‘I don’t know what to do, sir. I don’t know whether I should go to the police and tell them what I know, or …’
Pyke shook his head. ‘The fact that this man didn’t shoot you doesn’t mean you’re safe. You need to stay here a while longer, wait for me. Where exactly is this abandoned cottage?’
After she’d told him, Pyke took off his greatcoat and put it around her shoulders. ‘You’re clearly a brave woman, Maggie, but you need to lie low for a while longer. What you know could still be dangerous. I’ll come and find you when I think it’s safe.’
She wrapped the coat around herself and smiled. ‘Cathy liked you a lot, you know.’
Pyke looked at her, not sure what to say.
‘I think a part of her imagined – hoped – that you and she … might, I don’t know, find each other some time in the future.’
Pyke’s mind turned to Cathy’s decomposing corpse, her wrists slit open. A bloody winter, he thought. Another needless death.
It took him the best part of an hour to walk back into the town. He couldn’t see more than a few yards in front of him. Bill Flint was drinking in the taproom of the Three Horse Shoes but he denied helping Johns, said he didn’t know where the former soldier had gone.
‘Apparently there was no kidnapping,’ Pyke said, scrutinising Flint’s reaction. ‘The wife planned it with Johns, hoped to squeeze twenty thousand out of the Hancocks.’
If Flint was surprised by this, he didn’t show it. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘He was helped by some of his friends – radicals.’
Flint’s eyes narrowed. ‘Trying to blame us for the boy’s death now, eh?’
‘I just want answers.’
The Chartist looked around the smoke-filled room. ‘Then you’ll want to hear what this young soldier has to say. He came in here looking for you a few weeks ago. We’ve been hiding him ever since.’
‘Hiding him from?’
Flint shrugged. ‘I’ll let you work that one out.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Just a soldier.’ Flint sniffed. ‘Deserter now, I suppose.’
Outside, the cold was piercing.
‘Didn’t expect to see you again, to be honest,’ Flint said as he led the way along an unlit alley.
‘Think I made off with the ransom money?’
‘Wouldn’t be the first corrupt copper I’ve come across. So where have you been? Why did you come back?’
‘Recovering from a pistol wound.’
‘Someone shot you?’
‘John Wylde.’
Flint stopped and turned around. His chalky face was partly illuminated by the light from a half-open window. ‘Wylde tried to kill you?’
‘Didn’t succeed, though.’
‘I can see that.’ Flint turned and continued along the passageway, then came to a halt outside a door which led into a backyard. ‘Come back to settle some debts, then?’
Pyke tried to put Felix out of his mind. ‘Something like that.’
In the yard, Pyke waited while Flint knocked on the door of the house and whispered a few words to the man who greeted him. They were ushered into the back room, where another man wearing a dark blue woollen shirt was playing cards with a soldier still in uniform. The soldier was young, with cropped hair, pockmarked skin and a thick, almost square face. He stood up and greeted Pyke with an awkward shake of the hand.
‘I served in the Forty-fifth regiment, until I left two weeks ago. We were billeted in Brecon.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Richard Considine.’
Pyke noticed that Flint and the other man had left them alone. ‘What made you leave?’
‘What they made me do …’
Pyke nodded, decided to let the younger man talk.
‘They wanted me to kill someone I’d never seen before, never done us any harm, a civilian.’
‘Let me guess. The shooting took place up near the old quarry, just off the Anderson’s farm road.’
The soldier eyed him warily. ‘Did one of the radicals tell you that?’
‘I was hiding in the cabin at the time. I heard the rifle. The man you shot died in my arms. His name was Deeney. He was an Irishman, lodged in Dowlais.’
‘No one told me his name. Nor what he’d done … to deserve …’ The soldier’s voice started to crack.
‘I guessed you were a trained marksman. A professional. I had a friend look for you at the barracks in Dowlais.’
‘I was never stationed here in Merthyr.’
‘Probably why you were chosen. Clearly you’re good with a Baker’s rifle, too.’
‘The sergeant-major always said I was the best shot in the regiment.’
‘So why did you agree to do it?’
