‘If you like, I’ll kiss you, too,’ Pyke said, trying to grab his son.
Felix, though, was too quick for him. ‘Kissing’s for girls,’ he said authoritatively. ‘Girls and old people.’ Chasing after Felix on his hands and knees, Pyke caught up with him just as he was about to disappear under his bed and scooped him up into his arms, showering his head with kisses. Eventually Felix managed to wriggle free and demonstrably wiped both cheeks. ‘That was disgusting,’ he added firmly.
When Pyke next looked up, Milly was standing in the doorway, clutching her blanket.
‘Do you want to join us, Milly?’ Sitting up, Pyke held out his hand.
For a moment it looked as if she might take him up on his offer but her fortitude seemed to desert her at the last minute and she scurried back into her room.
When Pyke poked his head around her door, he saw that she had climbed back into bed. Stepping into the room, he told her that she didn’t need to be afraid, but she scuttled over to the far side of the bed and pulled the blankets over her head. Tentatively Pyke sat down on the edge of the bed and waited for a few moments. Finally Milly’s head emerged from under the sheet and she stared at him, perhaps trying to work out whether he posed a threat to her or not.
‘Do you like it here, Milly?’ He hesitated and looked around at the room. ‘Do you like your new room?’
After what seemed like an eternity, she gave him a very brief nod.
‘Do you want to stay?’
Again, another nod, this one more emphatic than the last.
‘You do? Because everyone here seems to think you’re unhappy and that I should take you back to your other home.’ He paused for a short while. ‘Are you unhappy here?’
This time she shook her head.
‘Can you talk, Milly? Because I want you to tell me what you saw that night…’
She stared down at the blanket, her head not moving.
‘Did you see the man who hurt your mama and papa?’
Milly looked up at him, a tear rolling down one of her cheeks. Pyke opened up his arms and the girl shuffled nervously across the thin bed. He gave her an awkward hug and told her that she didn’t have to say anything if she didn’t want to. She began to sob harder and before Pyke knew it her entire body was shaking in his arms, her arms clutching hold of him as though her life depended on it.
Later, Royce opened a bottle of claret and poured Pyke and Emily a glass each in the drawing room.
‘Did you think about what we talked about at the hospital?’ he asked, as he sat on the sofa next to her.
‘And what was that?’
‘About maybe spending more time here at Hambledon, until I’ve had the chance to determine what threat the man I told you about poses.’
‘I’m not going to be made a prisoner in my own home.’
‘And I’m just suggesting for a week or so.’
Emily put the wineglass down on the side table and turned to him. ‘I can’t do it. Not now. Not right at the moment.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because there are things that I’ve committed to; things I want to do, things I need to do.’
‘Such as?’
‘Just things.’ Emily shook her head angrily.
‘Things you can’t tell me about?’
‘It’s not that I can’t tell you,’ she said, sounding pained.
‘Then what is it?’
‘Don’t use that tone with me,’ Emily retorted, quickly. ‘It’s not as though you tell me everything you do, whether that’s fighting alongside the navvies or sniffing around an old acquaintance.’
‘That’s nothing by comparison.’
‘Nothing? An old lover suddenly becomes our closest neighbour and I’m meant to dismiss it as nothing?’
‘This is about your safety, your life. You think I’m just going to stand by and watch someone harm you?’
‘And I can’t just give up what I’m doing.’
‘This man killed a priest for no other reason than he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Think what he might be capable of, if he put his mind to it.’
‘All right,’ Emily said, finally giving a little ground. ‘Just give me a couple more days to tie up some loose ends.’
‘And then you’ll stop for a while?’
‘For a while.’ She reached for her glass and took another sip of claret.
‘But you won’t tell me what it is you’re working on?’
Emily sighed. ‘Don’t put a pistol to my head. I’ll tell you in my own time.’
A brief silence hung between them. ‘I’d like you to pass on a message to Jackman. Tell him I want to meet.’
