Andrew Pepper - The Last Days of Newgate

‘So we have an agreement?’

In the end, Peel gave him a grudging nod. But he did not stand or offer to shake Pyke’s hand.

Later, as Tilling followed Pyke to the front door, he patted him on the shoulder. He was smiling. ‘You handled yourself well.’

Pyke accepted the compliment. ‘But you’ll make sure Peel’s true to his word?’

‘You still don’t understand, do you? Peel is not your enemy here.’ Tilling started to shake his head.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ Pyke said, buttoning up his jacket.

‘Of course.’

‘The last time we met, you said something about Vines and Sir Richard Fox, the two of them being closer than I thought.’

‘So, ask them about it. Not me.’

‘I can’t ask Vines. Apparently he’s in Scotland at a family wedding.’

The interest in Tilling’s face faded. ‘Scotland? I saw him the other day walking down the street.’

They shook hands and Pyke wandered down the steps towards the heath. It was only then that the implication of Vines being in London finally struck him.

It was after midnight when Pyke made it back to the Old Cock tavern in Holborn. He entered the building through the back door and went straight down to the cellar. He lit a candle, jammed it into a tin sconce and carried the flickering light carefully through to the room where Villums had built a cage for the creatures used in the ratting contests. Villums paid sewer hunters sixpence per rat; the hunters themselves worked in pairs, for if they worked alone they ran the risk of being overwhelmed by their venomous prey. Villums preferred sewer to water-ditch rats because he reckoned they were meaner and hence posed more of a challenge to the dogs. They were certainly ravenous; the three hundred or so creatures that currently occupied the wooden cage had stripped the fifty-stone carcass of the dead bear in less than five minutes.

Earlier, Pyke had bound Swift’s wrists and ankles to the outside of the cage with rope; below Swift’s tethered form was a seething carpet of sinew, wet black fur, whiskers, beady eyes, pincer teeth and ribbed tails the size of horsewhips.

In the end, it had simply been a matter of who had responded quickest. Since Pyke’s reactions had been sharper than Swift’s and Pyke had reached for his knife before Swift could decide what course of action to take, it was Pyke who had triumphed in their skirmish. Pyke had forced the blade of his knife deep into the flesh of Swift’s thigh and immobilised him. He had then transported Swift from Russell Square to the tavern in Swift’s carriage.

Lifting the candle up in order to throw some light on Swift’s unmoving body, Pyke inspected his adversary for a while. He was nearer forty-five than thirty-five, Pyke decided, with bushy, sandy-coloured hair and a gaunt, almost oblong face. He was by no means an attractive man, but there was something arresting about his features; his taut, weathered skin, his slate-grey eyes, his pursed lips and his almost translucent eyebrows gave the impression of someone who had been mummified. But it was his mole that attracted one’s attention; it was an ugly purple mark, almost as large as a half-shilling coin, located in the middle of his chin.

Swift seemed barely alive so Pyke opened a bottle of gin and sloshed it liberally into his eyes. When that did not rouse the man, Pyke took out his knife, heated the metal blade over the flame of the candle for a few moments, steadied himself, sliced the mole from Swift’s chin and then daubed the open wound with gin.

For an instant, Pyke was worried the man’s agonised screams might have attracted the attention of those upstairs in the tavern.

He tossed the remains of the mole into the cage and watched as the long-tailed rats fought one another for the fleshy morsel. Blood poured from the wound and dripped into the cage, sending the rats into an even more heightened state of anticipation.

Pyke rested the candle on top of the cage, next to Swift’s head, and unbound his gag. Swift’s mouth sagged open; his stare was uncomprehending, as though he had not yet adjusted to his new fate.

‘Jimmy Swift. Or should I call you James Sloan?’ Pyke spoke in a soft whisper.

Swift stared at Pyke for a while.

‘Well?’

‘Sloan was my mother’s name. I adopted it when I left Ireland and came to London. Funny, I didn’t want my past catching up with me. The very last thing I did as Jimmy Swift was lead you to St Giles.’ He spoke in a gentle, nasal tone. ‘You walked straight into that one.’

Pyke nodded, ‘I visited your old house in Hamilton’s Bawn. It’s comfortable but a little run down perhaps. Nothing compared to your Russell Square residence. Or Hambledon Hall.’

Pyke’s taunt registered in Swift’s eyes but he said nothing.

‘A seat in Parliament. The daughter’s hand in marriage. And the prospect of one day inheriting a country estate. That’s quite a reward, particularly from someone as ungenerous as Lord Edmonton.’

For a moment, Swift was distracted by the sound of the rats. He was tied to the cage in such a way that he couldn’t see them, but he could hear them.

‘You’re going to kill me anyway, so why should I tell you what you want to know?’ His face betrayed some of the dread that he was, doubtless, feeling.

Pyke took out his pistol and fired a shot into the sea of rats. He must have wounded or most probably killed one of them because the others began to swarm around its twitching form and feed on its carcass.

‘You hear that sound?’ he said to Swift. ‘There are three hundred rats in the cage, three hundred sets of pincer-like teeth. Can you even imagine what short work that many teeth would make of your flesh? You would be dead in a matter of seconds, of course, but imagine those final moments of your life, rats crawling on your face, chewing out your eyes.’ He aimed the barrel of his pistol at Swift’s head. ‘But if I felt you were telling the truth, I might consider simply shooting you.’

Swift watched him carefully but said nothing. He was listening to the rats beneath him.

‘Perhaps I might outline what I think took place,’ Pyke said. ‘You can interrupt me if I have made a mistake or if I require your assistance.’ Again Swift did not respond.

Pyke began by indicating how he believed Swift’s relationship with Edmonton had started. He said they had probably met through the Orange Order and the Brunswick Club and corresponded regularly over issues of mutual concern. The unappealing prospect of Catholic emancipation had certainly been one such issue, and Edmonton had asked Swift to be vigilant for anything they might use to thwart or disrupt the smooth passage of the Catholic Emancipation Bill through Parliament. This had taken place some time in October or even November of the previous year. Six months earlier, Swift had employed the services of Davy Magennis to tend his small plot of land. Magennis had been dismissed from the Irish Constabulary for violent misconduct but had been recommended to Swift by someone in the order. Swift had never particularly liked Magennis but his interest in the big man was piqued by a story he told about his brother, Stephen, who had fallen in love with a Catholic girl and had absconded to London. Magennis had spoken about his brother’s betrayal with an anger that bordered on mania. When Magennis had also revealed that he had once been personally recruited into the constabulary by Tilling, Peel’s emissary in Ulster, Swift had seen an opportunity that was too good to pass up, especially as Peel was openly talking about changing his position on the Catholic question and throwing his support behind the push for emancipation.

But Swift had had to move quickly. He had contacted Edmonton in London and explained what he had discovered and how this information might be used in such a way as to further their cause. Edmonton had been delighted by the idea: that Swift would accompany Davy Magennis to London and talk him into, if any talk were required, killing his brother. For their plan to work, any subsequent investigation would have to establish a connection between Peel and Magennis. They could then claim that Peel had staged the murder in order to bolster support for the police bill that he was attempting to push through Parliament at the same time as Catholic emancipation. In any case, if it could be leaked to the newspapers that a Protestant man from Ulster had been murdered, seemingly by a Catholic, then such news would, no doubt, spark a wave of anti-Catholic protests that might end up blowing Peel’s plans out of the water. Edmonton had assumed responsibility for planning events in the capital. He had paid someone to track down Stephen Magennis and his mistress and given some consideration to how he might ensure that the subsequent investigation into the murders would unearth the connection between Davy Magennis and Peel.