Andrew Pepper - The Last Days of Newgate

‘And from there, they travelled south to London.’

Mary nodded. ‘Didn’t tell a soul where they were going. It was like the earth had swallowed ’em up. Then out of the blue, ’bout six months later, I got a letter from Clare, so I did. Tellin’ me where they were and sayin’ I could join up with them, if I wanted to. It weren’t like I had anything in Belfast to give up, apart from a job in a mill. .’

‘So you left Belfast and travelled to London.’ Pyke waited for a moment before he asked whether she had been followed. But it seemed to upset her, the notion that she might have been responsible for leading members of Stephen’s family to London.

To fill the silence, Pyke asked her to tell him more about the family.

‘So, ’bout a month ago, I saw him, Stephen’s older brother, Davy, in London. In the name of almighty God, I almost died, almost keeled over there and then. Couldn’t miss him. A burly, ugly fellow. Country stock, you know, Mr Pyke. Now you got to understand me. I ain’t sayin’ country folk are all like Davy Magennis. He weren’t ever the brightest boy in the world but, see, he grew up around all these preachers, folks talkin’ about this massacre and that one, Catholics killing Protestants, what happened a hundred years before, like it was yesterday. He didn’t stand a chance, I suppose. He had hate beaten into him. That’s why I said you wouldn’t understand, Mr Pyke. This fear we have of the other lot. Now I’m from Belfast and I grew up around different people. Myself, I wouldn’t want to marry an Orangeman but I wouldn’t want to kill someone, if they felt different. But to Stephen’s folk, papists weren’t no better than whores and rapists.’

Pyke smiled at Mary. He decided she was older than he’d initially supposed. Older and more intelligent.

‘Tell me what you know about Davy.’

‘He was one of the first to join up to the new police force, the Irish Constabulary, when it was first set up in Ulster, ’bout seven years back. According to Stephen, your man was specially chosen. All it was, some fellow came visitin’, said the new force needed good strong Orangemen like Davy. I guess his da pulled a few strings. Made Davy feel important. Way of getting the boy out of the house. Stephen didn’t talk a whole lot ’bout his brother, Mr Pyke, but when he did, he spoke in a quiet voice, like he was terrified. .’

‘And this Davy fellow, he’s been in the police ever since?’ Her expression darkened. ‘For a while anyhow.’

‘He’s not any more?’

Mary shook her head. ‘They had to discipline him. In the end, they threw him out just last year.’

Pyke asked what had happened.

‘I don’t guess you read about too much news from Ulster in your London newspapers, do you, Mr Pyke? This all happened last autumn. There’s a fellow, Jack Lawless, a journalist in Belfast, one of O’Connell’s lieutenants in Ulster. You heard of O’Connell?’ Pyke nodded. Mary continued, ‘And you probably know, us Catholics, we’re in the minority in Ulster. Well, last autumn, Lawless announces he’s going to raise a force in the south and enter Ulster, march from town to town holdin’ meetings and the like, raisin’ support for Catholic emancipation and collectin’ Catholic funds. So Lawless gathers up maybe eighty thousand men and crosses from County Monaghan into Ballybay, which is nearly all Presbyterian and full of about ten thousand Orangemen with pitchforks and scythes ready to defend their town. All of the army and police in the whole area rush to the town. At first, they manage to get Lawless to avoid Ballybay and travel via another route. But then the two sides come face to face on the Rockcorry road and all hell breaks loose. There’s a pitched battle and the police wade in, too. According to Stephen, in front of a thousand witnesses, Davy beats this Catholic fellow to within an inch of his life. Normally that kind of behaviour would go unpunished but there were witnesses. After that, there wasn’t nothing that anyone could do for him, even if his da was a well-respected preacher. Stephen just said his brother had dropped out of sight. No one knew what happened to him.’

‘He didn’t go home?’

‘Not as far as Stephen reckoned.’ Mary sat up a little and stretched her arms. ‘Though his family hold on to much hate, they still think of themselves as respectable folk, friends in the right places. Those friends like their violence to be carried out under the cover of darkness, not in full sight of a thousand other men.’

Pyke liked her analysis. ‘And that’s how you think Davy got the police job in the first place? Because his father had friends in high places?’

‘That’s what Stephen reckoned. Reckoned the da was friends with this fella, John Arnold, owns the biggest mill in Belfast, both of ’em up to their necks in Orange business.’

‘I take it you can’t remember any other names. Did Stephen ever mention specific names?’

Mary frowned. ‘What kind of names?’

‘For a start, the man who came calling to the home, recruited Davy into the police in the first place.’

‘Not that I can remember.’ She winced a little. ‘I’m sorry. .’

‘I have to ask, Mary. Did you see any of what happened?’

‘You mean to Stephen and Clare and the wee baby?’ She was shaking, perhaps not just from the cold.

Pyke nodded.

A tear escaped from Mary’s eye and rolled down her cheek. ‘It was a small room. I didn’t always stay there. I didn’t like to get in their way and in the last month I had a room elsewhere. .’

She did not want to elaborate and he decided not to push her. ‘You didn’t see anything, then?’

‘No,’ she whispered, staring down at the ground. ‘I just heard about it later. I heard about it and panicked. I collected up a few things and hid out with Gerry in his room but even there I didn’t feel too safe. I knew someone would want to talk to me but I didn’t want him to find out. Davy. Gerry knows a man who works on this farm in the spring and summer. We’ve been here a few days now. It’s brutal cold, too.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘In the name of Jesus, it was just a baby. Would you think it was even possible?’ She was crying now. Gerry sat down next to her, trying to offer comfort.

Pyke wondered whether Mary was telling him the truth. There was no doubt she was terrified. But was she keeping something from him?

‘Are you certain there’s nothing else you can tell me?’

This time she looked away. Gerry put a protective arm around her shoulder and glared at him.

He waited for a while before saying, ‘Do you think Davy killed them? Was he capable of doing something like that?’

‘Do I think he was capable of it?’ Mary said, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of Pyke’s coat. ‘I wouldn’t imagine anyone was capable of doing something like that.’

‘But you do believe he killed them?’

Mary shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Honestly I don’t.’

‘But it’s possible that he did it?’

Her stare was devoid of emotion. ‘I fancy it is. The longer you live, the more you realise that anything’s possible. Even something as terrible as what happened.’

Once Pyke had deposited a bedraggled Mary Johnson and a grateful Gerry in a guest house in Isleworth, paid for a week’s accommodation and warned them not to go anywhere or talk to anyone without his consent, he told Gaines to return him to Bow Street. As he sat in the carriage on the journey back to the city, Pyke considered what Mary had told him and thought about the implications for his own investigation.

He was close, now, to finding the real killer, not the unfortunate lunatic who was currently being held by Hume. For a lot of reasons, Davy Magennis seemed to be the likely candidate. From the start, Pyke had believed that whoever had murdered Stephen, Clare and the baby had known his victims. Nothing about the scene suggested a random attack. It had been premeditated and, Pyke had felt all along, motivated by hate. And now, according to Mary, Davy Magennis had been sighted in London: Davy Magennis, who was uneducated, physically strong and driven by hate; a man who had perhaps lost sight of familial links to his brother.