‘What do you want with him?’ There was a sharpness in Emily’s tone that hadn’t been there before.
‘Can you arrange it or not?’
‘Not until I know why you want to see him.’
‘For God’s sake, Emily, the man saved my life in Huntingdon,’ Pyke said, angrily. ‘Did he tell you that? Someone was about to pull the trigger on me. He intervened. I think I have a right to see him and express my gratitude.’
From Emily’s expression, it was clear that Jackman hadn’t told her and some of her resolve left her. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’
‘So you’ll arrange a meeting?’
She bit her lip and nodded.
For the rest of the night they barely said another word to each other, and when it came time to go to bed, they gravitated towards their separate bedrooms without having to articulate their need to be alone. As he lay in his bed, Pyke listened to the branches of the trees swaying in the wind and thought about what to do. It was no longer a question of being nice or accommodating. If he couldn’t guarantee Emily’s safety, either in public or, for that matter, at Hambledon, then he would have to find another place for them to live, if only temporarily. At least until he’d tracked down the glass-eyed man, which was now his top priority.
NINETEEN
The sky was low and grey and reminded him of why he detested this time of year, the prospect of a long, cold winter ahead, months of damp coats, coal fires, sodden earth and seasonal chills. Pyke was waiting at the bottom of Park Lane with Green Park on one side of him and Hyde Park on the other. The location meant he had little protection from the squally wind, and as the leaves fell from almost denuded trees and glistened underfoot, a carpet of wet slime as smelly as it was treacherous, he was put in mind of funerals. This was the time of year when his own father had been killed, the victim of a crowd stampede in the vicinity of Newgate prison, a herd of frightened, angry people pushed into a space that couldn’t accommodate them as they waited for the execution of two men found guilty of killing a botanist. Even now the smell of wet leaves conjured memories of that moment when his father’s calloused hand had slipped from his own and he had stumbled and been swallowed up by the terrified mob, a clutched fist disappearing into an ocean of contorted faces. Some thirty years later, he might see a glimpse of his father’s dark, weather-beaten face in a dream or, fleetingly, in a crowd, but it was never enough to sustain a picture of him in his head. Often Pyke wondered how his life might have been different, if his father hadn’t lost his footing and fallen to his death under the boots and shoes of people as poor as him.
Ned Villums shuffled into view, a black, woollen muffler around his neck and a greatcoat pulled tightly around his waist. ‘Come on, let’s walk,’ he muttered as he came up alongside Pyke. He was carrying a newspaper under his arm. The Times or the Morning Chronicle.
‘Any news about the leak at your bank?’
Pyke was about to say the leak couldn’t have been at his end but stopped himself at the last minute. Why? Perhaps Villums was correct. Perhaps someone at the bank had passed information on to the Tory leader. ‘The matter’s in hand,’ was all he said.
‘Good.’ Villums headed into Hyde Park and Pyke followed him.
‘Any news on the man I asked you about?’
They had walked twenty or thirty y
ards into the park when Villums turned to face him. ‘His name’s Jimmy Trotter.’
‘What can you tell me about him?’
‘He’s a nasty one, that’s for certain.’
‘Oh?’
‘You name it, he’s done it. Theft with violence, larceny, embezzlement, burglary, assault, housebreaking, pick-pocketing. ’
‘Murder?’
‘You tell me.’
Pyke pointed to the newspaper. ‘Did you read about the priest who was killed in St Paul’s?’
Villums’ face hardened. ‘That was Trotter?’
Pyke told him what had happened, including the threat Trotter had made against Emily.
‘Your business with him is your business, but if you want my advice I’d get my family as far away from him as possible.’
‘You know where I can find him?’
Villums started to walk, his hands dug deep into the pocket of his coat. ‘I heard he was working for a man called Field in the East End. Embezzling money from shopkeepers and small businessmen.’ He paused to clear his throat. ‘Actually there’s a story about that you might want to hear. Or not, as the case may be.’
