Blackstone and the Endgame by Sally Spencer Page A

worthy of some small reward.’
    â€˜I don’t …’ Blackstone began.
    The man reached into his waistcoat pocket and produced a coin. It was a golden guinea.
    â€˜Take this,’ he said, holding out the coin. ‘Come on, man, you can tell from the way I’m dressed that I won’t miss it, and it could do a great deal for you.’
    It could indeed, Blackstone agreed silently.
    â€˜Thank you,’ he said, taking the guinea and pocketing it.
    â€˜No, thank
you
,’ the gentleman said.
    An hour earlier, he had been hoping desperately for a turnip, and now he had a guinea in his pocket, Blackstone thought, as he watched the coach drive away.
    And yet, though he had wanted the turnip, he had not wanted the guinea, and he wondered why that was.
    You
know
why it was,
said the malevolent voice.
    â€˜Do I?’ Blackstone asked.
    Of course. What have you spent most of last week thinking about?
    â€˜Surviving.’
    Just so. And now you have a guinea which will buy you decent food and a roof over your head at night. Now you have the luxury to think about the future – and you don’t
want
to think about the future.
    The voice was right, he thought. Just before he had found the toff, he had been thinking about the future – and it had been agony. The guinea would buy him weeks in which he would have nothing to do but contemplate what lay ahead – and that was just unbearable.
    End it now, Sam,
said the voice.
Accept that you’ll never be able to save Archie. Spare yourself the humiliation of the trial. You’re already as good as dead – why not go all the way?
    Yes, why not go all the way, Blackstone agreed.
    He had always suspected that he might eventually kill himself – on two occasions he had come very close to making that suspicion a certainty – and whenever he had pictured it happening, it had always involved the river.
    And how could it not have involved the river? The Thames was the beating heart of the city he loved, and what better way to make himself at one with that city than by drowning himself in the soothing waters?
    He turned off Tooley Street and began what he had accepted would be his last walk down Battle Bridge Lane.
    Blackstone had almost reached Battle Bridge Steps when he realized he was being followed.
    â€˜You’re slipping,’ he told himself. ‘The old Sam would have noticed them long ago.’
    But that was just the point! He wasn’t the old Sam any longer.
    He turned to face his enemies – and even before he’d turned, he was sure that was
exactly
what they were.
    There were two of them – young thugs with bad teeth and twisted expressions. They had not volunteered for the army like all the decent lads from the area had. They had stayed behind, like jackals – free, now that the lions had gone, to feed on whatever looked weak and helpless.
    â€˜We saw that toff give you some money,’ one of them snarled. ‘Why would he go and do that?’
    â€˜He’d fainted,’ Blackstone said wearily, knowing that this was nothing more than a ritual leading to a demand, but going along with it anyway. ‘I helped him back to his carriage.’
    â€˜Dropped your trousers and let him have his way with you, more like,’ the young thug said. ‘Anyway, we saw him hand you money – and now we’re going to take it off you.’
    What good was a guinea to a man who was planning to drown himself? Blackstone wondered.
    Why not simply hand it over to them?
    And yet, he was surprised to discover, he did not
want
to hand it over – in fact, he was willing to fight to the last drop of his blood to keep it.
    â€˜Come on, you old bastard,’ one of the thugs said impatiently. ‘Give us the money.’
    He was the leader, Blackstone decided. He was the one who would make the first move.
    â€˜Make us work for it, and we’ll have to hurt you,’ the second thug