The former soldier didn’t answer immediately. ‘I got into some trouble with a woman, wife of a councillor. I was told I was going to be thrown out of the regiment. Stupid, really.’
‘And all you had to do to clear your name, wipe the slate clean, was to come to Merthyr and do as you were told.’
‘It didn’t seem like too much at the time.’
‘Killing an innocent man?’ Pyke didn’t say this to judge the young soldier, just to indicate that he knew what it meant to take a life. He tried to remember that awful, hollow sensation he had felt after he’d killed for the first time.
The soldier nodded, his expression pale, haunted. ‘Captain said he was a criminal.’
Pyke shook his head. ‘Not true. My guess is that he’d been paid a few coins to go to that cabin and pick up a purse. Just his bad luck he was Irish.’
He now understood what had happened. Someone had planted the rent book on the dead man, directing them to Irish Row and the shoe and coat belonging to William Hancock. Clearly this person had wanted them to suspect an Irish mob.
Considine nodded. ‘That’s what this big fellow told me after he’d tracked me down in Brecon.’
Pyke described John Johns and asked whether this was the man who’d found him.
‘That’s right,’ Considine said, surprised he had been able to identify Johns so quickly.
‘And he persuaded you to come back to Merthyr?’
‘He told me he’d been in my shoes once.’ The young soldier wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘Said he knew how it felt, to kill a civilian in cold blood, made me see what I’d done. He said that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself ’less I tried to put things right.’
Pyke thought about Johns and his friendship with the radicals. He would have known the second letter – directing them to the quarry – hadn’t been sent by the real kidnappers and he’d always had his suspicions that one of the marksmen was a trained soldier.
‘Do you know where that man is now?’
‘Now?’ The soldier shook his head. ‘I just met him once, that time he came to Brecon.’
‘There were two of you up the mountain that day.’
‘That’s right. Me and Captain Kent.’
It took Pyke a moment to place the name. He was the man who’d imposed martial law in Merthyr. ‘Was he the one who gave the orders?’
The soldier nodded. ‘He’ll deny it, of course. He’ll claim I deserted because of what I did, the affair.’
‘Depends who asks.’
‘You don’t understand,’ the soldier said, openly showing his fear for the first time. ‘He won’t stop looking for me and when he finds me, he’ll kill me.’
‘Let me worry about him.’
Considine shot him a puzzled look. ‘Why? What do you intend to do?’
‘That’s my business.’ Pyke kept his expression blank. ‘Kent’s now in Merthyr with your regiment. Apparently he’s taking his orders from a man called Josiah Webb.’
Considine frowned. ‘Only one person Kent ever took orders from.’
Pyke had expected the soldier to jump at the mention of Webb’s name but he hadn’t. ‘Let me guess. Sir Clancy Smyth?’
The young soldier looked a
t him, still puzzled. ‘Never heard of him.’
Pyke felt his world tilt on its axis and suddenly he saw it; saw what he’d been missing, saw who had killed William Hancock and why. It was all so obvious.
‘Hancock,’ Considine said, ‘Zephaniah Hancock.’
TWENTY-FIVE
TUESDAY, 2 FEBRUARY 1847
Dundrum, Co. Tipperary
The rain was falling as sleet and there were no stars or moonlight to guide Knox, but he knew the track well, knew it as he knew everything else in Dundrum. He fought back another wave of anger. Usually the walk from the church to Quarry Field might have taken him half an hour but Knox covered the distance in ten minutes, running more than walking, impervious to the sleet and cold.
He didn’t knock. He just opened the door and stumbled into the front room, red-faced and out of breath. His mother was knitting by the fire, a woollen shawl draped over her knees. His father appeared from the bedroom, wearing trousers held up by braces, and an old vest. There was no sign of his brothers.
‘What is it, Michael?’ His mother could see his expression, see that all was not fine.
‘I have two words to say to you, Mam. John Johns.’ Knox saw her flinch as if he had struck her.
She put her hand to her mouth and gasped. Knox’s father remained rooted to the spot, unable to say anything.
‘Born eighteen hundred and six. March the tenth. You would have been eighteen at the time.’