‘What story?’
‘A cabinetmaker in Bow wouldn’t pay, so Field sent Trotter to persuade him. Trotter saw the man’s wife was pregnant and when the cull refused to pay, he tied him up and went for the wife with a red-hot poker. According to my source, Trotter knocked her down and shoved the poker right up inside her, if you know what I mean, with this cully looking on, helpless. It killed the baby straight away and, after a long, painful illness, the wife, too. The cabinetmaker disappeared shortly afterwards, as well. After that no one in the East End ever refused to pay Field again.’
For a moment neither of them said anything. The gusting wind rustled the tops of the trees. In the distance, they could hear the sound of horses’ hoofs and carriage wheels clattering past Apsley House at Hyde Park Corner.
‘Does your source have an address?’
Villums nodded. ‘A former crimping house on the river, just along from Cowgate. After the war, it was turned into a convalescence home for soldiers wounded in action but the funds ran out a few years ago and now it’s been overrun by petty thieves and the likes of Jimmy Trotter.’
‘And Field?’
‘He owns a slaughterhouse near Smithfield.’ Villums’ expression clouded over. ‘But I wouldn’t go there if I were you. Not if Field was the last man alive.’ He looked up at the army of jackdaws perched in the treetops. ‘Listen, Pyke, I’m well aware you don’t need my advice and I’ve seen with my own eyes that you can take care of yourself…’
‘But?’
‘We both know you haven’t been out there for a while. All I’m saying is take care with Field. If you’re going to tackle him, make sure you’re unfailingly polite and careful about what you say.’
They walked back to Hyde Park Corner and ‘Rotten Row’, where, despite the foul conditions, men and women dressed in the finest clothes, attended to by liveried servants, rode up and down on magnificent groomed horses, as they had always done, past the Duke of Wellington’s Apsley House.
‘A few years ago, I wouldn’t have dared to show my face at a place like this one. I’m sure you were the same.’
Pyke shrugged. But it was true that, until recently, he’d had little need to visit the West End.
‘I used to think folk riding horses like those ones owned the city and everything in it. But you know what I think now?’
‘That it actually belongs to people like you and me.’
‘It’s what I’ve always liked about you,’ Villums said, beaming. ‘You always seem to know exactly what other people are thinking.’
After surveying the front page of The Times for houses to rent in the vicinity of the park, Pyke spent the rest of the morning sizing up the potential options. The one he liked best was, unsurprisingly, the most expensive, an enormous terraced property on Berkeley Square that rented for just under a thousand pounds a year and which contained within its walls the most extravagantly ornate marble staircase and domed ceiling he had ever seen. The agent who showed him the house, number forty-four on the west side of the square, explained that it was one of the finest eighteenth-century residences in the city, adding that the inside had been planned and designed by the renowned architect William Kent and that its ‘baroque theatricality’ perfectly matched the scale of the building. Pyke thought it looked a little like a Roman bordello but liked the fact that a house that looked quite normal from the outside contained so many architectural wonders within. For a start, the white marble staircase extended up through the full height of the building, almost up to the domed roof, which put him in mind of St Paul’s. There were also the marble columns on the first-floor mezzanine and the great chamber room with its panelled walls and hand-carved Italianate ceiling.
The agent informed him that the house was available immediately and, if he paid a deposit of a hundred pounds, he could move in right away. The remaining balance would be due within a month. The house was already furnished, too, which meant less expense for him. His plan was to take it and stay there just for a month. In the light of his financial problems, Pyke couldn’t justify spending a thousand pounds on rent, but if he managed to resolve matters and settle his dispute with Blackwood, and if they liked the house and the new location, then what was to stop it becoming a more permanent move? Pyke knew that Emily would take one look at it and dismiss it as too grand and indeed too large for their needs, but if she could see its advantages — its proximity to the city and to Hyde Park — she might be talked around. He told the agent he would have to think about it but in his own mind he had already decided to take it.
