Andrew Pepper - The Last Days of Newgate

Reluctantly, Godfrey produced the small bottle from his coat pocket.

‘Are you sure you know what you’re getting yourself into?’ His uncle’s expression suggested both concern and discomfort. ‘You do know the farmers lost everything. Barns, equipment, the entire harvest. I fancy this was the point. I mean, they won’t be able to pay Edmonton what they owe him in rent.’

‘Is that my problem?’ Pyke stood up and walked to the end of the pew.

‘What of the ordinary men and women who’ll go hungry this winter because there isn’t enough food to go around?’

It was dark inside the church, but not so dark that Pyke could not see the expression on Godfrey’s face.

‘People are starving right now because Edmonton is squeezing every last penny from them.’ Pyke dug his hands into his pockets to keep them warm.

‘And he’ll continue to squeeze and eventually someone will bite back and then he’ll squeeze even harder, and more and more people will be hurt in the process.’ Godfrey seemed puzzled. ‘Is that what you want?’

Pyke did not meet his stare. ‘Did I ask you to find out whatever you could about a man called Jimmy Swift?’

‘Three times. You described him for me, too.’ Godfrey shook his head and waited for a moment. ‘I don’t know what to say. . I just. .’ He stared at Pyke awkwardly. ‘I’m just worried about you, that’s all.’

Pyke reached down and picked up the bottle of gin. He opened it and took a swig. ‘Thank you for bringing this and the blankets.’

The serrated edge of the blade cut into Polly Masters’ leathery throat and drew a few droplets of blood. Standing behind her, Pyke locked his left arm around her neck.

It was a dank, windowless room. The walls had been stained black with coal dust and on the ceiling there were large circular smudges from where candles had been left to burn. Close-up, Polly Masters’ skin smelled of camphor and rancid mutton. Barely twitching, she muttered, ‘That you, Pyke?’

‘Who else did you tell about Mary Johnson?’ He repeated the question he had just asked.

‘I don’t ever show my feelings, Pyke, but when I heard they was gonna kill you, I did a little jig,’ she whispered hoarsely.

‘Someone tracked Mary and her boyfriend Gerald down to an inn in Isleworth. This person strangled them and dumped the bodies on Hounslow Heath.’

‘I din’t tell no one ’bout Mary.’

Pyke pressed the blade deeper into her neck. More blood bubbled up from the wound. ‘No one else, apart from you, knew where they were hiding.’

‘I swear, I din’t tell a soul.’ Her tone remained defiant.

‘Mary Johnson was a nice girl who didn’t deserve to die. I don’t care whether you liked or hated her. I know you’re a greedy woman and you would have sold her out in the blink of an eye. But I want to hear it from you. I want to know who you told about Mary’s whereabouts. I want a name or I want a description.’

Polly Masters tried to wriggle free from his armlock but couldn’t manage it. Eventually she exhaled loudly and croaked, ‘You’re a marked man, Pyke. Downstairs, there must be close to a hundred men who’d kill each other for the chance to pummel you with their bare knuckles and collect the reward what’s been offered. There’s men givin’ out handbills with your likeness across the whole city. All I have to do is scream. .’

‘And I’d slit your throat and leave you to bleed to death on the floor like a slaughtered pig,’ Pyke said, jabbing the knife even deeper into her flesh. ‘Like you said, I’m a marked man. I don’t have anything left to lose.’

Her bruised lip quivered with anticipation.

‘Tell me the truth this time,’ he said, slowly. ‘Did someone come here asking about Mary Johnson?’

‘No.’

‘Polly, I want the truth. Did a man with a brown mole on his chin come here asking for Mary?’

‘No.’

‘One last time. Did you tell anyone where Mary Johnson was hiding?’

‘Fuck you, Pyke.’ Polly Masters was crying now. ‘You’re a monster. Fuck you, fuck you and fuck you again.’

Later, as Pyke wandered through the mud-crusted alleyways and cobbled streets around Covent Garden, comfortable in his disguise, he thought about Polly’s defiance and decided she had probably been telling him the truth. But just because Swift had not found out about Mary Johnson from Polly Masters did not mean he hadn’t strangled her. No one else apart from Pyke had known which guest house she had been staying at.

So how had they found her? How had Swift found her? Pyke sensed that the answer was staring him in the face but he still couldn’t work it out.

It was raining and mud clung to his boots, weighing them down as he walked. Ignoring the outstretched hands of a sooty-faced beggar and walking past an old man who was chewing on a bar of soap in order to simulate having a fit, he tried to arrange his thoughts.

Pyke liked the grimy anonymity the city afforded him but knew he belonged neither to the world that Polly Masters inhabited — that grubby, hand-to-mouth existence he’d known for much of his early life — nor to Emily’s comfortable world, where propriety and social mores determined what was and wasn’t permissible. Pyke wasn’t naive or rich enough to romanticise the poverty he had once known, but nor was he blind to the suffocating aspect of privilege that seemed to characterise Emily’s circle of acquaintances. It was a curse and a blessing, being able to move between different worlds without feeling a sense of belonging. This adaptability was an advantage, but in his darker moments he wondered whether the loneliness he often felt would be a permanent condition.

Emily came from aristocratic stock and it was folly to contemplate a different life with her. Nonetheless, he felt drawn to her in a way that assumed, perhaps foolishly, that such desires were reciprocal. Part of him wanted to give in to his yearnings, but he was also aware of the dangers this course of action posed. Like it or not, he couldn’t get Emily out of his mind. In his pocket, he ran his fingers over the bottle of laudanum to check it was still there.

‘Hello, Sir Richard.’ Pyke stepped into the light being emitted from candles resting on the mantelpiece. Above the fireplace, on the wall, was a portrait of Sir Henry Fielding.

Fox stopped writing a letter, and looked up at Pyke, suddenly ashen-faced. The quill fell from his trembling ink-stained fingers. He started to say something but the words wouldn’t form on his tongue. ‘My God,’ he finally managed. ‘It is you.’ He looked older and frailer than Pyke remembered. He had lost some weight, too, and the skin seemed to hang off his face and neck. Fox stood up, grimaced a little, pulled down his frock-coat, and shuffled around his desk to greet him. Pyke wasn’t sure whether the old man wanted to hug him or shake his hand. In the end, they managed an awkward mix of the two. ‘You are alive,’ Fox said, not wanting to let go of his arm.

Pyke disentangled himself from Fox’s embrace. ‘So it would seem.’

‘I had given up hope,’ Fox said, guardedly.

‘I wasn’t aware you were hopeful.’ He stared at the old man. ‘But I see you’ve been keeping up with recent developments. ’ He pointed at the newspapers laid out on Fox’s desk.

‘I heard you were in the capital, of course, but I didn’t know whether to believe the stories or not.’ Fox’s expression was polite and opaque. ‘Was that you? The robbery?’

‘I came back to take care of some unfinished business.’

‘Not with me I hope,’ Fox said, with a chuckle.

Pyke raised his eyebrows and folded his arms.

‘There was nothing I could have done, Pyke. Nothing at all. Peel wanted you dead. There was no way of overturning the sentence.’