Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

Captain Paine, RIP.

Without thinking about it, Pyke hurled himself at the dog, going for its throat, but the giant mastiff was too quick for him and sunk its powerful jaws into his wrist and didn’t let go until it had touched bone. Screaming, he tried to wrap his other arm around the dog’s neck and use his weight to twist the snarling creature on to its back, its tawny fur now also smeared with Emily’s blood. Too late, Pyke remembered that Copper was a fighting beast, trained to attack when scenting blood, and though both his arms were now coiled around the animal’s throat and its front legs were dangling in the air, the mastiff was still stronger than him, its jaws locked on to his wrist. In the end Pyke had to poke the creature in its eye, to stop it from tearing off his hand, and when its jaws snapped open, he pulled it up off its feet and started to squeeze, the dog snarling at first and then whimpering, but exhaustion did for them both and eventually they came to rest on the hard, frozen ground, Pyke’s efforts to strangle the dog becoming, through tiredness, a muted embrace, and very soon the only noise he could hear was the breathy panting of the living dog.

Then he was surrounded by his marksmen. They looked at him, then at Emily and the dog, not knowing what to say. Townsend was there, too, attempting to take charge of the situation. The police would be there soon, he kept saying. Rising to his feet, Pyke told half the group to take Emily’s body and the carriage to his uncle’s basement shop in St Paul’s Yard and wait for him there. The others would come with him: they still had to find the assassin.

Having made a leash from one of the horse’s reins, Pyke coiled it around the dog’s neck and held on to the other end. Copper tugged hard on his new leash and Pyke allowed the eager mastiff to lead him through the hospital’s wrought-iron gates and up some stone steps into the main building. The entrance hall was a frenzy of activity; clearly the volley of rifle shots had sent the porters, nurses and patients into a panic, and some were trying to evacuate the building using a rear entrance. In the mayhem, no one even seemed to notice a man and a dog, both smeared in blood, running across the hall, the dog leading the way to the main staircase, taking the steps two at a time, perhaps following his master’s scent.

Holding on to the lead, Pyke followed Copper up a further flight of stairs and along a long, narrow passageway as far as a closed door, where the mastiff hesitated and sniffed, its tail wagging from side to side. It let out an excited bark, and from the other side Pyke heard Jake Bolter say, ‘Is that you, Copper?’ When the door swung open, Copper pushed ahead of him but Pyke had his pistol ready and swung it around to face Bolter, who’d been shot in the shoulder and stomach and sat propped up against a wall in a small, bare room that reminded Pyke of a prison cell. Pieces of smashed glass lay all around the wounded man. Copper bounded across to greet his master, while Pyke kept the pistol trained on him and kicked the rifle Bolter had used to shoot Emily out of the ex-soldier’s reach.

‘Who sent you here to kill my wife?’

Bolter had lost a lot of blood and could barely summon enough strength to pat the dog on its head. ‘I was meant to get the pair of you, then collect any letters you’d brought with you. I hadn’t counted on there being other folk with rifles. You outfoxed me there.’ He tried to smile.

‘Who gave you the orders?’

‘A soldier never gives up the name of his superior officer.’

Pyke stood over him and rammed the pistol into his face. ‘My wife was pregnant when you killed her.’

That seemed to cause Bolter a little distress. ‘I didn’t have nothing against her but I wouldn’t have shed any tears over you.’

‘Just like you didn’t have anything in particular against Johnny Evans and Freddie Sutton?’

‘You care about those cullies?’

‘So you don’t deny killing them?’

‘I did the Suttons but Johnny was Trotter’s work. Reckoned cutting off the head would spook the folk in Huntingdon as much as the threat of the navvies.’ For a moment he shut his eyes and Pyke thought he might have passed away.

But a lick from the mastiff brought him around, and when Bolter next looked up at him, Pyke had trained the pistol on the dog. ‘Tell me who gave you your orders or I’ll kill your dog.’

‘You wouldn’t hurt a poor, dumb animal, would you, sir?’

Pyke took aim and fired. The shot tore through one of the dog’s legs and the beast flopped to the floor, yelping.

Bolter looked at him, uncomprehending. ‘You shot my Copper,’ he whispered, the life ebbing from him.

‘If you don’t tell me who sent you here to kill my wife, I’ll aim the next one at his head.’

On the floor, the terrified mutt whimpered and yelped.

‘Well?’ Pyke removed the other pistol from his belt, raised the barrel and coiled his finger around the trigger.

‘Please don’t kill my Copper,’ Bolter whispered.

Pyke knelt over him. ‘Tell me who sent you.’

Bolter slumped forward and murmured, ‘Gore.’

‘And my son. Where’s my child?’

‘Your child?’

‘Has Gore got my son?’

Bolter took his last breath and died, Copper’s attempts to crawl towards his master and bring him back to life coming to nothing. The mastiff tried in vain to haul itself up on to its three good legs but it didn’t have enough strength. Like its master, it had lost too much blood. Pyke went to try to pick the dog up but it was too heavy for him to carry on his own. He found a trolley in the passageway and with Townsend’s help, he managed to haul the shivering beast up on to it. Pushing the trolley back along the passageway towards the staircase, Pyke reached down and patted Copper on the head. The dog whimpered by way of response.

It took them a half-hour to find a surgeon and another ten minutes for Pyke and two of the men to carry the dying animal from the trolley and down two flights of stairs as far as the operating room. When the man realised what he was being asked to do, he put down his scalpel, removed his gown and said he wouldn’t demean his profession by operating on a dog. Pyke offered him fifty pounds if the mastiff survived and the surgeon hurriedly ushered them out of the room to begin his work.

It rained on the morning of Emily’s funeral. It rained the day before and it rained the following day, too. The northerly wind that had brought snow with it was replaced by a brisk westerly breeze that warmed things up but swept in wave after wave of thick, dark clouds. The water dripped from branches and gathered in stagnant pools; it turned the already sodden ground into a boggy mush and it drained into rivers and canals until their banks were on the verge of bursting. But still it continued to fall, relentlessly, from skies as black as gunmetal, and though it eased a little when Pyke and three of the servants carried Emily’s coffin from the hall on their shoulders, when it came to lowering it down into the freshly dug grave, the skies opened once again and soaked the small congregation of servants.

Pyke hadn’t announced the funeral in any of the newspapers, nor invited any of the radicals to attend it. He was determined that she would be buried not as Captain Paine but simply as Emily. He didn’t want her death to be turned into a political event.

Some, like Jo, who had known Emily for many years, wept inconsolably; others stared down into the grave, keeping their thoughts to themselves. Pyke stood on his own, at the front of the group, with Godfrey just behind him, lost in his grief, hardly noticing the rainwater as it dripped down his cheeks and neck. He could still taste her in his mouth; he could still smell her on his clothes; his skin was still stained with her blood. There was no formal service and no vicar presided over the short ceremony. No one gave a eulogy or said a few words. To the sound of Jo’s sobs, Pyke stared at nothing, thought nothing and felt nothing. In the end, the rain drove everyone back to the hall, where the gloom masked a general air of anxiety, none of the servants knowing what would happen to the hall or their posts. Pyke remained at Emily’s graveside, thinking about his wife and the child that had died in her womb. Thinking it was his fault. That was the worst part. Thinking, knowing he could have done more.