‘Strip or leave.’
The man’s calloused fingers brushed against the handle of the knife. He took another step forward. ‘I ain’t going nowhere till I’ve been paid.’
Murmurs of approval buoyed the man, who doubtless believed the tide of opinion was turning in his favour.
‘The rest of you, strip.’
Some continued to do as they had been told but others seemed to take heart from the man’s refusal and stopped removing their clothing.
‘This is your final warning: strip now or leave.’ Pyke kept his voice hard and firm.
‘No.’
In one fluent action, Pyke removed his pistol and shot the man in the middle of his chest, watching, without sentiment, as he fell to the ground, clutching his wound.
‘Anyone else?’ Pyke wiped saliva from his mouth with the sleeve of his coat and glanced across at Townsend, whose expression was unreadable.
The remaining ten had removed their clothes by the time Pyke had counted to thirty. Taking one bucket at a time, he threw the icy water over their naked, shivering bodies. ‘I need you all sober. Is that understood?’ Water dripping from their whiskers, they nodded their assent, hardly daring to look down at the pool of blood spreading out beneath the dead man. ‘Now dry off, put your clothes back on and meet me at the coffee house across the street. I’ll buy everyone dinner and explain why I’ve gathered you together and what I want you to do.’
After they had rubbed themselves down and started to put on their clothes, Pyke checked his fob-watch. It was almost one o’clock, which meant he had less than five hours to turn them into a viable force.
As they shuffled out of the yard, he turned to Townsend, who was doubled up next to the wall, coughing up phlegm and blood.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Am I all right?’ Townsend laughed bitterly and pulled down his shirt. There was a large, black tumour bulging out of his neck.
Pyke had to look away. ‘My God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know…’
‘That’s because you never asked.’ Townsend pulled down his collar to cover the growth. ‘I went to see a physician last week. He told me there was nothing he could do. He also reckoned I’d be dead by the end of the year.’
‘You didn’t say anything…’
‘And you didn’t notice how thin I am, how pale I look?’
Pyke stared down at his boots, not knowing what else to say.
Townsend kicked the dead body in front of him and looked up at Pyke. ‘I’ve never been able to work you out. You despise poor folk almost as much as rich ones. You seem to think you can take on the world on your own terms and do it without help from anyone else.’
‘I need your help.’
‘But deep down, you despise me, too. Because I remind you of who you were and where you came from.’
Pyke stared at him, momentarily lost for words. ‘Where’s all this come from?’ he managed finally.
‘I’m no longer frightened of you, Pyke.’ Townsend rubbed the lump on his neck. ‘I’m not afraid of anything any more.’
‘Even dying?’
That drew a jaundiced laugh. ‘Right now dying is the best thing that could happen to me.’ Whatever had brought on this outburst soon dissipated and he added, in an almost pleasant tone, ‘I talked to Bentley at the jeweller’s shop yesterday. He thinks you might’ve got a bite.’
‘A diamond-encrusted solid gold pocket watch, more than a hundred years old, with a champleve face?’
‘The seller’s bringing it to him next week. Tuesday or Wednesday.’
‘Find out which one it is. And get an exact time,’ Pyke said. ‘I want to be there to meet him.’
THIRTY
The field at Smithfield, almost five acres in size, was deserted as Pyke surveyed it from his vantage point on the roof of a tenement building. It was four in the morning and the first glimpses of dawn wouldn’t come for at least another hour, perhaps two now that winter was upon them. On Mondays and Fridays, when the main livestock market took place, the field would, by now, have started to fill with sheep and cattle herded from their grazing pastures by drove-boys and their dogs, but because it was Sunday, the whole place was still eerily quiet, and briefly Pyke wondered whether Cumberland or indeed Conroy had wanted it to be this way. From a tactical point of view, there were many, many things about the location which concerned Pyke. For a start, its sheer size meant that it was all but impossible to seal it off and police its dark corners, just as it was hard to determine which street or alley the kidnapper or kidnappers would approach the field from and use to try to escape. A force of a hundred might have been adequate for this task, not ten sullen, ill-disciplined mercenaries. A man could instantly lose himself in the warren of alleys and courts surrounding Smithfield. And there was little chance of successfully pursuing someone on foot through its narrow windy lanes.
