Andrew Pepper - The Detective Branch

They turned to watch the men entering and leaving the taproom, Pyke scrutinising their faces. A pot-boy in a black and white apron swept past them with a tray of drinks.

‘Are the men happy with how things are progressing?’ Pyke asked, suddenly.

‘You mean the investigation?’

‘Or generally.’

Whicher shrugged. ‘They seem to be.’

‘You don’t talk to them?’

Whicher seemed to consider this for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t call any of them my friend.’

Pyke was emboldened by this response. ‘But they talk to you. Particularly Lockhart.’

Whicher took a sip of gin. ‘We talk but given our work together, what we do, that isn’t a surprise.’

Pyke nodded, wondering whether in his eagerness to extract information from Whicher he had overplayed his hand. He was about to make light of it when he looked up and saw Alfred Egan wander into the room. Grabbing Whicher’s arm, Pyke whispered, ‘You see the one in the shooting jacket? That’s him.’

Whicher’s body stiffened. Pyke said, ‘Stand by the door. But don’t make a move until I give you the sign. Pretend you’re waiting for someone.’

He watched as Whicher pushed through the crowd of bodies. Nervous all of a sudden, he tried not to think about all of the things that could go wrong. Egan was just as Pyke remembered: a slight, nervy, hatchet-faced man. If the fence caught the slightest glimpse of him, he would head straight out of the door. As it was, Egan sat down at one of the tables, his billycock cap resting on his lap. His gaze swept around the room before settling on the door he’d just come through. Whicher took up his position with his back turned to Egan. The fence didn’t seem to notice him.

About five minutes later, the door swung open and a tall man wearing a dark cloak stepped into the taproom. Pyke felt the skin around his temples tighten. There were many tall men in the city and it would be too much to hope that this might be the same man the witness had seen running away after the shooting. Pyke took a moment to memorise his features: his muscular frame, slightly receding hairline, beaked nose and thin, almost non-existent, lips. Egan stood up and sidled towards the new arrival. Whicher noted this and moved to block their access to the door. Pyke was moving, too, trying to remain hidden among the mass of bodies milling around the counter. Heart thumping, he made it to within ten feet of Egan before the fence saw him, and immediately tugged at the taller man’s sleeve, turning for the door. Whicher was there to block him but the other man had already sensed the danger. Dropping his shoulder, he sent Whicher tumbling to the floor. Pyke arrived in time to hit Egan with a cudgel, but too late to stop the other man from bolting.

Outside, Pyke found little Frederick Shaw lying on the ground. He had been no match for the man, who was now halfway across Field Lane.

Pyke tore off in pursuit of the man, who was now about twenty or twenty-five yards ahead of him. The man noticed he was being followed and darted into one of the alleys zigzagging off the main street, hoping to lose Pyke in the labyrinth of lanes, yards and courts. Underfoot, the ground was slippery and Pyke nearly lost his footing. Each time he turned a corner, he feared that he had lost his prey, but the man ahead of him wasn’t thinking as he should have; he was concerned only about putting as much distance as possible between himself and Pyke rather than trying to hide from him. The man was taller than Pyke and should have been quicker, but he was less agile over the spongy ground. Pyke sensed he was catching up even before the man tripped on a piece of discarded furniture. But just as the man fell, a young girl, oblivious to what was happening, stepped out in front of Pyke. Later he would remember the feeling as he clattered into her, but he managed to maintain his footing, careened on towards the man and launched himself through the air, tackling the man and sending them both sprawling into the mud.

On the ground, the advantage ceded to the taller, stronger man. The chase had taken more out of Pyke than he’d realised, too. He tried to stand up, reasoning that if he could make it on to his feet, he stood a better chance of being able to finish off his opponent: a kick to the groin, a stamp to the head. This was how street fights were won. The man sensed this, and pulled him back down into the mud, wrapping his giant arms around Pyke’s chest and squeezing. There was little Pyke could do. The man’s grip was like a vice and Pyke thought at one point that his shoulder had been wrenched out of its socket. Red faced and perspiring, Pyke looked up and saw a smudged face and a pair of white eyes looking out from one of the broken windows of the tenements. Others had gathered around them; the fight a diversion from their routine. They could tell it was serious, too — an awed silence had fallen over the alley. Just as he feared he might pass out, every last breath crushed from his chest, Pyke managed to free one of his arms and with as much force as he could muster, he drove his elbow back into the man’s stomach. Doing so created sufficient room for Pyke to drive the other elbow up into the bridge of the man’s nose. Free at last, he rolled over and brought his forehead down hard against the man’s already shattered nose. That drew a shriek of pain.

Up on his feet, Pyke drove the heel of his boot on to his opponent’s hand but the man was quick and scrambled to his feet as well, then charged at Pyke, catching him off balance. They crashed through the half-open door of one of the tenements. Too late, Pyke realised that the man had managed to retrieve a knife from his boot. In the next instant, he slammed the knife down, Pyke moving quickly to one side, the blade slicing through his coat and shirt. At first, Pyke felt nothing, then a wetness. The pain hit him only later. The man vacillated as Pyke sank to the ground, perhaps trying to decide whether to finish him off or run. Pyke took advantage of his hesitation, grabbed hold of the man’s ankle and twisted it in a sudden, circular movement. There was the sound of bone snapping and what tumbled from the man’s mouth seemed inhuman. The knife fell from his hand and he collapsed to the floor. Pyke tried to crawl away but the man wouldn’t let him. Pulling Pyke back towards him, he seemed to have made up his mind. His hands slid around Pyke’s neck and he started to squeeze. Pyke could see the man’s eyes, smell his rage. Choking, he tried to pull the man’s hands away from his neck, to no avail. Suddenly light headed, he tried to resist the urge to panic, to give in. That would lead to certain death. With his last reserves of strength, Pyke ran his fingers over the man’s face and then gouged his thumbs into his eyes, breaking his opponent’s grip. Pyke staggered to his feet and aimed a wild kick at the man’s head. Then he heard rattles and saw Shaw and Whicher at the door, a constable in uniform, too, and he felt one of them — Whicher perhaps — pulling him away as someone else uttered, ‘He’s lost a lot of blood.’

The wound wasn’t a deep one. It was what doctors called a flesh wound. Still, Pyke couldn’t remember much about being carried to St Bartholomew’s or being stitched up by a surgeon. He put this down to exhaustion — and the effects of the laudanum they’d fed him. Later in the night, he woke up, disoriented, asking for Emily. She came to him, her face clear in a way it hadn’t been for years. The room smelled of camphor. He tried to reach out and touch her but there was nothing there. Outside, the rain was pelting down against the windowpanes but the room — and the hospital — was absolutely quiet. Pyke lay there, not daring to move, thinking about the man he’d fought and whether the Saviour’s Cross had been recovered from one of his pockets.