The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins (36 page)

I nodded, struggling to keep an even expression. I understood her meaning. If I was willing to accuse Alice of Burden’s death and use the dress as evidence, I would be free to leave. Otherwise – I would not escape St Giles with my life. I pretended to consider the proposition. Rubbed my face wearily. ‘Yes. Very well.’

I rose to my feet, turning to the window. It was still dark, but the roofs were covered in snow that glowed in the moonlight. Gabriela rose too. She was very beautiful in this strange half-light. I had been watching her for so long that I hardly noticed the scar any more, though it cut so deep through her brow, and down to her jaw. She leaned closer, and for a strange, fluttering moment I thought she meant to kiss me. But no, no – I caught the tightening around her eyes. The sudden set to her mouth. I leaped back just as she sprang forward, pulling the brooch from her chest. Not a brooch but the hidden top of a dagger, slid between her breasts.

I was a
good man
. And she had not believed me.

She swiped again with the blade, and I threw myself back, stumbling towards the balcony. The dagger sliced along my arm. I felt a sharp sting and then warmth as the blood began to flow. She was shouting now too, calling for aid.

I barrelled through the door out onto the balcony, groping desperately for the ladder. And now the household was in uproar – I could hear cries from below as Fleet’s men responded. The first footsteps upon the stairs. A moment later Eva ran into the room.

‘Ma!’ she gasped, her face white. ‘Ma, no!’

Gabriela spun around, distracted. I grabbed the ladder and flung it across the gap. It hit the roof opposite with a dull thud, knocking away a patch of fresh snow. I had to clamber up – it was the only way across to safety. But all Gabriela had to do was snatch the ladder from this side and I would fall. I hesitated, clutching my wounded arm. And suddenly Eva pushed her way past her mother, throwing herself between us.

‘
Eva!
’ Gabriela snapped, furious.

‘
Go!
’ Eva hissed.

Without another thought, I clambered on to the ladder. It bowed under my weight, rocking a little with no one to hold it steady. I inched my way along, terrified that Gabriela would shove Eva aside and I would be tipped from the ladder to my death. But no, here was the rooftop ahead of me. I flung myself up on to the icy timber. The ladder scraped from the roof and crashed to the ground.

I lay on my back, the sky spinning above me as the cold air caught my breath. Snow melted through my clothes.
Stand up, stand up.
I rose carefully to my feet. Rooftops, stretching out far into the distance.
Frosted
rooftops, ice sparkling in the halflight. I put one foot out and it skated ahead of me. One careless step and I could break my neck.

On the balcony below, Gabriela was pointing up at me. One of Fleet’s men clambered down to collect the ladder, rested it against the house below me. He began to climb up to meet me.

I slid carefully to the other side of the roof. There was a balcony below. I jumped down, then dropped from there to the street, landing heavily on my hands and knees. I pulled the dagger from my coat and ran down Phoenix Street. If I could reach the Garden, the market traders would be filling the piazza. Fleet’s men would not risk attacking me in such a public fashion – it was not their way.

The streets were quiet and I must have seemed half-crazed, even for St Giles, with my dagger in hand. Who would risk attacking a man under James Fleet’s protection? And then, as I turned a corner he was there, in front of me. I ran straight into him.

We stared at each other, the one as surprised as the other. And I thought of the man behind me, only a few paces away.

Fleet recovered first. ‘Hawkins. What the devil . . .’

‘Gabriela. Sir, you must go to her now. She’s in danger. Run, sir, run!’

A tumble of words that made no sense. Only that I knew now his one weakness. How much he loved his wife, and the lengths to which he would go to protect her.
Gabriela. Danger
. It was enough. He didn’t stop to wonder why I was in St Giles. Why I was running in the opposite direction. He thought only of his wife. He ran towards her, and I fled through the streets, faster than I had ever run in my life.

As I reached the turning to Long Acre, I was almost crushed beneath the wheels of a vegetable cart. I leaped to the pavement, panting hard, my heart hammering against my chest.

‘You stupid arsehole!’ the cartman yelled over his shoulder. ‘Almost killed you!’

I waved my apologies. People were staring. My stockings were soaked and ripped from my scrabble across the rooftop, my wig and hat lost in the chase.

I didn’t care. I was safe – and I had the truth. Now I must decide how to use it.

Chapter Eighteen

^‘
You must leave the city. At once.’

I leaned over the hot punch and breathed in its steam. ‘I know, Betty. I know.’

We were hidden in a quiet corner at Moll’s. I’d sat at this table many times before, nursing a sore head after another night’s debauch. But it was not liquor that made my head pound now, or my hands shake. I reached for my tobacco and built another pipe, conscious of Betty studying me hard under those thick black lashes. She knew that I had run foul of Fleet’s gang, nothing more. Anyone who knew Gabriela’s story would be in danger, and I had no wish to put Betty’s life at risk.

I drank a glass of punch in silence. After the exhilaration and relief of my escape, here was the crash back down to earth. I should go home, pack my belongings and leave within the hour. But home meant Sam. I couldn’t face him, not yet. I couldn’t bear to look into those black eyes and see the truth staring back at me.

I had never felt so angry before. My body was shaking with it. I had witnessed cruelty before – even murder. But James Fleet’s crime, and Gabriela’s . . . surely even God couldn’t forgive it. They had corrupted their only son beyond all hope of return. A boy of fourteen. If I reached out and told this story to the man at the next table, his head bent low over his
Daily Courant
, he would shrug his shoulders. Some black-hearted villain from St Giles raises his son to be a killer. What of it? What news was this? Sam had lived among thieves and murderers all his life. Why should any of this matter? Son of a whore, son of a cut-throat gang captain. If any boy had been born and raised to kill, it was Sam.