She stared at him, the edifice of her life beginning to crumble around her.
‘This would have been before you married him.’ Knox pointed at his father.
‘Michael, please …’ His mother’s voice sounded weak, alien.
‘Perhaps this was before you even knew him. But he wasn’t the father, was he? Otherwise there would be no reason to leave his name off the birth certificate.’
‘No good will come of this, Michael. Please, I beg you, don’t take this any farther,’ she muttered, her hands trembling.
‘No, Mother, I will not leave it. You’ll tell me the truth. What I’ve been doing these last few weeks, why my life has been destroyed.’
Sarah Knox began to weep.
‘Moore’s the father, isn’t he?’ The words filled Knox with revulsion, the thought of his mother, his own flesh and blood, lying with that man.
‘Oh, dear Lord.’ His mother gasped for air.
‘Did he force himself on you? Was that it?’ Knox waited, light-headed, dizzy. ‘No, that couldn’t have been it. You wouldn’t have stayed in his service for forty years. He wouldn’t have let you.’
‘He’s not the monster you think he is …’
Knox grabbed his mother by the shoulders and shook her, more violently than he’d wanted to. ‘That man paid some thugs to destroy our home, giving us no time to clear out our possessions, taking to it with crowbars and sledgehammers.’
Disturbed from his sleep, Peter stumbled bleary-eyed into the room and scurried over to where their mother was sitting. Instinctively she opened her arms and allowed the lad to nestle against her.
‘If not for me, son, then for Peter’s sake. Please. Just let sleeping dogs lie. I’ll tell you all you want to know in time. But not now, not like this.’
Without knowing what he was doing, Knox slapped her around the cheek, once, the noise echoing around the small room. ‘Our child, your grandson, is desperately ill with a fever he picked up after we’d been driven from our home.’ He stared at her, then at his hand, unable to comprehend what he’d done.
Peter was wailing in her arms, sobbing and shaking uncontrollably.
‘Little James is ill?’ She had been trying to console Peter but all of a sudden she looked up at Knox through bloodshot eyes.
‘I want to hear you say it, Mother. Tell me to my face. John Johns is Moore’s son. Your son.’
She bowed her head and nodded.
Knox never thought the day would come when he hated his mother but in that instant he felt nothing but contempt for her; contempt for the life she’d built, a life built on lies.
‘Yes, Michael, he’s our son,’ she whispered, not looking at her husband, who hadn’t uttered a word. ‘There. Are you satisfied?’
Our son. Hers and Moore’s.
‘I’ve lost everything, Mother. My position, my home, maybe even my child. You could have helped. You could’ve said something. But you just let it happen.’
Peter had calmed down a little but she still wouldn’t look at Knox, wouldn’t meet his eyes.
‘And if I’d told you, what do you think Moore would have done? That he wouldn’t have tried to evict us? And how long do you think your brother would have lasted, living hand to mouth, sleeping rough?’
This took the sting out of Knox’s anger but it didn’t dissolve it completely. ‘He asked for me, Mother, for me. Because he knew he could lord it over me. Knew you would keep me in line. He asked for me because he thought I was weak, pathetic, that I’d roll over and let him get away with it, just like this family’s been doing for the last forty years.’
Tears were flowing down his mother’s cheeks again and Knox began to feel a pang of sympathy for her. ‘You don’t think I’m proud of myself? That I don’t hate myself for turning my back on you? What I did, I did for your brother’s sake alone. But every night I went to bed and prayed for you, Michael, prayed that God would keep you safe.’
Knox felt another spike of anger. ‘You prayed? You think God – if there is a God – is listening? Folk are dying out there in their thousands. If God cares so much, why doesn’t he do something about it? I don’t need your prayers.’ Disgusted, Knox looked across at his father. ‘You knew about this, didn’t you? That she’d given birth to Moore’s bastard. And yet you went ahead and married her.’
But Martin Knox didn’t say a word. Instead his mother rose and moved into the space between them. ‘Michael, I’m begging you, please go. I’ll meet you in a day or two, we can talk then, I’ll tell you everything …’
Knox stared at his father. The man’s lips were dry and flaky, and his eyes were empty. There was something else, something they knew, his mother and father, something they’d both wanted to keep from him.
