Andrew Pepper - Bloody Winter

Pyke offered her his handkerchief but she declined. He was trying to make sense of what she’d just told him, the unidentified man firing but deliberately, it appeared, missing her.

‘So what did you do next?’

‘I didn’t know what to do. I panicked. I didn’t dare get on the train. I thought they might be waiting for me at the station. So I walked — ran, actually — back to Merthyr, picked up a ride that took me to Caedraw, and from there I went to the cabin, I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘And did Cathy and Johns come and find you?’

Maggie nodded. ‘Eventually. John came. I told him what had happened. He said the suitcase wasn’t on the train.’

‘I left it there, in the first-class carriage. I saw the train pull out of the station.’

‘Well, according to John, it was gone about five minutes later, when he joined the train at Cwmbach.’ Pyke thought about the two men in the first-class carriage. Perhaps one of them had taken it after all.

‘Did he say who he thought had taken the money?’

Maggie wouldn’t look at him.

‘Maggie?’

Slowly she lifted her head to meet his gaze. ‘Your name was mentioned. Then I told him what I’d seen, who I’d seen. That changed things. He left and I didn’t see him again.’

‘And Cathy?’

‘She came later; she was out of her mind with worry. When I told her what had happened, she broke down.’ Maggie took another deep breath.

Gently Pyke placed his hand on her shoulder. ‘And?’

‘She didn’t tell me what she planned to do. I assumed she was going back to the Castle. We agreed that it was no longer safe to hide at John’s cabin. I told her I would come up here, to an abandoned stone cottage near the cemetery. She promised she’d come and find me.’

‘But she never did.’

Maggie shook her head. ‘A little later, I heard about William, that his body had been found in the town.’

‘You assumed Smyth and the other man must have killed him.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ve been living up here ever since?’

‘I didn’t know where else to go. Every so often, I went back to John’s cabin, to see if anyone had been there. I thought John might return. Or Cathy.’ She shook her head. ‘Yesterday, when I saw the light, the fire, I thought it must be one of them. I crept up and saw you in the window. That’s why I left the note.’ She looked at him, her eyes glistening with tears. ‘Who do you think killed the boy?’

‘I don’t know. It’s hard not to point the finger at Smyth, though.’ Yet Pyke couldn’t see what the magistrate would have to gain from it, apart from using the death as an excuse to send in the troops.

‘I don’t know what to do, sir. I don’t know whether I should go to the police and tell them what I know, or…’

Pyke shook his head. ‘The fact that this man didn’t shoot you doesn’t mean you’re safe. You need to stay here a while longer, wait for me. Where exactly is this abandoned cottage?’

After she’d told him, Pyke took off his greatcoat and put it around her shoulders. ‘You’re clearly a brave woman, Maggie, but you need to lie low for a while longer. What you know could still be dangerous. I’ll come and find you when I think it’s safe.’

She wrapped the coat around herself and smiled. ‘Cathy liked you a lot, you know.’

Pyke looked at her, not sure what to say.

‘I think a part of her imagined — hoped — that you and she… might, I don’t know, find each other some time in the future.’

Pyke’s mind turned to Cathy’s decomposing corpse, her wrists slit open. A bloody winter, he thought. Another needless death.

It took him the best part of an hour to walk back into the town. He couldn’t see more than a few yards in front of him. Bill Flint was drinking in the taproom of the Three Horse Shoes but he denied helping Johns, said he didn’t know where the former soldier had gone.

‘Apparently there was no kidnapping,’ Pyke said, scrutinising Flint’s reaction. ‘The wife planned it with Johns, hoped to squeeze twenty thousand out of the Hancocks.’

If Flint was surprised by this, he didn’t show it. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘He was helped by some of his friends — radicals.’

Flint’s eyes narrowed. ‘Trying to blame us for the boy’s death now, eh?’

‘I just want answers.’

The Chartist looked around the smoke-filled room. ‘Then you’ll want to hear what this young soldier has to say. He came in here looking for you a few weeks ago. We’ve been hiding him ever since.’

‘Hiding him from?’

Flint shrugged. ‘I’ll let you work that one out.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Just a soldier.’ Flint sniffed. ‘Deserter now, I suppose.’

Outside, the cold was piercing.

‘Didn’t expect to see you again, to be honest,’ Flint said as he led the way along an unlit alley.

‘Think I made off with the ransom money?’

‘Wouldn’t be the first corrupt copper I’ve come across. So where have you been? Why did you come back?’

‘Recovering from a pistol wound.’

‘Someone shot you?’

‘John Wylde.’

Flint stopped and turned around. His chalky face was partly illuminated by the light from a half-open window. ‘Wylde tried to kill you?’

‘Didn’t succeed, though.’

‘I can see that.’ Flint turned and continued along the passageway, then came to a halt outside a door which led into a backyard. ‘Come back to settle some debts, then?’

Pyke tried to put Felix out of his mind. ‘Something like that.’

In the yard, Pyke waited while Flint knocked on the door of the house and whispered a few words to the man who greeted him. They were ushered into the back room, where another man wearing a dark blue woollen shirt was playing cards with a soldier still in uniform. The soldier was young, with cropped hair, pockmarked skin and a thick, almost square face. He stood up and greeted Pyke with an awkward shake of the hand.

‘I served in the Forty-fifth regiment, until I left two weeks ago. We were billeted in Brecon.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Richard Considine.’

Pyke noticed that Flint and the other man had left them alone. ‘What made you leave?’

‘What they made me do…’

Pyke nodded, decided to let the younger man talk.

‘They wanted me to kill someone I’d never seen before, never done us any harm, a civilian.’

‘Let me guess. The shooting took place up near the old quarry, just off the Anderson’s farm road.’

The soldier eyed him warily. ‘Did one of the radicals tell you that?’

‘I was hiding in the cabin at the time. I heard the rifle. The man you shot died in my arms. His name was Deeney. He was an Irishman, lodged in Dowlais.’

‘No one told me his name. Nor what he’d done… to deserve…’ The soldier’s voice started to crack.

‘I guessed you were a trained marksman. A professional. I had a friend look for you at the barracks in Dowlais.’

‘I was never stationed here in Merthyr.’

‘Probably why you were chosen. Clearly you’re good with a Baker’s rifle, too.’

‘The sergeant-major always said I was the best shot in the regiment.’

‘So why did you agree to do it?’

The former soldier didn’t answer immediately. ‘I got into some trouble with a woman, wife of a councillor. I was told I was going to be thrown out of the regiment. Stupid, really.’

‘And all you had to do to clear your name, wipe the slate clean, was to come to Merthyr and do as you were told.’

‘It didn’t seem like too much at the time.’

‘Killing an innocent man?’ Pyke didn’t say this to judge the young soldier, just to indicate that he knew what it meant to take a life. He tried to remember that awful, hollow sensation he had felt after he’d killed for the first time.