That drew a thin smile from Hardwick. ‘Except that the condemned man in Newgate prison would tear you apart, given half a chance, while those under Tuke’s supervision would happily go on about their business. In whose company would you prefer to spend some time?’
‘And let’s say you were in physical danger from an invading army or were being bullied by someone stronger than yourself.’ Pyke stared at Hardwick and smiled. ‘Who would you turn to for help? A smiling lunatic or violent outlaw?’
‘Good God, man, criminals of any denomination should not be lauded as heroes. They are but children who lack the necessary self-discipline to control their excessive passion.’
‘Unlike you, Mr Hardwick, I grew up around such people and there is nothing childish or ill-disciplined about most of them. They are just poor, desperate people doing what has to be done in order to survive.’ Pyke decided it was time to move in for the kill. ‘And is that who murdered our newborn baby just delivered from its mother’s womb? A child?’
For the first time Hardwick’s composure seemed to crack. He stammered something about the difference between conventional criminal behaviour and homicidal monomania.
‘But practically speaking, Mr Hardwick, how does your diagnosis assist those of us actually involved in the process of trying to catch whoever murdered these people? Who, or what, are we supposed to be looking for? By the sounds of things, any of us here could be suffering from homicidal monomania, if the symptoms are undetectable under ordinary circumstances. Surely you don’t suspect one of us?’
A laugh rippled around the room. An indignant Hardwick was about to respond but before he had a chance Peel intervened, to bring their discussion to an end. He thanked Hardwick for enlightening them with his theories and, addressing Pyke, said, ‘If you find our friend’s ideas to be less than useful in this particular instance, perhaps you could share with us your own thoughts regarding what you witnessed and how they might assist us with the investigation?’
Pyke made a point of addressing the room from where he was sitting. As he had done to Fox and Vines, he explained what had happened, what he had seen and what it might mean. When he had finished there was a sober hush in the room. Peel glanced nervously at Charles Hume. Hume merely nodded. Peel thanked Pyke for his illuminating thoughts, and said he was sure his discoveries would be of tremendous use to the investigative team.
Charles Hume agreed. Hardwick sat in silence, scowling. Beside him, Pyke heard Fox whisper, ‘You stuck it to the bastards. Well done.’
As the gathering broke up, Peel came across to where he was sitting and asked Pyke whether he might be able to stay behind for a few minutes, so they could chat in private.
Fox answered him first. ‘I think we’d be prepared to discuss relevant matters in a more congenial atmosphere.’
‘I had rather hoped I might have a word with Mr Pyke on his own. I am assuming, of course, that such an arrangement might be acceptable to you, Sir Richard.’
‘Why on earth should it not be acceptable?’ Fox said huffily. ‘I will wait for Pyke in my carriage.’
Peel put his hands into his pockets. ‘You go on ahead, Sir Richard. It’s late and I’m already concerned that I have taken up too much of your valuable time. I’ll make my own carriage available to Mr Pyke.’
‘Really, I don’t mind waiting.’
‘No, really, I insist that you are delayed no more.’ His manner indicated that the subject was closed for discussion.
‘Well, I’ve been told, haven’t I?’ Fox said under his breath. Peel either did not hear him or chose not to answer him.
‘It perhaps does not need to be emphasised that any investigation, whether it’s carried out by Hume or yourself, should be a discreet one. The public is fickle and their willingness to sanction a new police force is conditional on the belief that its role will be one of prevention and not detection. It’s one of the areas where I disagree with Hardwick’s assessment. He sees detection as one of the characteristics of preventive policing, whereas I believe prevention to be preferable to detection.’ Peel had ushered Pyke into a chair just across from him. Up close, his skin was pockmarked and lumpy.
‘I understand you’re asking me to conduct some kind of unofficial or parallel investigation,’ Pyke said, trying in vain to read Peel’s expressionless face. ‘I’m just not sure in what capacity that might be.’
That drew a shrill laugh. ‘If you’ll permit me to speak plainly, I would say that you’re not a fellow who needs, or indeed cares for, official sanction.’
