‘What if Flynn’s accusations could be substantiated? Corroborated, as they say.’ The old man’s grin revealed teeth as yellow as his skin.
‘Evidence can always be fabricated. In any case, it would be a foolish man who did not take advantage of all available circumstances to further his own interests. These sentiments are as true for a poor man who steals an apple as for a rich man who steals a whole estate.’
Edmonton seemed taken aback but Pyke was more interested in searching his own brain for an explanation of how Edmonton might have found out about Flynn.
Pyke had used Flynn to store items that he had recovered from thieves but which he could not claim any ransom on. Flynn had tried to defraud him by selling on some of these items without consultation and would pay the ultimate price for his dishonesty on the scaffold.
With some effort Edmonton leaned forward, almost so that his head protruded from the carriage, and whispered, ‘You know enough to make things awkward for yourself, boy, but not enough to make things awkward for me. Think on that before you do anything rash.’
Before Pyke could answer, Edmonton disappeared into the cab’s interior and left Pyke to ponder his threats.
Lizzie was drunk and agitated. That was part of the problem. It made her combative, whereas he was just tired. The skin around her neck was flushed and blotchy.
‘Thirty-seven messages, Pyke, and all from thieves and swindlers. You think I got the time to be your secret’ry?’ Lizzie tucked her straw hair behind her ears. ‘Why do you want to find this whore anyhow? Are you fucking her?’
Pyke could smell the bar on her clothes: the spiced gin and tobacco. He had once found her muscular forearms attractive but now they just seemed vulgar. He knew other men found her desirable, the kind who clung to the bar as though it were a lifeboat set adrift in the ocean. On occasions, the gin palace would attract doctors fresh from carving up human beings in St Bartholomew’s Hospital, but mostly their customers were men who traded and slaughtered animals. In either case, they smelt of fresh blood. This was the kind of man who lusted after Lizzie, but Pyke was as certain as he could be that she had been faithful to him, even though he could not claim the same thing.
It was unfair, expecting something from Lizzie he was not prepared to reciprocate, but he did not lose any sleep over his own double standards.
His room was kept warm by a plentiful supply of coal. There were a few ostensible trappings of wealth - a large Turkish rug, a feather comforter on the bed - and one of the walls was adorned entirely with shelves of books. It was an unremarkable room, one that aptly suited Pyke’s needs. Though he had in excess of three thousand pounds lodged in a City bank, Pyke did not like to draw attention to his modest wealth. Still, he sometimes enjoyed the envy money elicited in others and would show off his gold watch or a wad of banknotes simply in order to witness the stares of those less wealthy and fortunate than himself.
He asked whether Lizzie had heard anything from Polly Masters at the Rose tavern in Covent Garden.
‘Whoever left you a message, they’re all written out. I put the list on your desk.’
Later, in Lizzie’s room, as Pyke guided his erection into her, his face pressed into her pillow, he tried to picture Emily Blackwood’s expression, the way she would close her eyes whenever she laughed or the looks she gave him, with eyes that were inscrutable and alluring.
Pyke felt himself harden and used the jolt of excitement to finish, so he could return to the comforting silence of his own room. But as he lay there, staring up at the ceiling, Lizzie’s sadness was tangible.
‘What is it about me?’ There was no anger in her voice. Only regret.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sometimes I think you despise me.’
Sighing, Pyke shifted away from her. ‘If I despised you, would I still be here?’
‘But you’re not here.’ She looked at the empty space next to her. ‘That’s the problem.’
‘Everyone has their problems.’
‘Everyone has problems. Is that supposed to make me feel better?’
Earlier Pyke had read through the list of names that Lizzie had compiled, but found no message from Polly Masters.
‘Am I just another woman to fuck?’
Pyke rolled over, out of the bed, and reached down to pick up his shirt, strewn across the floor. In the dimness of the candlelight he had to strain to see where he had left his shoes.
‘You’re right.’ He was by the door, with his back facing her. His tone was as soft as he could manage.
‘Right about what?’ There was hope in her voice. He hated himself for it.
‘I’m sorry.’ He pulled the door open but still did not turn around to face her.
‘Is that it? You’re sorry?’ She sounded angry. ‘What the fuck are you sorry for?’
‘You deserve better.’ He made to leave.
Lizzie exhaled loudly. ‘God, you’re a cold bastard.’ Pyke guessed she probably had tears in her eyes but did not turn around to see whether he was right.
Much later, when he could not sleep, Pyke ascended the staircase up to the garret under the tiles where George Morgan’s crippled form lay on the bed. Often, Pyke had wondered why Lizzie insisted upon tending her father, when he hardly seemed to know who or where he was, but equally he could not imagine casting the old man out on to the street or into an asylum.
Pyke stood by the window cut into the roof and looked out at the brick chimneys of the slumbering city.
In the darkness, George’s chest expanded slightly as he slept, the only indication that he was alive. Until his stroke, he had been an impressive figure, but now he seemed as frail as a rose petal.
Under George’s tutelage, Pyke had developed from ingenu into a hardened professional and he could still hear the man’s raspy voice: The law is what men want it to be. Only a fool or a coward fails to take advantage of the opportunities available to him. Between them, they had once set up and arrested the capital’s most notorious robber. As George put it, afterwards, that they had prospered from the spoils of this man’s crimes was incidental to the fact that someone who had once bitten a prostitute’s ear clean from her head, and pummelled an apprentice to death with his bare fists, had hung by the rope.
Stroking George’s sweat-matted hair, he said, ‘You were never concerned whether what you did was right or not, were you, old man?’
George, near comatose, had not spoken a word in two years.
‘Do what you need to do and to hell with the consequence, that was always your motto.’
Outside, it had begun to rain and the drops of water fell on to the tiles of the roof like small pebbles.
‘Take what you can but don’t lose sight of who you are.
And, above all, don’t get caught.’
The darkness hid the fact that the stroke had immobilised one side of George’s face. He seemed almost normal.
‘So why am I bothered, old man?’
Pyke didn’t know why Lizzie had never produced children, whether she was barren or not, but as he stood up beside the old man, he wondered whether he would ever be in a position to affect someone’s life in the manner George had affected his.
Fox’s cheeks were flushed and his moustache was ruffled and unkempt.
Newspapers were spread across the surface of his desk. He was reading a particular report. He ushered Pyke into the chair across from him and said that special police constables had arrested an escaped lunatic for the St Giles murders and would be charging him with these crimes. He read from the newspaper. The report made it appear that the man’s guilt had already been proven beyond all doubt. This sense of certainty was matched only by the hyperbolic relief the newspaper’s readers were no doubt supposed to feel at the prospect of this man being behind bars.
The journalist looked forward to the spectacle of the hanging and wondered whether the seriousness of the crime merited some additional form of punishment.
