He pushed open the door and entered the small room, flicking a switch to turn on the lights that illuminated certain parts of his collection. One wall was dedicated to masks and Dale reached out to touch the plague doctor's hooked beak. He had replaced it after his success at the masquerade ball. The city was infected with a plague and it was time to weed out the weak and the needy, those who were a burden on society. Nature knew how to cull the herd, he only helped the process with his bombs.
Next to the mask were his knives, some ceremonial and precious for their monetary value. But others … Dale walked to the display and caressed the gleaming edge of the skinning knife. This one held greater pleasure than much of his collection, but now he would have to rest it for a while. He would soon give up control of crime scenes as Mayor and no longer have the ability to disappear evidence. The knife would have to remain on the wall, at least for now.
He ran his fingers over the books of human skin that were placed on their own bookshelf, flesh against flesh as their covers touched. Each was a slightly different size, all the better to allow the tattoos to be fully displayed on the covers and spine. There was space missing for the book he would have had made from the skin that had been found at the old abattoir. It was in the evidence room now, but perhaps there would be a way to get it back once the noise had died down.
Owning a Cabinet of Obscene Objects had once been fashionable amongst aristocratic families. So many of the treasures of antiquity portrayed sex and debauchery that special rooms were created to protect the eyes of the more sensitive members of society. Dale thought of this place as his own cabinet, where only the strong could stomach what was within. Not that he ever allowed anyone inside. The bachelor life suited him just fine.
He turned and bent to his prize possession, his pulse racing as he placed his hands upon the box. It was carved with images of carnal depravity, one of those objects that the public would complain of while secretly craving a look. As part of the police task force on pornography, he had overseen the seizure of millions of photos and videos over the years. He had kept a selection of it to add to his own collection, not for his own pleasure of course, but to galvanize his desire to stamp out the perverts who made them. Only by understanding their mindset could he seek them out and destroy them.
He had also kept copies of crime scene photos, finding a beauty in the colors and poses of corpses. He opened the box, his hand hovering over his pictures. He wanted to allow himself the time to sit and gaze at them, to find his own pleasure in the descent into depravity. But he had more work to do today. He pulled out four new photos from his jacket pocket. Each one was a close-up of a corpse from the Turbine Hall, three women and a man, each body ripped apart but their faces intact. Dale liked beauty with an edge of darkness and these epitomized his particular fascination.
He sat down on the single chair in the room, an antique he had purchased from the estate of Sir Francis Galton, the esteemed eugenicist, a man who had known about culling the weak. Dale liked to think he could channel the great man here somehow. He breathed deeply and took another sip of his whiskey. Now that he had the mandate of the city to pursue those responsible for the Masquerade Massacre, it was time to send a stronger signal. He had been preparing for this day for a long time and finally he could act with public support behind him. In the next week, he would rid London of its dregs and take the Mayoralty on a surge of public support for strong-armed action.
He thought back to the Turbine Hall in the moments before the explosion. He had turned to fix the masquerade in his mind, seeing the hall through the slits in his mask, framed as a tableau of revelry. The proud before the fall. But someone had seen him. There was no way Jamie Brooke could have recognized him in the mask, but he had felt a moment of connection between them.
She had been a thorn in his side for too long now. Her interference had brought down the Lyceum that night in the Hellfire Caves and she had stumbled into the plans RAIN had for the mentally ill. Dale remembered their confrontation after that case. He had wanted her reassigned somewhere she would be kept busy and out of the way, but she had resigned and started her own investigation service. She couldn't be allowed to threaten his plans, but there were ways she could be dealt with this time and it might help rid him of the others too.
Dale pulled out his wallet and riffled through it, finding the business card with a blue boxing glove on it. He picked up the phone and dialed. He would start with Southwark, his own rotten borough. If he picked off the leaders, the rest would fall.
Chapter 22
The smashing of glass woke Magda from a deep sleep. Her heart beat fast at the unusual sound, panic rising in her chest. She untangled herself from O's sleeping form and pulled a robe around herself. She walked quickly into the studio area to find flames spreading from a broken bottle of accelerant, glass all over the floor from the broken window.
The fire caught on some of the flammable paint and flames spread quickly towards the stack of canvases in the corner.
"Olivia," Magda shouted. "Get up, quickly. We have to get out." She grabbed at some of the canvases nearest to her, dragging them out of the way of the flames, but she knew it was too late. The fire was spreading too fast.
The high-pitched squeal of the smoke alarm pierced the air, a note of danger and desperation. Magda beat at the flames with a fire blanket, sobbing as she watched her canvases catch and burn.
O emerged from the bedroom and rushed into the kitchenette to grab the fire extinguisher. But Magda knew that it was only meant for a small fire and sure enough, it was soon empty, the flames still spreading. She called the emergency services, giving the address in a calm voice and explaining the situation, even as her mind struggled to fathom the destruction around her. The soothing voice of the operator assured her that the fire brigade was on its way, but Magda knew it would be too late.
"We have to get out." O tugged at her lover's arm, covering her mouth to block some of the smoke.
"I can't leave it all," Magda whispered in desperation. "This is everything. I'll be ruined."
O put her hand on Magda's cheek, turning her face and looking into her eyes.
"You are everything, my love. This stuff can be replaced, but you can't. Haven't we learned that over the last days?"
Magda looked around at the flaming studio, her canvases, her equipment on the way to ruin. This was her life's work, her sanctuary. The flames roared as they accelerated through a pile of packaging material.
"We have to get out now." O pulled on her arm and Magda's resolve crumbled. With tears in her eyes, she stumbled out of the studio and into the courtyard outside. Groups of people stood looking on, tenants from the flats above weeping as the flames climbed higher and they were pushed back towards the road beyond.
The sound of cracking and buckling beams could be heard from within as an upper level collapsed down through the ceilings to the ground floor. The creaking protests of the building were like the groans of the dying.
Magda stood as close she could, the heat from the fire almost burning her skin. In other circumstances she would have reveled in these flames, an element of destruction that allowed rebirth. She had thrown her own past on flames like these, destroying what was spent and rotten to enable the new to arise. But now … everything she had built here would be destroyed. She swallowed, fighting to hold back the tears.