Alone up on the roof, Pyke thought about Emily and Felix and sought, in vain, to convince himself that he’d made every effort to ensure their safety. Earlier he had taken some laudanum to settle his stomach but the drug had had little noticeable impact. It still felt as if he was swallowing shards of glass. Climbing back into the garret at the top of the building, he tried to ignore the stink of ripe animal flesh that filled the room — the cellar had once been used as a slaughterhouse — and checked his fob-watch. The hands had hardly moved since he had last looked. Back at the window, Pyke saw what looked like an old man scavenging for scraps in the middle of the field, but within a few moments two of his men had appeared from the shadows, rifles slung over their shoulders, and dragged him from the field.
Afterwards, everything went quiet again. There was nothing left for him to do but wait.
An hour later, he left the building by the front door and stepped out into the field, staring up at the dark, starless sky. There were no sounds at all, not even the barking of a dog or the crowing of an early-rising cockerel. Soon the first glimpses of light would be visible to the east and then it would all happen, Pyke thought, trying to keep his nerves under control. The ransom demand had simply said ‘ Sunday. Smithfield at dawn ’. It was freezing, and Pyke pulled his greatcoat around him and dug his hands into his pockets. Sleet had started to fall and Pyke moved around quickly to keep warm, having a final word with each of the men before returning to his original position in the middle of the field. Though it was surrounded on all sides by buildings, no candles were burning in any of the windows and even the old hospital, on the north side of the field, looked to be deserted. On another day, Pyke might have appreciated the stark beauty and solitude of the scene, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Were Emily and Felix close at hand? And who would actually oversee the planned exchange, the letters in return for Emily and Felix? A dog barked and he jumped, startled by the sudden noise. He checked to see that both pistols were in his belt and ready to fire. A cockerel began to crow and Pyke surveyed the field, gulping down cold air. It was almost time.
Just before six, the sleet turned to snow: not just a light flurry but thick, heavy flakes that fell relentlessly from a grey sky and made it hard for Pyke to see more than a few yards in front of him. He was standing in the middle of the field and couldn’t see any of the buildings that surrounded him, nor any of the men he’d positioned at various places around the field’s perimeter. The settling snow, which had turned the field into a blanket of brilliant white, had also muffled any noise, and when the chimes of St Paul’s struck in the distance, it sounded as if Wren’s cathedral were miles away, rather than a few hundred yards. Feeling isolated and exposed, Pyke tried to quell a mounting feeling that he had already lost control of the situation. To calm himself down, he tried to think about what it would feel like to be reunited with Emily and Felix: to hold them in his arms. They would be close by now.
In the end he saw the carriage before he heard it, the clip-clopping of hoofs and the rattling of iron-shod wheels muffled by the snow. The carriage had emerged from a small street on the north side of t
he square, in the shadows of the hospital, one that Pyke hadn’t put a man on. Long Lane, perhaps. Or Cloth Lane, an even smaller street just to the south. It was pulled by two horses and it came to a halt in front of the hospital gates. Pyke didn’t stop to think about it. He ran towards it, his arms pumping up and down like pistons, and saw the cloaked driver jump from his station and land awkwardly on the hard ground. He saw the man dart into a nearby alleyway and wondered whether one of his men would chase after, and apprehend, him. No one apart from him was to approach the carriage. That had been the instruction he’d given to the men. Anyone who did was to be shot dead on sight. And under no circumstances were any shots to be fired in the direction of the carriage. Pyke didn’t want a stray bullet killing Emily or Felix. The field was still quiet as he neared the carriage. The two black horses tossed their heads up in the air and whinnied. Removing one of the pistols from his belt, Pyke circumnavigated the horses and approached the door. He peered through the mud-smeared glass and that was when he saw her. Alive. His heart leapt. Emily had been tied up and gagged and was wriggling to free herself. There was no sign of Felix. Ripping the door open, he pulled the gag from Emily’s mouth and took her in his arms. For a moment, he clutched her and sobbed, their mouths meeting in a messy embrace, a surge of desire rising up in him. She tried to say something but the words tumbled too quickly out of her mouth and he took her face in his hands, kissed her lips and told her to slow down. He pulled out his knife and began to cut the bindings around her wrist.
