“What do you want with us?” she asked with a frown. She began to pick absently at the pie in her hand. “Why are you feeding us? We tried to steal from you.”
“Shut up,” the boy warned her. When he thumped her she immediately thumped him back and aimed a well-placed kick at his shins which she accompanied with a dark glare.
“Don’t you tell me to shut up you oaf. Look what mess you have got us in to.”
Sensing trouble was about to start, Luke leaned forward in his seat and coughed meaningfully. “If you two can keep your hands and your feet to yourselves, keep eating. I need to ask you some questions. Then you can be on your way.”
The boy and girl looked at each other in confusion before they turned to scowl at Luke and Marcus.
“Questions about what?” the boy asked.
He frowned at them in a way that warned Luke they weren’t going to be easy to get information out of in spite of the food in their hands. Luke had an ace up his sleeve though and gave them a few moments to finish their pies and empty their mouths before he began to ask them what he really wanted to know.
“You were both in the park the other morning.” Luke held his hand up when the boy took a breath to argue. “Don’t lie to me. If there is one thing I won’t stand for it is lying. Tell me the truth. You are not going to get into trouble. Trouble already happened by the time you arrived. I just need to know what you saw that morning.”
“What trouble happened by the time we arrived?”
“Murder,” Luke replied.
The word fell into the silence of the carriage, the echoes of which hovered over everyone and heightened the tension to breaking point. Allowing the change in atmosphere to register on the children, Luke leaned back in his seat and waited.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“We ain’t killed no-one,” the girl protested.
“I know, I never said you did,” Luke replied smoothly. “But I think you may have seen something important in the park yet don’t realise it; something that is important to us, and the dead man.”
The boy snorted. “How can it be important to the dead man? He is dead!”
“He has a family,” Luke reasoned. “It is important to the dead man’s family.”
“Why should we help you?” the boy asked curiously.
“You will go to the magistrate to face trial for stealing if you don’t,” Marcus growled in a voice that was laden with menace.
“You kidnapped us off the street,” the girl argued. “That’s illegal.”
“So, who do you think the magistrate is going to believe? Two thieves, or two grown up and well-to-do men with connections in high places?” Luke challenged.
Neither child answered.
“What do you want to know?” the boy asked sulkily after several moments of silence during which he studied the door and considered his chances of escaping without being caught.
“What do you want to know?” The girl echoed as she brushed crumbs off her fingers and folded her arms.
Luke sighed. “I want you to think carefully about that morning I chased you across the park. Did you see anyone else apart from me and the young woman I was with? You must have been there for a while, waiting for someone to happen by. Was there anyone else there?”
The boy and girl looked at each other. The boy shrugged. “There was a man in the trees.”
“What was he doing?” Luke tried to keep his voice calm and steady but was bristling with impatience when the boy appeared to have lost interest and focused on the remainder of the food instead.
“He was standing in the trees,” the girl added. “We thought he was taking a pee.”
“Was he?” Marcus asked carefully.
The girl grinned. “I dunno. I didn’t see.”
“Was he by himself?”