anywhere else.’ The priest looked away, faltering. He tried to gather himself. ‘The following morning, I came to see if he was still here, and ask if he wanted any food or drink, and, well, I found him . . .’ Pyke could see tears building up behind the young man’s eyes. ‘I found him lying on the floor at the front of the church surrounded by his own blood. There was a knife on the floor next to his hand. He had cut his own throat, or so they reckoned. Two officers from the constabulary and the magistrate were here by midday. They asked me who he was. I told them what I told you, that I only knew him by the name Davy. None of them recognised him. In the end, they decided it was most likely a suicide and since there wasn’t any way of identifying him, the magistrate said it was probably best that we give him a Christian burial, even if what he had done was a mortal sin in the eyes of God.’
Later, in the front room of a village tavern, the priest took a sip of ale and said, ‘Back in the church, you told me you were a friend of Davy’s?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’ Pyke had the feeling the man wanted to tell him something important.
‘I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely honest with the magistrate and the constables. I wasn’t thinking straight at the time. I’m not certain I’m thinking straight even now.’
‘Finding a dead body can be a terrible shock,’ Pyke said.
‘Yes, it was.’ For a moment, the priest shuddered and looked down into his half-empty glass.
‘Davy told you something, didn’t he?’
Still unable to meet Pyke’s stare, the young priest simply nodded his head.
‘He told you what he had done. Confessed his sins?’
When the priest looked up, his eyes were clear. ‘Yes.’
‘But you can’t tell me what he told you.’ Pyke waited for a moment, before he added, ‘Or can you?’
‘I’m not a Catholic minister, if that’s what you mean. I’m an Anglican. We’re not bound by the confessional oath.’ That drew a frown. ‘But that’s not to say I don’t have a moral obligation to safeguard what has been told to me in the strictest confidence.’
‘Of course. I understand.’ Pyke tried to keep his tone as neutral as possible. ‘But what if I already knew what Davy had done? What he confessed to you?’
‘How would you know?’
‘When I told you I was a friend of Davy’s I was lying. I’m a Bow Street Runner. Does that mean anything to you?’
The young priest stared down at his trembling hands. ‘That’s like a London policeman, isn’t it?’
Pyke nodded. ‘I was the one who found the bodies.’
‘Oh God.’ The priest’s face whitened. For a moment, it looked as if he might pass out.
‘I understand that, first and foremost, you serve God,’ Pyke said, as gently as he could, ‘but you also have an obligation to see justice served in this world.’
‘I suppose.’
‘How about I tell you what I already know or think I know and, if I make a mistake, then you can perhaps point me in the right direction?’ Pyke smiled easily. ‘Does that sound acceptable to you or not?’
The priest nodded and took a long draught of ale.
‘I want to talk about the man who Davy went to work for, after he’d been dismissed from the police.’ As he pointed his pistol at Andrew Magennis’s eye, Pyke cocked the trigger, as though about to fire. He had found the old man sitting alone at the table, staring into space.
‘What do you want to know?’ This time the old man’s expression seemed placid.
‘His name, for a start.’
‘I can’t remember. I’m not sure I even found that out.’
Pyke brought the pistol closer to the old man’s eye. ‘The priest either didn’t know or wouldn’t give me his name.’
‘What priest?’
‘The one Davy confessed to,’ Pyke said. ‘He told me Davy’s former employer owns a few acres of land on the Armagh road just outside Market Hill.’
‘That sounds about right.’
‘I went looking for the house today. I think I found it.
It’s been boarded up. No one’s living there.’
‘Wha’s that got to do wi’ me?’
‘I asked in the town. No one wanted to talk to me about him.’
‘Folk in this part of the world don’t much care for loose talk with strangers.’
‘I’m not a stranger to you.’
Andrew Magennis shrugged.
Pyke nodded. He had expected to be stonewalled. ‘Davy’s dead. He cut his own throat. They buried him in an unmarked grave outside a church in Mullabrack.’
This was sufficient to break the old man’s resolve. ‘The big lad’s dead?’ His lip quivered. ‘My Davy?’ Tears welled up behind his glassy stare.
‘The man who Davy went to work for . . .’
A solitary tear rolled down the old man’s face.
‘Let me assure you of one thing,’ Pyke continued. ‘He was no friend to Davy.’
Beaten now, the old man just nodded. His eyes were dark with exhaustion, his hair matted with sweat.
‘You met him, didn’t you?’
‘Once, about two years back,’ Magennis said, slowly. ‘I paid Davy a visit, when he was still workin’ there.’
Pyke took his time. ‘I just need you to answer one question for me.’
‘Then you’ll leave us to grieve?’ The old man stared at him through bloodshot eyes.
‘Did this man have a brown mole on his chin?’
Magennis seemed momentarily nonplussed.
‘Did he have a large brown mole on his chin?’
‘Jimmy Swift,’ Magennis said, nodding his head. ‘How did ye know?’
Pyke closed his eyes. It was as though an anvil had fallen on his skull from a great height. He felt sickened. How did he know? God, the real question was: how could he have been so blind?
PART III
EIGHTEEN
It started when a curmudgeonly black bear, with fur shaved from its head to make it appear more human, broke free from its shackles outside the Old Cock tavern in Holborn. Perhaps wanting retribution for years of humiliation and ill-treatment, the bear lumbered up the creaking staircase at the back of the building and forced its way into the crowded upper room where red-faced market vendors were screaming their support for a seven-foot man wearing full military uniform to resemble the duke of Wellington. The outfit would have been too small on a man half his size. The giant had placed a dwarf, dressed as Napoleon, in a headlock, and was squeezing his neck with such intensity that the little man’s eyeballs seemed as though they might pop out of their sockets.
Pyke could not hear the dwarf’s chokes over the delighted cheers of the crowd, at least eight deep around every side of the gas-lit ring. That was until the bewildered bear paused briefly in the doorway to the upper room and surveyed the surroundings. It would have been a familiar sight: the tavern owner, Ned Villums, put the beast to work twice a week in that same ring, performing a version of Little Red Riding Hood, taking the part of the wolf. The
