Fyre & Stone: The Spectre Games

By Steve Downes

Book one in the Fyre & Stone series.

Two men from the same city, but very different worlds.

Sebastian Fyre is a wealthy young Lord with an unshakable belief that he can communicate with the dead. John Stone is a tough policeman who grew up in the Victorian slum tenements of the city he now patrols.

A series of brutal murders across the city throw these two men into a reluctant and volatile partnership.

Fyre and Stone attempt to hunt down a conspiracy of killers, while trying to avoid becoming prey themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BLKDOG Publishing
• Release date: Aug 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201501655

Book preview

Chapter 1

S

tone pounded along the cobbled streets, his breath coming in short, hard and cold mouthfuls. Strange things ran through his mind when his body was at is limits; he considered that if he hadn’t spent so much on feeding himself this week, he could have bought new shoes. What he was wearing now were well past their useful lifetime. He could feel each of the cobbles, painfully, as they seemed to rise up into his thin soles.

Ahead, a small darkly dressed figure continued to pull away from him with every stride. The figure took a sharp left. The streets, close behind Dublin’s North Wall docks, where the Royal Canal met the River Liffey, were laid out in a grid. He knew them well. His lungs gave an extra burn as he tried to fill them and his feet ached as he swivelled and turned left into a parallel laneway, which led up to the new railway tracks. He passed no one as he ran past the terraced houses. It was too cold even for the most dedicated of criminals to be out this late at night. The low small-windowed houses that were either side of him, gave no illumination onto the narrow street. It was expensive to run the lamps, so the people who lived around here went to bed for the long dark nights of winter. Luckily, he had grown up on streets like these, and his eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness; a near full moon at his back helped.

He got a second wind just as he could see the end of the street. It opened out onto the much wider Sheriff Street, just behind the main railway station in the north of the city. Here his quarry would have to emerge too. He gave one extra push with his legs, wanting to beat or at least equal who he was trying to catch. He hoped the man would slow down, now that his pursuer was not directly behind him. He sprinted onto Sheriff Street, hitting the big new cobbles hard with his sore feet as he did.

There was a bit more life here. A few of the houses had their lamps still lit and a few fires still burned, grey smoke rising into the black still night. On either end of the street two gas lamps gave out thin yellow spheres of light. Three men were huddled in an archway, one that supported the station above. He was immediately aware of them.

Stone could feel his body throbbing as he watched his own heavy breaths blow out like the smoke from the chimneys above. He turned his head sharply left then right; there was no movement on either end of the street.

‘Lost are ye?’ came the sound of a heavy Northside accent.

Stone didn’t answer straight away, his keen eyes were still scanning the street for any sign of movement.

‘I said are ye lost, sir; need some directions?’ a second heavy accent joined in.

Stone didn’t need to have his eyes on them, he could sense their movement; they had come out from under the arch. He knew their type too, opportunistic scum.

‘I know exactly where I am,’ Stone replied, his breath still struggling a bit, his own rough Dublin accent tempered only with the pronunciation of an educated man. Not that the three men noticed this, but they did pause their progress toward him, perhaps taken aback by his confident tone.

‘This is the Northside, friend, you’d wanna be careful where yer walkin’ ’round here,’ the first voice said as a clear threat.

Stone swivelled on his cheap heels and flashed back the body of his overcoat. The men’s eyes dropped instantly to the two very large hunting knives strapped around Stone’s midriff.

‘Oh, I’m very careful,’ Stone replied. He was going to add something, a threat of his own, perhaps out of frustration, but probably out of habit. He didn’t get the chance, something moved across the yellow sphere of light to his right.

Stone was running before the three men had a chance to think about what they were going to do; they just stood in the cold and watched him pelt down the cobbles toward the front of the station.

It was a hundred-yard dash to the intersection of the two roads. As he got halfway, he could see a Hackney carriage door close and the big wooden wheels begin to move off. He tried to increase his pace, but his lungs and his whole body protested. By the time he reached the gas lamp, the carriage was well under way; he could hear the crack of a whip and the neigh of a horse. He could only come to a jogging halt and watch as the carriage disappeared into the night toward the Quays and the River Liffey beyond.

Stone bent over, his hands on his knees, huge gasps of cold, smoky air driving into his chest. Of course, he couldn’t be sure that the man getting into the carriage was the same man he had been chasing, but he knew that no one with the money for such transport travelled around this part of the city at this time of night; not without some serious reason.

There were plenty of desperate women who prostituted themselves to the better classes, in order to survive. Whoever was in the carriage could be just some ‘gentleman’ having paid a pittance to have a young girl for a few minutes of vile pleasure. Stone was all too aware of such men, and of such girls, but right now he had other matters on his mind.

