Chris Nickson - The Broken Token

Around him carters were urging on their teams, the clack of horseshoes and wheel rims sharp and loud on the cobbles. Men bowed by heavy packs on their backs negotiated the traffic with stoic looks on their faces, coming to sell or going home disappointed. A few smiled, hands jammed in their pockets to keep thieves from their profits.

That set him thinking. They’d heard nothing more about their cutpurse for a day or so now. Could he have moved on, deciding he’d tried his luck as far as it would go in Leeds? It was possible, but unlikely. Every thief he’d met liked to push it to the limit, and most ended up caught and hanged. It happened so often it almost seemed like a natural law.

At the south end of the bridge he turned into a warren of streets. Much of the area to the west, on Meadow Lane, was given over to grand houses built by the merchants as symbols of their success, with expensive brick fronts to illustrate their wealth. But back in these yards was someone who could give them a run, guinea for guinea.

Without even needing to find his bearings, he made his way through the tiny streets. Few people were around; they were mostly off at their work, or in their rooms, sleeping off labour or drink. It was a place without joy, without hope, like so many others he saw every day, where most people existed rather than lived.

Not Jane Farnham, though, Sedgwick thought as he stopped and knocked on a door. She was a woman who broke all the rules. She relished her life as a bawd and she’d made a small fortune pandering to the needs of others. No Amos Worthy, perhaps, but with plenty of money just the same.

A grille in the wood opened and a pair of eyes looked out. Sedgwick didn’t bother to say anything. Whoever was looking would know his face. A thickset man let him in, a fearsome scar on a face that had been battered several times, the nose broken and awkwardly set.

“Henry.” Sedgwick nodded. The servant wasn’t wearing a waistcoat or jacket, and the muscles of his arms and chest bulged against the old linen of his shirt. He’d been a soldier once, at least that was the tale, and had killed his sergeant with his bare hands before deserting. Not that anyone, except perhaps Henry himself, knew the truth. And after all this time perhaps he’d chosen to believe the legend.

“What dost tha want?” The man’s voice always sounded hoarse.

“Is she around? I need to talk to her.”

Henry eyed him impassively before leaving him inside the door and going into another room, emerging a few seconds later and tilting his ugly head as invitation. Sedgwick followed. He’d been here a number of times, but on each occasion it took his breath away. Jane Farnham’s morning room was the equal of any fine lady’s residence, the furnishings expensive and exquisite, with a thick carpet of Oriental design like a cushion under his feet. From the outside of the building no one would have guessed at this interior.

But Sedgwick also knew that decorating her rooms in such a manner was as close as Mrs Farnham would ever come to society, for no procurer could ever be received by polite people. So she created her own rich world that would have intimidated most of the people she’d never be likely to entertain, and established her own superiority.

Farnham herself, wearing a fine jade silk gown of a fashionable London cut, her hair elegantly pinned up in an elaborate coif, looked up from the delicate chair where she sat. No one had ever seen Mr Farnham, if he even existed.

“Yes?” she drawled. She was a small woman, her head barely reaching Sedgwick’s chest, and nearly as thin as a consumptive. There was a fine, moneyed air about her. She was used to her comforts. No one who didn’t know would ever have guessed that she was a madam with a bawdy house and girls on the street. She strove to seem cultivated, always with a book open on the table. At times she seemed too genteel and tiny to be an effective pimp. But Sedgwick had seen her lose her temper with a whore. She’d beaten the lass so hard and long that the girl had to be carried away. The refined behaviour, he reflected later, was a very thin mask.

“We’ve got a dead prostitute in the jail,” Segwick blurted. “Have you had a girl gone missing lately?”

Farnham exchanged a glance with Henry, who shook his head briefly.

“No, we haven’t,” Farnham informed him in a soft voice. “If we had, of course we’d have told the Constable’s office.”

Aye, if it suited you, Sedgwick thought to himself. With a slightly envious glance around the room, he bowed his head and left.

One down, he thought, crossing the bridge again, but so many more to go. He’d do as the Constable ordered and talk to a few more pimps, but he wasn’t hopeful. He reckoned he might be better off chatting to some of the girls, describing the dead lass to them and see if anyone knew her. A few would certainly have seen her and might even know her name. Ultimately, though, it probably didn’t matter. By tomorrow she was going to be just another dead body in a pauper’s grave, mourned and missed by next to no one. There were dozens of them each year.

David Sheepshanks and Edward Paley didn’t aspire to the same luxury as Farnham. Both were small time, with just four or five girls each. Neither of them had a girl missing and knew of no one who did. Two more brief visits revealed nothing, and Sedgwick began to believe it was going to be a waste of time.

So he followed his instinct and started canvassing the girls. There were always plenty around, no matter the time, in the inns or on the streets, touting for trade. As they learned all too quickly, it wasn’t a business for the shy, unless they had an inclination for starvation. Some of them were mean bitches, women he wouldn’t dare cross for fear of his life, but most were simply trying to get by and live.

Lizzie Lane was like that. It had been her and her daughter since her man left — ’listed for a soldier when drunk, some people said, although no one seemed to know for sure. She was cheerful, brash and bawdy whenever Sedgwick saw her. For more than two years she’d been a fixture near the Old King’s Head on Briggate. She kept her large breasts pushed high, almost out of the top of her dress, and she loved to trade lewd banter with passing men, usually getting a fair share of customers that she took to her dingy room down the grubby yard.

“Hello, John,” she yelled as she saw him approach, a warmly lecherous smile crossing her face. “Come looking for the company of a real woman?”

“Now then, keep your voice down, you might put off trade, talking to the law,” he told her, laughing, before adding in a quieter voice, “And my missus might hear about it.”

“She didn’t last time,” Lizzie winked and folded the small fan so many whores carried.

“Aye, but if she found out she’d hurt me.”

She rolled her eyes and sighed in mock frustration.

“You’re not here for me, anyway, are you, luv?”

“Not today,” he admitted.

“Well, you’d better not take long, then. Not that most do, anyway,” she chuckled.

“You’ve heard a couple of girls have been murdered?”

Lizzie nodded.

“There’s one, we don’t know who she is, and the Constable would like to find out. The pimps I’ve talked to aren’t saying anything.”

“You think those bastards would?” she interjected.

“Just ask around and see if anyone’s gone missing, would you?”

“What did she look like?” Lizzie asked.

“Tiny thing, blonde hair, pox marks, scar on her chin, old blue dress,” he said.

“That could be half of them around here,” she pointed out wistfully.

“Can you ask a few questions and let me know if anyone says anything?”

Lizzie brightened. “Course I will. Can’t have some prick killing us.”