Chris Nickson - Cold Cruel Winter

He let the words trail off. They didn’t need to be spoken. Nottingham stood. He’d achieved what he wanted; the Mayor would do all he could to ensure the skinning was kept quiet. The rest, as always, was up to him and his men.

He’d never been there, but he knew where Graves had his warehouse, just as he knew where most things were in Leeds. He’d scavenged its streets so often when he was young, finding places to hide and live, little refuges and sanctuaries of hope for a few days, that he knew the city intimately, like a lover. Grown, he patrolled them, and learned the city’s deeper secrets and shame.

The warehouse was one of the buildings by the river, downstream from Leeds Bridge. The stone was just beginning to wear, darkened by soot and rain, the main door painted a deep, forbidding black. He walked in, entering the office, where three clerks sat working at their high desks. They looked up together as his heels clopped on the flagstone floor.

‘I’m Richard Nottingham, the Constable.’

Like brothers used to each other but not to outsiders, the men glanced between themselves before one dared clear his throat and ask, ‘How can I help you, sir?’

‘Have you heard about Mr Graves?’ he asked.

The man stared blankly, while the others looked confused.

‘He’s in London, sir, he left on Friday,’ the man responded with an uneasy smile. ‘He’ll be back next week.’

‘I’m sorry, but he won’t,’ Nottingham told them, watching their faces as the words captured their attention. ‘Mr Graves was found dead yesterday here in Leeds. Someone killed him.’

There was a low stir of voices between the men.

‘I need to know about his plans, and about the business,’ Nottingham interrupted them.

The man who’d answered him was somewhere in middle age, his back bent from years of writing, his fingers permanently stained with the deep blue-black of ink. He cleared his throat softly.

‘This is one of the biggest warehouses in Leeds,’ he said with pride, as if he owned it himself. ‘We export cloth all over, to Spain, Italy, the Low Countries, sir. We’re always busy. Mr Graves said he was going to London to discuss a contract there.’

His eyes were cast down slightly, not cowed, but trained by a lifetime of deference to those who’d always have more than him.

‘I thought he’d retired.’

The man smiled wanly and shook his head. ‘He tried, sir. He really tried. It lasted about three months. But Mr Graves wasn’t a man who could take his ease too well. He’d planned on selling the business, but then he decided to keep going himself. He needed it, he said.’

‘How are your order books?’ Nottingham asked.

‘Full, sir, they’re always full.’

‘And how long have you three worked here?’

‘I’ve been here twenty-five years, sir.’ He gestured at the others. ‘Mr Rushworth’s been a clerk with us for almost twenty years, and Mr Johnson eight years. Mr Graves trusts us to run things.’ His face reddened briefly in embarrassment and sadness. ‘I mean, he trusted. .’

‘Do you know who he was meeting in London?’

The man shook his head. ‘He never said, but I’m sure there will be letters in his correspondence. I can look if you’d like, sir.’

‘Do that, if you would. I’ll need everything you can find,’ the Constable told him. ‘What time was his coach?’

The men looked between themselves again, shrugging.

‘I’m sorry, sir, he didn’t tell us that, only that he’d be gone to London for a few days. Mrs Graves might know,’ he added, then paused. ‘Do you know what might happen to the business now? And to. . us?’

‘I don’t. I’m sorry.’ He understood their fear, not knowing whether they might be cast out in a week or a month. But there was nothing more he could learn here at the moment. ‘Can you bring all his correspondence about London to the jail, please?’

Outside, a weak, watery sun had started to shine, but its faint brightness did nothing to warm the air. Nottingham pulled the coat close and the tricorn hat down tight and trudged back along the river, then over the patches of ice on Lower Briggate to the jail. The drunks had woken, and he let them go with a warning. They’d be back soon enough anyway, if they didn’t freeze on the streets first. All anyone could hope was that the weather would break soon, and that spring would arrive. They all needed new life, he thought grimly.

He sat, letting the heat from the fire slowly fill him. A scrawled, almost illegible note on the desk told him that the undertaker had collected Graves’s body. Tomorrow there would be men hacking at the frozen earth for his burial and the day after a sombre crowd in thick woollen coats in the churchyard to hear his eulogy.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, then sweeping the fringe off his forehead, he gathered together what he knew about the killing. It was precious little, a spider’s web made up of mystery and questions.

To the best of his knowledge, Graves had never been one to frequent the inns and taverns. On a few occasions Nottingham had seen him at Garroway’s coffee house, and the merchant had seemed uncomfortable enough there, surrounded by brittle noise and the prittle-prattle of chatter.

He was at the Parish Church every Sunday, in his own pew with his wife and some of the servants, parading down Kirkgate and back, the soul of rectitude. And that was what he might have been, a man who lived for his work and his family. But now, no more.

That wasn’t the question that gnawed at him. What he couldn’t understand was why one man would take the flesh of another. Why had he held on to the body? What could he do with the skin? There seemed to be no reason behind any of it. His imagination could conjure up nothing, and that left him at a disadvantage.

The more he considered it, the more certain he was that there could be nothing spontaneous about the killing. Everything had been planned with the greatest care. It had taken place somewhere the skin could be removed, and the murderer had held on to the corpse somewhere before leaving it, quite deliberately, to be found.

That meant someone had a deep reason to kill Graves. So someone, somewhere, had a motive, some history, some explanation for it all.

That much he could accept. But the skinning still made absolutely no sense.

For now all he could do was wait until Sedgwick and Joshua returned, and hope they’d discovered something. In the meantime there were lists to complete, reports to be written, the terrible minutiae of his job.

Writing never came easily to him. For his daughter Emily, who maybe still harboured the secret, ridiculous notion of becoming a writer, words flowed easily, like water in a brook. For Rose, like him in so many ways, they never had. She’d been a kindly girl, with few pretensions, one who greeted each little twist of life with a smile.

He sighed loudly, aware once more of the large void in his life. In his head he knew others had suffered more, much more, but that was no comfort while his heart still broke at each memory.

Nottingham picked up the quill and dipped it in ink, hoping to lose himself in the effort of work. He’d learned to read and write as a young boy, before his father had convinced himself that his wife had been unfaithful and the lad was not his. He’d thrown the pair of them from his merchant’s house, and a life of luxury became a daily fight where books and words held no place.

He’d come back to his letters reluctantly when he took the job as a Constable’s man, but still found no pleasure in them. Now he was teaching Sedgwick to read and write, watching as the deputy eagerly embraced this new world of learning like a child, his writing shaky at first, then quickly becoming firmer, his eyes striving to make sense of words on the page, forming them slowly, then with more confidence. He worked hard at it. Nottingham knew Sedgwick had ambitions to succeed him as Constable, and he’d need these skills for the job. In time, he thought, it might happen. Maybe even sooner than anyone had imagined, he thought, if his weariness with the world didn’t end.