He walked down to the Quays, turned left away from the gas lights of the city and toward the vast sprawling docklands by the North Wall. He followed the river, past the blacked-out warehouses and down to where a dozen or so tall ships were moored along the new embankment wall. Where the Royal Canal met the river there was a huge deep basin that served as a false harbour for canal barges. Here he could see several men in long coats huddled around one of the iron cranes that hung over the edge of the basin.

‘Who’s that?’ called out one of the men. Stone knew the voice; a working-class Dubliner who masked his poor upbringing in the Protestant tenements, but was unable to lose his childhood twang. It was an accent of the same Dublin, but two very different communities. The voice belonged to Callen, Inspector, and head of the Night Watch.

‘It’s me, Stone,’ he replied and stepped out of the darkness to join the men under a shaking yellow light that was coming from a lamp hung high from one of the warehouse’s eaves.

‘Catch your phantom, did you, Stone?’ asked one of the other policemen gathered around.

It was a mocking question. Stone didn’t bother with a reply.

He looked behind to where the policemen were standing, where there was a blanket with the rough shape of a person under it.

‘You moved her,’ Stone said sternly.

‘We’re waiting for the wagon to come and pick her up,’ stated Inspector Callen, ‘you don’t think I stand out on a night like this for fun, do you?’

‘I’m surprised you bothered coming out at all, Callen,’ Stone had a strange relationship with Callen. He was one of the better officers in the Dublin Constabulary, he was a career policeman and most of the time he did give a damn about what happened in the city. Even so, Callen was part of the establishment, a Protestant officer in a mostly Protestant force, whose unofficial role was to keep the poorer (Catholic) half of the city away from the well-to-do. Stone had deep-set issues with this arrangement, and he found it hard to contain his contempt.

‘That’s Inspector Callen to you, Stone. Remember, I’m your gaffer and you’re only on this force because some wishy-washy Politician insisted,’ Callen spat out.

What Callen said was entirely true, but Stone, who had other immediate things on his mind, chose to ignore it (he was getting good at ignoring things. He hadn’t punched anyone on the Force in the face for a month).

‘You shouldn’t have moved her. We need to examine the body,’ Stone stated, he leaned down on his hunkers beside the filled blanket.

‘This is not my first dance, Stone, you smartass!’ Callen really didn’t want to be out in this part of the city at night, but he had things on his mind too, ‘A woman, mid-twenties, lower class, probably walking the street ...’

‘A whore!’ said one of the other men. Stone made a mental note that if he was going to punch anyone tonight it would be that idiot.

Callen continued, ‘... throat slit, a deep, long cut. Her head was probably held down tightly. She would have died instantly. The blood was fresh, so she’s only been dead half an hour. He was probably dragging her to the basin to dump her.’

Stone whipped back the blanket. There was stunned silence behind him. He could sense everyone but Callen taking a nervous step back. She was younger than Callen had guessed; tough life, bad food and desperation could age a face. Stone guessed she was probably nineteen or so. She had a flat face, a thick wide nose with arched nostrils. Her lips were thin, unadorned and chapped from being out in the cold air.

Stone reached his right hand out and touched her lips; there was residual warmth.

‘What are you doing, Stone?’ whispered Callen. The other policemen had moved down to the Quay road. They were talking loudly amongst themselves and the clip-clop of an approaching horse could be heard echoing around the dock.

‘Bad teeth,’ said Stone in reply.

‘Does that really matter?’

‘Not now.’

‘Look, Stone, I know these are your people, but you can’t be obsessing over every dead whore in Dublin. We have other duties. What happened here is straightforward.’

Stone took a few moments to look around where the girl lay. Callen’s men had brought the blanket in a trap box, but otherwise they had only moved her a few feet from where a night watchman had found her.

There was a pool of blood on the flagstones to his left, about twenty feet from the lip of the canal basin.

‘Tell me, Inspector,’ Stone said the word ‘inspector’ with dripping sarcasm, ‘What exactly happened here?’

‘This ... woman, was roughed up by a client, probably a cutpurse with a few extra pennies. He didn’t like the service or didn’t fancy paying, so he slit her throat as a cheaper option. He dragged her body here with the intention of dumping her in the water. The nightman disturbed him, he ran, we turned up, you thought you saw something move in the shadows and we’ve been standing here freezing our arses off waiting for you to come back. Straight forward ! Officer Stone.’

Stone looked into the girl’s wide-open eyes one last time before he closed the blanket back over her. Under the yellow of the gas lamp the pale blue of her dilated pupils seemed to glisten and for a moment he thought her eyes were moving, looking at him. He let the blanket slip out of his hands.

‘May I offer my version of events?’ asked Stone as he stood up.

Callen sighed and rubbed his cold face with his gloved hand, ‘I want to go home, Stone, be quick.’

