Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

Rockingham was sick as soon as his head cleared the slime, a string of bile traced with blood hanging from his lips. Lumps of the gruel-like water hung from his mouth and cheeks.

From behind, Pyke heard Townsend mutter, ‘He won’t be able to take much more of this.’

But Pyke continued to hold Rockingham’s head over the trough. ‘Tell me how you know Jake Bolter.’

‘What’s Bolter got to do with anything?’

‘Just answer the question.’

‘He used to serve in the Thirty-first. I hold occasional dinners and a ball in my home for the regiment.’

‘And did you meet Jimmy Trotter through him?’

‘Trotter?’

‘The man with a glass eye.’

‘I don’t know such a man.’ He tried to clear his throat.

Pyke dunked Rockingham’s head into the hog’s gruel once again but this time, when he pulled it clear of the liquid, the old man’s entire body began to spasm and a froth of blood and saliva started to seep from his mouth. Pyke dropped him on to the ground and tried to revive him, at first with a hard slap to the face and then with a few pumps on his chest. His body stopped convulsing and he must have died shortly afterwards because there was silence. In the yard, the only noises were the grunting and squealing of the hogs and the pitter-patter of rain. Pyke stood up and drew the sleeve of his coat over his mouth, staring down at Rockingham’s limp form. Another wave of anger and self-hatred washed over him.

‘ What? ’ Pyke said, turning around to look at Townsend, who hadn’t spoken a word. ‘He must have had a heart seizure. There was nothing I could have done.’

Townsend stood there, his arms folded. His clothes were soaking and rain dripped from his chin.

Pyke bent down and quickly stripped the old man naked. Then he scooped the body up in his arms and carried it across to the sty. The landowner couldn’t have weighed more than six stone, but it still took a monumental effort to lift him up over the chest-high fence and drop him into the sty. At first the reluctant beasts didn’t know what to do with the body. A few of them prodded the naked corpse with their snouts and jostled with one another to get the best vantage point. It wasn’t until one of them tasted a trace of blood on the old man’s mouth that the feeding frenzy began in earnest, but when it did it was a truly sickening sight. In ankle-deep filth, Rockingham’s arms and then his legs disappeared under a melee of trotters, and soon all that could be heard was a few quiet grunts as the creatures ripped into the old man’s flesh and crunched his bones. Before too long there was nothing left.

‘Tell the farmer we’re done and meet me in the carriage.’ Pyke stared up into the dark skies at the rain. ‘I want to be back in London by daybreak.’ The driver would have to be paid off, as well.

The odour of death had seeped into his fingers, clothes, skin and hair until it was all Pyke could taste, all he could smell. He had shot and, doubtless, killed the dragoon outside Huntingdon, but he hadn’t tasted death in such a visceral way for a long time and had forgotten the unpleasantness of the feeling: knowing he had taken everything the old man had, and everything he would ever have. Pyke had killed him, plain and simple, and whether he deserved to die was beside the point. He could save the self-justifications and regret for later. An image of his son wouldn’t leave his mind, and Pyke felt a gnawing emptiness building within him. It felt as if he were standing on the edge of a cliff, about to hurl himself to his own death. More than anything else he craved the reassurance of laudanum.

‘Do you still think he was responsible?’ Townsend asked, quietly. They had been travelling through the storm for almost two hours, and if anything the rain had intensified. The inside of the carriage smelled of mouldy hay and drying clothes.

Pyke gave him an empty look. ‘You heard him. He didn’t seem to know anything about it.’

Townsend put his legs up on the seat opposite. ‘Tell me again why you thought it might have been him.’ He tried to adjust his position, wincing as though in pain.

‘Rockingham had been following me on the day of the kidnapping. He would’ve seen Emily and Felix in the carriage. He had the opportunity and the motive…’

‘Motive?’

Pyke sighed. ‘I was getting close to exposing his involvement in the deaths of an actor called Johnny, whose headless corpse was found in a river bordering Rockingham’s land, an old crone who was raped and beaten to death just outside a navvy encampment, again in Huntingdon, and possibly also Edward James Morris.’

‘And these deaths directly benefited the old man?’

‘Certainly the last two did. More than anything, he didn’t want this railway being built across his land. In different ways, both deaths retarded its progress.’

‘Cold comfort for him now.’ Townsend stared out of the window as the rain beat ceaselessly against the roof. ‘And you had hard evidence linking him with all these murders?’

Pyke shook his head. He didn’t know for certain that Morris hadn’t killed himself and had no hard evidence, just a gut feeling that Morris wouldn’t have taken his own life and a suspicion that Bolter had somehow been involved. Regarding the other two murders, he tried to explain his suspicions concerning Jimmy Trotter — that the glass-eyed man had been trying to find the actor and had been spotted near the scene of the old crone’s killing and that both corpses had been peppered with the same burn marks, possibly from a cigar. He also explained the connections between Trotter and Bolter — both had once lodged in the same guest house — and Bolter and Rockingham. Bolter, Pyke added, had been the old man’s escort during a recent trip to the capital and, as the old man had admitted, they had met at social occasions hosted by Rockingham for personnel and former personnel of the 31st Regiment. Pyke also pointed out that the magistrate who had initially stirred up the trouble in Huntingdon about the time of the first two deaths had once belonged to this regiment too. He didn’t tell Townsend that he had shot and killed a soldier while trying to escape the violence in Huntingdon but made a mental note to check on this. Maybe Emily and Felix had been abducted as punishment for that?

‘But there’s something about what you’ve just told me that’s bothering you, isn’t there?’

Pyke nodded, surprised by the acuteness of Townsend’s insight. ‘Someone wanted me to see Jake Bolter with Rockingham.’ Briefly Pyke described the anonymous letter he had received, alerting him to Rockingham’s arrival in the city. He thought, too, about the odd expression on the older man’s face when Pyke had accused him of conspiring against the railway, and wondered whether it could really be true that Rockingham had never met or even known about Jimmy Trotter.

‘Why would someone have sent you that note?’

‘I don’t know. As I said, perhaps they wanted me to see Bolter and Rockingham together. Perhaps they wanted me to suspect the old man.’

‘Why?’

‘If I had to guess, I’d say to divert suspicion from themselves.’

‘You have anyone in mind?’

Pyke considered this for a moment. ‘A couple of people.’

‘You want to talk about it?’

Pyke shook his head. ‘Not yet.’ He didn’t quite feel ready. But he closed his eyes and thought about it.

As the carriage rocked gently backwards and forwards, the names of his suspects slithered in and out of his mind, each vying for his attention.

When Pyke next opened his eyes, a few hours must have passed because the first signs of daylight were visible across the flat, barren landscape. His first thoughts were of Emily and Felix: where they might be or whether they were still alive. Emily, who’d just told him she was pregnant. He felt queasy, scared. Perhaps there would be news waiting for him in London.