Bloody Winter: A Pyke Mystery (17 page)

Johns appeared at the doorway and held up a leather satchel. Pyke let him go first and then followed him through the front door. They walked quickly to the end of the alley then ran. A minute or two later, they were out of China and crossing Jackson’s Bridge.

‘I took what I could fit into the satchel,’ Johns said, panting, once they had crossed the bridge.

‘There was more?’

‘We got most of it,’ he said. ‘Enough to send Wylde into a frenzy.’

‘He’ll have to recover from his pistol wound first.’

Lines appeared across Johns’ forehead. ‘What happened?’

‘He took a swing at me with a cudgel. I shot his hand.’ Pyke shrugged. ‘It will work in our favour.’

‘He’ll tear China apart looking for his money.’

‘All we have to do is make sure he finds what he’s looking for.’ Pyke gestured at the leather satchel.

Johns looked down at the river flowing beneath them. ‘You realise we’ve opened Pandora’s box?’

Pyke joined him at the iron rail. ‘It couldn’t be done any other way, not without the sanction of the magistrate and the police.’

‘We’ll have blood on our hands before this thing is finished.’ Johns turned to Pyke. ‘Are you ready for that?’

‘To be honest, I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t blood on my hands.’

Jonah Hancock was apoplectic when he heard about the police action in Bathesda Gardens and Quarry Row and spent a few minutes pacing around the drawing room in ever decreasing circles, venting his spleen. Had the police found his son? Who had authorised the action and why had no one consulted him? Didn’t the police understand that the raid could put the boy’s life in danger? Rumours were sure to circulate regarding the object of the search. Soon they would be inundated by possible sightings and people trying to claim that they had taken the boy.

‘Sit down, it’s exhausting just looking at you,’ Zephaniah barked from his armchair. ‘This all came from Smyth, didn’t it?’ The question was directed at Pyke, not his son.

Pyke nodded. ‘He would have learned of our discoveries at the house on Irish Row from Jones.’

‘This was a shot across our bows,’ Zephaniah said quietly. ‘It had nothing to do with finding the boy.’

Pyke explained that he’d persuaded Smyth to order his men back before the situation had spiralled out of control. ‘But it did make me wonder about the enmity that exists between him and your family.’

Jonah exchanged a wary look with his father. Eventually it was Zephaniah who said, ‘Perhaps it’s a simple case of envy – and money. At one time, I suppose, his would have been the foremost family in the town.’

‘I got the impression he thinks that the ironmasters aren’t contributing enough to the general well-being of the place.’

‘We pay the rate. It’s up to the Board to determine how it’s spent.’

Pyke thought about the lack of civic amenities but decided not to say anything more.

‘I take it they didn’t find anything,’ Jonah said. ‘Anything to indicate my son’s presence on Quarry Row …’

‘Not as far as I know.’

Jonah started to pace again. ‘So what do we do now?’

‘We wait.’

‘For someone to respond to the notice in the newspaper?’

‘For the kidnappers to get back in contact.’

‘Meanwhile my son has to spend another lonely night in some godforsaken place …’

‘We’ll hear something soon.’

‘And if we don’t?’

Pyke didn’t answer.

Pyke knew that sleep was beyond him and decided to take some night air. He found his way to the walled garden and sat down on the bench. The night was clear and cold and the sky was filled with stars. Within a minute or so, he heard footsteps crunching on the gravel path. Without turning, he knew who it was. The first thing he smelled was the gin on her breath. Wordlessly she sat down next to him. They remained silent for a moment or two.

‘Sometimes I look at myself and think I’m not a good person.’ Cathy edged a little closer to him.

‘I’m not sure I’ve ever judged people on the basis of their moral fibre.’ Pyke half-turned and saw her profile silhouetted in the moonlight.

‘I married him when I was eighteen. I agreed to the marriage because he was wealthy. Isn’t that a terrible thing?’

‘Why don’t you leave him?’

‘I’ve thought about it. I might have come close to actually doing it. But I wouldn’t go without my son, and Jonah would never let me leave with him.’

‘And now this has happened.’

An owl hooted in the distance. ‘In one sense, I suppose, it has brought us closer.’