‘Felix,’ he started. ‘Where’s Felix?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. They came and took him from me yesterday. I tried to stop them but they tied me up. They were too strong.’
‘Who came to take him?’ Pyke had cut the bindings around Emily’s ankles and now helped her to her feet.
The snow had stopped falling and the entire field was quiet.
‘I don’t know.’ The panic in her voice was unmistakable. ‘They wore masks. We were locked in a cellar, not too far from here. But they came and took him away and now I don’t know where he is.’ Tears were streaming down her cheeks. They embraced again, Pyke taking her in his arms and whispering, ‘I love you so much,’ and then adding, in the same breath, ‘You didn’t see their faces?’
Emily pulled away from him and shook her head. There were heavy bags under her eyes and slight bruising around her mouth where the gag had been tied, but otherwise she appeared unharmed.
‘I’m sorry, Pyke. I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry for keeping things from you. I want to tell you the truth.’
‘You’re Captain Paine. I know.’
Silently she mouthed the word ‘how’?
That was when he heard a dog’s bark. Close by. Pyke looked up and saw the tawny mastiff, Copper, standing no less than ten yards away, his black head cocked inquisitively to one side.
The first crack of the rifle came shortly afterwards and it took him a few moments to work out that it had come from one of the upper windows in the main hospital building in front of them.
Panicked, Pyke looked around and tried to make sense of what had just happened, saw Emily, toppling backwards, hands raised to her neck, blood pumping from a wound. She fell and he dived on top of her, instinctively, and far too late to save her from the bullet that had torn a hole in her neck and ripped through her jugular. Another shot was fired, this one whistling harmlessly past them, but the damage had already been done. As hard as he tried, there was nothing he could do to halt the flow of blood gushing from the wound. She looked at him, her eyes swollen with fear, and then tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come and then her eyes glazed over and her body went limp. Emily died in his arms, blood still pouring freely from where the bullet had hit her.
The first two rifle shots had taken the men he’d hired by surprise but they quickly retaliated, four or five of them firing shots at the upper-floor windows where the assassin had positioned himself; windowpanes shattering as their bullets punctured one side of the building.
Pyke didn’t know how long he sat there, covered — soaking — in his wife’s blood. A few minutes, perhaps. Maybe as much as an hour. He held her blood-drenched head and kissed her still-warm lips. He held her and he wouldn’t let go. As he retched and sobbed, giant flakes of snow fell around them, a patch of crimson in an otherwise endless sea of white. Finally he looked up and saw the mastiff, Copper, stooped next to him, licking her blood as if it were a puddle of water.
Captain Paine, RIP.
Without thinking about it, Pyke hurled himself at the dog, going for its throat, but the giant mastiff was too quick for him and sunk its powerful jaws into his wrist and didn’t let go until it had touched bone. Screaming, he tried to wrap his other arm around the dog’s neck and use his weight to twist the snarling creature on to its back, its tawny fur now also smeared with Emily’s blood. Too late, Pyke remembered that Copper was a fighting beast, trained to attack when scenting blood, and though both his arms were now coiled around the animal’s throat and its front legs were dangling in the air, the mastiff was still stronger than him, its jaws locked on to his wrist. In the end Pyke had to poke the creature in its eye, to stop it from tearing off his hand, and when its jaws snapped open, he pulled it up off its feet and started to squeeze, the dog snarling at first and then whimpering, but exhaustion did for them both and eventually they came to rest on the hard, frozen ground, Pyke’s efforts to strangle the dog becoming, through tiredness, a muted embrace, and very soon the only noise he could hear was the breathy panting of the living dog.
Then he was surrounded by his marksmen. They looked at him, then at Emily and the dog, not knowing what to say. Townsend was there, too, attempting to take charge of the situation. The police would be there soon, he kept saying. Rising to his feet, Pyke told half the group to take Emily’s body and the carriage to his uncle’s basement shop in St Paul’s Yard and wait for him there. The others would come with him: they still had to find the assassin.
