Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’m listening.’

‘I believe you know a gentleman called Jemmy Crane. A pornographer, actually. Let’s call him what he is. He would like people to think of him as a man of letters but I don’t wish to bestow such a title on him.’

Pyke kept his expression perfectly blank. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Don’t insult my intelligence. I’m a resourceful man. I know, for example, that you recently had a contretemps with Crane in his shop.’

Pyke thought about the elderly shop assistant who’d overheard his conversation with Crane. ‘Is that why you brought me here?’

‘I brought you here because I was intrigued.’ Field’s cheeks glistened in the gaslight. ‘I was told you questioned Crane about the death of a young woman.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I’m intrigued by that, too.’

This time Pyke told Field what he knew — he didn’t have a good reason not to. For his part, Field listened carefully, and when Pyke had finished, he tweaked his moustache and said, ‘You believe Crane is somehow responsible?’

‘I don’t know. Like I said, he sent some of his men to talk to Mary Edgar and this other man, Arthur Sobers. I asked him why and he refused to tell me.’

Field digested what Pyke had told him. ‘And, quite naturally, you’re suspicious.’

‘You could say that.’

A smile spread across Field’s lips. ‘Then I believe our interests might happily coincide.’

‘In what sense?’

‘I’m told Crane has been searching for girls to pose for daguerreotypes taken from life.’ Field paused. ‘I assume you know what I’m referring to.’

Pyke nodded.

‘Bessie Daniels was sold to Crane by a madam in the East End. I was alerted to this fact and managed to have a chat with her before she was dispatched to him. I offered to pay her to be my eyes and ears in Crane’s premises, but I’ve not heard from her for a week or so. Suffice to say, I’m starting to get anxious.’

‘Why would you want eyes and ears in Crane’s shop?’

‘That’s not your concern.’ Field’s smile curdled at the edges of his mouth. ‘I’m reliably informed Crane owns a property in the East End.’ He pressed a slip of paper into Pyke’s hand. ‘That’s the address. I’d like you to determine whether Crane has taken her there.’

Pyke considered this for a moment. ‘And if I do find her?’

‘Elicit whatever information she has to impart but leave her where she is. Above all, don’t divulge my interest in Crane’s affairs to anyone.’ Seeing the expression on Pyke’s face, he added, ‘For reasons I’d rather not discuss, I can’t risk one of my men being seen talking to her.’

‘And how will I recognise her?’

‘Medium height, blonde hair, well-proportioned figure. She’d be quite attractive if it wasn’t for her hare-lip.’

Pyke looked around at the blood-splattered walls. ‘What if I found a way of paying you back the money I owe you?’

‘I’m afraid that option is no longer available to you, Pyke.’

‘And if I decided to carry on with my life and pretend we’d never had this conversation?’

‘Then you would be dead within a week. It’s as simple as that.’ Field put his hand on Pyke’s shoulder. In another context, it could almost have been a fatherly gesture. ‘It wouldn’t give me any real pleasure to have you killed, but I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it either. You’re a resourceful fellow and I need your help. Think of it that way. I’ll expect to hear from you by the weekend.’

Pyke must have been out for longer than he’d thought because it was almost light when he emerged from Field’s slaughterhouse. It wasn’t a market day and the giant field was almost deserted. Even so, the air smelled of the mephitic fumes produced by the nearby glue renderers and tripe-boilers. Thankfully it hadn’t rained in the night and the ground underfoot wasn’t the usual slush of mud and manure. For a moment, he stopped and looked out across the expanse of open space, a thin layer of mist rising up from the ground. This was the place where, five years earlier, Emily had died in his arms; where a rifleman’s bullet had torn a hole in her throat and the blood, the life, had leaked out of her. He looked over towards the exact spot where it had happened and tried to will some kind of sentiment but none would come. It didn’t seem to matter who was to blame any more — Emily was dead and she wasn’t coming back. That was the only thing that mattered. In the distance, a stray dog trotted through the mist, its head and tail just visible above the layer of white. It was strange, in a way, that he had chosen to live only a few streets from the place she’d been killed, but somehow he felt comforted by this proximity. It was also where his father had fallen under the boots of a stampeding mob and where his ex-mistress had been stabbed in the stomach while he slept next to her. That he, of all of them, should still be breathing seemed more than wrong, and even though he didn’t believe in the existence of an all-powerful deity, he often wondered whether fate had somehow conspired to let him live while those he cared for, those he loved, perished.

As the sun peeked over the roofs of the buildings, Pyke checked to make sure the charcoal etching was still in his pocket. He closed his eyes and felt the stiff breeze against his face. In his mind, a shadowy figure was hunched over Mary Edgar’s body with a cloth, liberally splashing it with rum. He worked quietly and methodically, cleaning every speck of dirt from her dark skin. When he was done, he took a scalpel and knelt down next to her face, drops of perspiration dripping on to the purple welt on her neck. The first incision sliced into the skin around her eye, the blade lodging deep into the bone. Calm nerves and a steady hand were needed. After a few minutes, he had cut out one of the eyeballs and wrapped it up in a clean handkerchief. Ten minutes later, the other eyeball had been extracted…

Pyke felt something brush past his leg. He looked down to see the same dog he’d noticed earlier, padding towards a gas-lamp. Perhaps he was wrong that no one else cared about Mary Edgar. Maybe Pierce was just as committed to apprehending and punishing her murderer as he was. But as the sun cast its pale light over the field, it was hard not to think he was as alone in his task as Mary Edgar had been in her death. In that sense, it felt as if the two of them were joined.

Pyke was waiting on the pavement in front of Godfrey’s apartment when Jo and Felix appeared, a little after nine o’clock. Felix was dressed for school and Jo wore a woollen shawl over her cotton print dress. This time Felix’s greeting was a little less diffident than it had been either at Hatchard’s or the first time Pyke had shown up after his release from prison. And when he suggested that his son might miss school just this once, and proposed spending the morning together, the three of them, the lad sparked into life. By the time they’d walked to the zoological gardens in Regent’s Park, less than ten minutes from Godfrey’s apartment, Felix had listed the numerous ways in which the malefactors from the Newgate Calendar had been punished by the state.

‘William Gregg, traitor, hanged at Tyburn, 1708; Jonathan Wild, hanged at Tyburn, 1725; Catherine Hayes, burned alive at Tyburn, 1726; Captain John Porteous, convicted of murder but killed by the mob in

1736; William Stroud, whipped through the streets of Westminster, 1752.’

Even when they had paid their admission fee, and were moving between the various exhibits, Felix appeared less interested in the animals than in regaling Pyke with the exploits of the characters he’d read about.