Come the Fear (6 page)

‘I'd be very careful if I were you, Mr Walton. You don't know us here.'

‘Not yet, perhaps,' he conceded. ‘But I've been watching and learning. I have an advertisement in next week's newspaper. We'll see if there's a demand for what I do.'

‘And if there's not?'

The thief taker gave a confident grin. ‘There will be. People are people, it doesn't matter where you go.'

‘I'll be watching you,' the Constable told him.

‘Of course.' Walton raised his hands. ‘What do I have to hide, Mr Nottingham? I've told you my plans.'

‘I'll wait and see what happens.'

The man ducked his head. ‘I'll bid you good day, Constable.'

He watched the man walk away with his sure stride, looking around as he went. Nottingham didn't trust him. Beneath the words he could make out the stink of evil, strong and sulphurous. He'd paid Walton little mind before; now that would have to change. Rob's father published the
Mercury
; they'd be able to see the advertisement before it appeared. Then he could keep an eye on the man.

He made his way back up Briggate, past the shit and piss that clogged the runnels in the street, hearing the Saturday market in full cry beyond the Moot Hall, the vendors yelling, ‘What do you need? What do you lack?' and the sounds of voices shouting and haggling furiously.

He turned the corner on to Kirkgate and saw the woman waiting by the door of the jail. Her hands were clasped in front of her and she glanced patiently at all the faces that passed, her face expressionless.

‘Mistress?' he asked. ‘Can I help you?'

‘I'm waiting for t' Constable,' she said.

‘I'm Richard Nottingham,' he told her. ‘I'm the Constable.'

He waited until she was seated. Her features had the sharpness of someone who'd never eaten her fill, the skin drawn and wrinkled. She was no older than him, he judged, but time weighed her down. Work had gnarled the knuckles of her hands into awkward shapes, the skin raw and red. Her dress was dowdy and ill-fitting on her thin body, the material worn thin.

‘How can I help you?'

She held his gaze with her clear blue eyes.

‘I'm Alice Wendell. It's about my lass,' she said. ‘Mebbe it's summat and nowt, but I don't know where she is.'

‘What's her name?'

‘Lucy. Lucy Wendell. She turned sixteen last month.'

He said nothing. At sixteen the girl could have gone off anywhere, with anyone.

‘How long's she been missing?' he asked.

‘I don't know,' she answered and he looked up sharply. ‘She were working as a servant but she never came home on her day off. And when I went to ask about her all they'd say was that she'd been dismissed. Wouldn't even tell me when she'd gone.'

‘What do you want me to do, Mrs Wendell?' Nottingham wondered.

‘Go and ask,' she said bluntly. ‘They'll tell you when they let her go. You're the Constable.'

‘I'll do that if you want,' he offered, ‘but it might not help you find her.'

‘Aye,' she agreed. ‘I know that. It's somewhere to start, though. She were never the brightest lass, you see. It was always better when there was someone to look after her.' Her face softened as she talked about the girl. ‘Me, her brother, the people where she worked.' When she lifted her face he could see her anguish. ‘I don't know what she'd do on her own.'

‘Who was she working for?' Nottingham asked.

‘Cates. You know him, the merchant? She was a maid up with him and his family.'

He knew them. They owned one of the new houses up at Town End, out where Leeds was pushing out into the countryside and the air was cleaner. Ben Cates had done very well from the wool trade over the years. He'd served on the Corporation, an alderman who'd used his connection to gather even more riches to himself.

These days, though, he left most of the work to his sons, Robert and William. But from the fragments of gossip the Constable had heard, he wasn't ready to give them their heads completely yet; he still kept a wary eye on the business.

‘I'll go and have a word with them and find out what I can for you,' he said. ‘And how will I find you, Mrs Wendell?'

‘Down on the Calls. They know me there.'

‘Where they had the fire.' He thought of the body they'd found. Could she have been the girl?

‘Aye,' she agreed sadly, ‘it were a bad business, that. Only t' other end of the street from me an' all. Just as well those Grants had done a flit the week before, they had three little ones.'

‘I'll go and talk to Mr Cates this afternoon,' the Constable promised.