Pyke acknowledged the remark with a nod. ‘And if you’ll permit me to speak plainly, that is the kind of remark I would expect from someone who clearly enjoys such sanction as a matter of course.’
Peel’s eyes narrowed. ‘Allow me to further speculate, then. Perhaps Sir Richard has already asked you to continue with your investigation, regardless of the outcome of this meeting. For some reason, he has been quick to identify this incident as crucial to the continuing survival of Bow Street.’ He looked at Pyke and smiled. ‘You don’t have to respond.’
Behind them, the brooding man entered the room and took up a chair. Peel did not acknowledge him.
‘I didn’t think it was a question.’
‘I stand corrected.’ The smile vanished from Peel’s face. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, and forgive my crude attempts to read your mind, but when you were describing what you found in that room, I got the impression you have already developed a strong attachment to the investigation. Perhaps you will pursue this matter, irrespective of whether or not you are sanctioned to do so.’
‘Perhaps I will.’
‘Then all I am asking is that you keep me informed of your progress. In an unofficial capacity, of course.’
Usually Pyke did not have a problem reading the nuances and inflections of people’s speech and actions. He could tell when someone was lying to him or trying to flatter him, even when those deceptions were dressed up in the most oblique disguises. In this instance, though, he could scarcely begin to decipher the various masks Peel had worn throughout the evening: cold, calculating pragmatist, political statesman, personal confidant. He had heard that Peel was quick-tempered, stubborn, oddly self-conscious and lacking in assurance, but he’d seen none of these characteristics on display. What he had seen was someone who could be a formidable opponent or a useful ally.
‘You are perhaps wondering what advantage this type of arrangement might afford you?’ Peel said, staring at Pyke with an unsettling intensity.
‘It had crossed my mind.’
‘It would not be possible to offer you any financial inducement.’
‘Nor would I expect it.’
‘But if, say, you were to continue with your own investigation, then perhaps as a courtesy to my office, you might share your findings with Charles Hume. Such an arrangement might be beneficial to our shared ambition of finding and being seen to find whoever carried out these abominable acts.’
Pyke digested this request. ‘And if, for any reason, I needed to get in touch with you?’
‘I would expect all of our correspondence to take place through Charles.’
Pyke decided to push the point. ‘But say I had some cause to pass a message to you in person?’
For the first time, Pyke sensed Peel’s unease. Taking his time, Peel motioned towards the dark-haired man who was sitting behind Pyke and said, ‘Let me introduce Fitzroy Tilling. He served under me while I was Chief Secretary in Ireland.’ Pyke turned around to acknowledge Tilling.
‘Let’s just say, should the need arise and should Charles Hume be unable to assist you, you could contact me via Mr Tilling here.’
‘It means you can have it both ways.’ Pyke held Peel’s formidable stare. ‘Find out what I know and keep an eye on me at the same time.’
‘You think me too devious.’ Peel rested his large hands on his desk. ‘I’m going to be blunt with you, Pyke, and you might think me hard for saying this. I am not particularly co
ncerned about the deaths that you’re investigating. I think them abhorrent, of course, but I am compelled to address my attention to a more general set of circumstances. If I am honest, I believe the Irish race to be an inferior one, at a lower stage of development than our own and, therefore, do not intend to alter any course of action already deemed by myself to be in the best interests of this country as a result of a few deaths, whether those who died were Catholics or Protestants. But I am, and have to be, concerned about the implications for public order, and the sooner this business is resolved the better it will be for everyone. I am not afraid to call in the armed forces because I am not afraid of being unpopular, but I see this course of action only as a last resort.’
When Pyke said, ‘It is far better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both,’ he saw the recognition register in Peel’s eyes.
He was about to follow it up with another quote from the same source when the door to Peel’s private office flew open and into the room strode a tall, muscular man, older than Peel by some years, dressed in a red riding coat, a silk cravat and buckskin breeches worn over stockings. He was striking rather than handsome, with grey hair, sideburns, a Roman nose and ear lobes that were as fat and long as half a pear. He limped ever so slightly. ‘The King really is the worst man I have ever had to deal with, the most false and with no redeeming qualities.’
