Chris Nickson - The Broken Token

He walked on, looking for the two men he’d detailed to search for the murder ground. He found them up Briggate in the Ship, supping ale.

“You’d better have a good reason for being here,” he said sharply to one of them, a haggard, underfed youth named Johnson.

“We wanted somewhere to wait for you, Mr Sedgwick, seeing as you’d gone to get some sleep.” He winked, and his companion, a brawny, older man called Portman, nodded agreement.

“Did you find the place?”

“Oh, aye, and a right bloody mess it is, too.” Johnson laughed stupidly at his own wit, showing a mouth with most of the teeth missing.

“Then you’d better drink up and show me, hadn’t you?” the deputy said testily.

The pair looked at each other, drained their mugs and stood. Eager to be moving, to find something, Sedgwick followed them.

It was in the old orchard just the other side of Lands Lane, perhaps a hundred yards from where the bodies had been left. The long grass under an ancient, gnarled tree was trodden down, the earth dark and still a little sticky with blood. Flecks of it were sprayed dully on some of the windfall fruit on the ground.

“Did you find anything else here?” he asked.

Each man shook his head in turn.

“Right. Well done, lads. You go on now.”

Once he was alone, Sedgwick began combing through the undergrowth around the tree. He didn’t expect that Carver would have left anything, but he still needed to search and be sure. After almost half an hour he gave up. Nothing. No buttons, scraps of cloth. Absolutely nothing that would help put the noose round the old drunk’s neck.

He made his way back to the jail, stopping only for the gift of a warm meat pie from the seller at the corner of Kirkgate and Briggate. Nottingham was at his desk, deep in thought, only looking up after Sedgwick had collapsed into the other chair. He raised his eyebrows for a report.

“They were killed in that orchard by Lands Lane. Close enough to pull them to the yard easily.”

“Anything there?”

Sedgwick shook his head. “I searched it myself. Was there anything on the bodies?”

“Nothing to tell us who they were,” Nottingham replied in frustration. “I doubt we’ll ever know her name unless some pimp comes to complain about a missing girl.”

“Oh aye, and it’ll snow in July next year.” Sedgwick pushed the last piece of pie into his mouth and stretched.

“I want you to go out and start talking to the pimps and procurers,” the Constable ordered. “Take a look at her, give them the description. One of them might say something. After all, someone’s lost income with her gone.”

“Are you going to bring Carver back in?” he asked. It came out as an accusation, but he didn’t apologise.

Nottingham nodded very slowly. Sedgwick’s rebuke was perfectly justified.

“I’ll find him when he goes out this evening. I did some checking; he was next door until about ten. After that none of the inns remember seeing him.”

“Yes, boss.” Although he tried to remain grave, the deputy’s face seemed to light up.

“I daresay I’ll be getting another summons from his Worship today,” the Constable observed. “He’ll doubtless be concerned about the murders of respectable citizens going unsolved.”

“And what about the whores?”

Nottingham smiled wryly.

“I suspect the Mayor and the corporation will only worry about them when they can’t get one.”

Carver, Nottingham thought when he was alone. Bloody Carver. Could he have been so wrong? Every sinew in his body had said the man wasn’t capable of murder. Even now he found it hard to believe. So far there was nothing to connect him with these fresh killings. But if Carver had committed them… then perhaps it was time to quit this post, before the Mayor dismissed him for incompetence. He tried to blink the tiredness from his eyes. He’d love to be away in his bed now, but there wasn’t going to be much sleep until all this was over.

The door of the jail opened tentatively and Nottingham looked up sharply, brought from his thoughts. A woman stepped in, glancing around nervously, as if unsure what evil she’d find inside and bracing herself to face it. He stood and bowed slightly to her.

“I’m looking for the Constable,” she announced in a quavering voice.

“I’m the Constable,” he said, moving to hold the chair for her. She was about thirty-five but worn by age and work, in a homespun dress of fair quality — her best, he guessed. She wore a woollen shawl around her shoulders, the fingers of one hand clutching it tightly at her neck. Her skin had the leathery look of someone who’d spent plenty of time out in the fields, lines radiating from the corners of her eyes and mouth in a plain face, her eyes flickering around the room, frightened. She’d tucked her hair into a cap, but he could see strands that had freed themselves, a mix of mousy brown and iron grey. He decided his farmer’s wife had found him.

“I’m Richard Nottingham, the Constable of Leeds,” he told her formally, settling into his own seat. “Might I ask your name, mistress?”

“Nell Winters.” She blurted it out as her gaze took in the details of the room. He knew how forbidding it could look to innocent eyes: thick walls, the doors to the cells stout and dark. It was a place for those who’d broken the laws, not those who lived by them. From the Constable’s office, spare and cramped, but at least warmed by a hearth, a corridor ran back long the building’s single floor, past the heavy, locked oak doors of each of the five cells to the windowless mortuary room with its pair of stone slabs.

“I don’t think you’re a Leeds woman,” Nottingham prodded gently. “I don’t know your face.”

“No.” She tried to smile, but couldn’t manage it. “We live in Alwoodley.” He knew the area slightly, four or five miles to the north of the city on the road to Harrogate, with wooded hills and good grazing.

“You’re looking for your husband, perhaps?”

“Yes,” she admitted, and he saw she was glad at first that he’d understood without her having to explain. Then realisation flooded into her mind, and her hands were covering her face as she said, “Oh God, no.”

Nottingham knew she needed comfort as tears and sobs racked her, but he didn’t move. Propriety forbade it. Instead, the best he could do was offer his messy kerchief for her to dab her eyes and hide her face.

“Is he dead?” she asked finally, her eyes rimmed with red.

“How was he dressed when he came to town?”

She gave a brief description.

“I’m sorry,” Nottingham told her gently, and she began to weep again. The minutes passed, until she seemed drained of tears for the present, and he began asking questions. It wasn’t something he wanted to do, when she was struggling to keep afloat in her grief, but he had no choice.

“What was his name?”

“Noah.” She barely whispered the word and tried to keep her face composed. “His mam called him that ’cause he was born when it had been raining for days and she thought they’d all end up living on an ark.”

“He was a farmer?”

She nodded.

“Why did he come into Leeds?”

“He wanted a new suit.” She shook her head at the stupidity and waste of it all, and her fingers pulled at the kerchief as if she was trying to tear it apart. “For years he’d wanted some clothes made in the city. He’d done well, the farm had made money the last few years, and he decided it was time to treat himself, so he could dress a bit more like a squire.” She offered a faint, wan smile.

“Did he come in yesterday morning?” Nottingham asked, and she nodded in answer.

“Said he’d be home last night. When he wasn’t back by this morning I had one of the lads drive me in on’t cart.” She hesitated, torn between wanting the truth and not wishing to hear a word. “How did he die?”