The Revenge of Captain Paine pm-2

by Andrew Pepper

  ‘Whoever killed him believed that Jackman was Captain Paine.’ Pyke stood up and waited for Hancock to do likewise. When Hancock offered no response, he added, ‘Who found him?’

  ‘A couple of the navvies came to our safe house earlier today and told us about it.’

  Pyke nodded. ‘I’m guessing this was left here during the day.’

  ‘For everyone to look at,’ Hancock, said trying to hold back his tears. ‘Apparently one of the navvies demanded that someone take it down and he was beaten by the ganger with a truncheon.’

  Hundreds of navvies would have seen it. Gore would have wanted it that way. This was meant to be a warning, after all.

  ‘What were you trying to do here?’

  ‘Who, me?’

  ‘The Wat Tyler Brigade.’

  Hancock stared down at his boots. ‘Next week, Jackman was going to tell the world that more ’n three-quarters of the navvies working on the Birmingham railway had sworn their oaths and they were going to call a strike demanding more money and better working conditions. Once that news had broken, Jackman was going to announce that the navvies working on the Great Western, the Grand Northern and the Brighton and Greenwich lines had joined the strike as well: one big union joining the navvy men together up and down the whole country.’

  ‘And that’s what you’ve all been working to do, these past few months? Gather signatures and give the navvies reassurance, moral support…’ Pyke already knew that Jackman and his crew had been agitating among the navvies but, even so, he was taken aback by the scale of their plans: what they had been able to do and how close they had come to achieving their ambitions.

  ‘And money,’ Hancock said, quickly, looking down at the mud, perhaps realising he’d said too much.

  ‘That’s where my wife, Emily, came in, I presume.’ He paused, and added, ‘With her money.’

  Hancock shuffled awkwardly from leg to leg. ‘It’s been an expensive business, sir, travelling the length of the country. We also promised the navvy men money to keep ’em in food and ale while they striked.’

  ‘Lucky for you my wife has deep pockets.’

  But Hancock shook his head, apparently angered by this insinuation. ‘No, sir, that weren’t it at all. Not at all.’

  ‘Then how was it?’

  ‘We weren’t taking money from her pocket like you just said. She wanted to give it, sir.’

  Pyke shook his head, irritated. He didn’t want to be having this conversation with a stranger.

  ‘You still don’t understand, sir. All of this was her idea. All of it. She weren’t just a little rich girl giving us her money.’ There were tears in his eyes now.

  Pyke’s legs buckled. The shock was palpable. But Hancock hadn’t finished, not by a long chalk. He dug his hands into his pockets and said, in the same frightened tone, ‘You see, she’s Captain Paine, sir. She has been from the very beginning. Not Jackman or no one else. It’s always been Mrs Emily.’ Hancock had finished his speech but he couldn’t bring himself to look at Pyke.

  For a few moments Pyke wandered around in the shadow of the crucifix in a daze, the news he had been given too overwhelming to take in. Emily was Captain Paine. Still the idea refused to sink in. Was it possible? He took a few gulps of cold air and tried to focus his mind.

  ‘The arson attack on the Granby Street terraces?’ Pyke racked his brains for other snippets of information.

  Hancock nodded. ‘That was Mrs Emily. Some of us helped clear out the houses, though.’

  ‘And the fire at the warehouse near Birmingham?’

  ‘That was us, too.’

  ‘Emily picked up a bruise,’ Pyke started, still too dazed to think clearly.

  ‘We were ambushed by a couple of watchmen and had to fight our way out of the warehouse.’

  Not knowing whether to feel angry or proud, Pyke looked at the half-naked figure of Jackman, hanging from the crucifix. No, he felt stupid. That was it. He felt stupid and betrayed. How could he not have noticed? And how could she not have told him? Didn’t she trust him enough? But as the sheer shock of Hancock’s hammer blows started to wear off, Pyke found himself thinking about other, even less palatable possibilities. If Jackman had been nailed to two planks of wood for his part in this business, what might lie in store for Emily, especially since, if Hancock was to be believed, she had orchestrated the whole thing? That possibility made him feel sick, and he tried to reassure himself, perversely, with the thought that Cumberland had arranged her kidnapping and she would be safe in his protection for as long as he believed that Pyke had Conroy’s letters. The fact that the duke had snatched her, rather than someone else, might be what kept her alive, he thought, savouring the irony. His pregnant wife. And Felix. He couldn’t forget about his frail little son.

