Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

AUTUMN 1835

The brickbat whistled through the air as Pyke slammed it down on to the wooden stall, snapping the stall in half and sending its contents tumbling on to the cobblestones. Another lunge with the same weapon shattered a barrel filled with pickled cucumbers and herrings, the sour liquid spraying all those standing within a ten-yard radius. Drawing his sleeve across his mouth, Pyke stared into the hooded eyes of the man standing in front of him, ignoring the sea of sullen faces gathered in the walled pen at one end of Petticoat Lane.

His name was Gold.

Ever since Pyke’s bank had started to court the burgeoning slop trade, Pyke had been at loggerheads with Petticoat Lane usurers like Gold: usurers who regarded the business of lending money to small businessmen — who, in turn, paid slave wages to growing numbers of workers in order to produce an ever-proliferating supply of underpriced goods — as their natural domain.

In his position as the bank’s senior partner, Pyke had employed two former Bow Street Runners to collect debts in the vicinity of Spitalfields, and one of them, Bethell, had been attacked a few days earlier and been beaten with brickbats and pickaxe handles. In the subsequent melee, Bethell had lost an eye and a tooth. Investigating the matter himself, Pyke had discovered that the assailants were, or appeared to be, Jewish, and he knew that nothing happened in and around Petticoat Lane without Gold’s approval.

Pyke’s associate, Jem Nash, wielded a blunderbuss to keep the crowd from trying to help the unfortunate man at the end of Pyke’s brickbat.

‘If you ever harm one of my men again, or attempt to damage one of my places of business, I’ll hunt you down and kill you. Is that understood?’

As he spoke, Pyke almost didn’t see the figure moving out of the shadows and it wasn’t until the man had slipped the wire around Jem Nash’s neck that Pyke responded. In the blink of an eye, he had retrieved his knife and, in the same movement, thrust it against Gold’s throat. It wasn’t a manoeuvre he had had much use for in recent years but he had spent the best part of a decade as a Bow Street Runner and could still remember how to draw a pistol or turn a knife on an opponent.

For a moment, no one knew what to do. Nash’s assailant swapped a panicky look with Gold.

‘Let him go,’ Pyke barked.

Gold’s eyes darted between Nash and his assailant.

‘ Let him go.’

After what seemed like an eternity, Gold nodded his assent.

The man dropped the garrotte and Nash swung the blunderbuss around and fired, the ball-shot tearing his assailant in half and splattering the people gathered in the pen with blood, intestines and bone. The wounded man collapsed into a puddle of his blood, quivered and then died.

There was one shot left in the blunderbuss and thirty men unable to take their eyes off their slain friend.

‘That just wouldn’t have happened if your boy hadn’t tried to choke my associate.’ Pyke clenched his jaw and cursed Nash’s rashness under his breath. He had brought the younger man because he’d needed someone who could keep the mob from retaliating but he hadn’t, for a moment, imagined that Nash would be capable of turning the blunderbuss on someone and firing it in anger.

Gold stared at him, hollow eyed. ‘You gemmen come down here like a couple of freebooters, pop the cull and expect to walk away?’ There was a note of incredulity in his voice.

‘You dealt the cards, you’ve got to play the hand.’

Gold nodded but didn’t speak for a moment. ‘Ever heard the phrase an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?’

Pyke could feel the anger in the faces of those gathered around them. He glanced over at Nash, whose armpits were damp with sweat.

‘Is it money you want?’

‘I know this cully. I know his family. Who’s going to put bread on their table now?’

Pyke let out a sigh. Gold was willing to negotiate. It meant they might escape with their lives. ‘My man lost an eye, your man’s dead. What do you think you’re owed?’

Gold sneered. ‘You think a few pieces of silver can buy a fellow’s life?’

‘What if the money folded?’ Pyke asked.

Gold seemed to consider this for a short while and licked his lips. ‘I give the word, there are thirty men here all wanting to pink you with two inches of cold iron.’

Pyke let Gold see the pistol in his belt and motioned at the blunderbuss Nash was aiming at the chests of the men surrounding them. ‘Don’t you reckon enough blood has been spilled already?’

Silence hung between them. In the distance, he heard a dog barking and someone laugh. More bodies appeared in the walled pen, eager to see what was happening. ‘What kind of arrangement were you thinking of?’

Pyke took out his purse and tossed it on to the ground. ‘There are thirty sovereigns in there,’ he said, pausing. ‘I’ll pay you another fifty on top of that.’

‘Thirty megs, eh?’ Gold scratched his stubble and rubbed his eyes. ‘And fifty more to come.’

There had to be forty men in the pen now and one word from Gold would see both of them engulfed by a wave of bodies and fists.

‘Well?’

‘It seems a little short to me. Man can hardly wet his beak with that.’

‘A hundred. That’s my final offer.’

‘ Your final offer? Are you the cock of the walk now?’ Around Gold, a few of the gathered figures took a step forward as if to signal their intent.

‘I’ll send a man down with the rest of the money this afternoon.’

The blood was vivid in Gold’s sunken cheeks. ‘You need to put some reins on your colt. An unlicked cub goes out on the pad, he’s axing to be hurt.’

Pyke nodded. It was a fair point. ‘So do we have a deal?’

‘I reckon I should put it to his family. Don’t want ’em thinking they were gulled.’

‘We’re leaving now. I wouldn’t want one of your men to do anything rash.’ Pyke nodded at Nash and they shuffled in unison towards the pen’s only door. Nash’s weapon was still trained on the mob.

‘Maybe the matter’s settled.’ Gold smiled, half closing his eyes. ‘But then again, maybe it ain’t.’

Pyke kicked open the door and allowed Nash to hurry past him. ‘Is that a threat?’

‘Call it what you like, Pyke.’

The crowd of onlookers had cleared a narrow path for them but their glares hadn’t softened.

‘You’ll have the rest of the money by nightfall.’

Gold looked down at his slain friend and muttered, ‘I wouldn’t like to be the cully who has to bring it.’

‘In that case I’ll do it.’

‘You’re braver than you look,’ Gold said. ‘Or more stupid.’

In the taproom of the Barley Mow on Upper Thames Street, Nash drank gin from the bottle, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat until he had to pause for breath. ‘I killed a man,’ he muttered, visibly trying to work out whether he abhorred the notion or felt some kind of pride at his actions.

With his dark blue swallow-tailed coat, checked trousers, crimped shirt, top hat and leather gloves, Jem Nash looked more like a dandy than the banking clerk — and more recently minor partner — that he was. Notwithstanding the fripperies of his outfit, people often commented that Nash and Pyke might have been brothers. Though Nash was a few inches shorter than Pyke and without his broad shoulders, they both had the same coarse black hair with trimmed mutton-chop sideburns and similar dark, olive-coloured skin. Pyke’s waist had spread a little in recent years and the privileges of wealth had softened him to a degree, but he could still take the younger man in a fight, and when they stood next to each other in a public place, it was Pyke who turned the heads of the female passers-by. But Nash was not without his own attributes. In the short space of time he had worked at the bank, he had proven himself as one of the most ruthless operators Pyke had ever seen. Nash could foreclose on another man’s livelihood without a thimbleful of sentimentality.