Andrew Pepper - The Last Days of Newgate

Tilling did not seem unduly concerned or surprised by Pyke’s presence in his home, though on closer inspection his tar-black hair, which had seemed greasy at first, was slick with perspiration.

‘I fancied it would only be a matter of time before you tried to make contact,’ Tilling said, entering the small front room. Walking towards a cupboard at the back of the room, he asked Pyke whether he wanted a drink.

Tilling poured them both a brandy. At the last minute, Pyke took the glass Tilling was about to drink from.

Tilling smiled at the switch. ‘After all that’s happened, I can understand why you might be nervous.’ His smile became a smirk. ‘That’s quite a trail of destruction you have left behind. Governor Hunt and John Arnold. And now I read about arson attacks and rioting on land owned by Edmonton. You’re a veritable one-man Armageddon.’ He held up his glass and said, ‘To your health.’ He looked at Pyke and smiled. ‘So tell me something. Have you got a particular problem with authority figures or do you just like killing them?’

‘It would depend on the authority figure in question.’ He regarded Tilling with a dispassionate stare. ‘Why is Peel nervous?’ He felt tired and washed out from the laudanum he had taken the previous night, and bloated from the pastries and sweet cakes he’d consumed that morning.

‘Should he be?’

‘That’s what I’m here to find out.’

‘Holding a gun to the Home Secretary’s head with half of London looking for you.’ Tilling raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘I’m a little impressed.’

‘Only a little?’

‘I’m impressed you haven’t been captured.’ Tilling smiled. ‘You’re the most wanted man in the country.’

Pyke took a sip of brandy. ‘I didn’t get the impression you were on particularly friendly terms with John Arnold.’ The fiery liquid did little to settle his stomach.

‘I wasn’t.’ Tilling shrugged. ‘I couldn’t stand any of the Orange Order. Neither could Peel, despite the nickname O’Connell gave him. Still, aside from his bluster, Arnold wasn’t the worst of them.’

Pyke watched his expression carefully. ‘You’re sorry to see him dead?’

‘Not really.’ Tilling shrugged.

‘But when you were stationed in Ulster, you agreed to assist the man, didn’t you? On his request, you rode to Armagh and recruited a brawny Protestant thug into the Irish Constabulary.’

‘It’s the way political business is conducted, Pyke. As I remember, Peel required the order’s assistance in some matter.’

‘So you went to Loughgall and told Davy Magennis the new Irish Constabulary needed good strong Protestant men like him.’

‘I can’t remember exactly what I said to him.’

‘But you washed your hands of him quick enough, when he nearly beat a Catholic man to death in front of a thousand witnesses.’

‘No, in fact I was keen to prosecute him, but I was told such a practice wasn’t conducive to the long-term stability of the Union. As it was explained to me, how could I punish a young lad from an upstanding Orange family for simply doing what came naturally to him?’

Tilling shrugged and looked down, as a ginger cat with white paws strolled into the room and jumped up on to his lap. He shrugged. ‘The cat must have got in through the window you left open.’ He patted the purring animal on his head. ‘He sometimes comes to visit me.’ Tilling looked at him. ‘We did what we could. We dismissed him from the force.’

Pyke allowed himself a weak smile. ‘I’m gratified to know that your conscience is clear.’

‘And it makes me feel a whole lot better to know that you approve.’

Pyke ignored his sarcasm. ‘And this was the last you heard of him?’

Tilling nodded. ‘Until you came to see me in March and dangled his name in front of me.’

‘You did a reasonable job of hiding your concern.’

‘But not good enough.’ Tilling’s eyebrows were arched in amusement.

‘Your reaction revealed you knew Magennis. At the time, I was also fairly sure Magennis had killed those people. It didn’t seem possible it was an innocent coincidence. Quite reasonably, I assumed that if you knew Magennis, and Magennis had killed those people, then you must have been involved in the murders, too.’

Tilling’s expression revealed little. ‘But I didn’t stand to gain anything from slaughtering innocent people. Neither did Peel.’

‘On the contrary,’ Pyke said, taking another sip of brandy. ‘The murders strengthened the case for police reform. Afterwards, people were falling over themselves to demand a better police force.’

Tilling shook his head, angry for the first time. ‘The case for a new police force had already been made. Peel had won the argument through skill and hard work. We didn’t need to kill anyone, let alone a young family, to make our case.’ Tilling looked at him coolly. ‘And in case you have forgotten, the government wanted to push through two pieces of legislation: the police bill and Catholic emancipation. By the time those people were butchered in St Giles, Peel had already thrown his weight behind Catholic emancipation. And those murders made it a hundred times harder to force the legislation through both Houses.’

‘I know.’ Pyke exhaled loudly. ‘In the end, I reached the same conclusion. I knew, or I believed, you were involved because of your link with Davy Magennis, but I couldn’t see what you or Peel had to gain.’

Tilling cut in. ‘We had nothing to gain and everything to lose.’

‘But that notion only struck me much later. Before I went to Ireland, I was so obsessed with the idea of implicating you and Peel I didn’t see what was right in front of me.’

‘Which was?’

‘I’d been set up from the outset.’

‘By Edmonton?’ Tilling asked, as though he didn’t already know the answer.

‘I think Edmonton planned for me to discover the bodies.’

‘How did he manage to do that?’

Pyke chose to ignore the question. ‘When I first glanced down into that metal pail, I thought it was an animal of some kind.’

‘And you believed Peel himself might have sanctioned such a heinous act?’

‘I see you’re a widely read man. Sometimes moral absolutes can be as harmful as acts of kindness. People have committed terrible crimes in the name of some greater good.’

Tilling paused, rubbing his eyes. ‘Peel might be prickly and arrogant but he’s not a killer.’

‘But he presided over a murder investigation that wilfully identified, pursued and, in the end, executed a wholly innocent man.’

Tilling was visibly shaken by this accusation. ‘In that particular instance, the circumstantial evidence seemed to be compelling.’ He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket.

‘As compelling as the existence of a family member who had good reason to hate his brother and who had been seen in the vicinity of the lodging house on the same day as the murders?’

‘You’re right that such a claim should have been investigated more thoroughly.’ Tilling seemed downcast.

‘But to do so would have been to acknowledge, and lay bare, your own connection to the chief suspect.’

Still unsettled, Tilling gently lifted the cat down on to the floor. It yawned and stretched a little. ‘It is a folly of mine, but I like to give the cat a saucer of milk. Excuse me for a moment.’ He disappeared into the kitchen and the cat followed jauntily. When he returned, Pyke said, ‘Meanwhile, an innocent man gets put to death for something he didn’t do.’

Tilling stared at him coldly. ‘Do you have unequivocal proof that Magennis committed those murders?’

Pyke thought about what he had learned from the priest in Ireland.