But there were other paths he could have taken, with that sharp, inquisitive mind. He could have been a lawyer or a stockbroker or a physician or an anything he damned well chose, given time. And now? Even if he escaped the rope, those paths were closed to him for ever. He had stolen into a house and stabbed a man to death. It would shape the rest of his life. How could it not?

How could a father want this for his son? Even a killer such as James Fleet – did he not dream of better for his only boy? And I wondered – did he send Sam to me with an order to kill Burden? Or had he simply placed him next door and waited for the inevitable act? Did he think that absolved him of the sin? No – Fleet would care nothing of absolution. He was a murderer many times over. He
must
have ordered the boy to do it.

I thought of Sam creeping around the Burdens’ home at night, knife in hand.
Practising
. He’d confessed in that one word, but I’d refused to hear it. He’d tiptoed into Burden’s bedroom, ready to strike . . . only to find Alice Dunn curled up next to her master. An unexpected complication. He couldn’t kill Burden in front of a witness – she would have woken the whole house. So he’d waited for another night, when Burden was alone – then thrown suspicion on poor Alice.

I thought back to the night of Burden’s murder. Sam had been most anxious to let Alice take the blame. If she had run, as Sam had suggested, everyone would have believed she was the killer, instead of me. Had he pressed for this out of some twinge of loyalty, or guilt for placing me in danger? Or was Alice simply a more suitable scapegoat? Gentlemen don’t hang, as a rule. But a lowly servant, with no friends and no capital . . .?

I could no longer trust my feelings in the matter. What did I know of Sam, truly? This was the little moon-curser who just a few months ago had led me to his father’s gang to be robbed and beaten. And still I had trusted him. I’d followed that flickering torch without question through his narrow, twisted maze – and it had brought me here.

I didn’t blame Sam. If anything, I blamed myself. All this time he had spent under my roof and I did not have the wit to see he was in trouble. Jenny had warned me there was something wrong with the boy. He had sneaked into her room while she was sleeping, for God’s sake! If I had only paid more attention. If I had
listened
. Instead I had landed on some fool notion that Sam and I shared some unspoken affinity. I too had suffocated beneath my father’s expectations. The difference was, my father was a country parson. Sam’s father was a murderer.

I should have helped the boy, not colluded with him. Now it was too late and Sam was set upon a path that led only to more death, including his own. How many boys from St Giles had begun this way and ended up swinging from a rope before they even reached their twenties? I could be kind to myself and say that Sam’s fate was sealed the day he was born into that family of thieves and murderers, but I knew better. I was furious with James Fleet and with Gabriela – a white-hot anger pouring like burning metal through my veins. But I saved a portion of that anger for myself. Somehow, surely, I could have prevented this.

Betty touched my wrist, fingers brushing lightly against my skin. I blinked. How long had I been staring out across the coffeehouse, lost in thought? My pipe lay upon the table, burned-out. The man at the next bench had left, and a group of lawyers’ clerks had gathered by the fire, stamping their feet to thaw out their toes.

I took a last swig of punch. It had turned cold. ‘I must return home.’

Betty’s hand tightened about my wrist. ‘Fleet will be watching the Pistol. Mr Hawkins – you
must
leave London now. I can send a message to Miss Sparks.’ She leaned forward, forcing me to look her in the eye. ‘Go to my lodgings now and hide there. I can bring you clothes, food, coin – everything you need within the hour. There is a coach to the coast that leaves from the George . . .’

I scarce heard her.
Kitty.
I rose from the table, struck with a sudden fear. Kitty was at home, oblivious to the danger we were in. What if Fleet had sent his men to the shop? She wouldn’t know to bar the door to them. They could be there even now as I sat witlessly over a bowl of punch.

Betty gazed up at me as I stood, her lips pursed. ‘No one ever listens . . .’

‘One half-hour, that is all. I must fetch Kitty.’ I smiled. ‘Thank you, Betty.’ And on a whim I leaned down and kissed the disapproval from her lips.

She let me, just for a moment, then pushed me away. ‘Fool,’ she muttered.

The bells of Covent Garden were striking seven as I left Moll’s. Light had begun to build in the sky. The market on the piazza was still busy, the scent of ripe fruit and warm barley mingling with the pungent but not unpleasant smell of livestock. A knife sharpener had placed his cart beneath the sundial in the middle of the square. I winced as I passed, the high shriek of metal scraping along stone almost unbearable on the ear.

So – it was resolved. Farewell to London and the life I’d built here. My flight would convince the whole world of my guilt, but I would live and keep Kitty safe. The career of a gang captain was a short one. I had never seen a man hang at Tyburn older than forty.

Perhaps when James Fleet was dead, we might return and resolve matters. The taverns were full of villains who’d been transported and stolen home again to live in secret.

As I hurried through the square, I began to sense a crowd gathering at my back. More choice gossip for the scandalmongers of the Garden. I searched the crowds and rooftops for Fleet’s men but found only sullen glares from old neighbours who had once smiled and nodded in friendship. Was there something more sinister about their behaviour today? There was a boldness in their stares that unnerved me. I sensed a brewing anger, as if they had decided, en masse, that they had reached the end of their patience. A ripple of fear ran through me as I crossed briskly on to Russell Street. Anger of this kind could turn a crowd into a mob very fast – and a London mob showed no mercy.