Knox turned back to her, afraid now. ‘He was here, wasn’t he? John Johns. He came to see you.’ The reality of what he’d done – striking his mother – was starting to sink in and Knox knew he was capable of worse, knew it because it ran in his blood.
‘I told him he couldn’t stay.’
‘He’s your son; he came to you in his hour of need. And what did you do? You turned your back on him, just like you turned your back on me.’
‘NOOOO.’
They stopped and stared at Peter, who had bellowed this, the loudest sound Knox had ever heard coming from the lad’s lips.
Sarah Knox gathered him up into her arms and held him. ‘Whether you can understand or not, Michael, I did what I did, I made the choices I made, to ensure this one would have a roof over his head.’
‘What did Johns want? Why did he come here? It has something to do with the man who died, doesn’t it? Did Johns kill him?’
‘I don’t know, Michael. Please, I can’t do this. Not now. Not like this.’
‘Well, does he look like me?’
That drew the first sound from his father’s lips. It came out like a strangled laugh. For the first time, Knox saw there were tears flowing down his cheeks too.
He had a terrible sense of foreboding.
‘What is it you’re not telling me?’ Knox looked first at his mother, and then at his father. ‘This is me you’re talking to, Mam. If you turn your back on me again, I’ll walk out of that door and never come back. Is that what you really want?’
‘I don’t know what I want any more.’ This time, she shouted, her face red and blotchy. ‘I want what’s best for everyone but I know I can’t have that.’
His father turned and withdrew into the bedroom. His mother went to follow him but Knox grabbed her wrist.
‘You don’t understand. I need to talk to him …’
Sarah Knox managed to free herself from his clutch. When Knox joined her in the bedroom his father was sitting on the edge of the bed, weeping. Knox tried to summon pity for the man but he couldn’t. He thought about all the times his father had beaten him, with a leather strap, with a cane, with his fists.
‘I’m not your real father,’ the man said listlessly. ‘Moore is.’
His mother had collapsed on the bed and was weeping. Somewhere in the other room, Peter was screaming. Numb, Knox looked between his mother and father, still trying to assimilate what his father had said. His father, who wasn’t his father. The truth of it was beginning to dawn: why his father had always hated him, the living embodiment of his wife’s infidelities.
His mother was still sobbing and was trying to catch hold of his father’s hand. ‘All this time you knew?’ she kept saying.
‘Is it true?’ Knox felt dizzy, the room spinning around him. ‘Is it true, Mam?’ he whispered.
She stared at him, her hands cradling Martin Knox’s almost unrecognisable face. Knox tried to digest what he’d been told, the fact that his mother had never told his father that Knox wasn’t his, that she’d kept this from him and believed – wrongly, as it turned out – that the man was unaware of Knox’s real parentage. That she’d continued the affair with the father of her first child after their marriage.
Sickened, bewildered, Knox lurched towards the door.
Outside, he felt a blast of cold air against his face. He stumbled down the steps, looked around him and started to run, with no idea of where he was going. He ran until his lungs gave up and he fell down on to the muddy ground.
TWENTY-SIX
THE EARLY HOURS OF MONDAY, 14 DECEMBER 1846
Merthyr Tydfil, Wales
Pyke had seen the men guarding the front gate before but he had thought nothing of it. Now, though, he knew why they were there. The Hancocks hadn’t decamped to Hampshire to mourn William’s death. They had never left their fortress, and if Pyke had pushed on into the Castle, after finding Cathy’s body, he would also have found father and son hiding away in their dusty rooms. As before, he approached the Castle from the mountain. There were no lights burning in any of the windows but this didn’t mean the Castle was deserted. The shutters and curtains were thick enough to block out the light from a few candles. Aided by the moonlight, Pyke moved down the slope, oblivious to the cold and the discomfort of his wound, and found the entrance that Cathy had shown him at the back of the building.
Bloody Winter: A Pyke Mystery Page 25