  ‘So what will happen now?’ Pyke asked, staring up at Jackman’s hollow, bloated face.

  Hancock looked at him and shrugged. ‘I’d like it if you could help me take this thing down and bury Jackman’s body.’

  ‘I meant with the plans to get the navvies to swear their oaths and call a strike?’

  ‘Word of this will have spread as far as Birmingham by first thing in the morning. Do you really think anyone will want to strike now?’

  Pyke put his hands around the foot of the crucifix to see how deeply the stake had been driven into the ground. ‘In which case Jackman will have lost his life for nothing.’

  ‘Not for nothing, sir. He died a hero, a martyr, and by the time we’re finished, folk up and down the coun’ry will know his name and his sacrifice.’

  ‘And Emily?’ Pyke’s mouth was still dry and his head dizzy. ‘You have any news about her?’

  Hancock stopped trying to loosen the crucifix and looked over at Pyke. ‘She told us she was giving it all up for you and your son. Because it’s what you wanted.’ His tone was cold and accusatory. ‘These last few weeks had taken it out of her. She said that once the strike was announced, she was going to withdraw from her role: spend more time with you.’

  ‘That might have been her intention, but she was abducted five days ago, together with our son.’

  Later, after they had taken Jackman down from the cross and buried him, using a pick and spade Hancock had brought with him, Pyke followed the radical back up the side of the ravine, but one question, more than any other, dominated his thoughts.

  Did Gore know that Emily was Captain Paine?

  It was a ten-minute walk from the top of the Hampstead Road to Godfrey’s apartment in Camden Town, and once there Pyke proceeded to tell his uncle everything he had found out.

  When he had finished, Godfrey poured them both a glass of claret and asked him how or whether this new revelation affected the search for Emily and Felix. Pyke told him about the ransom demand he’d received from the Duke of Cumberland and said that the safest place for Emily and Felix right now was in the duke’s care.

  ‘But Gore now knows that she’s been abducted,’ Godfrey said. ‘Perhaps he’ll be looking for her, too.’

  Pyke conceded the point and again kicked himself for having taken Gore into his confidence.

  ‘I heard back from this fellow I’d asked to look into Bellows’s recent activities in the property market.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It seems the chief magistrate started to buy up derelict buildings along the New Road at the beginning of last year. He now owns ten or so properties, all within spitting distance of Euston Square.’ There was a spark in Godfrey’s eye. He’d already reached the same conclusion as Pyke.

  ‘The terminus of the Birmingham railway.’

  ‘Exactly, dear boy. But if you remember, at the time, the plan was for the railway to terminate just around the corner from here, not down the hill in Euston. The buildings nearest to the proposed station were snapped up by developers. The plan was to turn them into a railway hotel and boarding houses.’

  ‘Then in June or July, an Act of Parliament comes along authorising the extension of the railway line t
o Euston.’

  ‘July,’ Godfrey said. ‘And the company pushed hard for it. They had to go back to Parliament because the extension is going to cost another four hundred thousand pounds. They’re building this monstrous contraption just down the road from here that will pull the trains up the hill from Euston. I’m told the company reckoned a terminus there would be more convenient than one in Camden.’

  ‘And in the meantime, let me guess. The price of property along the New Road in Somers Town has soared, and Bellows has made himself a small fortune.’

  ‘I think it’s fair to assume that Bellows was forewarned about plans to move the terminus to Euston.’

  Pyke nodded, his fists clenched into balls. ‘One presumes by Abraham Gore.’ He thought about Gore’s intervention in Godfrey’s libel trial and the violent words he had exchanged with Bellows at the coroner’s meeting. These, Pyke supposed now, had merely been cynical ploys to win Pyke’s friendship and favour and to distract his attention from what was really happening. All of which threw fresh light on to Morris’s death and, in turn, cast suspicion back on to Gore. Had he conspired, after all, to murder his ‘oldest, dearest’ friend? The thought was almost too monstrous to imagine. If Pyke hadn’t seen Jackman’s body nailed to the crucifix, he might not have believed it possible. But who knew what a man like Gore was capable of?

