The Revenge of Captain Paine (44 page)

In the taproom Pyke retrieved his pistols and shirt from the landlord. He couldn’t see out of one eye and his head throbbed with pain, but apart from that he felt all right. He was alive. That was the most important thing.

The man with the coiled whiskers slapped him on the back. ‘That was quite a performance.’ But he was wary of Pyke now. There was fear in his voice.

‘The address.’

‘A half mile farther along this street, opposite the turn for Porter’s Field, there’s a brothel run by an old dowdy called Bennett. Trotter’s taken a room there.’

‘There’s another man called Bolter. He sometimes fights a mastiff, Copper, here. You know him?’

‘Aye, I seen him.’

‘But you don’t know where I can find him?’

The man shrugged apologetically.

Pyke tucked the pistols into his belt and turned to leave.

‘Why don’t you stay for a drink?’ the whiskered man called out. ‘Well, be careful, then. Trotter’s not a fella you want to turn your back on.’

But Pyke made it only a few steps out of the tavern before the effects of the fight, together with the alcohol and laudanum, caught up with him. He felt dizzy and nauseous, in no condition to take on someone as dangerous as Trotter. If the giant had come at him with fists like anvils, Trotter would be armed with pistols and knives. He found a scrub of land set back from the street with a ragged hawthorn bush in the middle of it. He lay down behind the bush, out of sight of the street, and within a few moments he had passed out.

 
A dog’s bark woke Pyke just before dawn. He sat upright and looked around him, trying to gather his bearings and remember where he was. The throbbing in his head had subsided to a dull ache but the bruise under his eye had swollen up still further, making it all but impossible for him to see out of it, and the inside of his mouth tasted as if a cat had defecated into it during the night. Standing up, he checked to make sure he still had his purse and the two pistols and gently touched the bruise under his eye. Through the rows of houses and derelict cottages he could just about see the river, dappled by the early morning sunlight. He stretched and let out a brief yawn. He didn’t feel
good
but he felt better than he had done when he had left the tavern. Tooley Street was deserted and it took him only ten minutes to walk to the brothel, a tenement building that had long since fallen into disrepair. His watch told him it was half-past five. It wasn’t likely there’d be anyone up at such an early hour, but if Trotter was there, and asleep, it would be a good time to surprise him.

It took him a few minutes of continuing banging on the door to raise the harridan who ran the brothel. Grumbling, she unbolted the door from the inside and peered around the edge of it. Pyke dug the barrel of his pistol into her cheek and whispered, ‘I just want Jimmy Trotter. Tell me where I can find his room and I’ll let you get back to bed. It’ll be like I was never even here. Nod your head once if you understand.’

She nodded.

‘Is he here?’

‘I don’t know,’ she croaked. ‘But he owes me a week’s rent. You can tell him that if you see him.’

Pyke pushed her back into the gloomy hallway and closed the door behind him. It smelled of fried fish and mould.

‘Which room?’ With the hand not holding the pistol, Pyke dug into his pocket and produced a half-crown.

That settled the matter. She snatched the coin from his hand and muttered, ‘Up the stairs to the back of the building. Last door on your right.’ Slamming the door behind her, she disappeared into her apartment. After that everything went quiet. He heard a mouse or a rat scurry across the floorboards above him and somewhere on the street a cockerel had begun to crow.

As quietly as he could, Pyke started to mount the rickety staircase, two steps at a time, his pistol still in his hand. A certain amount of creaking could not be avoided. At the top of the stairs he paused, to give his eyes time to adjust to the darkness, and surveyed the long, narrow passageway. It wasn’t fried fish he’d smelt earlier, he realised. It was the stink of stale sex. Halfway along the passageway Pyke hesitated again, this time because he heard voices in one of the rooms. A prostitute and her mark, he hoped. Startled by his presence, a tiny field mouse bolted from its hiding place and fled past him in the direction of the stairs. He edged farther along the passageway and waited, listening for any sounds. There were none. At the end of the passageway he stopped, checked to see his pistol was cocked and took a couple of breaths. The only sound he could hear was the beating of his own heart.

