Chris Nickson - Come the Fear

The kerchief was soaked in moments. The girl was breathing, but her eyes were closed, her hands limp and chilled, all the colour gone from her face. He could feel prickles of cold sweat on his back as he knelt, the fear she might never wake.

He had no idea how much time passed before the apothecary arrived, a wheezing, fat old man carrying his medicines in a large bag. Only as he began to examine the girl did the deputy look at the thief taker. The ball had smashed a hole in his scalp, and flies already covered the edges of wound. Dead and no loss to the world.

He felt as if something was separating him from everyone else. The people gathered around, almost thirty of them, rumbled with speculation on the servant girl, betting on whether she’d live or die, or casting glances at Walton, carefully making the sign of the evil eye after looking at the corpse. No one stared at him; it was as if he wasn’t there.

Finally he tossed a beggar boy a coin and sent him for the coroner, watching as the boy limped away.

‘Mr Sedgwick,’ the apothecary called, rousing him from thoughts that travelled nowhere. ‘She’ll be fine.’

The girl had her eyes open, although she seemed to struggle to focus. The man had stopped the bleeding and wiped her face clean. He took her hand.

‘I’m sorry,’ he told her, not sure whether she even understood him. He looked up and saw her friend. ‘I had to do it,’ he explained, even though the words seemed weightless, vanishing in the air. ‘I had to do it. Please, tell her that. There was nothing else I could do.’

Before the clock struck the hour it was all over. Willing hands lifted the girl and helped her home; she’d only be left with a scar and a memory of terror. Brogden the coroner pronounced the thief taker dead and Sedgwick sent one of the men for the Constable and then fetch an old door to carry the body to the jail.

He felt weary, his shoulders bowed as if the world had thrown its whole weight on to him. He slowly made his way home. A dead cat clogged the runnel in the middle of the street, water and piss puddling around it. He stepped over it and unlocked his door.

Lizzie sat slumped by the light of a candle stub, stirring as he walked in. Her face was in shadow, and as he moved closer he could see she’d been crying, the salt marks on her cheeks, her eyes brimming.

‘John,’ she said. Her voice was no more than a raw, husky whisper. ‘They said someone was dead. I thought it was you.’

He pulled her tight to him, her tears falling freely as she sobbed. Tenderly, he wiped them away with his fingertips, kissing her forehead, her hair, her lips.

‘I’m here,’ he told her, his lips close to her ear. ‘Everything’s fine, love. Everything’s fine now.’

She rested her head against his shoulder. Her fists grasped his coat tightly, the spasms slowly leaving her body. He could feel her warmth, her breath soft on his neck.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s go to bed.’

The Constable was late to the jail. The sun was full risen, carters arguing for right of way in the streets, servants out shopping or working in the heavy steam and harsh lather of the Monday wash. Lister sat at the desk writing his report and Sedgwick paced the room anxiously, pushing a hand through his wild hair.

Finally Nottingham arrived. His face was serious as he removed his coat and the tricorn hat and picked up the note addressed to him, then put it aside.

‘I’ve been to see the girl and the mayor,’ he said. ‘She’s well enough, she’s recovering and making sense. Another day or two and she’ll be back at work.’ He glanced up to see the relief on the deputy’s face. ‘The mayor wasn’t happy. It’s bad for the city to have a man killed on Briggate.’

‘I’m sorry, boss,’ the deputy said. He shook his head shamefacedly. ‘I just didn’t know what else to do. He’d got the girl.’

‘That’s what I told his Worship. He accepted it, finally.’

‘Thank you,’ Sedgwick said. ‘I know I was wrong yesterday, boss. I just wanted to say-’

The Constable held up his hand. ‘It’s done, John. But I’d go and see the lass, if I were you. She works for Alderman Wilkins.’ He smiled as the deputy’s face fell. ‘Don’t worry, the mayor will look after anything he might say.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘Right. Anything on the child snatcher?’ He looked between their faces as they shook their heads. ‘Rob, I’m going to need you to work as much as you can for now. We need to find whoever’s doing this before she can take someone else.’

‘She?’ Lister wondered in astonishment.

‘Mark Morrison said it was a woman in a blue dress with dark hair who said she’d take him back to his mother when he was lost. She gave him something to drink. That was all he remembered.’

‘So it’s a woman behind it all?’ Rob asked.

‘It looks that way.’

‘It could be a pair working together,’ Sedgwick offered, and the Constable sighed deeply.

‘That’s possible,’ he admitted.

‘So where do we look?’ the deputy said.

‘Mark was found at the south end of the Bridge,’ Nottingham answered slowly. ‘There were plenty of us out on this side of the river. I’ve been wondering if he was kept over on the far side.’

‘Enough folk over there,’ Sedgwick observed.

‘Then go out and ask them. See if anyone’s just moved into the street, if there were any strange sounds on Saturday. You both know what to do. I’m going to keep looking for whoever killed Lucy Wendell. Now go on. And John,’ he added, waiting until the men were at the door, ‘try not to kill anyone today, please.’ He winked as they left.

Once he was alone he broke open the seal on the letter. Inside it read simply, ‘Good job. Buck.’

He walked through to the cold cell. Walton’s body was still there, covered with an old, dirty sheet. There were stains by the head where blood and brains had leaked. Later today he’d be gone and buried in a pauper’s grave outside Leeds. At least that problem had been resolved. And, as he’d told the mayor, the city had been spared the expense of the hangman’s fee. For a few days the talk would be of the man shot on Briggate, but even more of how he’d tried to grab the girl. And the deputy would be able to go into any beer shop or inn and have drinks bought for him by men whose own courage would have failed them.

The Constable had hoped for the spectacle of a trial. He’d wanted to see the thief taker in the dock, confronted by his evidence and by testimony, all his pride stripped away. He’d thought that being from the capital would let him outwit the provincials. For once he’d looked forward to the obscure words of lawyers and judges. The verdict would have warned off others who thought Leeds an easy place.

In the end, though, there’d been justice. He hadn’t managed that for harelip Lucy yet. The more time that passed, the less likelihood that people would remember her; he knew that all too well. If it dragged on much longer her killer might never be found, and he couldn’t allow that to happen. The picture of her body, the small, charred mound of the foetus on her belly, was fixed clear in his mind. He’d never be able to put it aside. God alone knew that he’d seen plenty of brutality, men murdered, even the skin cut from their backs, but this horrified him even more. She’d done nothing, hurt no one.

With nowhere else to turn, he decided to talk to her mother again. There might be something, some small idea, some thread he could follow that would lead somewhere. First, though, he needed to make his own visit to the dead.

At the churchyard he realized he hadn’t been to Rose’s grave as often since the stone had been set in place. His heart was still full of her, he could hear the quiet sound of her laugh and see her smile, but the memories were growing gauzy and fainter as time passed. He knelt, placing his hands on the ground where grass had grown in full, deep green and breathed slowly, ashamed of himself for letting her go but knowing he could do nothing else.