Chris Nickson - The Broken Token

“There’s something you’d better know, John. That whore was once our servant.”

“Oh?” Sedgwick raised his eyebrows. The gesture tilted a small knife scar beside his mouth and gave him a ghoulish smile. “Did you have to turn her out?”

Nottingham gazed at him levelly. “She left nine years ago to marry a farm labourer. Evidently she came back to Leeds a year back, after he died.”

Sedgwick lowered his eyes. That explained a lot, he thought.

“Sorry, boss,” he apologised hurriedly, “I didn’t mean any disrespect. Do you think she’s important in this?”

“I don’t know,” the Constable admitted with a baffled shake of his head. For now he knew very little. “But we’re going to find out. She used to be called Pamela Watson, then she was Pamela Malham out in Chapel Allerton. See what you can find about her,” he ordered briskly.

“Yes, sir.”

“I talked to Rawlinson earlier. He said the preacher went out for a walk after supper last night. I want to know who saw him, where and when.” Nottingham paused, looking worried. “The Mayor’s going to want the person who killed the preacher. Leeds has to look respectable and safe. And I want the bastard who killed Pamela.”

He needed to know more about Daniel Morton. Nothing the preacher had told Rawlinson could be taken at face value; words could be twisted into so many fabulous shapes. So in his best hand Nottingham composed a letter to the Constable of Oxford, asking for any information about Morton’s background and character, then dispatched it to leave with a coach the following morning.

With the state of the roads it could be a fortnight before he heard anything. Hopefully he’d have the killings solved long before he received word, but it would all contribute to building a picture. With no immediate leads he’d snatch at every scrap of knowledge he could gather.

Nottingham sat back in his chair, concentrating, fingers steepled in front of his mouth. He barely noticed the afternoon tumult of the street outside, the carters cursing at each other as they angled for room on Kirkgate, the clatter of horses’ hooves, the constant bristle of conversation and the cries of vendors as they tried to sell out their wares for the day.

He was groping in the dark at the moment; he needed a way into the maze of this mystery. All he had were the bodies of two apparently unconnected people who’d been murdered together. He needed something… anything.

Finally he stood up. He headed down Briggate in firm, concentrated strides. Just before Leeds Bridge he turned on to Swinegate, walking past the King’s Mill with its wheels still loudly and busily grinding corn into flour, then along a row of cramped, dilapidated cottages and artisan dwellings that looked on the verge of toppling over. A cobbler had his goods displayed in the wide front window of a house, the sound of his hammer against the last echoing across the street as he worked. Heat escaped like a thick sheet from the blacksmith’s forge, while next door a stable reeked of horse dung as an ostler’s boy shovelled the steaming mess on to a larger pile against the wall. Servants shopped late for their mistresses, talking and laughing loudly as they passed, enjoying the brief respite from the grind of their chores. Another frontage was piled with chandlers’ goods — coiled ropes, canvas duck, and all manner of items for the barges that plied the Aire. Outside the door, two women, both haggard and old before their time, chatted earnestly as their children played in the dirt, close to the puddles and mud where people had slopped the contents of the chamber pots into the street that morning. Somewhere in an upstairs room a baby was yelling, its cries going unheeded.

Without stopping to knock or announce himself, Nottingham slipped through a small door into a house that reeked foully of sweat and excrement. Thin light came through a dirty window, showing a pair of boys, neither of them more than five, their faces grimed almost black, playing on the filthy floor. A woman of indeterminate age sat on a chair in the corner, her eyes closed, oblivious to the world, an empty cup of gin on the table beside her.

He followed the passage through to the kitchen, a tumbledown affair that had been added to the house sometime in the past hundred years and never cleaned since the day it was built. The man he was seeking would be there, enjoying the sun through the window and the heat of the cooking fire.

Amos Worthy was leaning against a wall, eyeing a girl who stood in the centre of the room. She kept glancing up at him nervously, her face blushing red from his gaze, scarcely a day over thirteen. Seeing her, Nottingham thought of Emily, safe and sheltered at home. This lass had probably just arrived from one of the villages, hungry and in need of the only work she could find in the city.

Worthy was a procurer, one who ran many of the prostitutes in Leeds. By rights he should have been before the Assizes many times over, convicted and hanged or transported to America. But several of the city’s aldermen used his whores; he provided them with girls and in return they kept him safe from the law. His finger was firm on the pulse of the city’s crime.

Worthy turned his head, saw the Constable, and casually instructed the girl to come back later that evening, watching as she scuttled away.

Although he had to be well into his sixties, Worthy still cut a powerful figure. He was an inch or two taller than Nottingham, with a stiff, straight back and a barrel chest. His nose had been broken and badly reset so often that it curved awkwardly and unevenly across his face.

Two of the Constable’s men had once worked for Worthy, and told with awe how the man always relished a fight, first into the conflict with fists and boots flailing and last to leave, his cheeks flushed with blood and battle lust. His vicious reputation went beyond men; Worthy was also ruthless with his girls. If one didn’t do as she was told, he beat her bloody with his own hands. A repeat offence brought cuts from the razor he kept in his waistcoat pocket. If there was ever a third instance, the girl simply disappeared.

“Mr Nottingham,” he said lazily. “A pleasure to see you here.”

There was no trepidation in his eyes, merely a mocking smile. Worthy was a rich man, even if he spent little of his wealth on his clothes or his surroundings, and even less on his girls. Yet no matter how full his coffers or however many favours the people who ran Leeds owed him, his profession and low birth made him socially unacceptable. However important he was, the order of things kept him at arm’s length — but within easy reach.

“I’m sure you heard about the murders last night,” Nottingham began bluntly.

“Always unfortunate when people are killed,” Worthy agreed, calmly picking at a tooth with his thumbnail. “Especially when one of them is a guest in our city. But it’s nothing to do with me, Constable.”

He grinned, holding up a tiny piece of food for inspection before wiping it on his greasy coat.

“You deal in girls,” Nottingham pointed out. “She was a prostitute.”

Worthy shrugged carelessly. “Another girl. You know there’s no shortage of them.” He fixed the Constable with a pointed gaze. “If she’d been one of mine you’d have heard about it by now.” He made it sound like a threat.

“Did you know her?”

“Of her.” He chose his words carefully. “She came to me last year, but I turned her away. She was too old for the tastes of my customers. They prefer someone… younger.”

“Like the girl who was just here,” Nottingham said, keeping his tone deliberately even.

“Exactly, Constable,” Worthy smiled sharply, showing jagged teeth. “Pretty little thing, ain’t she? Still got her youth, and maybe even her maidenhead, too. She’ll be good for three or four years yet… as long she does what I tell her.”