‘And in another?’

Cathy laughed softly. ‘In my good moments I know my husband wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise our son’s life.’

Pyke said nothing, waited for her to continue.

‘In others, I wonder whether my father-in-law may be trying to use the situation to his advantage.’

‘In what sense?’

‘I don’t know.’ She turned to Pyke and tried to smile. ‘My husband has a complicated relationship with his father. He’s the elder but Zephaniah always makes it clear he favours his younger brother, Richard. As a result Jonah is always trying to prove himself. I suspect Zephaniah regards Jonah, and by extension our son, as weak. I know for a fact he’s always frowned on the way William cleaves to me.’

As Pyke listened, he tried to work out how the situation might benefit Zephaniah.

‘You do believe he’s out there, don’t you?’ Cathy added, turning to him. ‘That my son is still alive.’

Pyke could feel the warmth of her breath on his neck. Sensing what was happening, he tried to move away. ‘We can’t let ourselves believe otherwise. Your son is valuable to the kidnappers only as long as he’s safe and well.’

‘I do know that.’ She squeezed his hand and edged closer to him again. ‘But it’s nice to be reminded.’ Their shoulders were practically touching.

‘I’ve often thought how it would be if you ever came here to visit: what it would be like between us.’ She threaded her arm through his.

Pyke exhaled quietly. ‘I knew your father a long time ago.’

‘So?’

‘Whatever you think you might feel for me, it’s just nostalgia – and loneliness.’

Turning fully towards him, she slipped her arm around his neck, brushing her fingers through his hair. ‘Don’t say anything,’ she whispered, guiding him into an embrace.

It was a scalding, breathy kiss and its effect was like a kick to the guts. She pulled away and looked at him, her eyes shining. ‘Were you speaking for yourself just now?’

‘I meant I’m old enough to be your father.’ Pyke didn’t say it was just plain lust on his part, which would have been closer to the truth.

‘So’s my husband.’ Her lips were wet. She reached out and touched him on the cheek.

Suddenly he heard a twig snap and whatever had existed between them in the moment was broken. ‘Someone’s out there.’

‘
Where?
’

‘Over in those trees.’ Pyke saw something move in the shadows. He jumped up but whoever it was had disappeared by the time he reached the first line of trees. Once he had satisfied himself that this person wasn’t simply hiding near by, Pyke went to rejoin Cathy on the bench.

‘Are you quite sure it wasn’t just an animal? A fox, perhaps?’ Cathy was shivering from the cold.

‘No, it was a man.’

‘And do you think he saw us?’

‘I don’t know.’ Pyke turned to look at her.

Cathy seemed to have come to her senses and stood up, placing her cloak back over her head. ‘I should go.’

Pyke nodded but said nothing.

‘Come with me,’ Cathy said. ‘If we go back inside through the main entrance, even at different times, my husband will know.’ She led Pyke around to the very back of the building, the slope rising up behind them to their right, and came to a halt next to a door, concealed by a hedge, which seemed to lead not into the Castle but the side of the mountain.

Cathy opened the door and said, ‘Jonah doesn’t know I know about this. It’s how the prostitutes he fucks are smuggled into the Castle. When the place was constructed, his father had it included in the plans.’

Pyke followed her into the darkness, but once they were inside, she turned to him and said, ‘There was something I meant to ask you.’

‘Yes?’

‘It was a coat you found at the house on Irish Row, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s right. A winter coat.’

She nodded, as though she’d been expecting this answer. ‘I remember it was a mild day, unseasonably so.’

‘The day William was kidnapped?’

‘Yes.’ Cathy bit her lip. ‘I tried to make him wear a coat but he wouldn’t.’

‘You’re saying he wasn’t wearing that winter coat when the kidnappers seized him?’

‘I’m almost certain of it.’

‘But it was his coat? The one that turned up on Irish Row?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘So how did it get there?’

They stared at one another for a moment or two. Cathy didn’t have an answer for him.

