Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

Pyke nodded. He understood the older man’s dilemma. ‘I take it you don’t want to build a railway that terminates at Cambridge.’

Morris gave Pyke a hollow smile.

‘Mr Morris was heroic,’ Chauncey Bledisloe said, interrupting their conversation. ‘ Heroic is the only word I can think of that comes close to describing it. The question of whether we should push on to Lincoln and York came to a vote and Mr Morris here stood and gave a speech that anyone who was lucky enough to hear it will be talking about for years, even decades, to come. What did you tell them, Mr Morris? That if we stopped at Cambridge, we’d miss out on the holiest of holy grails, a route linking London with the great factories and collieries of the Midlands and the North and perhaps one day even with Scotland.’

Pyke pointed at him. ‘I thought I told you to keep your mouth closed.’

Turning crimson, Bledisloe flicked hair from his face and slunk to the far side of the carriage.

Pyke turned to Morris. ‘What happened in the vote?’

‘I carried the motion by a single vote.’ Morris rubbed his eyes and yawned. He looked tired and old and his skin had assumed a wan, almost yellowy complexion. ‘But the issue will be debated again in a week’s time by the central committee in London and doubtless another vote will be taken and then another vote and then another vote until the jackals finally win the day.’

Pyke stared out of the window at the dark, featureless landscape. ‘Of course, if the railway goes no farther than Cambridge, Rockingham will get what he wants.’

‘I know.’

‘So do you really think Rockingham could have pulled the strings of the soldiers, the townsmen and the magistrate? ’

‘I do know for a fact he’s a ruthless bastard. On the face of it, I’m quite sure he’d be capable of anything.’

‘But does his influence extend as far as your own board?’ Pyke glanced across at Bledisloe.

‘I don’t know. I really don’t know,’ the older man said, sighing. ‘But I wouldn’t rule it out.’

Pyke’s dreams were punctuated with images of decaying bodies and burning flesh and when he woke up his back and sides were drenched in sweat. Yawning, he stretched his limbs and looked out of the window. They were approaching the outskirts of the city: the flat, barren landscape had been replaced by red-brick houses, work-shops, clay pits and tile kilns. Morris was fiddling with his watch and staring glumly out of the window while Bledisloe snored quietly in his seat.

‘I was thinking…’ Morris hesitated. His skin was slick with perspiration. ‘In the light of your experiences, I’d quite understand if you didn’t want to have anything more to do with me.’

‘Aren’t you forgetting we have a business arrangement?’

‘Of course I haven’t forgotten,’ Morris said indignantly. ‘I just didn’t want to drag you any farther into something you might later regret.’

‘Someone tried to assassinate me last night. Don’t you think I’m already part of it now, whatever it is?’

‘I just didn’t want you to feel obligated.’

Pyke cut him off. ‘If you still need the money, the offer of the loan from my bank still stands.’ He waited until Morris looked up at him. ‘I might have walked away from it all but I tend to take it personally when someone tries to kill me and I don’t know why.’ Morris didn’t need to know that Peel was holding something over him, too.

‘Then we’ll sign the contracts tomorrow afternoon at the railway’s head office on Threadneedle Street.’ Morris hesitated and rubbed his eyes. ‘As one of the railway’s chief creditors, you’re also entitled to three votes whenever the committee votes on substantial issues. I hope I can count on your support.’

Nodding, Pyke wound the silver chain from his fob pocket around his thumb and played with the two keys attached to it.

‘Actually, Pyke, there was something of a more sensitive nature I wanted to talk to you about.’ Morris glanced across at Bledisloe, who was still fast asleep.

‘I’m listening.’

Beads of sweat pricked the older man’s temples. ‘In addition to the company loan, I’d like to borrow a sum of money from your bank under a more personal arrangement. ’

‘What kind of sum?’

‘Ten thousand pounds.’

Pyke whistled involuntarily. ‘That’s a lot of money. Do you mind me asking what you need it for?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell. As I said, it’s a personal matter.’

‘Personal as in you can’t tell me or won’t?’

‘It’s just personal,’ the older man said, frustration getting the better of him.

‘Tell me something, Edward. Are you in some kind of trouble?’

‘Trouble? Of course I’m not in trouble.’ Morris seemed unfazed by the question. ‘I merely need to borrow a small sum of money in the short term and according to all the usual practices and procedures.’

‘If you regard ten thousand to be a small sum then I truly take my hat off to you.’

Morris regarded him with a grimace. ‘You don’t wear a hat.’

‘It was a figure of speech.’

A moment passed between them. ‘So will your bank lend me the money or not?’

‘What will you put up as security?’

‘Cranborne Park. I own it free and clear.’

Pyke nodded, still turning over the older man’s request in his mind. ‘I assume this isn’t something you’ve discussed with your wife?’

‘Since when did men like you and I ever allow our wives to dictate the decisions we make?’

Pyke allowed himself a brief smile. ‘So how soon do you need this money?’

‘I’m afraid I’ll need a decision at once. I’ll need the money by tomorrow. In notes, if possible.’

‘All right,’ Pyke said, absent-mindedly fiddling with his two keys. ‘Bring the deeds to the estate with you to the meeting tomorrow and you have a deal.’

They shook hands.

Morris’s face brightened considerably but the strain was still evident. ‘I’d prefer it if no one else knew about this.’

‘We’ll need someone to witness our signatures on the loan contracts.’ Pyke waited and said, ‘What about Nash?’ He had first solicited Morris as a customer and they seemed to be on good terms.

‘As long as it goes no farther than young Jem.’ He looked across at Bledisloe who was beginning to stir. ‘Look, old boy, I do appreciate what you’ve done for me. I’d really like to invite you and your family to tea at Cranborne Park. You clearly made quite an impression on my wife. She insisted that I ask you: insisted that you bring your family, as well. Perhaps after we’ve concluded our business tomorrow? We could pick up your wife and child on the way.’

Pyke assured him he would ask Emily and let him know at the meeting the next day. He asked, ‘Do you ever think it odd that we’ve become neighbours and business partners at the same time?’

‘Odd?’

‘Coincidental.’

Morris shrugged. ‘Like I told you before, it wasn’t my idea to move to Cranborne Park.’

Pyke stared out of the window, declining to respond. But it was exactly this point which worried him.

Even by ten o’clock the next morning, barely a shard of daylight had managed to penetrate the asphyxiating miasma of soot and dirt that hung over the warren of narrow alleys and courts around Spitalfields. The stench, too, made Pyke’s eyes water, a pungent odour of discarded, overripe fruit from the nearby market, human excrement and gobbets of putrid flesh from a nearby slaughterhouse where the walls were six inches thick with the blood and fat from slain animals. A long-tailed rat, as large as a small dog, scurried across the street, nimbly darting between ragged cobblestones to join others gnawing on the carcass of a dead cat. Pyke didn’t bother to shoo them away; nor would the rats have taken any notice of him if he’d tried. It had been some time since he had ventured into this territory, and with each passing year it became more alien to him — the sight of out-of-work men dressed in filthy rags, teeth black from chewing tobacco, openly copulating with blowsy women while their bow-legged children ran freely in cess trenches. All of it took him back to his own childhood, but he was no longer able to remember what it had been like to actually live in such conditions. Money had softened him to such an extent that he now felt uncomfortable if he didn’t bathe three or four times a week, eat fresh fish and vegetables off fine china, drink expensive French wines and sleep on good cotton sheets.