  ‘Gore and Bellows,’ Pyke said, gritting his teeth. More than anything else he wanted to confront the banker and beat the truth out of him, but a more subtle strategy was required.

  ‘Gore, Bellows and Conroy,’ Godfrey corrected him. ‘Don’t forget the egregious comptroller.’

  Pyke took a sip of wine and felt the excitement building in his stomach. Godfrey was quite right. The three of them were tied up together. Everything was starting to make more sense.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  It was after one o’clock in the morning by the time Pyke made it up to Hampstead Heath and hammered on the front door of Fitzroy Tilling’s home. The worst of the fog had cleared but in front of the stout, red-brick property, mist-covered allotments and denuded apple trees shivered in the freezing temperature. It took a number of thumps to arouse Sir Robert Peel’s private secretary, and when he finally opened the door, wearing a gown and carrying a lantern, and saw it was Pyke, he wearily shook his head, muttering, ‘I might’ve guessed it would be you.’ Rubbing his eyes, he invited Pyke into the front room. As he did so, a ginger cat bolted past their ankles into the warm house. ‘I see things haven’t changed much,’ Pyke commented, as he settled into one of the uncomfortable horsehair chairs and watched as Tilling poured them both a glass of brandy, the cat coiled around his leg. It didn’t take much to revive the fire and, with a little brandy inside him, Pyke quickly felt sensation returning to his fingers and toes.

  ‘God, you look like shit, Pyke,’ Tilling said, peering at him from the other side of the hearth. He was, by no means, a good-looking man, with his receding hairline and bug-like eyes, but his olive skin and ink-black hair glowed in the flickering light produced by the candle and fire.

  ‘You mean the bruise?’ Pyke rubbed his cheek and smiled. ‘I got into a tussle with a bareknuckle fighter and lived to tell the tale.’

  ‘Should have seen the other man, eh?’

  ‘I ripped off his scrotum.’ Pyke hesitated and shrugged. ‘I don’t imagine he’ll be adding his progeny to the human race.’

  Tilling took a sip of brandy, not reacting to the story. ‘Why don’t you tell me what brings you to my house at half-past one in the morning?’ With a nimble leap, the marmalade cat jumped up into Tilling’s lap.

  ‘I need to talk to Peel.’

  Tilling waited for the cat to settle down in his lap. ‘Peel’s convalescing at Drayton Manor. He caught a fever and isn’t planning to return to London for at least another week or two.’

  ‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t pass on my condolences.’

  Tilling regarded him carefully. ‘I take it you have a particular gripe with Peel?’

  ‘A gripe. Hmm.’ Pyke considered this for a moment. ‘You could say that. Do you remember the radical, Julian Jackman? Peel certainly knows him.’

  Tilling didn’t answer but rather waited for Pyke to continue, stroking the purring cat.

  ‘I found Jackman about two hours ago nailed to a cross on the construction site of the Birmingham railway near Camden.’

  If the news was a surprise to Tilling, he didn’t show it. ‘And that’s what you woke me up to tell me?’

  ‘Is that all you’re prepared to say? A man was crucified. Six-inch nails were driven through his ankles and hands. He died the most horrible death imaginable.’

  Tilling nodded, acknowledging Pyke’s outrage and anger. ‘Perhaps you should tell me how you think any of this relates to Peel.’

  ‘About a month ago, he called me to his office at Westminster and persuaded me, you might even say blackmailed me, to perform a dirty little task for him. He wanted me to prove or disprove that Jackman was Captain Paine.’

  Tilling’s expression remained inscrutable.

