The Devil in Amber by Mark Gatiss

with an ornamental tooth-pick. On that occasion, though, the Domestics simply missed their train and glided in smoothly the very next morning, apologizing profusely and leaving the mandarin red-faced and cursing over his stringy moustaches. I was on a fast boat out of there before the sun was over the old clay tiles of the cop-shop.
    Now dressed and sitting in the police car this time, I knew I was in real trouble.
    Percy Flarge slipped onto the seat next to me, his long blond fringe bouncing into his eyes, a delighted smile on his lips. Both doors of the motor remained open and bitter night air bled over us from the white street.
    The police captain–inevitably Irish–was squawking orders to his subordinates, who were pushing back the eager crowd of ghouls that’d appeared around the entrance to the flophouse.
    ‘Look here, Flarge!’ I hissed. ‘This is insane! What the hell are you up to?’
    I flashed a look through the back window of the motor. The captain would return any moment. I didn’t have long. ‘Come on, man! This isn’t how we do things! We look out for each other in the RA. There’s a system! Why haven’t you called the Domestics? Or Reynolds?’
    ‘I’m merely helping the police arrest the guilty party.’
    ‘There’s more to this. You know there is. I’ve been–what do they say here?–framed up!’
    A thought suddenly struck me. Hubbard had said the same thing. That he was a patsy. I decided to risk showing my meagre hand. I was pretty much out of options. ‘Listen,’ I whispered urgently, ‘I’ve got what you’re looking for.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘That “lamb” or whatever the hell it is. I found it on Hubbard’s body.’
    ‘You found a lamb on Hubbard’s body? Taking it home for Sunday lunch, was he? Hmmph. Nice try, old thing.’ Fraid I searched him thoroughly. No livestock to be seen.’
    ‘You weren’t told, were you?’ I persisted. ‘You weren’t told exactly what you were looking for?’
    Flarge looked momentarily nonplussed. ‘My orders were to bring back everything he had on him—’
    ‘You missed his top pocket, old boy ,’ I mocked. ‘A small square of silk like a handkerchief. I know it’s important.’
    ‘You’re running away with yourself, old sport,’ said Flarge smoothly.
    I looked wildly about, anticipating with dread the approach of the police captain and the disappearance of all my long-held privileges. I’d be down in the cells with a copper’s boot in my guts and that’d be the end of old Lucifer.
    ‘I’ll tell you where it is,’ I said at last. ‘Then you can claim all the credit. Just get me out of this hell.’
    Flarge glanced over his shoulder. The captain was still talking, his flashlight bobbing in the darkness.
    ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I can’t promise anything, but…Tell me. Quickly.’
    He leant forward.
    I moved like a panther, jerking back my neck and then ramming my forehead into his nose. There was an awful crack and I felt warm blood jet onto my face. Flarge shrieked in agony but I was already smothering him, muffling his cries with my body as my hands moved expertly over his chest to where I knew he kept his pistol. It was out of its holster and in my hands before Flarge could get his bearings. I swung the butt up against his chin and he grunted into rapid unconsciousness.
    Letting him slide sideways onto the sweaty upholstery, I melted out of the motor and onto the road, flattening myself against the freezing tarmacadam and risking a look under the vehicle. I could see the captain’s steel-toed boots crunching their way towards me. Scuttling like a cripple, I moved across the roadway and within seconds made the safety of a pitch-dark alley.
    Huge black apartment blocks reared up on either side. It was nigh on impossible to make out anything in the darkness but I caught a suggestion of spindly fire escape and reeking bins as I pelted on.
    And suddenly there were yells and whistles and I knew they’d found friend Flarge.