‘Quick! If you like. The girl was killed here, on this spot, just twenty feet from the edge of the water. There’s no blood trail and the pool of blood shows her throat was cut while she was still alive, so she did die instantly, as you say. If he did manage to convince this ... lady, to come here, to a brightly lit, well patrolled area of the docks, with the intention of killing her, why not do it at the edge? Why not push her in? There’s no sign of a struggle, no sign that she was raped and I can tell you that no woman would walk these streets at this time of night, in this area, in this cold weather, because there would be no one to do business with.’

‘Maybe she was desperate?’

‘Maybe, but if she is from this area, I doubt if she was that stupid.’

‘What are you getting at, Stone? What is this all about?’

‘I like to ask questions. I get it from my mother, she was always asking questions, she said it was a good thing.’

‘And what question are you asking now, Stone?’

Two men from the wagon walked up to them, Callen nodded his head in the direction of the blanket, and they set to their work.

‘I’m asking this, Inspector, ... sir, why are you out here? Why does the head of the Night Watch come out of his warm office to see a dead whore by the canal basin? Is it because of the two other dead women that have been found around here in the two last weeks?’

‘Whores get killed all the time, Stone, all the time.’

‘Of course they do.’ Stone walked off. ‘Do you mind if I talk to the night watchman that found her?’

‘He’s been sent home,’ Callen replied sternly.

‘I’ll call into him in the morning. Goodnight, Inspector, sir.’

‘Stone!’

‘Was that quick enough?’ Stone called over his shoulder.

‘Stone, you’re on a last warning!’

Stone left Callen behind at the canal dock. He passed the wagon being loaded with the dead woman’s body. As he did, he could hear the muttered voices – no doubt something derogatory. He was a ‘no-win’ copper in this city; hated by the lower class Protestants that made up the rank and file, mistrusted by the officers, like Callen, and ostracized by his own community for joining the enemy’s bullyboys.

Most days, if not all, Stone mused on his self-imposed position; criminal turned vigilante ... turned copper. He snorted to himself as he marched along the North Quays, by the tall ships and the big, forbidding, blacked-out hulk of the Customs House. It was a hell of a mix he’d put himself in.  

He dug his hands deep into his pockets as he passed the tea clippers that lined the upper docks. He could see the misty breath of the watchmen of each vessel, hidden behind the gangplank, no doubt trying to find shelter from the bitter wind that followed the river to the sea. He had chased his ‘phantom’ as best he could. Whoever he was, he was fit anyway. If he was the killer, why leave her lying where she could be easily found? Why wait around? Why run? Why get into a fancy carriage? He ran through several scenarios in his head as he quickened his pace along the Quay to try and warm his body up, but none of them made much sense. Three dead women; a throat cut, a back stabbed, a third slashed like she was attacked by a wild animal. There didn’t seem to be much connection, but he could sense Callen was thinking along the same lines. If there was a connection, then whoever had killed them wasn’t going to stop at three.

He passed the bridge, which had a single horse and cart going over it, probably a rag-’n-bone man getting an early start to the plusher Southside areas. He followed Bachelors Walk for a short stint then turned onto Lower Liffey Street; he had lodgings there, on the fourth floor above a candle shop, which itself was above the offices of an importer of Far Eastern goods. It was only two rooms, but it was more than most people had in Dublin’s inner city. He felt his way up the backstairs of the building in the dark. There was only a window on every second floor, but they gave enough light for him to make his way as silently as possible.

His mind was tired, but still the flashes of the running man, the girl’s dead face and his so-called colleagues’ snide comments repeated themselves, like a bad dream.

‘Late coming in, Mister Stone!’ barked a hoarse female voice in the darkness.

Stone physically jumped and almost threw a punch into the blackness but managed to restrain himself.

A woman’s withered face came out of the black into the window’s light, ‘Not right for a gentleman to be out so late,’ rasped her voice into his face.

Stone caught hold of himself; there wasn’t much that could give him a fright, but Missus Carbury seemed to have the knack of catching him off guard.

‘I told you before,’ he protested, trying not to let his voice betray his shaking legs, ‘I’m a policeman with the Night Watch, it’s my job to be out late.’

‘Yeah, right, and I’m Lady Fanny!’

‘Well, goodnight, Lady Fanny, it’s been a long evening and I need some sleep,’ Stone turned his back on her, which made him more uncomfortable. He put the key in the door of his rooms and opened it.

‘Not right to be out late at night, should be in bed like all God-fearing folk,’ she barked.

‘I intend to be in bed in a dreamless and long sleep, good night, my dear lady,’ he replied, the shut the door behind him and breathed a sigh of relief as he heard her footsteps fade down and away.

He knew that a dreamless sleep was out of the question. He had never had a dreamless sleep, his own mind wouldn’t allow that luxury.

