James McGee - Resurrectionist

It was Hawkwood’s first visit to the Dog, though it wasn’t his first visit to a house of call. There were a dozen similar establishments within a square-mile of the market and the Dog was the fourth on Hawkwood’s list following the gravedigger’s tip-off that Edward Doyle, the man hanged in Cripplegate and currently occupying a cold dissection room, may have frequented one of the Smithfield watering holes. So far, however, he hadn’t discovered a damned thing.

Hawkwood could think of three reasons for his lack of success: genuine ignorance, concern over self-incrimination, and fear of reprisal. There had been more than a hint of the latter in the responses he’d received, even though his enquiries had been covert. It probably meant that word of the crucifixion had spread and people were too scared to point the finger.

All he could do for the moment was continue working his way down the list of taverns in the hope that something would eventually present itself to him. That didn’t mean, of course, that he couldn’t indulge himself in a small libation at the same time. Besides, after the day he’d had, he decided he’d earned it. And in a place like the Dog, if he hadn’t got a drink in front of him people would have noticed.

It was also one way of taking his mind off the God-awful stench.

The smell had hit him the moment he entered the pub and it hadn’t taken long for him to realize that it wasn’t emanating from any one source. It was all around him, seeping from every pore of the building, all the way from the foundations, the bricks in the walls, right up to the rafters above him. It oozed from the unwashed bodies and the clothing of the drinkers, and it rose like a thin mist from the blood-stained cellars and killing yards that had, in various reincarnations, been an integral part of the surrounding neighbourhood for the best part of six centuries. Here, the sickly aroma of putrefying flesh and the corrupting smell of death was a living, breathing entity.

On market days, the streets and alleyways around Smithfield foamed red with the blood from the slaughterhouses. Pavements would be slick with discarded entrails, while residue from the mounds of waste products tossed aside by butchers, sausage-makers and cat-gut manufacturers would be left to rot in the shallow, fat-lined gutters.

Inside the Dog, the carpet of sawdust had managed to soak up most of the day’s blood, but the pieces of mashed intestines and foot-trodden globules of animal matter tracked into the bar on the heels of the customers had helped churn the once-white dust into a stinking, black molasses that made the cracked flagstones look as if they had been smeared with dog shit.

The smell in Bedlam had been bad enough, Hawkwood thought, raising his mug, but this was far worse.

Inevitably, thinking about the hospital, his mind went back to the fire and the colonel’s fiery demise.

Constable Hopkins had asked why. Hawkwood was aware that his terse response, while accurate, still left many questions unanswered.

Apothecary Locke had said that the colonel was originally committed to Bethlem because his mind had been tortured by his experiences in the Peninsula. Hawkwood knew only too well the horrors the man would have witnessed in his capacity as a battlefield physician: tables awash with blood, his fellow surgeons elbow-deep in gore as they cut, probed and cauterized shattered flesh in a desperate attempt to make whole the bodies of soldiers maimed by musket shot, hacked by sabre, or shredded by cannon fire.

Hawkwood remembered his visits to the hospital tents all too well. It wasn’t only the sight of the wounded and the dying that remained with him but the sounds they’d made. Soldiers spitting out the leather strap and screaming in agony as the dull-bladed saw was dragged across bone; the whimpering of a drummer boy as the forceps searched for that elusive fragment of lead ball, the heart-rending wail of a dying ensign calling for his mother’s comforting hand as his innards cascaded like bloody tripe across his belly. While outside the tents, in the heat and the dust, the sickly-sweet smell of gangrene from the towering piles of amputated, fly-blown limbs would drift on the wind like rotten apples. Small wonder the colonel had lost his reason, Hawkwood reflected.

Many would have called the colonel a saviour, a man of compassion who had dedicated himself to the preservation of life. Who could have foreseen that a dark, malignant force lurking deep within the recesses of the colonel’s brain would drive him to commit two savage acts of murder?

Was it possible that, alongside that hidden malignity, there had still burned a tiny spark of conscience? Not only had he murdered a priest, but he’d also killed an innocent woman. Had the guilt finally caught up with him? It looked that way. In the end, overcome by remorse, the colonel had taken his own life.

He’d even used the church bell to summon witnesses to his suicide and cremation.

Hawkwood thought back. What was it Apothecary Locke had said? Confession was good for the soul? By his actions, the colonel clearly thought fire would have the same cleansing effect, even if they were likely to be the flames of Hell and everlasting damnation.

Though perhaps that had been the point.

Either way, the case was closed. Chief Magistrate Read had expressed his satisfaction at that. As he had announced when Hawkwood had returned to Bow Street to advise him on the outcome, it meant that all his attention could now be focused on the Cripplegate murder.

So, in the fetid interior of the Black Dog tavern, Hawkwood sat with his back to the wall, sipped his porter and watched the room.

Lizzie had decided it was time to give her two suitors the heave-ho. Both were virtually comatose. One was already face down on the table. His breathing had become increasingly ragged and Lizzie knew it was only a matter of time before he’d begin to snore. The other was leaning over the side of the bench, looking as if he was about to disgorge the contents of his stomach over the blood-soaked, sawdust-streaked flagstones.

Lizzie sighed. Using her considerable weight, she prised herself from between the two men. As she did so, one breast made an energetic bid for freedom. With nonchalant ease, Lizzie tucked the escaping mammary back into its proper place and squeezed out from behind the table.

The dark-haired man hadn’t moved from his seat, Lizzie saw. Perhaps a closer, more intimate approach was called for, rather than her previous long-range attempt to attract his attention. Undeterred by the possibility of rejection, Lizzie reached inside her bodice and pushed up her already spectacular bosom. In her experience, a frontal attack usually did the trick.

Hawkwood watched the moll extricate herself from her companions’ clutches. He had an inkling she would soon be heading his way and, judging by the determined expression on her face, unlike the other members of her sisterhood, this one might have a hard time taking no for an answer. He prepared to repel boarders. Unless she had the information he was after, of course; nobody knew the seamier establishments and the people who frequented them like the city’s molls.

Hawkwood had made good use of working girls in his career as a peace officer. The advantage being that he very rarely had to make the running. He would wait for the molls to come to him. The tactic had nothing to do with vanity. He just knew that if he hung around in one place long enough the women would invariably make the first move. They’d flirt, some more brazenly than others, and make their play, usually accompanied by a generous view of the goods on offer. And in the course of their inducements he would solicit them for information.

So it was with the Doyle enquiry. In each of the drinking dens he’d visited, Hawkwood had casually dropped the name on the pretext that he was an old acquaintance and there was a job in the offing with a chance for both of them to earn a few shillings. But the responses, so far, had all been the same. No one knew the man. Or if they had known him, they weren’t talking. Not yet, anyway. The only thing he’d received from the girls so far had been looks of disappointment, genuine and feigned, as they’d deserted him for someone who was prepared to pay for their company.