The Revenge of Captain Paine

by Andrew Pepper

  Rockingham was sick as soon as his head cleared the slime, a string of bile traced with blood hanging from his lips. Lumps of the gruel-like water hung from his mouth and cheeks.

  From behind, Pyke heard Townsend mutter, ‘He won’t be able to take much more of this.’

  But Pyke continued to hold Rockingham’s head over the trough. ‘Tell me how you know Jake Bolter.’

  ‘What’s Bolter got to do with anything?’

  ‘Just answer the question.’

  ‘He used to serve in the Thirty-first. I hold occasional dinners and a ball in my home for the regiment.’

  ‘And did you meet Jimmy Trotter through him?’

  ‘Trotter?’

  ‘The man with a glass eye.’

  ‘I don’t know such a man.’ He tried to clear his throat.

  Pyke dunked Rockingham’s head into the hog’s gruel once again but this time, when he pulled it clear of the liquid, the old man’s entire body began to spasm and a froth of blood and saliva started to seep from his mouth. Pyke dropped him on to the ground and tried to revive him, at first with a hard slap to the face and then with a few pumps on his chest. His body stopped convulsing and he must have died shortly afterwards because there was silence. In the yard, the only noises were the grunting and squealing of the hogs and the pitter-patter of rain. Pyke stood up and drew the sleeve of his coat over his mouth, staring down at Rockingham’s limp form. Another wave of anger and self-hatred washed over him.

  ‘What?’ Pyke said, turning around to look at Townsend, who hadn’t spoken a word. ‘He must have had a heart seizure. There was nothing I could have done.’

  Townsend stood there, his arms folded. His clothes were soaking and rain dripped from his chin.

  Pyke bent down and quickly stripped the old man naked. Then he scooped the body up in his arms and carried it across to the sty. The landowner couldn’t have weighed more than six stone, but it still took a monumental effort to lift him up over the chest-high fence and drop him into the sty. At first the reluctant beasts didn’t know what to do with the body. A few of them prodded the naked corpse with their snouts and jostled with one another to get the best vantage point. It wasn’t until one of them tasted a trace of blood on the old man’s mouth that the feeding frenzy began in earnest, but when it did it was a truly sickening sight. In ankle-deep filth, Rockingham’s arms and then his legs disappeared under a melee of trotters, and soon all that could be heard was a few quiet grunts as the creatures ripped into the old man’s flesh and crunched his bones. Before too long there was nothing left.

  ‘Tell the farmer we’re done and meet me in the carriage.’ Pyke stared up into the dark skies at the rain. ‘I want to be back in London by daybreak.’ The driver would have to be paid off, as well.

  The odour of death had seeped into his fingers, clothes, skin and hair until it was all Pyke could taste, all he could smell. He had shot and, doubtless, killed the dragoon outside Huntingdon, but he hadn’t tasted death in such a visceral way for a long time and had forgotten the unpleasantness of the feeling: knowing he had taken everything the old man had, and everything he would ever have. Pyke had killed him, plain and simple, and whether he deserved to die was beside the point. He could save the self-justifications and regret for later. An image of his son wouldn’t leave his mind, and Pyke felt a gnawing emptiness building within him. It felt as if he were standing on the edge of a cliff, about to hurl himself to his own death. More than anything else he craved the reassurance of laudanum.

  ‘Do you still think he was responsible?’ Townsend asked, quietly. They had been travelling through the storm for almost two hours, and if anything the rain had intensified. The inside of the carriage smelled of mouldy hay and drying clothes.

  Pyke gave him an empty look. ‘You heard him. He didn’t seem to know anything about it.’

  Townsend put his legs up on the seat opposite. ‘Tell me again why you thought it might have been him.’ He tried to adjust his position, wincing as though in pain.

  ‘Rockingham had been following me on the day of the kidnapping. He would’ve seen Emily and Felix in the carriage. He had the opportunity and the motive . . .’

  ‘Motive?’

  Pyke sighed. ‘I was getting close to exposing his involvement in the deaths of an actor called Johnny, whose headless corpse was found in a river bordering Rockingham’s land, an old crone who was raped and beaten to death just outside a navvy encampment, again in Huntingdon, and possibly also Edward James Morris.’