‘God fearing folk!’ he whispered to himself as he lay back in the bed, still in his clothes, because his rooms seemed colder than the night outside. More flashing images and sounds raced across his tired mind, then a strange thought occurred to him ... If she was so ‘God fearing’ why was she up this late at night?

Chapter 2

D

rumcrow House lurked like a low monolithic shadow against the red and blue of a failing western sky. It was an early grand Georgian house, three storeys high and seven bays wide. Its granite blocks appeared jet black under the winter rains, but in summer the whole house would glisten in the sunlight as if millions of tiny gems had been pressed into its walls. The house was set against the backdrop of the Dublin Mountains, their low peaks forming dark knuckles which made the setting sunlight as dramatic as possible. Even from the lower floor, at the front of the house, Dublin Bay was visible as a great arc of land carved out by the Irish Sea. At night the gas lights of the city would shine up in a web of shimmering yellow, with a bright central cord of light following the course of the River Liffey.

The landed estate that surrounded Drumcrow was divided into farmsteads, sheep and cattle on the upper side toward the mountains and crops of wheat and barley in the summer on the lower side. Now, on the lower side, in early January, potato farrows were beginning to mark the land in long lines of dark brown upturned soil. Around the house only a few acres of landscaped garden had survived from what had once been a vast and richly designed vista of constrained nature.

There was a formal herb garden, now left to nature, a sunken walled garden set in an octagonal frame of red brick walls, it too had been abandoned and was impassable without cutting a path. Beyond these stretched a rolling field, dropping down toward the city, dotted with great oak trees, whose sleeping winter branches appeared to be the frozen flailing arms of some mythical petrified beasts. There were many follies built by the previous occupants of the grand house; towers that looked like medieval ruins, statues of animals in wild poses, all now engulfed by hedgerows and bushes. There was also a sporadic stone circle, twelve stones in all, seven of which stood upright, while the others lay prone on the ground, half eaten by the grass and soil.

The circle was much older than the house or gardens. An inkling of its real age was a mystery to all but a few dedicated scholars, and none of those had ever been invited to inspect it. The landscape gardener who had laid out the grounds from scratch had wanted to move the stones, set them on the upper fields where, he thought, they would give a more theatrical impact. But somehow, they had remained untouched and largely forgotten.

In the circle, with his back against one of the larger uprights, sat Lord Fyre, the young inheritor and new master of the Drumcrow estate. He was naked from the waist up, his thin but well-developed muscles were covered in pale white skin, his long chestnut hair tied back with a bow, in a style that had not been fashionable for decades.

He sat, cross-legged, against the stone, his eyes shut and his thoughts far away. He had been in this position for an hour now and his servant had watched for most of that time from the comfort of one of the upper bay windows of the house.

Giles had been in service in the Fyre household all his life. The immediate family fortunes may have dipped in recent years, but not so much that the luxuries of life were ignored. However, Giles, the butler, and the weekend cleaning girls were now the only household staff. -. When the current Lord Fyre’s father passed away in his sleep, his wife, the lady of the house, had moved to London to live with her sister. Her visits to Drumcrow became a summer rarity and then stopped completely. Giles had never known a life outside the house. He was not married, and now, aged fifty, he had no desire for such things. The three years alone in the great mansion had been difficult; he had written several letters to Lady Fyre about the upkeep of house. When she did reply her tone was business-like and dismissive. He had fallen into a deep depression.

Out of the blue, with no warning from his mother, the young Master had returned to Drumcrow. Giles had forgotten what he looked like; he hadn’t seen the boy since he left for Cambridge twelve years before. There had been controversy while the Master was in college; something that had prevented him completing his degree. Giles had a suspicion of what that was, but he could not be sure, and the matter had been kept from everyone by the previous Lord Fyre. After Cambridge, the young Master was sent away, it was thought that a prolonged stay in the more exotic reaches of the empire would quell his ardour; but it seemed that even this simple wealthy indulgence was beyond the boy, and he never returned from his tour. The old Lord Fyre never spoke about his son from that day.

Giles had ironed flat the morning newspaper which had arrived by private post earlier. He did this for the previous Lord Fyre and nothing in his mind presumed that this Lord Fyre would want it any other way. Despite the freezing cold morning outside, Giles didn’t put on an overcoat; he walked down the back steps, across the lawn, past the walled herb garden and the neglected orchard, until he reached the stones. The young Master didn’t react to his approach; he was staring out across the vista of Dublin bay below.

‘Good morning, sir,’ Giles said in an even tone. He could feel the damp from the grass penetrating his shoes; this made him more uncomfortable than he had been already.

‘Morning,’ replied Fyre, ‘It’s going to be a beautiful crisp day.’

‘I believe so, sir. The paper has