Chris Nickson - Come the Fear

He moved between the memorials, over to a space by the wall. A flat slab lay on the ground, placed there just a month or two before. It was simple, giving nothing away. Only the name Amos Worthy, and the years of his birth and death. Another connection to his own history severed by time. The man had been a criminal, a pimp, violent. But a long time before he’d also been the lover of Nottingham’s mother, something the Constable had only discovered two years before. It had created an odd bond between the pair.

Finally he shook his head to rouse himself and walked down the Calls. The builders had almost finished work on the house where Lucy had died, a new front wall in place, the timbers light and clean, the limewash standing out in brilliant white. He could hear the workmen inside, laughing and joking. Soon someone else would live there, and in time none would remember the fire or Lucy’s killing.

Alice Wendell answered the door as soon as he knocked, almost as if she’d been expecting him. The room was scrubbed spotless, each of the few pieces she owned precisely in its place. He knew it was her way of giving order to a world that had collapsed around her. And part of her nature. The air smelt of vinegar and her knuckles were red and raw from cleaning.

‘Tha’d best come in,’ she said and waited until he was in the only good chair by the window. The woman he’d met just a short time before seemed withered now. Her hair was grey, wiry, her cheeks sunken, the flesh of her face almost translucent, as if she was slowly fading from the world. On her arms the skin had become wrinkled and her dress seemed to hang even more loosely on her bony frame. ‘Have you found him?’

‘No,’ he told her, ‘and I don’t know where else to look. I need your help.’

‘What can I do?’ she asked bitterly. ‘Finding them’s your job.’

‘Sometimes we can’t do our job by ourselves.’ He gave her a gentle smile. ‘Who did Lucy spend time with? What about her friends?’

She shook her head.

‘There were only me and her brother. We were the only ones cared about her.’

‘Are there other relatives?’

‘Nay mister, I had two brothers but they both died when the children were just bairns.’

‘No cousins or anyone Lucy might have known?’

Alice Wendell snorted. ‘Oh aye, there’s plenty of them all right, not as they’d have owt to do wi’ her. Who wants to know a harelip?’

‘What about friends?’ the Constable wondered. ‘Lucy must have had some friends.’

The woman stared at him, her eyes empty and hard.

‘Their mams used to tell them to have nowt to do with her, that she were bad luck. You ever heard a girl crying because the others told her she had to go away before she brought curses on them?’

‘No,’ he admitted, but he understood how he’d have felt if it had happened to his daughters.

‘There were a time it happened over and over, back when our Lucy were still young.’ She rubbed briskly at her eyes. ‘After that she just stopped trying. It were her and me and Peter.’

‘What about your son’s girl?’ he asked. ‘How was she with Lucy?’

‘Have you seen her?’

Nottingham shook his head.

‘She’s no more than a twig, that lass.’ Alice Wendell stopped, as if she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to say more. Then she took a breath. ‘I’ll tell you, I know our Peter isn’t a good man. He spends his money on drink or he’s off in the Talbot putting money on the cock fighting. And when he’s in his cups or he’s lost his brass he takes it out on her.’

‘That happens,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ she agreed sadly. ‘My man drank but he were never like that. Never raised a fist to me or my children. He knew I’d have killed him if he’d tried. But Peter, he doesn’t care, and he’s strong from working at the smithy. I’ve seen her all bruises and bleeding. He broke her arm once.’

The Constable waited.

‘But he loved his sister. He protected her. He’d never have done owt like that with her.’ He lifted her eyes to meet his. ‘Or wi’ me, in case you thought. He stayed in line around me.’

‘So who could Lucy have turned to?’

‘Do you think I’ve not spent all my nights thinking about that?’ she asked him, her voice desperate. ‘Do you think I’ve not asked God why she couldn’t come here and feel safe?’

‘She said she couldn’t come because he might find her,’ Nottingham said. ‘Do you have any idea at all who she meant?’

Very slowly she shook her head. ‘Nay,’ she answered. ‘There’s no one.’

‘And you don’t know who got her with child?’

‘No,’ she answered firmly. ‘Unless it were one of them Cates.’

‘I don’t believe it was. I mean that,’ he insisted. ‘We’ve talked to them.’

‘Only because Lucy looked like that.’

He said nothing, knowing she was right.

‘Until we can discover more, we’re stuck,’ he explained. ‘I told you, we traced Lucy for part of the time after she left Cates’s, but then there’s nothing. You see why I need your help.’

‘I don’t know more than I’ve told you.’ She paused. ‘And what now? Do you stop looking?’

‘No. I’ll keep on,’ he promised her, standing up. ‘If I can, I’ll find whoever did this and make sure he hangs.’

He was at the door when she spoke again.

‘If I had money and lived in one of them big houses do you think all this would have happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ he answered her.

‘Then tha’ dun’t know much, dost tha’?’

She was right, the Constable thought as he walked back along the Calls. Money could keep life’s evils at bay. With money Lucy would never have gone for a servant. She’d have had nurses and folk would have liked her in spite of her disfigurement. Poor was a hard trick of fate.

He’d have to talk to Peter Wendell’s girl; the deputy had said she might know more than she’d said. It would be better if he went himself this time. If Sedgwick hadn’t managed to draw the truth out of her, the weight of authority might make a difference.

He walked up Briggate towards Queen Charlotte’s Court. He passed the Shambles with the bloody carcasses and cows and sheep on display in the butchers’ shops, the stink of the offal and dead meat filling his nostrils.

In the court he picked his way beyond piles of rubbish, slowly rotting down and foul, and climbed the stairs to the room. He tested each step before placing his weight on it.

He had to knock twice before she answered, opening just wide enough to see who was there.

‘You’re Anne, aren’t you?’ he asked with a smile. Her face was thin and wary, eyes moving around as if she was hunted.

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Richard Nottingham,’ he told her. ‘I’m the Constable of Leeds. Can I come in?’

The sheets had been quickly thrown over the pallet in the corner. The plates were dirty, flies hovering around them and crawling on the waste. She hadn’t emptied the night soil and the smell from the bucket brought bile into his throat.

The girl clutched a shawl around her thin shoulders but it couldn’t hide the bruises on her skin. They coloured her arms, some fresh, others fading into shades of blue and green and yellow. One eye was blacked, and when she opened her mouth he saw her two front teeth were missing.

‘Do you know why I’m here?’

‘It’ll be about Lucy,’ she answered, and he could hear the resentment in her voice.

‘Yes, it is,’ he said calmly. ‘When my deputy was here, he thought you perhaps didn’t tell him everything. I’m trying to find out who killed her so I need to know it all now.’ He kept his voice gentle and friendly, but glanced at her so she’d understand his meaning. Nottingham watched her, leaving her to say the next word or endure the silence.