Tired-looking figures emerged from doorways, buttoning waistcoats and stretching stiff limbs. Some of them stopped to watch a poster-boy plaster new signs to a wall, demanding the capture of the Wild Boy of London and the Fairground Fiend Clarissa Everett. The price on their heads had risen. Wild Boy curled up tighter in the carriage footwell. He didn’t know where he was headed and he didn’t especially care. For now, he was happy to let Sir Oswald carry them to safety. Everything hurt — his shoulder, his side, his jaw, his teeth. Each time the carriage rattled over a pothole it felt like someone was punching his head. Clarissa lay across the carriage seats, her coat draped over her like a blanket. The hooded man’s attack had left a sunset of bruises across her face. Wild Boy kept thinking how close she’d come to death. Just seconds away, the squeeze of a hand . . . And for what? Doctor Griffin’s journal sat beside him in the footwell. He knew there would be clues in it to help catch the killer, but he couldn’t bring himself to look.