Having made a leash from one of the horse’s reins, Pyke coiled it around the dog’s neck and held on to the other end. Copper tugged hard on his new leash and Pyke allowed the eager mastiff to lead him through the hospital’s wrought-iron gates and up some stone steps into the main building. The entrance hall was a frenzy of activity; clearly the volley of rifle shots had sent the porters, nurses and patients into a panic, and some were trying to evacuate the building using a rear entrance. In the mayhem, no one even seemed to notice a man and a dog, both smeared in blood, running across the hall, the dog leading the way to the main staircase, taking the steps two at a time, perhaps following his master’s scent.
Holding on to the lead, Pyke followed Copper up a further flight of stairs and along a long, narrow passageway as far as a closed door, where the mastiff hesitated and sniffed, its tail wagging from side to side. It let out an excited bark, and from the other side Pyke heard Jake Bolter say, ‘Is that you, Copper?’ When the door swung open, Copper pushed ahead of him but Pyke had his pistol ready and swung it around to face Bolter, who’d been shot in the shoulder and stomach and sat propped up against a wall in a small, bare room that reminded Pyke of a prison cell. Pieces of smashed glass lay all around the wounded man. Copper bounded across to greet his master, while Pyke kept the pistol trained on him and kicked the rifle Bolter had used to shoot Emily out of the ex-soldier’s reach.
‘Who sent you here to kill my wife?’
Bolter had lost a lot of blood and could barely summon enough strength to pat the dog on its head. ‘I was meant to get the pair of you, then collect any letters you’d brought with you. I hadn’t counted on there being other folk with rifles. You outfoxed me there.’ He tried to smile.
‘Who gave you the orders?’
‘A soldier never gives up the name of his superior officer.’
Pyke stood over him and rammed the pistol into his face. ‘My wife was pregnant when you killed her.’
That seemed to cause Bolter a little distress.
‘I didn’t have nothing against her but I wouldn’t have shed any tears over you.’
‘Just like you didn’t have anything in particular against Johnny Evans and Freddie Sutton?’
‘You care about those cullies?’
‘So you don’t deny killing them?’
‘I did the Suttons but Johnny was Trotter’s work. Reckoned cutting off the head would spook the folk in Huntingdon as much as the threat of the navvies.’ For a moment he shut his eyes and Pyke thought he might have passed away.
But a lick from the mastiff brought him around, and when Bolter next looked up at him, Pyke had trained the pistol on the dog. ‘Tell me who gave you your orders or I’ll kill your dog.’
‘You wouldn’t hurt a poor, dumb animal, would you, sir?’
Pyke took aim and fired. The shot tore through one of the dog’s legs and the beast flopped to the floor, yelping.
Bolter looked at him, uncomprehending. ‘You shot my Copper,’ he whispered, the life ebbing from him.
‘If you don’t tell me who sent you here to kill my wife, I’ll aim the next one at his head.’
On the floor, the terrified mutt whimpered and yelped.
‘Well?’ Pyke removed the other pistol from his belt, raised the barrel and coiled his finger around the trigger.
‘Please don’t kill my Copper,’ Bolter whispered.
Pyke knelt over him. ‘Tell me who sent you.’
Bolter slumped forward and murmured, ‘Gore.’
‘And my son. Where’s my child?’
‘Your child?’
‘Has Gore got my son?’
Bolter took his last breath and died, Copper’s attempts to crawl towards his master and bring him back to life coming to nothing. The mastiff tried in vain to haul itself up on to its three good legs but it didn’t have enough strength. Like its master, it had lost too much blood. Pyke went to try to pick the dog up but it was too heavy for him to carry on his own. He found a trolley in the passageway and with Townsend’s help, he managed to haul the shivering beast up on to it. Pushing the trolley back along the passageway towards the staircase, Pyke reached down and patted Copper on the head. The dog whimpered by way of response.
The Revenge of Captain Paine pm-2 Page 42