Even as he made this decision, Pyke knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep Emily and Felix locked up in the new house and that if someone really wanted to find them, they would find them: at Hambledon or a new domicile. More to the point, Emily would not be talked out of doing her work for ever. In the end, it would be easy for someone, someone like Trotter, to find and hurt her. It crossed his mind only afterwards that he’d used the present uncertainties to justify a move that he had wanted to make for a while. Still, he lingered for a while in Berkeley Square, looking up at the first-floor windows of number forty-four and trying to imagine the three of them, and possibly the little girl, Milly, setting up a new home within its walls. As Ned Villums had said, old barriers were beginning to crumble. Why shouldn’t a man like him live in such a residence?
Pyke hadn’t been inside the Spotted Dog on King Street in Holborn for a number of years, and walking into the taproom was like stepping back into his former life. Then it had been a meeting place for gamblers and petty thieves and, as one of the most feared Bow Street Runners in the capital, his presence had sent even the flashest of men scuttling for their boltholes. This time his entrance merited no more than a ripple of interest, and he made his way to the table at the back of the dark, smoky room where Julian Jackman was sipping from a pot of ale. The floor was covered with hay and a thick coating of butcher’s sawdust, and the gas lamps fixed to the walls produced a greasy, reddish flame that smelt almost as bad as the drying clothes of the men and women huddled around the blazing fire. For a while after he had quit as a Runner, he had missed the sensation of being feared in such establishments — it meant that people generally left him alone — but more recently he had warmed to the anonymity that his new role offered him and, anyway, he rarely had reason to visit low taverns any more.
It was the first time Pyke had seen Jackman since he had saved his life in a field outside Huntingdon. They shook hands, but not warmly — mutual suspicion still informed their dealings. Jackman looked older and more worn than Pyke remembered. His skin was pale and mottled and his red-rimmed eyes were supported by large black bags. When the potboy came, Jackman asked for another Perkins’ ale, Pyke ordering the same.
‘How long have you been back in the city?’ Pyke asked, even though he knew the answer already.
Jackman told him a week or two. Nodding, Pyke asked him about the situation in Huntingdon when he’d left.
‘Three of the navvies drowned in the Ouse. Another five are injured so badly they can’t walk and may never be able to work again.’
The pot-boy returned with their drinks. Pyke took a sip of ale and wiped the foam from his top lip with his tongue. ‘And what happened to the rest of the navvies?’
‘Someone authorised the use of troops to round them up and shut down the camp. A few men are still being held in the town’s gaol, most have been released and told never to set foot in the county again.’
Pyke considered telling Jackman about his own encounter with the dragoons but relented at the last minute, still not sure whether he could trust the man or not.
‘You think you know who it was?’ he asked instead.
‘I have an idea.’ Jackman looked up from his ale pot, one side of his face lit up by the greasy flame of the gas lamp. ‘You?’
‘You know a landowner called Rockingham?’
Jackman’s curt nod gave little else away. ‘What about him?’
‘He’s affiliated to the thirty-first regiment barracked near Huntingdon. So, too, was the magistrate you shot, Septimus Yellowplush, and an associate of Rockingham’s here in London called Jake Bolter. Is that name familiar to you?’
‘Bolter?’ Jackman scratched his chin and shook his head. ‘Can’t say it is.’ Taking a sip of ale, he added, ‘You think Rockingham planned the whole thing?’
‘He’s been campaigning against the railway crossing his land since the enterprise was first mooted.’ Pyke waited for a moment and said, ‘Now Morris is dead, it looks like his wish might be granted. No one on the committee seems very keen on the prospect of pushing on beyond Cambridge.’
‘Yes, I heard about that. Suicide, I read.’
His elbows on the table, Pyke leaned forward and whispered, ‘What if I told you I thought Morris was killed?’
The Revenge of Captain Paine pm-2 Page 26