  ‘At the time he tried to make out that he was simply helping out a friend, Edward James Morris. Morris was about to begin work on the next section of the Grand Northern Railway and Peel made it appear that the venture was beset by problems mostly caused by the radicals; radicals, that is, like Jackman, who, according to Peel, were stirring up dissent among the navvies.’ Pyke paused for a moment, to gather his thoughts. ‘Then there was the matter of the headless body which had turned up a few miles from the navvy camp in Huntingdon. I heard later that Peel had already been to Huntingdon himself. He asked me to investigate that death, too.’

  Tilling was apparently absorbed in stroking the cat but looked up at the last moment, a frown on his face. ‘I’m not sure what it is Peel has supposed to have done here. I mean, surely you don’t suspect him of any involvement in the unfortunate death of this Jackman figure?’

  ‘Involvement. That’s a fine word, isn’t it? No, I don’t think Peel had any direct involvement in the matter but his hands aren’t clean either.’

  ‘Perhaps you should explain yourself.’

  ‘I don’t believe Peel ever cared one little bit either about the problems facing the Grand Northern Railway or the threat posed by the radicals.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘It’s my guess Peel suspected Abraham Gore was involved in the struggle against the radicals in London and Cambridgeshire and sent me off into the lion’s den hoping I might turn up something he could use against him.’

  Tilling shoved the purring cat off his lap and sat forward, his eyes fixed on Pyke. ‘You know, there are some who believe that Gore effectively controls this current Liberal government from behind the scenes, but without ever having to show his hand or answer to the electorate.’

  ‘Is that an admission that your master tried to use me to do his dirty work?’ Pyke had used the term ‘master’ deliberately, to cause offence, the insult registering in Tilling’s stare.

  ‘If Peel suspected Gore of wrongdoing, why shouldn’t he try and gather evidence against him?’

  ‘ Gathering evidence implies Peel sanctioned some kind of official investigation in which his full intentions were disclosed. What actually happened was he dispatched me to Huntingdon without an inkling of what or who I was dealing with.’

  Tilling’s face reddened a little and Pyke knew he’d scored a hit. ‘He made certain you were adequately compensated for your troubles. I heard that Morris gave you a plum contract, one you couldn’t fail to make money from.’

  ‘And that’s supposed to make everything all right? Some gold coins in return for my silence and acquiescence?’

  ‘I don’t imagine Peel ever thought you would be either silent or acquiescent.’

  ‘But ruthless, maybe. I expect he hoped I might be ruthless. Do what other men might not have the stomach to do. Put a pistol against Gore’s head and pull the trigger…’

  ‘I can safely say Sir
Robert would definitely not sanction such a drastic course of action.’

  ‘Who said I needed his sanction?’

  Tilling took a sip of brandy and put the glass down in front of the fire. ‘Then why are you here?’

  ‘Perhaps without realising it, Peel opened up a whole Pandora’s box when he sent me to Huntingdon. I want him to face up to his responsibilities.’

  A vague smile creased the corners of Tilling’s mouth. ‘ You’re telling the leader of the Tory party that he has to face up to his responsibilities?’

  ‘Everything is going to get a whole lot worse here in London and elsewhere before it gets better. I want Peel here to help clean up the mess.’

  ‘And what mess are you referring to?’

  ‘The mess that’ll happen when I finally make a move against Gore and Sir Henry Bellows.’

  ‘What’s Sir Henry got to do with any of this?’

  ‘Like Gore, Bellows might claim to hate the radicals but this, as you put it, is about money, plain and simple. Jackman’s plans to unionise the navvies threatened the progress of Gore’s railway. And as the competition, Morris’s Grand Northern threatened to severely limit the sums of money Gore might earn from his venture. So he planned something that would effectively take care of both problems. To do this, he required Bellows’s assistance. I’m guessing the crackdown against Jackman and the rest of the Wat Tyler Brigade was Gore’s idea but Bellows orchestrated it: that’s how Jackman’s carcass came to be hanging from a makeshift cross. A nice, cosy arrangement. Gore gets what he wants and Bellows is amply rewarded for his efforts.’ Briefly Pyke told Tilling about the properties Bellows had purchased in Somers Town eighteen months earlier, before it was announced that the new terminus for the Birmingham railway would be Euston rather than Camden Town, and the fortune he stood to make when he sold them.