Entering a rough-cobbled street he risked quickening his pace in haste to get to Swan Court, breathing hard against the stale sweat of his coat. Then his foot tripped on something yielding and his face met with a great buzzing swathe of flies. He swatted them back and his eyes dropped down to what he had just stumbled over. Charlie’s stomach lurched. It was a corpse. Picked out in shadows against the dark ground he could make out the face smashed against the cobble. The man had flung himself from the window above and lay with skull splintered and arm twisted under him. Charlie’s head dropped back to the corpse at his feet. He was holding the key so tightly his nails cut bloody crescents into his palms. Enormous purple swellings bulged at the throat. One of the buboils had burst on impact and a thick mucus rolled forth, mixing with the blood from the cracked skull. The noisome fluid was dappled all over with a black army of flies. A sudden light went on in a diamond-leaded window in the distance.
