Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

Earlier in the day he had looked for Jake Bolter at Prosser’s asylum in Tooting but had been told by one of the staff that neither Bolter nor ‘Mr Prosser’ had been seen there for a few days. Back at the crimping house, he had learned nothing new about Bolter or Trotter. Earlier still, Pyke had interrupted the journey back from Huntingdon by insisting that they stop at Hambledon, but no ransom demand had been delivered. Only Jo had been told what had happened and, if she heard anything at all, she’d been instructed to contact Townsend, day or night, at the bank. Nor had a ransom demand been left for Pyke at Blackwood’s. He had remained in the carriage while Townsend made his enquiries there.

Overnight the storm had passed and the temperature had plummeted, a cool wind from the north replacing the easterly gales. The air was cold and dry and the sky a crisp blue. It took him half an hour to walk from Smithfield along High Holborn to the start of Oxford Street, and there he sat on the pavement and ate a meat pie bought from a stall, his fingers dripping with hot gravy. As he licked the gravy from his fingers, he could see his own breath. Once he’d finished the pie, he fumbled around in his pocket for the bottle of laudanum, unscrewed the top and drank almost half of it. The syrupy tincture, mixed with port rather than gin, made him shudder, and for a moment Pyke thought he might bring up the pie.

He visited three tobacconists at the eastern end of Oxford Street, none of whom recognised Jimmy Trotter from his description. Having picked up the cigar stub he’d been given by the navvy, Red, from the Hall, Pyke showed it to the three men, but none of them was able to identify the brand or shed light on where it might have been purchased.

Oxford Street was a tumult of noise and motion: pedestrians five or six deep on the flagstone pavement streaming in and out of the bazaars and shops. Silversmiths, shoe- and bootmakers, fruiterers whose windows displayed exotic fare like pineapples and figs, spirit booths selling hot gin and Jamaica rum by the quart, and large emporia selling everything from the finest silks to Staffordshire bone china. Here the idle rich, waited upon by their liveried servants, rubbed shoulders with ragged hawkers whose kerbside stalls were piled up with old boots, broken umbrellas, stolen handkerchiefs and strips of ribbon.

Usually Pyke would have taken the bustle in his stride but the laudanum and a lack of sleep made everything seem strange and disjointed. People’s faces drifted in and out of focus, their smiles turning into grimaces and vice versa. Pyke liked the anonymity that the city afforded him but, all of a sudden, he felt exposed and perhaps threatened by the faces that passed him by. No one knew. No one understood. He wanted to stop the next man he saw and shake him by the collar. ‘My wife and child have been kidnapped,’ he wanted to say, even though he knew how ridiculous it made him sound. Why should anyone else but him care?

At the junction with Regent Street, the shops became grander and the pavements wider still. A crowd had built up and it took Pyke a few moments to realise that everyone was looking at a procession of three giraffes, with their Nubian attendants, heading along Regent Street in the direction of the new zoological gardens in the park. Pausing to watch these strangely graceful creatures, he thought how excited Felix would have been, if he’d been there, and felt another wave of anguished sadness wash over him.

When the procession had passed, Pyke crossed the road just in front of a brightly painted carriage and, startled from his thoughts, he looked at the window and saw Emily, her face pressed up against the glass.

Running behind the carriage, waving his arms and shouting, Pyke caught up with it at the next junction, the driver and footman both looking at him as if he were an escaped Bedlamite.

‘That’s my wife in there,’ he said, panting, his lungs ready to burst.

But it wasn’t Emily, of course. Nor did the delicate, effete woman in the carriage look anything like her, apart from having the same colour hair.

Pyke sat down on the kerb and tried to catch his breath. Perhaps the laudanum had affected his vision. He was joined briefly by a young girl in a flimsy white dress. She shot him a wan smile and held up a bunch of wilting cress. ‘Ha’penny for some watercresses,’ she croaked. Her arms were skeletal and uncovered, her dress offering no protection from the elements. He got up and bought her a meat pie from a nearby stall, but when he came back she had gone.

Darkness had begun to gnaw at the edges of the sky and the lamplighters were out on Oxford Street, moving from lamp to lamp with their ladders and tools. Pyke had nearly walked the entire length of the street. He was cold and his feet ached. There was one final tobacconist hemmed in between a grocer’s and a barber’s shop. He pushed open the door and heard a bell ring. The tobacconist wore wire-rimmed spectacles and a blue-and-white-striped apron. Pyke showed the man what little remained of the stub and asked whether he could identify the brand.

The tobacconist pushed his spectacles back up his nose. ‘Not the exact brand but it looks like a well-rolled cigar. Something we might stock.’

His assistant, a pretty young woman with blonde braids, hovered to one side of the counter.

‘I’m looking for the man who purchased it. His name’s Jimmy Trotter.’ Pyke gave them a description.

The tobacconist shook his head and said he didn’t recognise the name or the description, but out of the corner of his eye Pyke saw the young assistant flinch. It was all he needed.

It was another half-hour before the tobacconist pulled down the wooden shutters and locked up the shop. Wearing a shawl now, the young assistant bade him farewell and set off along Oxford Street. Pyke caught up with her at the corner of Duke Street. At first she didn’t seem to recognise him but when he mentioned Trotter’s name her face fell and her lips began to quiver. Pyke told her not to be scared, he just wanted some information, and if she told him what he needed to know, he would buy her a hot roast beef dinner and as much beer as she wanted. That seemed to do it, and she led him around the corner to a pub called the Three Geese.

‘He’s been a regular in the shop for a year. Always gives me these looks and tries to touch me when Mr Bent ain’t looking. He always buys the same thing, too: a box of Fuentes cigars, from the West Indies. Expensive, they are. He calls ’em his Prometheus sticks.’

She was a slight, willowy girl with fine blonde hair and a freckled face, but she had already finished one mug of beer and ordered another.

‘Do you know where he lives?’

‘Not where he lives,’ she said, licking foam from her top lip.

‘Then where I can find him?’

‘Last month, Mr Bent made me deliver the cigars to him in person. I didn’t want to but he told me ’less I did, I’d lose my job. He said Mr Trotter was one of his very best customers. I didn’t tell him about the looks and the groping. And he said he’d pay me sixpence for it.’

‘Where did you deliver them to?’

‘That was the thing. When I left them for him, he weren’t there. But as soon as I stepped out of the pub, I felt something touch me and he was there, leering at me. I could tell he was in the gun, his eyes were crossed and I could smell the rum on his breath, but I could see he meant business. I’d say he’s a mean one. He tried to grab my wrist and pull me into the alley but I was too quick for him and then a gentl’man happened to walk past and I latched on to him.’

‘You did well,’ Pyke said, waving at the pot-boy to bring her another beer.

She gave him a toothy smile but he could see she was still shaken by the incident.