Andrew Pepper - The Detective Branch

Pyke tried to reconcile his curiosity with the guilt he felt for putting her in danger. ‘And what did you find out?’

She shook her head as though she’d expected him to say this but was still disappointed. ‘No words of contrition? No “I’m so sorry my demands led to this ”?’ Gingerly she touched the bruised side of her face.

‘Would it help if I was sorry? Would it make it more bearable?’ When she didn’t answer, Pyke said, ‘What did you find out?’

‘Culpepper is adamant that no one in his mob even whispers those boys’ names. The last anyone heard of them, they’d just turned over a house on Cheapside. Number twenty-three. That’s all I know; that’s all I want to know.’

Pyke decided not to push the issue. Instead he took the copperplate from his pocket and handed it to her.

Reluctantly she took it and glanced down at the image of Sharp’s face. Her expression remained inscrutable.

‘Do you recognise him?’

Without answering, Clare stared down into the yard. ‘I wondered why I hadn’t seen him around,’ she said, keeping perfectly still.

‘So he did work for Culpepper, then?’

This time she turned around and nodded once. ‘He wasn’t part of the inner circle.’

Pyke didn’t smile, but he felt an inner satisfaction spread through him. It was starting to come together, to make some sense. So it was Culpepper who had dispatched Sharp to retrieve the Saviour’s Cross, and maybe kill the three men in the shop on Shorts Gardens. But on whose orders?

‘I take it you didn’t like him.’

‘What gave you that idea?’ For the first time since he’d arrived, she seemed to relax. ‘No, you’re right. I always thought he was an animal.’

‘And Culpepper isn’t?’

‘If you’ve come to judge me, you can go to hell.’ Softening a little, she gestured at the marks on her face. ‘He did this to me with a leather strap.’

Pyke felt his anger — and guilt — return. He took a step closer to her. ‘You have to understand, Clare, I’m not trying to judge you. But ask yourself this: do you still want to be answering to a man like Culpepper in a year or even five years’ time?’

That made her laugh. ‘And you think I have a choice?’

‘We always have choices.’

‘In your world, perhaps. But in my world, you do what you’re told. And if you step out of line, you’re crushed.’

Pyke looked around the nicely decorated room. ‘He comes here, doesn’t here? Perhaps not to you but he comes here as a client.’

The fact that she didn’t answer straight away told him all he needed to know.

‘Just go, Pyke. Leave me alone. I’ve done what I can for you.’

‘And the next time he decides you’ve let him down? Because once this kind of thing starts, Clare, it doesn’t stop.’ He scribbled his address on a scrap of paper and pressed it into her hand.

‘Spare me the cheap sentiments, Pyke. I can make my own decisions.’

It took a few minutes of grubbing around in the scrubland behind the Coach and Horses in St Giles to find what Pyke was looking for: a plank of wood that he could easily hold in his hands. Clutching it, he kicked down the same door he’d used about a month earlier, and swung the piece of wood into the face of the first man who tried to block his path. Another man stepped out of a room leading off the dank corridor and Pyke smashed one end of the plank into his stomach and watched him collapse to the floor. Feeling his fury gather momentum, he kicked open the door at the end with the heel of his boot and looked for any sign of Culpepper: there were two men he didn’t recognise from the previous card game but otherwise the room was deserted. From somewhere else in the building, Pyke heard the sound of urgent footsteps. Before the two men could get up, Pyke had taken the plank of wood and swung it against their respective heads. He looked around, the blood pulsing through his veins.

‘ Culpepper. Come on, Little Georgie. Let me beat you like the dog you’ve always been.’

He felt the jab of something hard and cold against his neck.

When Pyke turned around, one of Culpepper’s lieutenants was aiming a pistol directly at his face. Soon there were four others in the room, all armed with pistols, and finally Culpepper appeared, his face relaxed, his gait almost languid.

Pyke took stock of his situation, only now beginning to realise how badly he’d misjudged the situation.

‘Drop it,’ Culpepper barked. Pyke felt one of the lieutenants jab the end of his pistol into the side of his cheek.

Opening his hand, Pyke let the plank of wood clatter to the floor. Grinning, Culpepper took a few steps towards him and aimed a sharp kick at his groin. It connected almost perfectly and, for a moment, Pyke felt as if he might pass out.

‘Go and fetch the police,’ he heard Culpepper grunt to one of his men. ‘There’s a reward for this one.’

Pyke stumbled to his feet and looked around him. The route back to the corridor he’d come along was blocked by three men, all armed.

‘As much as I’d like to cut you up with an axe, I have to be practical,’ Culpepper said, smiling. ‘It would be satisfying in the short term, but I’d be pissing good money up the wall.’

One of the men turned and left. Pyke tried to focus. How long would it take him to fetch a police constable? Five minutes perhaps?

‘That was quite a performance you put on at the courthouse the other week. I’d say you’re about as famous as any man in the country at the moment.’ Culpepper paused and touched his chin. ‘I’m just trying to imagine the scene when you’re led out on to the scaffold.’

‘For that, Little Georgie, you need to have an imagination. But they say dogs can’t even see in colour.’

Culpepper seemed amused rather than irritated by Pyke’s attempt to rile him. ‘The other day I was thinking about the street we used to live on. But you know what else I remembered? Your father. He used to coin for a living, didn’t he? He was a failure and a drunkard and when he perished in that stampede outside Newgate prison, hardly anyone went to his funeral. I heard folk talking about it afterwards. Said it was an embarrassment. For a moment I even felt sorry for you. I always knew you wouldn’t amount to much.’

Pyke felt something as close to pure, undiluted hatred as he had ever experienced. He hadn’t thought about his own father in years and wasn’t even certain that he could remember what he looked like.

Culpepper continued to grin. ‘I know you visit Clare Lewis’s place every now and again, just as I knew how you’d react when you saw what I had done to her. I’ve been expecting your visit.’

Pyke looked around him and tried to ignore Culpepper’s taunts. They had backed him into a corner of the room: just a window behind him; no door and no way out.

‘Who paid you to set Sharp on those men in Cullen’s shop? And who paid you to go after Keate’s mother?’

‘You think you’re in a position to ask me questions?’

Fighting off the fear in his stomach, Pyke ran through his options. The window behind him seemed to be the only viable choice but he didn’t know what lay beneath it, or whether the storey-high fall might, in the end, do more harm than good.

‘Was it Benedict Pierce?’

Culpepper’s small, quick eyes gave little away.

Without warning, Pyke suddenly turned and launched himself at the window, his arms wrapped around his head to protect it from the glass. He heard the blast of a pistol as the glass shattered into a thousand pieces. He landed, shoulder first, on a ledge before rolling over and falling ten feet into the yard below. This time he landed partly on his side, the force of the impact momentarily winding him. Up on his feet, Pyke stumbled through an open gate just as a ball-shot tore into the mushy ground where he’d landed. And then he was moving, half-running, half-limping, into the street behind the yard.