Andrew Pepper - The Last Days of Newgate

‘How did you know I. .’

‘I figured that sooner or later you’d need to visit the privy.’

Pyke was momentarily overwhelmed with gratitude. ‘Why have you done this for me?’ He tried to retrieve the pistol from Megan’s hand but she was not about to give it up.

‘What?’ she said, sounding amused. ‘Ye think I’d just give it to ye for nothing?’

‘But I’ve already paid you for it.’

Tait banged on the door, harder this time. Thirty seconds and I’m breakin’ the door down.’

‘And now the price has suddenly gone up.’

‘I don’t have any more money.’ He took out his wallet to show her.

Megan took what little he had left and said, ‘Bet there’s plenty more on the table you been usin’ to play cards.’

‘You want more, I’ll get it for you,’ he spat. ‘But can I please have the pistol?’

‘Here.’ Megan handed it to him. ‘But hear me, mister, I want whatever’s on that table.’

One shot. That was all he had. One shot for ten or fifteen men in the cellar; another fifty or so upstairs in the taproom.

Pyke was alongside Arnold when he removed the pistol from his shirt and jabbed the end of the barrel into the man’s left temple. For a moment, no one moved. No one even breathed. Pyke used the opportunity to position himself behind Arnold, to use him as a shield, all the while keeping the pistol aimed at his head. Arnold ordered the men in the cellar to remain calm. From behind him, Pyke explained what was going to happen; explained that if anyone tried to prevent him and Arnold from walking up the stairs and leaving via the rear door, or tried to warn people in the upstairs room, then he would pull the trigger and take his chances. As he spoke, and with one hand holding the pistol to Arnold’s head, he gathered up the pile of coins and banknotes from the table with the other hand. The stares of those gathered in the room left Pyke in no doubt what they had planned for him.

Halfway up the staircase, Arnold said, ‘Don’t be thinkin’ you’ll walk away from this, Pyke.’

It was only once they were outside, moving quickly through the back yard and along a narrow passageway that ran between two rows of terraced houses, that Pyke realised what Arnold had said.

Ahead of them, at the end of the alley, Megan and the dog were waiting for him, but instead of joining them Pyke forced open a nearby back gate and pushed Arnold roughly through it and into the yard of a derelict house.

It was a cool, starless night. The ground under their feet was soggy and riddled with puddles. In the near distance, Pyke heard the angry shouts of men spilling out of the tavern. One said, ‘Let’s kill ’im.’ Another said, ‘No fuckin’ mercy.’

Pyke prodded the pistol into Arnold’s throat. ‘How did you know my name?’ In the darkness, he could see the whites of the man’s eyes. ‘Speak.’

‘After you escaped from prison, I received a letter from Tilling. The man warned me that you might try to contact me. I didn’t think anything of it. Then when you mentioned Tilling’s name, I suppose I knew. I should a’ dealt with ye then but I wanted to have some fun. I figured — wrongly, it turns out — you weren’t a threat.’

Pyke digested this news and wondered what it indicated. That Tilling wanted to conceal a trail of complicity that led back to him?

‘You know the Magennis family of Loughgall? Yes or no?’ Pyke jabbed the pistol into Arnold’s Adam’s apple.

‘Andrew Magennis is the Grand Secretary for County Armagh.’

‘A few years ago, he contacted you, asked if you could put in a good word for his son, Davy. You arranged for someone to visit Loughgall in person, to enlist Davy in the Royal Irish Constabulary.’

‘If you say so.’ Arnold’s voice sounded as though it had been flattened with hammers.

‘You went to see Tilling. Later, Tilling paid Davy Magennis a visit and recruited him into the new force.’

‘You’d have to ask Tilling about that.’

At the far end of the alleyway, Pyke heard voices, a scuffle of footsteps. He had less time than he needed.

‘There were three murders earlier this year in London. A man, a woman and a baby. I found the bodies. Magennis killed them. One of the victims was Magennis’s brother. I saw the cut to his throat. It was so deep the man’s head had practically been severed from his body. Magennis throttled the baby with his bare hands, with his bare fucking hands, and then dumped it into a metal piss-pot.’ Pyke took a breath and tried to calm himself.

Arnold waited for a moment. ‘You have a powerful way wi’ words.’ In the street, his brogue was stronger.

‘Magennis is hiding somewhere in Ulster.’

‘What’s that got to do wi’ me?’

‘I think you know where he might be.’ Pyke raised the pistol and aimed it at Arnold’s forehead.

On the other side of the gate, two men hurried past. He heard one of them say, farther along the alley, ‘Archie reckoned they must be around here somewhere.’ Pyke pressed his finger to his lips. Seconds later, they had moved on.

‘I’ve never met the man.’

‘But you know where he might be hiding.’

‘I know he’s got family in the town. That’s all.’ Arnold seemed irritated enough to be telling the truth.

‘Family? Where.’

‘A house on Sandy Row.’ Arnold let out a heavy sigh.

‘You know, if you shoot me, they’ll send the whole garrison after you.’

‘Except they won’t know where I’ve gone.’ Pyke thought about it for a moment. ‘And if I let you live, you’ll send a warning to Andrew Magennis in Loughgall. Perhaps arrange for an ambush along the way.’

Pyke heard footsteps and saw the gate open. He felt something brush against his boot, heard a yap. The little dog brushed against his leg and wagged its tail.

‘No one else knows who I am, do they?’

Arnold didn’t speak but, for the first time, Pyke sensed his discomfort. He was a canny man and understood the precarious nature of his own situation: the garrison would be looking for a man called Hawkes, not Pyke.

‘That was a mistake, telling me you knew who I was.’ Arnold seemed to shrink before him. His eyes darkened with fear.

That settled it: Pyke knew what he had to do.

Megan appeared, silhouetted against the frame of the gate. The dog was licking his boot. Pyke told her to wait for him at the far end of the alleyway. She said they had to move; that all the streets were crawling with armed vigilantes. Pyke heard a shout at the other end of the alleyway. He decided he could not wait any longer, so he raised the pistol and shot Arnold in the middle of his forehead. The blast was drowned by Megan’s scream.

The first time it had happened, Pyke was not even certain whether he had killed the man or not. He had spotted him, a forger who had returned illegally from transportation, in a crowded pub in Clerkenwell and pursued him through labyrinthine back alleys and courtyards, across traffic-choked streets, through bustling warehouses and eventually up on to the roof of an abandoned lunatic asylum. Cornering the fugitive, Pyke had advanced slowly, hands in the air, to show that he was not carrying a weapon, and backed the terrified man towards the edge of the roof until he could go no farther. Afterwards, when it was finished and the man was dead, Pyke had not been able to tell, with any conviction, whether he had pushed the man or whether he had jumped, but in the end it did not seem to matter: the man was still dead. Later, he would become accomplished at constructing whatever moral justification his actions seemed to require, but in that moment, as he stared down from the roof of the building at that unmoving figure sprawled on the stone floor, Pyke had been struck both by the pointlessness of the man’s death and by his own culpability in it.