  ‘And these deaths directly benefited the old man?’

  ‘Certainly the last two did. More than anything, he didn’t want this railway being built across his land. In different ways, both deaths retarded its progress.’

  ‘Cold comfort for him now.’ Townsend stared out of the window as the rain beat ceaselessly against the roof. ‘And you had hard evidence linking him with all these murders?’

  Pyke shook his head. He didn’t know for certain that Morris hadn’t killed himself and had no hard evidence, just a gut feeling that Morris wouldn’t have taken his own life and a suspicion that Bolter had somehow been involved. Regarding the other two murders, he tried to explain his suspicions concerning Jimmy Trotter - that the glass-eyed man had been trying to find the actor and had been spotted near the scene of the old crone’s killing and that both corpses had been peppered with the same burn marks, possibly from a cigar. He also explained the connections between Trotter and Bolter - both had once lodged in the same guest house - and Bolter and Rockingham. Bolter, Pyke added, had been the old man’s escort during a recent trip to the capital and, as the old man had admitted, they had met at social occasions hosted by Rockingham for personnel and former personnel of the 31st Regiment. Pyke also pointed out that the magistrate who had initially stirred up the trouble in Huntingdon about the time of the first two deaths had once belonged to this regiment too. He didn’t tell Townsend that he had shot and killed a soldier while trying to escape the violence in Huntingdon but made a mental note to check on this. Maybe Emily and Felix had been abducted as punishment for that?

  ‘But there’s something about what you’ve just told me that’s bothering you, isn’t there?’

  Pyke nodded, surprised by the acuteness of Townsend’s insight. ‘Someone wanted me to see Jake Bolter with Rockingham.’ Briefly Pyke described the anonymous letter he had received, alerting him to Rockingham’s arrival in the city. He thought, too, about the odd expression on the older man’s face when Pyke had accused him of conspiring against the railway, and wondered whether it could really be true that Rockingham had never met or even known about Jimmy Trotter.

  ‘Why would someone have sent you that note?’

  ‘I don’t know. As I said, perhaps they wanted me to see Bolter and Rockingham together. Perhaps they wanted me to suspect the old man.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If I had to guess, I’d say to divert suspicion from themselves.’

  ‘You have anyone in mind?’

  Pyke considered this for a moment. ‘A couple of people.’

  ‘You want to talk about it?’

  Pyke shook his head. ‘Not yet.’ He didn’t quite feel ready. But he closed his eyes and thought about it.

  As the carriage rocked gently backwards and forwards, the names of his suspects slithered in and out of his mind, each vying for his attention.

  When Pyke next opened his eyes, a few hours must have passed because the first signs of daylight were visible across the flat, barren landscape. His first thoughts were of Emily and Felix: where they might be or whether they were still alive. Emily, who’d just told him she was pregnant. He felt queasy, scared. Perhaps there would be news waiting for him in London.

  ‘Who’s done this to me?’ he asked, not really expecting a response.

  ‘The list of people bearing a grudge against you could be a long one,’ Townsend replied. He looked pale and tired and each time he moved, he winced a little, as though trying to hide some kind of ailm
ent.

  Pyke thought about his own predicament. Given what had happened, he had to at least entertain the possibility that he, not Emily or Felix, had been the target of a failed assassination attempt, but this didn’t explain why the masked man, who’d fired two shots at him, had driven off with his wife and son. Or why he’d heard nothing in the subsequent twenty-four hours.

  ‘You think this could be someone trying to settle an old score?’

  ‘You’ve made plenty of enemies.’

  Pyke rubbed his eyes and stared out of the window. ‘Then why hasn’t there been a ransom demand?’

  ‘Maybe there will be one waiting for you when you get home.’

  Pyke nodded, slightly reassured by this hope. At least then, he would know that Emily and Felix were alive.

  ‘On his third birthday I took my son to Bartholomew’s Fair. I thought he’d like the noise and the colour. Maybe the animal exhibits, too. In the end, we spent most of our time by a stall where newborn babies were being sold. He didn’t ask me about it once, not at the time and not on the way home, but later he had the most terrible night-mares, woke up the entire house with his screams.’ Pyke paused, not sure why he’d remembered this or decided to tell Townsend about it.

