Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

‘And Trotter’s arrival disrupted all that?’

The man nodded sullenly. ‘Jake’s an impressionable chap, easily gulled. Jimmy Trotter got him involved in something rotten and after that he stopped coming to see me. To my mind, he couldn’t face me out of the shame.’

‘But you don’t know what it was?’

‘No.’

Pyke digested this information. ‘Did they both move out about the same time?’

The midshipman stared forlornly into the fire. ‘About three months ago, I’d say.’

They talked in halting sentences for a few minutes more but Salt had no additional information about Trotter or Bolter and didn’t know where they might have gone to. Pyke made his excuses to leave and Salt muttered something under his breath, refusing to meet his stare.

It was hard not to feel sorry for the old man. He had faithfully served his country and had been rewarded with a drab, windowless room in a convalescence home that had long since been overrun by thieves. Still, there was also something pitiful about someone who’d spent the last twenty years of his life reliving former glories and, in the end, Pyke had nothing more to say to him, no words of reassurance that might lift his despondency. He left quickly without saying goodbye.

It was a ten-minute walk through the deserted wharves and jetties back to London Bridge and after just a few paces Pyke realised he was being followed. It was just a sense at first, an intuitive feeling heightened by his awareness that the man he was trying to find posed a very serious threat to his personal safety. It was as though his footsteps along the slippery, creaking wharf were somehow echoing fifty or a hundred yards behind him. To prepare himself, Pyke took one of the pistols in his hand and coiled his finger around the trigger. He kept on walking, though, and even picked up his pace a little, to see whether his pursuer would follow. Whoever it was, and Pyke had no idea whether Trotter had seen him enter the former crimping house or not, displayed an adeptness for courting shadows. Whenever he glanced behind him, his pursuer would somehow disappear from view. But when he continued on his way, the faint thud of someone else’s footsteps filled the eerie silence, and if he stopped suddenly, the footsteps behind stopped, too. He had hoped that whoever was behind him would get too close to him and afford him the chance of an ambush, but his pursuer took care to maintain a discreet distance between them. Pyke took a quick note of what lay around him: on one side was the river itself, extending off into the darkness; on the other side were a collection of warehouses, some used and some derelict. If he could duck into one of the warehouses, and wait for whoever was following him to do likewise, he might stand a better chance of apprehending them. His armpits were moist with sweat. In the distance, he could see the vague outline of the new London Bridge, the old one, nearer, and now dilapidated, like a relic of a bygone era, crumbling into the river. Ahead, he saw an alleyway running alongside one of the warehouses and ducked into it. He waited; the only noise he could hear was the thumping of his heart. The footsteps came to a halt. Pyke raised the barrel of the pistol and waited. Nothing moved; the air was utterly still.

Peering out from his hiding place, Pyke tried to determine where his pursuer was, and how close. But the wharf was deserted; nothing stirred. He was about to give up when he saw a cloaked figure disappear into a doorway about fifty yards behind him and he set off in pursuit, pistol in one hand. He followed the figure into the warehouse and waited — listening — trying to decide whether to take the staircase or push ahead into the building. He heard footsteps somewhere above him and decided to climb the stairs. At the top Pyke followed a passageway as far as it took him, passed through a doorway and entered a storage room, with wooden crates stacked in rows, three or four on top of each other. He saw the figure disappear through another door on the far side of the room and set off after him. For a moment, he thought about firing the pistol but he didn’t have a clear shot. The door led to another flight of stairs and at the top, having sprinted the length of a dark, narrow corridor, Pyke found himself on the flat roof of the old building. Momentarily breathless, he stopped to assess the situation, and realised that the cloaked figure had nowhere else to go. He aimed the pistol and shouted, ‘Stop right there. Don’t take another step or I’ll shoot you.’ He kept the pistol raised and walked quickly across the roof to where the man had backed away, almost to the edge of the building. The figure was slight in stature and wore a black cloak over his head to conceal his identity. ‘Who are you?’ Pyke called out, as he came closer. Still breathless from the pursuit, he was about fifteen or twenty yards away when the figure pulled off the cloak and he found himself staring at the apologetic face of his own wife.

‘What are you…?’ But Pyke couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. He was too confused, his bewilderment quickly turning to anger. ‘I could have shot you. I could have killed you, Emily.’

Emily bowed her head. She was breathing heavily too. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to see me.’

‘Is that supposed to make it acceptable?’

‘I said I was sorry.’

Pyke put the pistol back in his belt, his anger abating a little. ‘So why were you following me?’

‘I had some business in the city this evening. It finished earlier than I’d expected. So I went to your office, to see whether you were still there. I thought we could ride home together. When I got there you were just leaving. I should have called out but you seemed so serious. I was curious. You didn’t hail a cab, so I guessed you weren’t about to go back to Hambledon. On the spot, I decided to follow you. It’s stupid, I know, but I thought you might be meeting her.’

‘Her?’

‘Marguerite.’

Pyke stared at her, dumbfounded. ‘Is this what we’ve been reduced to? Is that how little we trust each other?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

‘You shouldn’t be here, Emily. This is a dangerous part of the world at night. Do you have any idea what the jackals here would do to a woman of your looks and standing, if they came upon you?’ Pyke shook his head.

‘I can take care of myself well enough,’ Emily muttered.

‘And if you came across someone like Jimmy Trotter?’

She screwed up her face. ‘Who’s he?’

‘The blackguard who killed the canon in St Paul’s. The man who threatened you,’ Pyke said, still shaking from the thought of what might have happened, the fact that he’d considered firing a shot. ‘That’s what I was doing tonight. Trying to track him down.’

‘There will always be threats. You can’t deal with them all.’

‘Why will there always be threats, Emily?’ Pyke took a step towards her. ‘Isn’t it time we started being honest with each other?’

‘What I do is upsetting to some people.’

‘And what exactly do you do?’

‘I’m a socialist, Pyke. An Owenite. A radical. I don’t believe the current system can be reformed. I think we need to tear it down and start again.’

‘The men of the French Revolution tried that already and look where it got them. Their own heads on poles.’

Emily shook her head. ‘This isn’t the time and place for a political argument. This should be about us. You and me, Pyke. Why we’re standing on a roof in the middle of the city at past midnight.’

‘Why you took it upon yourself to follow me,’ he reminded her.

‘What? And you’ve been entirely open and honest with me?’

Pyke held her stare. ‘I had a visit tonight from Sir Henry Bellows, chief magistrate at Bow Street. He told me I had no idea what I was dealing with. He warned me to stay at home and not get involved in whatever I’m supposed to be involved with. He also advised you to do the same. That’s two threats made against you in as many days. How can I keep you safe if you won’t tell me what you’re doing?’