Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

‘And that’s what you think has happened?’

Emily stared at him through her long lashes. ‘Perhaps this isn’t a talk we should be having.’

‘Why not?’

‘As you indicated the other night, we might see that our respective positions aren’t as compatible as we might have once hoped.’

‘Perhaps they’re closer than we might have imagined, too.’

‘In what sense?’

‘Captain Paine is an advocate of direct action, isn’t he?’ Pyke looked at the words daubed on the gable-end in white paint. ‘It’s what I’ve always said. You want to make an impression, you don’t reason with someone. You take out a pistol and press it against the man’s head.’

They had travelled a few hundred yards along the cobbled street in their carriage when Pyke banged on the roof and ordered the driver to stop.

‘Where are you going? What are you doing?’ Emily called out as he opened the door and took off back down the street. ‘ Pyke.’

He found one of the masters in an upstairs room, shaving with a razor over a pail of hot water.

The man wore a black monkey coat with knee breeches, wool stockings and lace-up boots. Standing up, his whiskers lathered with soap, he held out the razor. ‘You want, I can walk the blue dog with you, cully.’

Pyke went for his throat and the master managed only one wild swipe of the razor, catching Pyke’s forearm and slicing through his coat and jacket, before Pyke had landed a clean blow on his nose, breaking the bone, blood and sinew exploding from his nostrils. Clutching his nose, the man fell backwards, the razor clattering harmlessly to the floor, as Pyke scooped him up by the collar and dragged him over to the half-open window. ‘As of now, your employment here is terminated.’ Pyke rammed his head through the gap, forcing the rest of the man’s body out of the window but making sure he held on to the legs. Soon the master was dangling precariously from the upstairs window, people gathering in the street below to watch. ‘It takes a big man to keep children in line, doesn’t it?’ From somewhere out of the window he heard the master scream for help. But he was heavier than Pyke had realised and his boots were slippery, too, and soon Pyke knew he wouldn’t be able to hold him.

Later, when the children Pyke had rescued from the first house gathered cautiously around the man’s motionless body, hardly daring to get any closer, Pyke suspected the fall might have killed him, but then he saw the man’s limbs twitch and heard him gasping for air and realised that he was just very badly injured. But the ensuing pandemonium had roused the masters from the other houses on the terrace and, when they saw what had happened, they tried to round up as many of the stray children as possible. Some of the children were still too dazed to take evasive action; others had seized the chance and had already made their escape. The masters were armed with pistols and sticks and there were too many of them for Pyke to take on without support. Retreating along the street, he came across one of the youngest boys he’d seen in the first room huddled in a fetid alley. Pyke hadn’t stopped to think what might become of the children, assuming that a life on the street was preferable to another minute in Horace Groat’s employment, but now it struck him that he’d rushed into something, more to appease his own conscience than to help the children, and created a whole new set of problems.

Where would this child sleep tonight? What would he eat? How would he survive on his own?

If Pyke didn’t do anything, the lad would be back stitching together Groat’s shoes before nightfall.

‘Do you have anywhere to go? Any family?’

The boy stared up at him though large, liquid eyes.

‘Who brought you here?’

The boy shrugged. ‘A man. Before, I went to a school in the country.’

‘What kind of a man?’

‘A man with a dog.’

‘A big, fighting dog with copper-coloured fur?’

‘Aye, that’s the one.’

Pyke tried to sound calm. ‘You went to Prosser’s school in Tooting?’

The boy nodded. ‘My family all died last year.’

A moment passed. ‘What are you going to do now?’

‘I don’t know.’

Pyke thrust a few coins into his hand and said, ‘There’s this basement shop in St Paul’s Yard, number seventy-two, in the shadow of the cathedral. Present yourself there today and tell the white-haired man I sent you. My name’s Pyke. He’ll pay you to deliver a newspaper. It’s not much but it might keep you alive. Do you think you can remember all that?’

The boy gave him a confused, bewildered stare and later, when Pyke was lying in his own bed unable to sleep, it struck him that the young lad might not have the necessary toughness and guile to make it through the night.

‘I want you to call in all of Horace Groat’s outstanding loans. Everything we’ve lent him.’

William Blackwood flicked through an oversized ledger on the table in front of him and frowned. ‘He’s a very good customer. He hasn’t missed a single payment.’

‘I don’t care,’ Pyke said firmly. ‘In addition, I don’t want us to lend another penny to the slop trade in the East End.’

Blackwood removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. ‘Can I ask what’s brought this on?’

‘No, you cannot. I’ve made my decision. I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘But those are some of our most reliable customers,’ Blackwood said, frowning. ‘And in the light of your questionable decision to loan such a large sum to the Grand Northern, we need to set our liabilities against more reliable forms of income.’

They were sitting around a table in the boardroom, just the two of them. They had begun the meeting at nine o’clock as usual, without acknowledging what had happened to Nash or even mentioning the matter of the loan and the missing contracts. They had taken their usual places around the table, Pyke nearest to the fire, but their efforts to continue as normal quickly seemed misplaced.

Someone — a good man, no less — had died and a proper reckoning of the situation was required.

‘Just do it. I want the notices served on him by the end of today.’

There was a loud rap on the door, but it was William Blackwood, rather than Pyke, who called out, ‘Enter.’ Tiny beads of sweat had appeared around his temples.

‘And you are?’ Pyke asked, barely looking up from the table.

A smartly dressed grey-haired man wearing a full-length velveteen coat and a white pique waistcoat buttoned all the way to the top stood there, his top hat cradled in his hand.

But Blackwood had clearly been expecting him and shook the man’s hand, before showing him to one of the empty chairs at the other end of the table.

‘Allow me to introduce Mr James Herries,’ he said for Pyke’s benefit. ‘Mr Herries is currently the solicitor to the committee of bankers for protection against forgers and fraud.’

This time Pyke had a proper look as the man shuffled to his chair. Herries was a strange, elfin-looking individual with long, pointy ears, sharp canine teeth and an unctuous manner that immediately irritated him. Grinning, Herries assured Pyke that there was nothing to worry about and that the whole matter had doubtless been a terrible misunderstanding that could now be cleared up.

There wasn’t too much difference between him and the eels they pulled out of the Thames.

Clenching his fists until the knuckles had turned white, Pyke stared at his partner. ‘This is your doing, I presume.’

‘Let’s try and move beyond attributing blame.’ Herries smiled. ‘Suffice to say, an audit was conducted yesterday afternoon that I oversaw, and it’s come to light that a sum of ten thousand pounds of the bank’s money cannot be accounted in terms of the existing documentation.’