them tear.
By the time he reached Timble Bridge he felt frozen, even wrapped in the heavy greatcoat, as the night closed its grip on him. Just taking a breath hurt, the cold air knife-sharp in his lungs.
He turned on to Marsh Lane, his house just yards away. He glanced up, seeing a light burning behind the window, knowing it should seem welcoming. But rather than walking faster and rushing home, as part of his heart wanted, his footsteps faltered and stopped.
Inside, the fire would be banked for the night, good Middleton coals glowing red, their slackening warmth still filling the room. Mary would be sewing by the light of an acrid tallow candle, eyes squinting, her face creased and serious with concentration, square, rough fingers moving without thought to make a seam.
The place would be spotless, every surface scrubbed down to rawness, clean enough to ward off death.
He was scared for them, he realized. For Mary, for Emily, for the only two precious things left in his life, scared of losing them the way he’d lost Rose. The idea of his own existence trickling away caused him no pain — he’d been close to death too often to fear it — but the bitter, searing pain of losing someone else close halted him.
Each night when he came home, he held his breath as he opened the door, unsure if he’d find them alive and well. That was the demon perched on his shoulder, one he could only wrestle with privately and never talk about with anyone.
He began to walk again, slowly covering the distance, grasping and turning the handle, exhaling softly as the room opened before him and he saw his wife and daughter.
‘You’re so late, Richard,’ Mary said solicitously, putting down her needle and rising immediately. ‘I was wondering what’d happened to you. You must be hungry. I’ll bring you something to eat.’
He wanted to hold her, to feel her warmth and life against him, but she quickly bustled off into the kitchen as if all the small normalities could patch the gaping hole in their lives. Nottingham smiled at Emily, who was lost in thought, a book closed in her lap, and then followed his wife.
‘Was the road from York bad?’ she asked, feeling his presence as she cut bread and cheese and poured him a mug of ale.
‘No worse than you’d expect,’ he answered, looking helplessly at her back, ‘but there was something waiting. A murder.’
For a moment she stopped, and he knew the image of death was in her mind. Then she continued her movement, turning to hand him a plate. His hand covered hers for a second, her warm flesh brushing momentarily against his palm, before her face turned away from him.
He ate as Mary cleaned the table, wiping away the crumbs meticulously. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was; his teeth tore at the food and he swallowed it so quickly he barely tasted it before drinking deep from the mug. When he finished eating, she took the plate to wash and dry fastidiously with an old cloth.
For one brief moment, as she left the room, Mary let her fingertips trail lightly on his shoulder. Nottingham drew in his breath, surprised by the first spontaneous sign of affection since Rose’s death. Had she done it deliberately, he wondered, or was it just idle memory that moved her hand?
Left alone, his belly full, his mind moved back to the corpse in the jail. Why would anyone want to kill Graves? But, more importantly, why would someone take the skin off his back? That wasn’t murder, it was the working of a sadistic mind, of someone with special knowledge. It wasn’t a random killing, he was sure of that; it must have been planned. What could be the purpose behind it?
He reached for more ale and swirled it in his mouth. Animals were skinned for a reason, leather for boots and shoes, pelts for furs. But skinning a man. . he couldn’t even begin to imagine why someone would need to do that.
Graves would have made enemies during his life; no one could succeed as a wool merchant by being a saint. But it was business that was cutthroat, not life. How long had he been dead? When had he left home to take the coach to London?
He rubbed his cheeks. Tomorrow they’d start asking the questions and piecing together the final hours of Samuel Graves. Finding out who could have done such a thing to him, though, that would be a different matter.
In his mind he could picture the man’s back quite clearly, the large wound red and livid, mottled with dirt and frozen by snow. The cuts had been straight and exact, and as far as he could judge, the skin had been peeled off smoothly and cleanly. Whoever did it had an experienced, steady hand. He wasn’t someone easily revolted by a man’s flesh.
But what could anyone do with that skin? It was most of Graves’s back, but really that wasn’t so much. A trophy, a souvenir? Whatever the reason, it terrified him to know that there was someone like that in the city. His coldness made the cruel winter seem mild.
Nottingham stood up and stretched. He could feel every moment of the day in his muscles, the ride from York, and the long hours of the evening piled atop all the compacted emotions that plagued him. He needed to sleep.
Three
Nottingham was on his way to the jail by six, boots crunching over the ice, slipping and sliding in places, shivering as he walked quickly. The first pale band of dawn lightened the horizon to the east. The city was already waking, plumes of chimney smoke rising to the sky, the sound of voices from the streets and courts, the clop of hooves and grating squeak of wheels as the first carters made their way around.
Two drunks slept in one cell, better here than freezing to death outside. He kept his greatcoat bundled tight, then lit a candle and marched through to look at the body again.
He turned Graves over and brought the light close to the skin. Part of him wanted to touch the man’s back, to feel it for himself, to know it that way, viscerally, but he held back, revolted even as he was intrigued.
He’d been right; this work had definitely been done by someone who knew how to skin animals. The cuts were clear and confident, long, single strokes that met cleanly, and the skin had been peeled off evenly. Despite himself, he reached out, running a fingertip lightly down the line where the blade had gone.
This had been done after Graves had died. The lines were too sharp, the work too precise and etched for the man to have been alive. At least there was that, small comfort that it offered.
So now he knew a little more, but the knowledge didn’t answer the important questions. What could anyone gain from doing such a grotesque thing? Taking a man’s flesh seemed like sacrilege, leaving him less in death than he’d been before. Why would someone do this to Samuel Graves? What was the point of it? What was the meaning? Why had he kept the body for four days? Graves hadn’t been just any man, either, but one of the leading citizens of Leeds, wealthy, powerful, not someone who could disappear easily.
He returned to the office at the front of the jail and stirred up the embers in the grate before adding more coal from the scuttle. Sitting, the coat still wrapped close around him, he tried to think.
But there was nothing to consider. They had a body, a respectable man mutilated after he’d been violently murdered, and only one person knew the reason.
Nottingham pushed the fringe of hair off his forehead. The room gradually warmed and he finally shrugged off the greatcoat. Soon Sedgwick and Forester would arrive and he could begin delegating tasks. The Mayor would want this murder solved quickly, and, more important, very quietly. There could be no word of the skinning to spread a creeping panic among the moneyed class.
He heard a noise outside and glanced through the window. It was Isaac the Jew making his early rounds, calling, ‘Clothes! Old clothes!’ in his fractured accent. He was the only one of his faith in Leeds, a tall man with thick white hair and deep, sad eyes who’d come from somewhere across the sea. He made his living buying and selling rags and clothes, setting up his stall in the market twice a week.
They’d sold him Rose’s clothes after her death, taking the memories of her from her husband and pushing coins into his hand instead. Isaac had folded the items tenderly before pushing them into his pack.
Did he miss his own people, Nottingham wondered? Isaac was a solitary figure, walking the city mornings and evenings with his hoarse, broken shouts for business. As he sometimes said wanly, the few times Nottingham
