Chris Nickson - The Broken Token

“Evening, Adam,” the deputy said breezily. “Staying out of trouble?”

“Of course, Mr Sedgwick,” Suttler answered uneasily. It was a lie, and they both knew it, but for the moment they accepted it as the truth.

“You heard about the murders.”

Suttler shook his head sadly. “A terrible business. I saw him preach on Saturday, very inspiring.”

He might be a criminal, but the forger was also a thoughtful, religious man, in church without fail every Sunday. Still, the deputy supposed, what he did was no worse than some of the merchants, and they were always ready to bow their heads piously.

“A lot of people didn’t like what he said,” Sedgwick pointed out.

“True,” said Suttler, bobbing his head in agreement. “But perhaps they chose not to hear.”

“Did you see him at all after Saturday?”

“I didn’t,” he said with regret. “I’d have liked to talk to him.”

“You go and enjoy your ale,” Sedgwick told him. “And keep out of trouble, Adam. Next time we might not be able to save you.”

With a shy, embarrassed smile, Suttler ducked into the tavern.

Oh well, the deputy thought. Even if there was nothing to be gained from Suttler, the information about Pamela and George Carver was worthwhile. Now all he needed was a little more luck at Queen Charlotte’s Court to make it a good night.

But it seemed as if fortune had just been teasing him. By ten he’d discovered nothing new. His long legs ached from walking and standing, and his knuckles were sore from rapping on doors. At least he’d been able to find many of the dwellers in the court at home. Yet however much he tried to joke and charm information from them, there was little to be had. A couple believed they might have heard something in the middle of the night, but they weren’t certain. Most, it seemed, had been dead to the world. And perhaps they’d earned that, he thought. Working too many hours for too little money, with hardly any food in their bellies, sleep was their only escape from drudgery, the only place where all things and all people could be equal. When simply living was an act of concentration, how could he blame them for not noticing the deaths of people they didn’t even know?

Still, he continued to go methodically around the court, knowing he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d done everything possible. In the attic of a building that should have been razed twenty years before, its stairs rickety and rotted beyond danger, he found an impossibly young mother, with her husband and tiny baby. She looked barely thirteen, her eyes not yet lost in desperation, wearing a dress that had likely been fourth- or fifth-hand when she found it two or three years earlier. Her man barely seemed older himself, a walking jumble of rags tied to his body with string.

“We heard summat, didn’t we, Will?” she told Sedgwick. “I were up with the baby — he’s got the croup, I think — and there was this noise.”

Sedgwick smiled down at her.

“What kind of noise, luv?”

“I wasn’t sure at first. Like someone was dragging something heavy. You remember, Will, I woke you?”

The lad nodded.

“What time was that?”

The girl looked confused.

“Time? I couldn’t tell you that, mister. It were dark, and it felt lonely, so it must have been the middle of the night. You know how everything feels far away then? Except him, of course,” she added, rocking the child in her arms.

“Did you look out?” Sedgwick asked. The room’s sole window opened on to the court.

The girl shook her head.

“Not at first. I mean, the noise stopped, so I didn’t think much more of it, and I had to deal with the babbie. But when it started again, I did.”

He looked at her pinched face, alert now.

“Started again? You mean there was more? How much later was that?”

She considered her answer.

“Not long. I don’t know, I’d just got him settled and fed, and I was going to go back to sleep when I heard it.”

“And what did you see?”

“There wasn’t much of a moon, so I couldn’t really make it out proper. But it looked like someone pulling something, I thought it were a sack of rubbish or summat. I thought it was an odd time, but folk are strange, aren’t they?” she asked with an almost childlike sense of wonder at the world.

“They are, yes.” He smiled kindly at her. “Did you see or hear anything else?”

“Not really.” She frowned as she tried to recall. “A bit more noise from down there, and that’s it. I didn’t really see anyone, not enough to make them out or owt. Once it went quiet again, that was it.”

“Was it a man or woman you saw?”

The girl shook her head.

“I didn’t really notice. Just a shape.”

“Thank you.” Sedgwick noticed that the boy she called Will had barely glanced up throughout the conversation, a sullen expression on his face.

“Will Littlefield,” he said, and the youth turned sharply. “You do right by this lass of yours, or I’ll be back.”

“You know him?” the girl asked, taken aback.

“Oh aye,” Sedgwick replied. “Been friends a long time, haven’t we, Will? Just haven’t seen much of him recently, and you might say that’s a good thing for everyone.”

He bowed to the girl and left.

Not a bad night after all, he said to himself as he strolled back down Briggate towards home. It might even make the bollocking he’d get from his wife worthwhile.

Telling the girls about Pamela’s death hadn’t been as bad as he’d feared, Nottingham reflected the next morning. Rose, with her feelings always close to the surface, had sobbed, comforted by her mother, but Emily, always self-absorbed, had been stoic.

As he poured water from the ewer into the basin and cleaned his teeth with a piece of sponge, he could hear them all in the kitchen. Mary was issuing her quiet instructions, Rose was trying too hard to inject some gaiety into her voice, to sound lively and happy, while Emily’s brooding presence was evident in her silence.

The subject of death was carefully avoided as they broke their fast with porridge and small ale. But the conversation remained stilted, almost as if Pamela’s ghost was in the room with them. As soon as he’d eaten Nottingham pulled on his coat and left, eager to escape the close atmosphere of the house.

Sedgwick was waiting at the jail, dark circles underlining his eyes. He’d arrived home long after the clock struck midnight and had been back by six, listening to the reports of the two men who made up the night watch. He was a good young worker, the Constable thought, there was no doubt of that.

Nottingham sat and listened carefully as his assistant explained what he’d discovered the previous night.

“Good,” he nodded appreciatively. “I talked to Amos Worthy yesterday, and he told me Pamela was often at the Ship. Now we need to find where she lived. I’ll take care of that. Have we found the killing ground yet?”

“Not yet. But from what that lass said, it can’t be far away. I’ve got a couple of men searching; we should have it this morning.”

“You keep on looking for anyone who might have seen Morton the night before last. The bugger was somewhere before he was killed.”

“What about George Carver?” Sedgwick wondered.

The Constable rubbed his chin. Carver was a local legend. He’d been a successful merchant once, selling cloth to the Continent. Somehow the business had slipped away from him and he’d lost everything, his family, his house, whatever money he’d had. No one knew how he earned a living now, but he was in the inns every night, drinking. Pleasant, even charming, company when sober, once he was drunk he turned belligerent and violent, going out of his way to pick fights. He was under five feet six, his body bloated by years of alcohol; all too often he was the one who ended up bloody and unconscious. He’d spent plenty of nights in the cells, as much for his own protection as for the trouble he caused. It was hard to picture him as any kind of murderer, let alone killing in cold blood. But stranger things had happened.