He kicked the door open with the heel of his boot and stepped into the tiny room. Jimmy Trotter, naked apart from a pair of underpants and his work boots, was urinating into a bucket. Bleary eyed, he looked up, startled at first, and then smiling. His beard and whiskers were more ragged and overgrown than Pyke remembered. He could have shot him then but he needed Trotter to answer some questions and perhaps Trotter sensed his indecision. Pyke raised the pistol to his face and said, ‘Move slowly and quietly back into the room and keep your hands where I see them.’

Trotter finished his piss, tapping his flaccid penis to get rid of the last drops.

‘Do you know where I can find my wife and child?’ Up close, Trotter had a pungent, feral scent, but his body was lean and hard.

‘Best place I’ve ever lived,’ he said, casually. ‘If I’m hard in the morning, I just go next door and get the biter to French-kiss me.’ His grin revealed gums that were black and bloody and his naked flesh was gnarled, like old leather.

‘I asked you a question. If you don’t answer, I’ll blow a hole in your face the size of a grapefruit.’

‘I don’t know anything about your piece . . .’ He licked his lips and raised his one good eye to meet Pyke’s stare. ‘Except I’ve heard she’s a screamer and she likes it hard and rough.’ Wiggling his hips to simulate the sex act, Trotter grinned more broadly. ‘I heard she likes to fuck horses, too.’

‘You move another muscle in your body and you’re dead.’ Pyke kept the pistol trained at Trotter’s head and thought about the unspeakable things Trotter had done to the old woman at the navvy camp in Huntingdon. ‘Tell me why you made a threat against her in St Paul’s.’

‘That upset you, eh?’

‘More than pulling the trigger and decorating the wall behind you with pieces of your skull.’ Pyke poked the end of the pistol harder into his cheek. ‘Who told you about my wife? And what were you doing following me?’ He had other questions, about the old woman in Huntingdon, the actor Johnny and Freddie Sutton and his wife, but he would start here.

When he moved, Trotter was as quick as a whip. In a single movement he picked up the metal bucket and hurled it as Pyke at the same time as diving for something next to his mattress.

Pyke aimed and squeezed the trigger. The blast was deafening in such a confined space and the ball-shot tore into Trotter’s flesh, shattering his ribs and peppering his heart. The contents of the bucket, Trotter’s urine, stung his eyes and mouth.

Trotter fell on to the mattress, a pool of blood spreading beneath him. Turning him over, Pyke stood above him, whispering, ‘Where can I find my wife and child? Try doing one good thing before you die.’ He could smell Trotter’s urine on his face and clothes.

A blast of fetid air escaped from Trotter’s mouth and blood pooled around his chest. He was trying to whisper something. Pyke came closer. ‘What was that?’

‘I hope the bitch and brat die.’ His head lolled backwards and the spasms stopped. Blood continued to leak from the wound but Jimmy Trotter was dead.

Pyke gave the room a quick search but apart from a knife that he kept next to his mattress there was nothing of interest. Downstairs he found the madam, Mrs Bennett, and paid her five pounds to arrange to have the body thrown into the river. He asked her about Bolter and the dog and whether they had ever visited Trotter, but she shook her head and said she’d never seen them.

Pyke had shot a man but didn’t feel a thing: neither vindication nor relief, despite the unforgivable crimes that Trotter had committed. Still, as he walked back along Tooley Street in the direction of the river, he thought about what Trotter had said and experienced a sudden flutter in his heart.
I hope they die
. It suggested to him that Emily and Felix were both still alive.

 
At half-past midday he met Godfrey’s lawyer, Geoffrey Quince, a King’s bencher no less, on the other side of Bow Street from the magistrates’ court. He had bought a new set of clothes and had washed himself in a tub of icy water in the kitchen of number forty-four but he could still smell his own sweat. Quince didn’t seem to notice or care and didn’t comment on the bruise under Pyke’s eye or his broken nose. Either he was completely unobservant, Pyke decided, or very diplomatic.

‘Did you see Bellows, then?’ Pyke asked, once they had found a seat in the nearby Brown Bear tavern.

Quince nodded. He placed his stovepipe hat on his lap and adjusted his pale grey cravat. ‘But the man you described, Julian Jackman, wasn’t being held in any of the cells or the felons’ room.’ He glanced disparagingly around the smoky room. ‘To be honest, there wasn’t anyone down there who didn’t look like they belonged.’

‘And how was Bellows when you demanded to be allowed to inspect the cells?’