‘Thank you.' She stood, back carefully straight, head high.

‘I have a daughter myself. I understand.'

She gave him a short nod and left. He sat back and sighed. He'd heard the pain behind her request and understood just how much it had cost her to come and ask this favour from him. She was like so many women he knew in Leeds, strong because she had to be, relying on no one to get through life, trying desperately to keep the edges of her family from fraying apart. But there were few happy endings for the poor in this world.

He'd go and ask his questions and find the answers. They wouldn't give her any comfort, and she knew that as well as anyone, but she needed them anyway. Cates had seemed reasonable enough whenever they'd met. By all accounts he was a hard man but at least he wasn't a bad one.

The merchant was at home, working at the polished desk in his library. An expensive, full-bottomed wig had been casually thrown aside on a table, a thin dusting of powder on the wood around it. The windows were open on the garden, drawing a light breeze into the room. Nottingham saw the books packed tight on shelves along one wall, and thought how much Emily would love something like this one day.

‘Constable.' Cates rose and extended his hand. The man had grown portly in the last few years, Nottingham thought, chins fleshy and sagging into his collar and over his stock. His coat was good wool, flatteringly cut, the breeches tight around a pair of heavy thighs, his long waistcoat gaudy yellow and blue silk. ‘Sit down. What brings you here? Nothing wrong, is there?'

‘No,' the Constable answered, settling carefully on a delicate chair of fine wood, its legs thin as spindles. ‘Just a question about someone who used to be a servant here.'

Cates snorted. ‘Lucy Wendell?'

Nottingham nodded.

‘Her mother was round here yesterday, wanting to know about the girl,' he said brusquely. ‘I told her I'd had to dismiss her.'

‘She was hoping for more. The girl seems to have vanished.'

‘No surprise,' the merchant said dismissively. ‘I've had dogs with more brains than her. Someone had to watch her the whole time or she'd be off in a daydream.'

‘I see.'

‘That wasn't the reason I got rid of her. I could have lived with idleness, you can whip it out of them. But she was pregnant. I hadn't noticed, what with her apron, but my wife saw it. I had her in and asked her.' He shook his head. ‘I'm not sure she even understood what I meant. But I had to turn her out. Didn't want the girl whelping here.'

‘What did she say?'

Cates waved his hand. ‘Cried, the way they do. But she was out that afternoon.'

‘How long ago was this?' the Constable wondered.

‘A month?' The man thought. ‘Aye, it was four weeks ago, I remember. We'd just made a big sale to Spain the day before.'

‘How long did you employ her?'

Cates calculated for a moment.

‘Six months, as near as dammit. Too long, really, for what little she could do.'

‘Thank you.' Nottingham stood. He'd learned what he needed.

‘You're wondering why I didn't tell her mother, aren't you?' He sighed. ‘How do you tell someone her daughter's not only stupid but a slattern as well?'

‘I understand,' the Constable told him.

‘I didn't think she'd come to you.'

Nottingham looked at him calmly. ‘I don't think she had anywhere else to turn, Mr Cates.'

He walked back down Briggate. The market had ended and the men were packing away their wares, laughing and boasting and comparing profits. Somewhere in the distance he could hear the rough, raw scrape of a fiddle. Ragged, hopeful children darted out of the shadows to grab at fruit that had fallen, holding it close, a meal for the night, survival until tomorrow. He'd been one of them himself, long ago in a lifetime he'd put away. After his father, one of the merchants, had thrown out his wife and son, they'd had to scrabble on the streets. His mother had become a whore and Nottingham had lived by theft, work, anything to keep body and soul together.

A pair of women wandered like ghosts through the detritus, eyes sharp for anything they might be able to use, scraps of food, pieces of tin, a dress too ripped or threadbare to sell. They moved silently, hopelessly, so pale and thin they looked like wraiths caught between life and death. One he'd seen for at least five years, her back bent and her grey hair lank, no expression on her face. He took a coin from his breeches and slid it into her cold hand. She didn't even look up at him. Sometimes he believed that the line between the poor and the dead could barely be seen.

