Where were you, anyway?”
“I was trying to find a name for that second whore,” Sedgwick explained. “Someone must have known her.”
“Any luck?”
“Bugger all.” He scratched his head. “If anyone knows owt, they’re not saying.”
“Get yourself a cup,” the Constable said. “You’ve earned it.”
Nottingham knew he should have gone home long before. But he was still at the tavern three hours later, sitting across from Sedgwick. He’d lost track of how much they’d drunk, and he didn’t care. Usually he was temperate; tonight, though, he felt a need to lose himself. Mary would understand, he was certain.
Just before midnight Sedgwick pushed himself to his feet. His legs were a little unsteady, but his mind seemed clear enough.
“I’d better check the night men,” he told the Constable in a thick voice.
Nottingham nodded. It was better to stop now, before they were too far in their cups. He rose too, wrapping the thick coat around himself and taking a final sip of wine.
“Let them manage by themselves for once,” he said. “Go home.”
Sedgwick’s eyes shone bright and he shook his head briefly.
“Duty,” he laughed. “That’s what you taught me, boss.” And he left.
By the time the Constable emerged, Sedgwick had vanished. There was a raw, thin edge to the night air that made him shiver and pull up his collar. The cold sobered him slowly as he walked. The afternoon’s rain and rushing wind had brought plenty of leaves off the trees, leaving them slippery and treacherous along the streets, and he trod carefully. The sky had cleared, leaving a bright rash of stars bright in the sky.
Nottingham tried to allow himself a small glow of satisfaction. After all, it looked as if they’d caught the murderer. But underneath, worrying away like a burr, was another fact: if that was true, he’d been wrong about Carver. His judgement, his instinct, had been faulty, and Sedgwick had been right. And two people had died because of it. Maybe his time had passed. Maybe he should quit his post.
What else could he do, though? This work had been his life for so many years. He’d kept the city safe. The citizens of Leeds — the ones who led blameless lives, at least on the outside — feared that crime and murder might touch their houses at any time. No matter that many of them, especially the merchants, were involved in their own schemes that broke the law. Or, he laughed to himself as his thoughts wandered, maybe that was exactly why they feared things happening.
He’d been their Constable a long time, but few of them would miss him if he was replaced — as long as the next man kept them safe. Some might know his name, but most would be happily ignorant, recognising him only by face if they bothered to acknowledge him at all. Yet they’d still expect the Constable and his men to protect them from the sea of danger they imagined washing up against the walls of their impeccable houses and the driftwood of humanity that might touch them.
But at times it was all beyond his control. If a man spent his money on a prostitute, he took his risks. Sometimes it was a few minutes of satisfaction. Sometimes it meant a dose of mercury and a lot of prayer. And sometimes it meant robbery or death. Anyone who wanted to play a game with those odds couldn’t complain at the outcome — but they did anyway, if they had the money and power enough to believe themselves untouchable. They thought money bought all the privilege in the world. On a few occasions he’d wanted to haul them down to Amos Worthy so they could see real power, the control of bodies and souls, and meet someone who’d end a life without a second thought. That made all the gold in the vaults seem like tin, and the protection of brick and glass crumble like sand.
Yet he knew he could never do that. To let them see that they didn’t really run the city in the way they imagined, that the way they thought of themselves was an illusion, would be more than they could take. And more than his job was worth. So he’d bowed at the right times and to the right people and allowed it all to fall like rain off his back.
Nottingham was the first to admit he wasn’t an educated man. He could add and subtract, he could write and read, but he’d never really had the chance to study anything. He was methodical, he had good intuition, but he understood he wasn’t clever in the way most people used the word. He’d known and admired Ralph Thoresby, the local historian. Thoresby had been a truly clever man, his house full of artefacts and antiquities, the books he wrote about Leeds praised for their scholarship and erudition. He could never have done anything like that.
But what he did, he’d always done well. There’d been mistakes, of course, but never any that had cost lives — until now. With a heavy heart, he stopped on Timble Bridge and listened to Sheepscar Beck running loudly along its channel. His mind was drifting, dulled by the drink, so he didn’t hear the running footsteps until they were almost upon him, and turned, unsure what was happening.
“Mr Nottingham!” The man careened to a stop, panting, his face flushed red, and he made out Joe Ashworth, one of the night men. “You’d better come quick. It’s murder, sir. It’s Mr Sedgwick.”
19
He was pounding back up Kirkgate, immediately sober, feeling his heart thud in his chest. The night man was far behind now, unable to keep up Nottingham’s brutal pace. He’d told the Constable where it had happened, another of the innumerable little yards that spidered off Briggate, and Nottingham had sprinted away.
Images came unbidden into his head as he ran, of Sedgwick dead on the ground, or dying slowly, and he shook them away. The sound of his footsteps echoed off the cobbles like rapid gunshot.
The city was dark, but he knew the place too well. He slipped into ginnels and through archways, bouncing off walls as he turned corners without slowing. He splashed through large puddles left by the rain, his feet and legs soaked, but he barely noticed. Finally he rounded into a small open space. The yard was filthy, and he trod through litter scattered over the mud, hearing voices around him.
“Someone get a bloody light here,” Nottingham yelled urgently. In the corner a man struck a flint, but everything was too wet to catch.
“Boss?”
He turned sharply, following the direction of the word before kneeling in the dirt.
“John?” Nottingham touched Sedgwick on the chest and felt the ragged movement of his breathing. A sense of relief coursed hard through him, then a moment of doubt. He wanted to ask the question, but daren’t.
“I’ll be fine, boss,” Sedgwick anticipated him. He was sitting up, and Nottingham could faintly make out his grimace and shudder as he tried to move. “I put up my arm to defend myself, and he got me.”
“Christ.” The word whistled out of the Constable’s mouth.
Someone finally managed to light a torch, and as it guttered into flame, Nottingham’s could see the wide rent in the coat, and the thick, soft shininess of blood all over Sedgwick’s forearm, and puddling on the ground. His face was almost white, and a sheen of chilled sweat glistened on his skin. As he struggled awkwardly to his feet, cradling his right arm, he turned to Nottingham, his eyes wide and contrite.
“I was wrong,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t Carver. Look over there.” With his head he indicated a far, shadowed corner.
“Light over here,” the Constable commanded.
The corpses lay at the foot of a wall, a man and woman. This time the murderer hadn’t had the time to arrange them, and they lay sprawled on the ground, not touching. He dispatched someone for Brogden, so they could officially be pronounced dead, but by then he’d already felt their wrists; life had left them both a little while before. He glanced up at Sedgwick, standing very carefully still, clasping his arm against his body.
“What happened?” he asked, then ordered someone to bring a rag to tie around the wound.
“I’d met up with the night men, and I was down Briggate, on my way home, when I saw a couple coming in here,” the deputy recalled slowly. His eyes were closed. “There was someone else right behind them. It looked wrong, so I came up to follow him in. I heard him kill them. It was so quick…” He paused, almost in awe of the act. “He must have heard me running down here. He came pelting out. I tried to stop him, he hit me and then the bastard cut me. He’d gone before I could do anything.” There was a sense of failure in his voice and the Constable could make out Sedgwick’s mouth settling into a grim line. “I almost had the fucker.”