A
fter a week, Knox managed to put the letter out of his mind. He hadn’t forgotten about it entirely but there were too many things to do; too many things to worry about. So when, more than two weeks after he’d sent it, he still hadn’t received a response from the son, he started to relax. Perhaps the letter had never arrived; perhaps Felix had moved address; or perhaps Knox had misunderstood the exact nature of his relationship to the deceased. Initially, when he’d heard nothing, Knox had considered writing another letter, this time to Scotland Yard, but he decided on reflection that this would have been pushing the matter too far. He had done his duty and his conscience was clear. In actuality he was glad that he’d received no letter from the son. It meant he didn’t have to worry about what Hastings would say – if and when he found out what Knox had done. Knox had been lucky not once but twice. In addition to the son’s silence, he had not been reprimanded for letting McMullan go free. Cornwallis must have forgotten to look at the list of defendants at the quarter sessions.

As January wore on, the weather remained cold and the ground frozen solid. This made digging new graves and burial pits next to impossible and meant a temporary cessation of most of the public works which, in turn, put new strain on the workhouses and the shambolic relief effort. Fifteen people died in the parish in the third week of the month – from disease, starvation or just from the cold – and by the end of the month the situation had deteriorated further. Each day, the newspapers would report on the arrival of a new shipment of corn from America, but what little of this made it to the depot in Cashel was too expensive for most people to buy. It was the same
story right across the island. Knox had read in the
Tip Free Press
that folk were dying in their tens of thousands and that no one in Dublin or London was doing a damn thing about it. Anger had given way to despair – and while the government ignored their suffering, the landowners squabbled among themselves about who would pay for the non-existent relief effort. The only ones who prospered were traders and undertakers.

Knox had received a letter from his mother informing him that all was well at home and that Peter was thriving in the new cottage. Though she hadn’t said so, the message seemed clear enough: carry on doing nothing. He’d wanted to visit them but his shifts at work hadn’t permitted this, and in any case he had his own family to worry about. Despite the food shortages, the constabulary were well provided for and James continued to grow. He seemed healthy and Knox felt as content as the circumstances permitted.

During the days, Knox and the other constables found themselves deployed away from the town, patrolling the lanes and fields of nearby estates in order to crack down on poaching and sheep-stealing. Aristocratic families like the Pennefathers and the Moores had complained to the authorities about the theft of game and livestock from their land, unable to acknowledge the link between their greed and short-sightedness and the worsening public order. If the great and the good refused to provide, the land would have to: snails and frogs were fried, hedgehogs baked, crows feathered and roasted, and foxes stripped to the bone and boiled for soup.

One evening, after a particularly long and gruelling day, Knox had come across a poem in the new edition of the
Nation
, sandwiched in between stories about the famine and a dispute between Daniel O’Connell, long seen as leader of Ireland’s quest for independence, and Young Ireland, a group who believed – unlike O’Connell – that blood would have to be spilled before Britain relinquished its grasp over the island. The poem mocked the ‘proud soldiers’ who guarded their ‘masters’ granaries’, and as Knox sat with Martha and the dog in front of the kitchen fire, it struck him that he was one of the poet’s targets.

Knox had spent much of his adolescence and the early part of his manhood trying to be good. It had been one of his mother’s earliest admonishments and certainly the one he had tried hardest to respect.
And it was true: Knox did try to be good. But what did that really mean? How good was he and did goodness matter when so many folk were dying? Was it
good
to uphold public order? Was it
good
to humble yourself before men like Asenath Moore? Surely to be good, in such a situation, was to resist such men. And yet each morning, in front of the sub-inspector, he nodded compliantly as he and the other constables were berated for failing to arrest more poachers and thieves.

The following morning, Knox prepared breakfast as usual and sat with Martha while she breastfed James. It was a clear, bitterly cold day and another flurry of snow had fallen during the night. Standing by the upstairs window, he looked out at the hedgerows shagged with ice. There would be more bodies today. He turned and watched Martha and James. ‘Sometimes I dread going to the barracks. I dread what might have happened in the night.’

Martha looked up from her breastfeeding. ‘I forgot to tell you. I came across a body yesterday at the end of the lane. Birds had pecked out the eyes. When I came back later, it was gone.’

‘Yellow Bill probably heard about it and carted it off to the burial pit.’