Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

Still ignoring the lawyer, Pyke said, to Blackwood, ‘I told you I lent that money to Morris according to the standard procedures of this bank.’

‘Ah, indeed, very good, sir,’ Herries said, interrupting. ‘Then perhaps you would be so good as to provide me with the attending documentation and this unfortunate matter can be resolved.’

‘You know me and what I’m capable of and yet you still decided to humiliate me in this way.’ Pyke waited for his partner to look up at him but his eyes remained rooted to the floor. ‘That either tells me you’re stupid or you know something I don’t. Which one is it?’

But it was the lawyer who answered him. ‘If the documents aren’t forthcoming in, say, ten days — after all, we don’t mean to be unfair — it’s my unpleasant duty to inform you that a warrant for your arrest will be served and you will be sanctioned by the courts to repay the ten thousand pounds from your own pocket or face a lengthy sentence in one of His Majesty’s prisons.’

Finally Pyke turned to him and licked his lips. ‘If you haven’t left this building by the time I’ve counted to thirty, I’ll tear you apart with my own hands and happily face the scaffold.’

But Herries wasn’t cowed. ‘I was warned about your questionable reputation and I should just add that if something untoward was to happen either to Mr Blackwood here or myself the charges against you would still be pursued right the way to the highest court in the land.’ Gathering up his papers, he stood up and smiled. ‘Good day, gentlemen.’

But when Pyke stood up at the same time, the lawyer’s composure finally cracked and he bolted for the door.

As the dust settled, Pyke had to hold in the urge to stamp on his partner’s head, but the feeling passed quickly. This time he knew that a different approach was needed. For a start, there was no conceivable way Blackwood would have initiated such a bold move on his own, which meant that someone else was pulling his strings. Someone with sufficient status and power to afford Blackwood the protection he would undoubtedly need.

‘William?’

Blackwood was trying to slip out of the room without a confrontation and seemed to freeze as Pyke barked his name. ‘Yes?’ But he couldn’t bring himself to actually look at Pyke.

‘You do know you won’t get away with it.’ Pyke shook his head, feigning sadness rather than anger. ‘That’s to say, you do know I’ll do everything in my power to stop you ruining my name.’

Blackwood licked his lips. He looked like an unarmed man trapped in front of a cavalry charge.

‘Ten thousand has effectively been stolen from under my nose.’ Pyke slammed his fist down on the table so hard that Blackwood jumped. ‘ Ten thousand. I don’t even have that amount in my own account.’

‘I don’t know what you expect me to say,’ Blackwood mumbled.

‘I don’t expect you to say anything. But I want you to know I’ll strangle you with my bare hands before I give up a penny of my own money,’ Pyke added, calming down. ‘Nod, if you think I’m capable of it.’

Dumbstruck, Blackwood scurried from the room, his face noticeably whiter than it had been at the start of the meeting.

Pyke had thought that if he traced the missing ten thousand pounds, he would find Jem Nash’s killer; but equally, if he found out who had killed Jem Nash, he would surely be led to the stolen papers and the missing money. And what he discovered from Ned Villums later that afternoon, though not throwing any direct light on the issue of who may have killed Nash, certainly revealed Pyke’s assistant in a new light.

Villums was waiting in his office. A coal fire had been burning in the grate since early morning and the room was comfortably warm. An oil lamp on his desk produced a greasy yellow flame.

Pyke sat down behind his mahogany desk and poured them both a glass of whisky from a crystal decanter. ‘I wasn’t expecting you for another couple of days.’ He’d already seen that Villums hadn’t brought anything with him: no case, no money to deposit.

Villums took a drink of the amber liquid. ‘The chat we had the other day made me nervous. Then I happened to read that your assistant at the bank had his head cut off.’

‘Are you saying you want to terminate our arrangement?’

Villums shook his head. ‘I just want to give you a few weeks to get your house in order.’ He pulled up his chair closer to Pyke’s desk and added, ‘And I thought you’d like to know something about the lad.’

‘Nash?’ The skin tightened around Pyke’s eyes.

Villums nodded. ‘He lost seven thousand on the roulette table at Barnaby Hodges’ gaming house in a single night.’ He must have seen Pyke’s expression because he added, without changing his tone, ‘Suffice to say, he couldn’t pay his debt.’

‘He told me he lost money on the tables. But I had no idea it was as much as that.’ Pyke finished his whisky and poured himself another. The fiery liquid tasted good against his throat. ‘It would have been the night before he died. The next day at work, it looked as if he’d been in a prize fight.’

‘Hodges told me that his men gave your lad a reminder of what might await him if he didn’t settle his debt.’

‘But you don’t think they killed him?’

‘Why would they? What good would Nash be to them dead? Hodges is still owed the seven thousand.’

Pyke tried to turn this information over in his mind but he could see that Villums hadn’t quite finished. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’

‘Hodges also told me your lad liked to frequent a place called the Bluebell Club on Windmill Street in Soho. You know it?’

Pyke shook his head.

‘It’s a club for mollies.’

‘Mollies?’

‘Mollies, mandrakes, she-shirts.’ Villums winced. ‘You know.’

He must have stared at Villums for some time, unable to assimilate or make sense of this revelation, because the next thing he was aware of was Villums preparing to depart.

‘Does he know for a fact that Nash was…’

‘A molly?’ Villums put his coat on and shrugged. ‘Hodges told me he’d heard it on very good authority.’

Later, Pyke tried to reconcile what Villums had told him with his own knowledge of his assistant. He had always imagined Nash to be a ladies’ man, someone who had shown no inclination to settle down because he was happy playing the field. In addition, Pyke had always thought himself a good judge of character and an exemplary reader of people’s thoughts, but armed with this new information, he felt foolish and short sighted, and wondered what else he might have missed about his young assistant.

‘Before you go, Ned, I was hoping there was something else you might be able to help me with.’

‘Oh?’ Villums turned around in the doorway.

‘I’m looking for a man.’

‘Go on.’

‘A heavily whiskered man with a glass eye. A nasty sort. The kind capable of rape and murder. He likes to burn people with cigars.’

‘And you reckon I might know him?’

‘Of him.’ Pyke stared into his associate’s unflinching face. ‘Just like you know of everyone else who steals, cheats and kills in this city.’

That drew a hint of a smile. ‘I don’t have any doubts that you’ll get to the bottom of this whole mess, Pyke, but I want to make it clear to you that I don’t want to get drawn into it.’

‘I just want a name.’

Villums nodded and said he would see what he could do. ‘And Pyke?’

He looked up from behind his desk.

Villums tapped his head. ‘Remember, there are times when this works just as well as a loaded blunderbuss.’

After Villums had gone, Pyke went over to the window and looked out at the vista of tiles, steeples and chimneys. The ravens were no longer there.