledge’s kneecap as he leapt back.
There was more thunder, and Rutledge could hear the German guns.
His attention on the boy, looking for an opening to bring him down once and for all, Rutledge felt arms flung around his shoulders, hauling him back. He thought it was one of his own people and relaxed his guard.
Billy hit him then with locked fists, across the face.
Behind Rutledge, someone said, “Will. For God’s sake—”
“No, I’ll kill him. And you as well.” His face was green in the lightning.
“Listen to me, Will. I’ll help you, I swear to God I will.”
“I don’t want your help.”
Billy lunged with the knife, straight at Rutledge’s exposed chest, but the man behind him shoved Rutledge to one side with such force that both went down, and the knife plunged into the man’s left side.
Rebounding, Rutledge was already on his feet, and before Billy could react to what he’d done, he had the boy in a grip that brought him to his knees. Billy yelped in pain. The man lying on the pavement looked up and cried, “Don’t hurt him.”
Rutledge said through clenched teeth, “I’d like to throttle him.”
But he was referring to Mickelson, for the sound of boots pounding belatedly in his direction was none too soon.
The first constable to reach the three men held a torch in the face of the fallen man, and Rutledge nearly lost his grip on Billy as he recognized Charlie Hood.
“Are you all right, sir? That was a very foolhardy thing to do,” the constable chided him, bending over Hood. “And very brave, I must say.” He was shoving something against the heavily bleeding wound as two more men came up and took Billy roughly from Rutledge’s hold.
Rutledge knelt by Hood. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, but Mickelson had just reached them, out of breath, saying, “Who’s this other man?” Thunder cut across the rest of his words.
“Good Samaritan,” the constable retorted as he worked. “We’ll need help straightaway, sir. This looks bad.”
Billy said nothing, standing there pale in the torch beams, looking down at Hood. Then he burst out with, “What did you want to go and do that for? Now look at what’s happened.”
Hood cleared his throat, and they could all see flecks of blood like black freckles on his lips. “I didn’t expect to see you again quite so soon,” he said to Rutledge.
“What were you doing here?” Rutledge asked again.
“My son, man. This is my son,” Hood replied haltingly.
They looked nothing alike. As Rutledge glanced from Hood’s face to Billy’s, he could find no resemblance at all. And then in a quirk of the light as Billy turned to him, fright replacing his belligerence, he caught a similarity in expression around the eyes.
He’d seen Billy only once before, and then only fleetingly. Yet he had managed to register that expression as Billy had tried to plead his innocence to another constable, and it had stayed with him. And Charlie Hood had triggered that memory.
Hood was leaning back in the constable’s arms now, his face pale, his mouth a tight line of pain.
“It’s my fault,” he whispered, smiling with an effort. “I should have been in time. Long before this.”
They were trying to lead Billy away, but he was fighting to stay with the man on the ground. A flash of lightning illuminated all their faces briefly in a shock of white light, and then they were blinded in the aftermath of blackness. Thunder rolled, and the breeze had become a wind tearing at their clothing and pulling at their hair.
Someone had come with a motorcar, and there was an effort to get Hood in the back before the rain fell. Already the first heavy drops accompanied the thunder just overhead, and Big Ben striking the quarter hour sounded muffled.
Mickelson said out of the darkness, “We couldn’t see. There was a third person, and so we weren’t sure.”
Rutledge ignored him. He went to the motorcar as the rain fell and leaned in to speak to Hood. The man was breathing with some difficulty, and pain had set in. His clenched fist beat against the seat in rhythm with the throbbing.
“Why were you hunting him?” Rutledge asked urgently, bending over Hood.
“His mother and I separated years ago. I didn’t know he was in trouble. I’d been working in the north. When I heard, I started looking. I nearly caught up with him the day Bynum was killed. Too late to save him. He needed a father’s hand. I wasn’t
“Why did he want to kill me?”
“I think—you got in his way. He never liked being thwarted. He tried to kill me once, when he was twelve. I made him return a stolen bicycle.”
“Sir?” a constable said, and Rutledge pulled away. The motorcar gathered speed as it turned back the way it had come.
Billy too was gone, in custody.
A constable had stayed with Rutledge, rain cascading off his helmet and onto his cape. “Sir?” he said again.