The man still hadn’t noticed Pyke and continued, ‘And have you heard the King’s brother has recently returned from Hanover and is causing untold mischief?’ As he slumped into a chair next to Pyke, the man finally realised Peel was not alone.
That was how Pyke found himself sitting next to the Prime Minister, the grand old duke himself, and he smiled inwardly at the thought of what he could do in that moment. Pyke was not enamoured of the aristocracy, nor did the duke’s battlefield exploits impress him. He did not necessarily like or dislike the man, but simply because the opportunity had presented itself he imagined drawing out his pocket knife and driving it into the duke’s heart.
‘Arthur. Mr Pyke here and I were just discussing the relative merits of Machiavelli’s account of statecraft.’
‘Who? ’ The duke looked at Peel and frowned.
‘Mr Pyke is a Bow Street Runner.
‘Not him, dammit,’ the duke muttered, ignoring Pyke. ‘The other fellow.’
‘A Florentine consort, I believe. He wrote a book called The Prince.’
‘Oh.’ The duke turned back to face Peel and shrugged. ‘Why is this man relevant here?’
‘Machiavelli lived in the early sixteenth century . . .’
‘I’m not stupid, Robert. I meant this chap here,’ the duke said, motioning without enthusiasm at Pyke.
‘Mr Pyke was the man who discovered the bodies in St Giles.’
‘What bodies?’ The duke seemed both confused and annoyed. ‘I’m the Prime Minister and no one tells me a bloody thing.’
Peel looked at Pyke and said, ‘I think the Prime Minister and I need to have a talk . . .’
Pyke stood up and left.
FIVE
Lizzie’s gin palace did not, as the name might suggest, belong to Lizzie Morgan, the woman who occasionally shared Pyke’s bed. Nor did it belong to her father, George Morgan, who had once been a Bow Street Runner and had first initiated Pyke into the ways of earning additional income from the job. The establishment, which occupied a position at the north end of Duke Street, at the back of St Bartholomew’s Hospital and adjoining the livestock market at Smithfield, was owned by Pyke himself - the happy byproduct of a business arrangement that had also led to the capture and imprisonment of a notorious criminal. For a while, after this man’s conviction, his base of operations had remained vacant. Pyke had bought the lease with reward money paid to him by the grateful owner of valuables Pyke had recovered. He had then transformed it into a drinking establishment replete with plate-glass windows and gilt cornices, ornamental parapets, spittoons, gas lights and illuminated advertisements announcing the ‘medicinal’ properties of the gin on sale. Initially George, who had just retired from the Runners, had assumed the day-to-day running of the bar, but a stroke had subsequently confined him to his bed and propelled Lizzie into the limelight.
Pyke had christened it the Smithfield gin palace, but ever since Lizzie had put on her apron and taken over the running of the bar, most folk simply referred to it as ‘Lizzie’s place’.
It was after three in the morning by the time Peel’s carriage dropped Pyke outside the entrance. The main bar was deserted - the gas lamps had been switched off - and Pyke went straight up to his room, ignoring the powerful scent of human sweat, sawdust and alcohol. To his dismay, Lizzie was curled up in his bed, gently snoring. He envied her peace. Without waking her, he closed the door behind him and went back downstairs to the bar.
Pyke knew that sleep was beyond him, just as he also knew that he did not want to wake Lizzie and have to field well-meaning questions about where he had been and what he had been doing. But he could not settle in the empty bar and found himself yearning for someone to distract him from the unpleasantness of his own thoughts.
Even the laudanum, which he kept hidden away in a bottle behind the counter, did little to alleviate his anxiety.
A while later, still numb from the drug, he found himself walking, unaware of his surroundings or the biting wind, not knowing where he was going until he had reached the cobbled streets surrounding St Paul’s. The giant cathedral stretched so far above him that he could hardly see the starless sky.
