protectors in the city to end up convicted of anything: the merchants and aldermen who used his whores or borrowed his money.
Silence filled the air. Nottingham rubbed his chin, feeling the harsh bristle, a reminder that he needed a shave. He needed to be better armed, he thought. All he usually carried was a small dagger, little better than a penknife. Another knife, perhaps a primed pistol in his coat pocket. It wasn’t something he wanted to do, but he was forewarned now. Wyatt was clever. He needed to be constantly aware and alert.
But unless they had the devil’s own luck and found Rushworth soon, it would likely be several days until Wyatt tried to strike again. He’d need time with his victim, and longer still to cure the skin and write his book.
Doing that was as important to the man as the act of killing, Nottingham understood that. He needed it all to be known, put it all on paper, to indulge his evil and play out his part.
‘Penny for them, laddie?’
Nottingham shook his head. ‘Just thinking.’
‘So how are we going to stop him?’ Worthy asked.
‘We need to find him.’
‘And when we do?’
The Constable paused for a moment. ‘Kill him quietly.’
Worthy nodded and drained his cup. ‘Aye, that’s what I thought. They won’t want folk to know too much about all this.’
‘But that doesn’t happen until I’ve talked to him.’
The pimp gazed at him quizzically.
‘Why? You think you can make sense of something like this?’
Nottingham shrugged. ‘I doubt if I’ll be able to do that,’ he admitted. ‘I just want to know.’
‘Don’t waste your time,’ Worthy advised. ‘There are some things that are beyond understanding.’
The Constable stood up.
‘You’ll get your men out?’
‘Aye. Do you know anything about him that might help?’
‘He’s spent seven years in the Indies. His skin will still be dark, he’ll stand out. I don’t know what he’s doing for money. He’s probably taken a place that’s quiet. Not a room. Bigger.’
‘It’s a start. I’ll tell my lads.’
‘And he stays alive until I talk to him.’
Worthy held up his palms in submission. ‘If that’s what you really want, laddie.’
‘It is. And I don’t need one of your men watching me.’
The pimp’s eyes twinkled. ‘The thought never occurred to me.’
Thirteen
Wyatt would need to buy food. The Constable had said that, but Josh had already worked it out for himself. A man couldn’t live on air. But a man could be sly. Josh knew the tricks, the places to find food without spending money and without being seen by those who cared.
For the last few days he’d kept his eyes open, talking quietly to the folk who lived that way themselves, out on the edges of society. They were what he’d been himself just a few short months before. The dispossessed, the invisible, the hopeful and the hopeless. Most of the time they stayed out of sight, taking only what they needed, so that the good citizens were hardly aware of their existence. But there were those who saw things the others missed. These were the ones who’d notice someone like Wyatt. They were the ones to talk to.
His hair was wet from the light rain, lank against his face. Frances had cut it with an old pair of scissors a few days before. The blades were dull and she’d ended up hacking off hunks. Still, at least he didn’t look like a beggar lad now, she’d told him. He’d caught his reflection in a shop window a few times, taken aback by the change, his hair short, almost neat. The boss had said nothing, but he’d noticed and exchanged a short glance with Mr Sedgwick.
Josh drifted up the road that extended beyond the Head Row into Woodhouse. Beyond lay Headingley, then Otley, Ilkley, and a whole country past that. All places he’d never been and didn’t care about.
After a mile he turned on to a small track of bare, muddy earth and made his way up to a copse on the peak of the hill. Hidden away within the trees was a small community of people surrounded by their painted wooden caravans, with all the horses, their real wealth, hobbled beyond that. Old canvas had been pitched from the branches for shelters.
They’d arrived before winter’s grip turned cruel, and made the raw place their own. They’d been coming for years now, arriving with the season and departing in spring. Josh had first gone to see them when he was still a child, oddly drawn to these exotic folk. They’d treated him kindly, and he’d come to know a few of them, to like and trust them. He’d often brought Frances with him. She been entranced by the bright colours of their clothes and caravans, by the simple pleasure they took in their hard lives, and even by their strange tongue. Once they’d discovered he’d become a Constable’s lad they’d been wary, but their suspicions had quickly vanished.
Josh nodded at some familiar faces. A stewpot hung over a fire, and the tempting smell of rabbit meat filled the encampment. Water sat nearby in a pair of ewers, both cracked and ancient.
Women young and old tended babies and small children ran wild, their faces and hands rimed with dirt, feet bare in the mud. They laughed and danced, and Josh envied them the carefree times he’d never known. He walked on to where five men gathered together around a small fire by a cluster of the painted vehicles. Two were still youthful, their beards wispy, the other three older. The eldest sat in the centre, a man of indeterminate age, his skin darker, a sharp contrast to his heavy white moustache. They knew Josh, they’d welcome him, but they still kept their reserve. He was an outsider here; he was the law.
He bowed his head for a moment and drew a loaf of bread from under his heavy coat, putting it down near the flames.
‘Thank you,’ the oldest man said, his eyes smiling, speaking slowly in strongly-accented English. ‘You are well?’
‘Yes, I am,’ Josh responded, and added, ‘thank you.’
‘And your girl?’
‘She’s going to have a baby.’
The man beamed and translated. Everyone smiled widely.
‘New life is a good thing,’ the old man told him. ‘But I think you come for other reasons today.’
‘I’m looking for someone. I thought you might have seen him.’
One of the young men, who wore a permanently angry expression, raised his voice.
‘And why would we tell you if we had, boy?’
‘Because he kills people,’ Josh answered.
The elder raised his hand to bring calm. ‘Why you think we see him?’
‘You and your people see things most folk miss. You go to the places a lot of people don’t go.’
The man nodded slowly. ‘And this man, who is he? How we know him?’
‘He has dark skin. He was in the Indies for a long time.’ Josh hesitated. ‘That’s all I know.’
The men looked from one to another, communicating with small facial inflections.
‘It is possible,’ the old man admitted cautiously. ‘We maybe see man like that.’
‘I need to know where he lives,’ Josh told them. ‘Before he kills more people.’
The old man talked with the others once more, words flying in their incomprehensible language. Josh half- watched the men while he listened to the lively sounds of the camp and the whinnying of the horses tethered in the distance. The Gypsies made their money from horse trading, they’d told him, and from the small things they could sell.
‘We see him again, we find out where he live,’ the man agreed finally. ‘Some of my family, they feel is wrong to help the law. The law is often unkind to us.’ He frowned momentarily as memories slipped through his mind. ‘But you are our friend.’
‘Will he pay to know?’ the young man burst out.