  Was it a happy memory of their time together or an example of his failings?

  ‘Maybe what happened had nothing to do with you,’ Townsend said, a while later. ‘What if your wife was kidnapped because of something she’d done? You said she’d been involved with the radicals ...’

  Pyke nodded. He had thought about this already, of course. He had considered Tilling’s warning of an imminent crackdown and Bellows’s suggestion that he keep a tighter rein on Emily. But would the chief magistrate really have targeted her in such an apparently random way?

  ‘I don’t know,’ Pyke said, shaking his head. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I’m missing something. But would Emily really have been their main target? And if she was, why not just kill her? Why go to the bother of hijacking a carriage with our son inside too?’

  Townsend didn’t have an answer. ‘When we get back to the city, what d’you want me to do?’

  ‘For a start, you can take up residence in my office at the bank. I want you there in case a ransom demand is delivered. I’m afraid if I go anywhere near the bank’s premises, I’ll be arrested.’ When Townsend looked up at him, intrigued, Pyke added, ‘I know. It’s a long story.’ It was Monday morning, and a warrant for his arrest might already have been issued. ‘I’d also like you to keep an eye on William Blackwood. Every evening this week, I’ll expect you at my new house, number forty-four Berkeley Square, at six o’clock sharp for a report. Of course, if there’s a ransom note, I’ll want to hear about it immediately. No one else knows about that address. I’d like it to remain that way.’

  Townsend winced, as though in pain, and tried to get comfortable. ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I’m going to find Jake Bolter and Jimmy Trotter.’

  ‘And when you find them?’

  ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’ Pyke looked out of the smeared window at the orange sun that had just appeared over an allotment site.

  As they neared the city, Pyke’s sense of foreboding grew. What if Emily and Felix were already dead?

  TWENTY-THREE

  Pyke found Harold Field attending to a young lamb in the pit of his underground slaughterhouse. He wore a clean, white apron and was surrounded by five or six younger meat cutters. Gripping the terrified creature with one arm, its feet scraping against the cobblestones, he held the knife with his other hand and slit the lamb’s throat with a single draw of the blade. With another seven or eight strokes, Field had flayed and dissected the limp creature, his white apron now stained with the lamb’s blood and entrails. In a nearby pen, the other lambs mewed and bleated, the ground beneath their feet thick with dried blood and fat. Field wiped his hands on his apron and said something to the gathered meat cutters. Then the circle around him broke up, and Field made his way up to the top of the stairs where Pyke was standing.

  ‘Would you believe it? They call themselves butchers but some of ’em don’t even know how to flay a lamb.’ His hands were still caked in blood. ‘I take it you want to talk to me?’

  Pyke hadn’t seen Field before - he knew of his reputation, as most people did who lived or worked around Smithfield - and was surprised to find that he was such a neat and fussy dresser. Underneath the apron, he wore a fashionable black frock-coat and a blue silk cravat, tied in an immaculate bow. His hair had a reddish tinge but it had been neatly trimmed and his beard and whiskers glistened with pomade.

  ‘I was told that Jimmy Trotter does some work for you.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Field smiled easily, a mask for the violence that lurked within him. ‘And who told you that?’

  ‘Ned Villums.’

  This time Field regarded him with renewed caution. ‘So you’re a friend of that old rogue.’

  ‘My name’s Pyke.’ He waited and saw Field’s pupils dilate slightly. ‘I’m a banker now but I used to be a Bow Street Runner. And I once owned a ginnery around the corner from here on Giltspur Street.’

  ‘Lizzie’s place. I remember you now.’ Field’s smile was confined to the corners of his mouth. ‘You had some trouble with the law, if I recall.’

  ‘A long time ago now.’

  ‘People around here have long memories.’ Field shrugged. ‘You once had quite a reputation.’

  ‘Coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  Field regarded him suspiciously. ‘So what’s your business with Jimmy?’

  ‘I’d prefer to keep that to myself.’

  ‘And you think I’m just going to hand him to you on a plate?’ He seemed amused by this notion.

  ‘From time to time, you may have need of a banker whose discretion you can rely on.’

  Field’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is that how you know Ned?’

