Chris Nickson - Cold Cruel Winter

‘I’m not going to say no, Amos. I’ll sleep on it tonight. I’ll come and see you tomorrow, unless you want to visit me at the jail.’

Worthy grinned.

‘You already know the answer to that, laddie. And keeping things as quiet as possible is best — for both of us.’

He doffed his hat, half in friendship, half in insolence, turned and began walking back into the city, his silver-topped stick pushing into the mud. Nottingham watched him go. He was unsure what to make of Worthy’s offer. It was generous, but that was the problem: Worthy wasn’t a man known for his generosity.

Slowly, deep in thought, the Constable walked up Marsh Lane to his house. It was a small place, provided by the city as part of his job, but even though it needed repairs it was so much better than the rooms and garrets where he and Mary had lived before. It felt warm. Even now, in these days of loss and heartbreak, it felt like home.

The fire was burning bright, coal crackling in the hearth. Emily was seated, staring lost into the blaze with a book closed on her lap, scarcely noticing as he entered and said hello. As she did so often these days, she’d withdrawn into her own safe little world where life couldn’t touch her.

Nottingham took off the damp greatcoat, hung it from a sturdy nail in the wall, and walked through to the kitchen. Mary was kneading the dough for tomorrow’s bread, hands pushed deep into the mass. She glanced up and smiled at him, the gesture more comforting to him than any fire.

‘I hadn’t expected you yet, Richard. I’ve made a pie, but it won’t be ready for a little while.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he answered, reaching out and stroking her cheek with his fingertips to brush off a small smudge of flour. She didn’t pull away, didn’t flinch at his touch, and he felt his heart lighten. Could the scars have begun to harden, could they begin to move out of the morass?

Her hands continued to work the bread, her eyes focused on her labours. Slowly his hand dropped from her skin.

‘You should go and sit with Emily,’ Mary suggested.

‘Is she still quiet?’

Mary sighed and nodded, turning her gaze to her husband. ‘She barely says a word these days. She does everything I tell her without question or demur. You know what she was like. .’

Relations had soured between father and daughter in the autumn. Emily had been full of ideas, wanting to become a writer, wayward, secretly seeing a man who’d turned out to be a killer, and she’d been so faithful to him that Nottingham had been forced to hurt her to find his name and stop more death.

After that, the house had become a place of brooding, simmering silences. Until Rose’s death; then life itself had become fringed with black. Emily’s quietness had turned inward; the girl had barely wanted to leave the house.

‘She liked to think for herself,’ he answered.

‘She thought she knew everything,’ Mary corrected him. ‘Now she’s so meek, it’s as if she’s a different person. She needs to get some heart back in herself.’

‘Maybe she’s not the only one,’ he said.

She looked questioningly into his face.

‘All of us,’ he explained.

After long moments, she nodded sharply, gathered her breath and began to speak. ‘Most of the time I feel like my heart’s going to break. I see something and it makes me think of Rose. It’s everything. You, Emily, this house. And I don’t know what I can do about it. I don’t even have the words to tell you about the things I’ve been feeling.’

‘You think I don’t feel all that too?’ His voice was soft, a little stung by what she’d said.

‘I don’t know.’ She wiped her hands on her apron, pausing, pulling together her words. ‘I mean it, Richard, I really don’t know. You go on to work each day. You come home. You exist, and all we do is talk about all the little things as if nothing had changed, as if Rose hadn’t died.’

‘I. .’ he began, but couldn’t go further. She was right.

‘As long as I’ve known you, you’ve rarely discussed your work.’ The emotions started to rush out of her, as if she’d kept them in a bottle and now she was uncorking it. Mary placed her hands firmly on the table, trying to anchor herself in place. ‘I know you’ve done it to protect us. I’ve always loved that about you. But now, when you don’t talk about work, and we daren’t talk about family, what do we have left to discuss safely?’

He reached out, covering her hand with his own, rubbing it slowly, feeling her rough skin under his. ‘I stopped at Rose’s grave on my way home,’ he told her. ‘I go there when I can. Sometimes I pray for her, sometimes I just speak to her in my head.’

‘Does it help?’ Mary asked.

‘I think so,’ he answered after a moment. ‘Sometimes I feel closer to her.’

‘I’ve been there, too,’ she said. ‘I’ve stood for hours. I’ve tried to pray. But all I’ve seen is some earth and no God around it. Rose isn’t there. Not to me.’

‘Where is she, then?’

Mary tapped her head, leaving a smudge of flour on her cap.

‘I talk to her, too,’ she said. ‘I tell her things, the little things I’m thinking or doing. And she talks to me. She answers me.’

Nottingham listened.

‘She should still be here. A child shouldn’t die before her parents.’

‘It happens all the time,’ he said softly.

‘I know that, Richard.’ Her voice flared with bitterness and injustice. ‘That doesn’t make it any better.’

‘No,’ he agreed.

‘I cry a lot. I’ll be doing something, anything, and I’ll start crying. Sometimes it feels like I’ll never stop. Sometimes I don’t want to.’

‘We both miss her, you know that.’

‘I’ve watched you,’ she continued, her gaze fixed on him. ‘After Rose died, you seemed lost, but it was as if you wanted to be that way. You wanted it to hurt. You didn’t want anyone too close to you, you wouldn’t have let me near if I’d tried.’ She paused. ‘Now you have this murder the city’s talking about, and suddenly you’re you again. You’re Richard Nottingham, the Constable. You have a purpose.’ Her eyes were large and moist. ‘You have all that. And I’m Mary Nottingham, I’m still here. I’m still surrounded by the same things, the same memories, every single day.’

Slowly, with tenderness born from years together, from happiness and grief, he gathered her to him. She cried softly as he held her close. Silently, he thanked God. She felt so familiar in his arms, so much a part of him, a part he’d missed in these last weeks.

She pulled back suddenly, not hiding the tears, and wiping them away with the back of her hands.

‘Let me finish here.’

He smiled then unfolded her from his arms. They’d begun again. Together.

He’d barely taken three bites of the pie before there was a hurried pounding on the door. Glancing apologetically at Mary and Emily, he rose from the table to answer it. Josh was there, his legs muddy, breath coming fast and steaming on the air so he was hardly able to push the words out.

‘Mr Sedgwick asked if you’d come, boss. Right now.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Nottingham asked.

‘It’s that man from Graves’s warehouse.’

‘Rushworth?’ The Constable felt the pit of his stomach fall.

‘Yes. He’s vanished.’

‘Damn it.’ Nottingham paused to think. He thought he’d covered everything, that he was in control again. ‘Go back,’ he ordered quickly. ‘Tell John I’m on my way. Get men out. Look where he lives. Look in the taverns in case he went there. Look everywhere. And I want whoever was supposed to follow him at the jail in an hour.’

Forrester took off again, running as fast as his legs would move. Nottingham knew the reality. They’d search. If they were very, very lucky, they’d find Rushworth. But even as he hoped, he knew the truth would almost certainly be different. Wyatt had snatched him. The next time they’d see the man would be as a corpse with the flesh stripped from his back.