When he couldn’t help himself, Pyke tended to prowl the streets around Wellington Barracks on Birdcage Walk, looking for ‘dollymops’: maids, shop girls and milliners who moonlighted as prostitutes to earn additional money and perhaps find someone to support them in a flat of their own. But given that he was half an hour’s walk from the barracks, he didn’t expect to find anyone except a street-hardened prostitute. Usually Pyke did not much care for their crude ways, preferring the faux innocence of girls who still believed in the possibilities of true love. This time he had no intention of being selective.
To his surprise, in a grubby all-night coffee house, he found a nervous red-headed girl, no more than sixteen years of age, wearing a loose coat over a tatty wool dress. Her nails had been chewed but were clean, and before she could tell him in a soft voice that she didn’t do this sort of thing, he thrust a crown into her shaking palm. It was more than treble the going rate. He took her hand and led her, firmly rather than forcefully, outside. Her resistance crumbled when she saw the colour of the coin.
Outside, when she tried to speak, Pyke pressed his hand against her mouth, harder than he had intended, and saw the fright register in her dull eyes. In other circumstances, he might have stopped to say something to her, reassure her, but on this occasion he was too far gone to stop himself. As he pushed her against a wall in an alley adjoining the coffee shop and guided himself into her, he closed his eyes and tried to block the image of what lay inside that metal pail from his head. Moments later, as Pyke emptied himself into the nameless girl, rigid with terror, in a series of grim spasms, he felt as though he were standing over the metal pail peering down at his own corpse.
At one o’clock the following afternoon, Pyke was awoken by the unmistakable sound of cattle and sheep being driven along the narrow street below towards the vast market. On market days, the entire downstairs would be filled with traders, drovers, buyers and meat cutters standing three or four abreast along the entire length of the mahogany counter, smearing animal blood from freshly slaughtered carcasses on to cheap glasses from which they drank their gin. Even without the window open, Pyke could smell the filth and mire of the market and hear the screeching din of ten thousand frightened animals squealing, bleating, lowing and awaiting their demise. In spite of the rosemary and lavender sprigs thrown liberally on the floors throughout the building, the whole place would soon smell of offal, excrement and dead flesh.
Lizzie must have heard him splashing his
face with water she had left in a bowl for him, because shortly afterwards she was in the room with him, wanting to know how he felt and where he had been until five in the morning, masking her suspicions with affection. She was an ungainly woman, sinewy and powerful despite her apparently slight frame, and easily capable of throwing a man twice her size out of the bar when it was called for. Up close, Pyke could smell the soap he had bought for her last birthday on her scrubbed skin and felt a pang of remorse: remorse that, despite her physical toughness, business acumen and loyalty to him, he was never more than ambivalent about the notion of sharing his bed and his life with her.
She had already lit his fire and piled it high with coal.
When he had finished telling her something about the previous day, downplaying the grimness of the murder scene and omitting his visit to Whitehall, her face was still creased with worry. According to rumours circulating in the bar, a Catholic family had been burned from its home in Saffron Hill and a man of Irish descent had been clubbed to death in Hoxton.
Pyke asked whether she had heard anything at all about the dead family. Lizzie shook her head.
‘Should I be worried ’bout you?’ she said, after a few moments of awkward silence.
Pyke reached for the trousers he had tossed on to the floor. ‘I’ll not be able to see you much in the next few weeks.’
‘And you don’t think I’m used to that by now?’
Pyke stared out of the window.
‘That’s all I’m owed, is it? A quick pat on the head and some words that don’t mean a ha’penny.’ Her skirt clung to her legs, emphasising the thickness of her calves.
‘Lizzie?’
She looked up at him, surprised perhaps by the sudden tenderness of his tone.
He almost managed a smile. ‘You know that you’re a better woman than I deserve.’
Her expression filled with sadness and, as she turned to leave the room, her attempt to provoke a discussion dissolved into the space between them.
Pyke 01 - The Last Days of Newgate Page 6