  ‘I’ve known Ned from even before his tenure at the Old Cock.’

  ‘I remember now. You were something of a villain even as a Bow Street Runner.’ Field wiped his hands on his apron. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t help you. Jimmy doesn’t work for me any more.’

  ‘What happened? Did someone make him a better offer?’

  For the first time, Pyke saw real menace in Field’s eyes. ‘Don’t try and mock me. You’ve seen my handiwork with a knife.’

  Pyke thought about responding but remembered Villums’s warning. ‘So you don’t know where I could find him?’

  Field’s smile returned, perhaps because he sensed he had unsettled Pyke. ‘Jimmy always was a bit of a wanderer.’ He paused, then added, ‘But I do remember how he liked his cigars. He always bought them from a shop on Oxford Street. You could try asking for him there.’

  Pyke realised this was all he was likely get from the man and thanked him for his help. As he turned to leave, Field stepped forward and laid a hand on his arm. ‘What did you say the name of your bank was?’

  ‘Blackwood’s. You can find us above Sweeting’s Alley in the City.’

  ‘I might just take you up on your offer one of these days.’ Field was smiling. ‘And if you do see Jimmy, remember to give him my best wishes. I’m guessing he’ll need them if that look on your face is anything to go by.’

  Outside on the same street as Field’s slaughterhouse was a fat-boiler, tripe-scraper, glue-renderer and a small tannery. The air stank of offal, drying hides and mephitic fumes. Looking back into the slaughterhouse, Pyke wondered how many human beings had been murdered within its walls.

  Earlier in the day he had looked for Jake Bolter at Prosser’s asylum in Tooting but had been told by one of the staff that neither Bolter nor ‘Mr Prosser’ had been seen there for a few days. Back at the crimping house, he had learned nothing new about Bolter or Trotter. Earlier still, Pyke had interrupted the journey back from Huntingdon by insisting that they stop at Hambledon, but no ransom demand had been delivered. Only
Jo had been told what had happened and, if she heard anything at all, she’d been instructed to contact Townsend, day or night, at the bank. Nor had a ransom demand been left for Pyke at Blackwood’s. He had remained in the carriage while Townsend made his enquiries there.

  Overnight the storm had passed and the temperature had plummeted, a cool wind from the north replacing the easterly gales. The air was cold and dry and the sky a crisp blue. It took him half an hour to walk from Smithfield along High Holborn to the start of Oxford Street, and there he sat on the pavement and ate a meat pie bought from a stall, his fingers dripping with hot gravy. As he licked the gravy from his fingers, he could see his own breath. Once he’d finished the pie, he fumbled around in his pocket for the bottle of laudanum, unscrewed the top and drank almost half of it. The syrupy tincture, mixed with port rather than gin, made him shudder, and for a moment Pyke thought he might bring up the pie.

  He visited three tobacconists at the eastern end of Oxford Street, none of whom recognised Jimmy Trotter from his description. Having picked up the cigar stub he’d been given by the navvy, Red, from the Hall, Pyke showed it to the three men, but none of them was able to identify the brand or shed light on where it might have been purchased.

  Oxford Street was a tumult of noise and motion: pedestrians five or six deep on the flagstone pavement streaming in and out of the bazaars and shops. Silversmiths, shoe- and bootmakers, fruiterers whose windows displayed exotic fare like pineapples and figs, spirit booths selling hot gin and Jamaica rum by the quart, and large emporia selling everything from the finest silks to Staffordshire bone china. Here the idle rich, waited upon by their liveried servants, rubbed shoulders with ragged hawkers whose kerbside stalls were piled up with old boots, broken umbrellas, stolen handkerchiefs and strips of ribbon.

  Usually Pyke would have taken the bustle in his stride but the laudanum and a lack of sleep made everything seem strange and disjointed. People’s faces drifted in and out of focus, their smiles turning into grimaces and vice versa. Pyke liked the anonymity that the city afforded him but, all of a sudden, he felt exposed and perhaps threatened by the faces that passed him by. No one knew. No one understood. He wanted to stop the next man he saw and shake him by the collar. ‘My wife and child have been kidnapped,’ he wanted to say, even though he knew how ridiculous it made him sound. Why should anyone else but him care?