Quince shrugged. ‘He didn’t seem concerned one way or the other.’

Silently Pyke cursed his luck. He’d hoped that finding Jackman might shed some light on what had happened to Emily, and now he didn’t know where else to look for the radical.

‘Did he admit to playing a role in the raiding of various haunts frequented by the radicals in the East End?’

Quince paused to consider this. ‘I think he might have smiled a little when I put the question to him but he chose not to answer it.’

‘Smiled? As if he was amused?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps it wasn’t a smile. Look, Pyke, I did what you wanted me to do and your friend wasn’t there. Perhaps Bellows had some idea why I was there but then again perhaps he didn’t.’

‘And he didn’t come across as nervous, as if he was trying to hide something?’

‘I don’t understand.’ Quince stared down his long nose at Pyke. ‘What would the chief magistrate be trying to hide?’

 
That afternoon, while he waited for Townsend to see whether there had been any further news delivered to the bank or Hambledon, he paid Barnaby Hodges a visit at his gaming house in Regent’s Quadrant. He was a squirrelly, ferret-faced man with sharp features and a mop of raven-black hair, and he agreed to talk to Pyke only when Jem Nash’s name was mentioned. Pyke also let it be known that he was an associate of Villums. That helped to open doors as well.

‘I’m presuming Villums explained that your boy owed my establishment just over seven thousand pounds when he was killed.’

‘Don’t get excited,’ Pyke said, staring at Hodges across his desk. ‘I’m not here to settle his debt.’

Hodges wrapped his spindly fingers around a glass of whisky and brought it up to his lips. ‘I heard you’d made him a minor partner in the bank. I talked to my lawyer. We would be within our rights to claim our debt against his share of your profits.’

‘If you want to try, be my guest.’

Hodges drank some more of the whisky. ‘Ned Villums warned me about you. Said I should be especially careful in your company.’

‘I just want to know whether you or anyone sent by you had any contact with Jem Nash on the night he was killed.’

Hodges sat back in his chair and looked around his small office. ‘Like I told Ned, I sent one of my best men to chivvy Nash along a bit. He disappeared around the time that Nash was murdered.’

‘And you haven’t seen or heard from him since?’ Pyke regarded him sceptically.

‘That’s right.’

Abruptly Pyke stood up and pulled down his frock-coat. ‘I won’t take up any more of your time.’

‘If you hear something from my lawyer,’ Hodges called out after him, ‘try not to take it personally.’

 
But when six rolled around Townsend brought him no further news. Jo had passed word from Hambledon that no ransom letter had been delivered there. Nor had there been any word from Gore.

It had been more than four days since the abduction and Pyke was still no closer to finding Emily and Felix.

For an hour or so after Townsend had left, he wandered up and down the staircase of the enormous house, both to keep warm and to try to think of anything he might have missed. The Ionic columns of the first-floor mezzanine and the cut-glass chandelier that hung from the roof seemed to mock his pretensions, and the architectural flourishes, which he had initially found so entrancing, now seemed to be no more than bloated monuments to his vanity. As his footsteps echoed right the way up into the dome he tried to reassure himself with the thought that he had only paid a deposit and hadn’t committed himself for the whole year.

In the grand chamber room - that was what the agent had called it, anyway - Pyke built a fire using the last of the kindling wood and tried to warm his hands, but the flames were weak and the wood quickly burned down. To replenish the fire, he ripped down the velvet curtains so carefully installed by the upholsterer, tore them into strips and fed them to the fire. Gleefully he sat cross-legged in front of the blaze and inspected his work. But the curtains didn’t last long. Before long he had broken up the Hepple- white table and chairs and loaded them on to the burgeoning fire, and soon after that there was nothing left in the room to burn. As he stared into the flames, Pyke retrieved the bottle of laudanum from his pocket, removed the cork stopper and pressed it to his lips. He drank until the sickly clear tincture was gone.

It was dark and now he had burned the velvet curtains he could see outside to the square. The trees were bare and it had started to rain, little drops beating against the glass window. He stared into the darkness. Somewhere out there was Emily, pregnant with his child. And poor, frail little Felix. Settling himself by the fire again, he tried to get warm but the blaze had dwindled to nothing and he was soon shivering. Even the gin he drank on top of the laudanum failed to combat his shakes.