Andrew Pepper - Bloody Winter

Pyke felt himself shrivel up inside.

‘Jonah didn’t know I intended to kill the boy, of course. And when he found out about the death, he went berserk, threatened to kill me, kill himself. In the end, I made him understand.’

‘And Cathy?’

‘That’s where Smyth was useful to us. I wasn’t too concerned about Cathy but I didn’t want that brute John Johns coming after me. That’s why I made certain that her nanny, that Atkins woman, saw Smyth when we snatched the boy, why we let her live. Sure enough, she ran back to Cathy and Johns and blabbed, as she was meant to do.’

‘But Cathy must have suspected that you had something to do with her son’s death?’

‘Why? A woman she trusted with her life saw Smyth with her own eyes. And she knew that Smyth hated this family.’ Zephaniah grinned to reveal raw, bloody gums. ‘I was able to break the news to Cathy, tell her the boy had died at Smyth’s hands and, best of all, that you’d absconded with the ransom money.’

‘I found her body in the underground passageway. You as good as put the knife in her hand.’

Zephaniah nodded blankly as though he’d just been told the latest stock prices. ‘It was Jonah who found her first. He wanted to give her a proper burial, in spite of what she’d done, what she’d been planning to do. I talked him round. Told him the rats would get her if we left her there long enough.’

Pyke closed his eyes. So she had died believing that he had turned his back on her, sacrificed her son’s life for a tidy sum.

‘And William?’

‘What about him?’

‘Who actually killed him?’ Pyke realised that he didn’t know how the boy had died.

‘Does it matter?’ Zephaniah shrugged. ‘The point is, his death tipped the scales, set the fuse.’

‘Did Smyth ever realise you’d set him up?’ he asked eventually.

‘Didn’t have to have the conversation. I was going to suggest to him that he lie low for a while, perhaps go back to Ireland for a month or two, and then I heard he’d fled the town of his own accord.’

‘To?’

‘Ireland, I believe.’

‘Do you know why?’

Zephaniah shook his head. ‘Perhaps he realised what he’d become a part of. It worked out perfectly for us, though. Johns went after him, of course. Johns and Smyth, both out of the way, Johns blaming Smyth for the boy’s death. The Hancock family devastated by the loss and above suspicion.’ The old man eyed the pistol in Pyke’s hand. ‘Listen to me. Why don’t you put that thing down and we can have a proper conversation?’

Pyke watched the old man, listened to him talking, so pleased with himself and with his cunning. He rammed the barrel of the pistol into the old man’s cheek.

‘So why stay here? Why not get out, and come back when the dust had settled?’

‘You’re a funny fellow, aren’t you? Leave? When there’s business to be done? Last week I met with the Russians, promised them the iron, the full order, as Morlais won’t be able to produce it in time. When the deadline elapses, the Russians will tear up their contract with Webb and come over to us. Our iron is ready and waiting. Morlais will be forced to close, at least temporarily. But once Webb has gone, the works will reopen under new owners, us, and Caedraw will become the biggest ironmaker in the world.’ The old man took a breath. ‘It’s why money isn’t an issue. I’ll give you whatever you want. Let’s say fifty thousand, to make you go away?’ He seemed certain that Pyke would agree to his price or name a higher one.

‘I want to know about my son.’

‘Your son?’

Pyke tried to assess whether the bluff was genuine; whether Zephaniah really had no idea about, and therefore no hand in, what had happened to Felix.

‘My son arrived in Merthyr on or around the twenty-third of November to visit me. A few days later, I found his corpse laid out on a bed at the courthouse.’

This was another thing he hadn’t been able to work out — why someone had left Felix’s corpse for him to find, rather than burying it in an unmarked grave up on the mountain. It was almost as if someone had wanted him to find the body.

Doubt had crept into the old man’s eyes. This was something he hadn’t expected, something that altered the balance of negotiations. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘Felix would have gone to the station-house to find me. I’m guessing Smyth snatched him and took him to the courthouse.’

‘I had no idea you even had a son.’

‘Smyth didn’t share this information with you?’

Zephaniah tried to swallow. ‘Not with me, not with my son.’

‘I buried my son in London and I’ve come back here for answers.’

‘As I said, Smyth has fled to Ireland.’

‘Then I want the address of his estate.’

Zephaniah looked at the pistol, still in Pyke’s hand. ‘His family own land in Tipperary, near a place called Lisvarrinane.’

‘And Johns?’

‘All I know is that he grew up on an estate in Dundrum.’

‘Nothing else?’ Pyke took the pistol, aimed it at Zephaniah’s head and waited.

‘That’s all I know.’

‘Then it looks like our business is done.’ He lowered the pistol, and tucked it into his belt.

‘You’re going to let me live?’ There was a hint of incredulity in Zephaniah’s voice.

‘Did I say that?’

Turning suddenly, Pyke clenched his fist and smashed it against the old man’s face, felt his bones crumble under the impact. Zephaniah passed out.

Downstairs, Pyke found a tin of lamp oil in the pantry and took it upstairs to Jonah’s room. He doused the curtains with half of it, and took the other half to Zephaniah’s room and did the same. Then Pyke lit a match and tossed it on to the curtains. Flames shot up the fabric. In Jonah’s bedroom, he did likewise and waited to make sure the flames spread.

By the time he’d retraced his steps down to the cellar and out through the passageway, smoke was pouring out of the upstairs windows, and when he’d climbed up the mountain and turned around to inspect his work, flames had engulfed an entire wing of the Castle, plumes of orange lighting up the night sky.

As he stood and watched the fire, Pyke tried to feel something, anger, despair even, but nothing would come. He would go and find Captain Kent.

WEDNESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 1847

Clonoulty, Co. Tipperary

Knox had wandered for most of the night, not really knowing where he was, where he was going, only vaguely aware that he was heading north and west in the direction of Clonoulty. The sound of his father’s sobs echoed in his ears, except that he wasn’t Knox’s father, Asenath Moore was. At one time, his mother had willingly lain down next to the man and had borne him two children — John Johns, who she had given up to the childless gatekeeper, and him, the child she’d kept. Time and again, he thought about his childhood, his mother keeping him close to her, protecting him against his father’s drunken rages, his mother the saint, his father the devil, all of it now turned upside down. As he walked, Knox saw his father through new eyes; he understood his anger, his hatred of his wife, his self-hate, his self-pity. Knox hadn’t asked about his two brothers but he didn’t need to. They looked like their father and it was clear he loved them; loved them in a way he had never loved Knox. But how could he have loved another man’s child? His father had suffered in silence, drowned his anger in alcohol, taken it out on him and his mother, a broken man before he had become a broken father. How had it been for him, knowing that each day his wife went to work in the kitchens of a man she had slept with, a man whose children she had secretly given birth to?