Once he reached the Calls he only had to ask once to find the address he needed. It was a single room in a cellar, the only light a window high in the wall that would never catch the sun.

She owned little, but she kept it clean, the place spotless and scrubbed, a coat and dress hanging from a nail on the wall, a sheet folded carefully over the straw of the mattress in the corner.

‘You've seen him, then?' Alice Wendell asked, her back straight, her gaze direct.

‘Yes.'

She waited quietly for his response, her face composed, eyes intent on him.

‘Cates dismissed her four weeks ago,' he began. ‘He wasn't happy with her work, but mostly it was because she was with child.' He paused. ‘That's why he didn't want to tell you.' The woman remained still. ‘He said she didn't even seem to know she was going to have a baby.'

‘Aye, that'd be Lucy,' she said in a soft, tired voice. ‘She's a lovely lass but she's not always in this world. Someone will have had his way with her and she'll not even remember who it was.'

‘I'm sorry,' the Constable told her. She put a hand on his arm.

‘Nay, it's not your fault, lad. There's plenty happy to take advantage of a girl like that. Now I have to find her before anything else happens.' The woman sighed. ‘She'll be too ashamed to come back here where I can look after her.'

‘I can have my men keep their eyes open for her.'

‘Thank you.' For the first time, she gave a brief smile. Four weeks was a long time; he knew she understood that. The chances of finding the girl were small. But it cost nothing to have the men keep watch.

‘What does Lucy look like?'

‘She's easy enough to spot, is our Lucy. Lovely long, pale hair and blue eyes. But you can't miss her. She has a harelip.'

‘A harelip?' His head jerked up and he thought again of the girl from the fire.

‘Aye,' the woman said with slow resignation, as if she'd had to explain it too many times before. ‘You know what they say, don't you? If a woman sees a hare when she's carrying the child, it'll be born with a harelip. Well, I never saw one when I was big with Lucy, I'll tell you that for nowt.' She shook her head angrily. ‘All those bloody tales and she's had to pay for it her whole life. They've allus made fun of her.'

‘Is there anywhere else she could have gone?'

‘Only to her brother. There's just been the three of us since my man died, and they were just bairns then. But our Peter would have brought her back here if she'd turned up, I know he would.'

‘Where does he live?' Nottingham asked.

‘Queen Charlotte's Court, up off Lady Lane. Him and his girl have a room up there.'

‘How tall is Lucy?'

‘There's not much to her,' Alice Wendell said tenderly. ‘Thin as a branch and smaller than me.'

He looked at her, seeing the love for the girl in her eyes, and knew he had to tell her. ‘You'd better sit down, Mrs Wendell.' She looked at him curiously.

‘We found a body in the fire last week,' he began. He'd spare her the brutal details. ‘A girl who was pregnant. From what I could see, she might have had a cleft lip. It looks as if someone killed her before the blaze.'

For a moment he wasn't certain she'd understood him. Then slowly, by small degrees, her face crumpled and she brought up her worn hands to cover it.

‘I'm sorry,' he told her.

‘Why?' she asked eventually, her words muffled. ‘What was she doing there? Who'd do that to my Lucy?'

‘I don't know. But I'll find out.'

He stood, knowing there was no solace he could give now, then he closed the door quietly behind him, leaving the woman to a lifetime of mourning.

Back at the jail he sat and stared. The girl had been gone four weeks, and a little more than seven days had passed since they'd found the bodies after the fire. Now he had a name for her: Lucy Wendell. Pregnant and with a harelip, who else could it have been? He had somewhere to begin.

But that meant she'd been somewhere for three full weeks before she was murdered. Twenty-one days was a long time.

Lister was yawning, barely awake after the long Saturday night. There'd been something in the air; he'd lost count of the fights they'd broken up, men filled with ale and looking for violence. They'd cracked heads, put some in the cells to face the Petty Sessions, and taken blows. His cheek ached where someone had hit him and he had a kerchief wound round his hand to staunch the blood from a cut to his palm. At least no one had died, although one seemed unlikely to survive, cut deep in the chest with a long tanner's knife.