‘It’s slow, but it has to be done, Rob.’
‘I don’t mind,’ he answered with a smile. ‘It sounds strange, but I’m enjoying it.’
He needed to know more about Jackson, Nottingham thought as he walked down to the river and out along Low Holland. Just up the bank the cloth was being stretched out in the sun. A mild breeze came off the water, a gentle coolness that felt pleasant on the hot afternoon.
He knew the building he wanted, although he’d never been inside it before. Tom Williamson had just moved into his new warehouse down by the Aire the month before. Built for him, it offered more space than the tumbledown place in the yard behind his old, cramped house on Briggate, and made loading cloth on to the barges much easier.
The Constable pushed open the door and entered. Already everything had the unmistakable smell of cloth. The office, its battered desks looking out of place in this new setting, stood to one side, empty as all the men worked together to store the lengths the merchant had purchased at the afternoon’s coloured cloth market.
Williamson himself was supervising, stripped to his breeches and shirt, sleeves pushed up to show pale, scrawny arms. Nottingham waited, watching as the men worked in concert with pulleys and brute strength to put the cloth away on the shelves. The high windows, glass still clear and clean, were open to pull in fresh air, but everyone was sweating and cursing.
He waited quietly until they’d finished and Williamson walked towards him, towelling off his face and neck with an old scrap of linen. He was in his middle thirties, a slight man, full of energy, drive, and the kind of honesty all too rare in a merchant. He smiled as he noticed the Constable leaning against a wall.
‘Richard,’ he said pleasantly. ‘What do you think of it?’
‘Impressive,’ he answered truthfully. The large new place, its stonework bright, was an indication of the ambition Williamson had as a merchant, and of the fortunes of the wool trade in Leeds. Across the city, business was growing fast, with orders coming in constantly, and all because of the quality. No one in the country could match it. Profits were good and going to become even better. Tom Williamson had grown up in the business, his father a merchant, his own apprenticeship served in the city and abroad, and he’d taken over the firm when his father had died two years before. Now it was on the cusp of being one of the largest in Leeds.
The merchant poured himself a mug of ale and drank quickly before offering one to Nottingham.
‘It’s a big investment,’ Williamson said with pride. ‘But give it two or three years and it’ll be paying for itself. Come on, let’s go outside, I need some air after all that.’
Nottingham followed him and they sat together on the riverbank.
‘So what brings you here, Richard? You’re not one for social calls.’
‘Will Jackson.’
The merchant frowned. ‘I heard. That was terrible,’ he said with a long sigh.
‘Did you know him?’
Williamson took another drink. ‘Not especially well. We’d say good day when we met, that type of thing. But from what everyone said, he was up and coming, making a name for himself.’
‘Did you do business with him?’
‘I’ve used Tunstall’s a couple of times, mostly when there were orders I had to fill quickly.’ He wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. ‘You know how it is, you develop a relationship with companies. There’s a cloth finisher we’ve used for years. They’re fine, so I don’t have any reason to change.’
‘What do you know about Tunstall’s?’
Williamson eyed him curiously. ‘Trying to find the reason he killed himself??’
‘More or less,’ Nottingham answered evasively. In part, at least, it was the truth. The merchant considered his answer.
‘As far as I know, they’re going well. Jackson really built the business up. He came to see me a few times, trying for my custom. I imagine Elias is worried now.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
A suicide left a long, stained shadow, one that people were eager to avoid. Trade at Tunstall’s would suffer as long as people remembered what Jackson had done.
‘It’s not like you to investigate suicides, Richard, even if they’re in a place like that. Is there something more?’
‘Possibly,’ was as far as he’d go in response. Tom was a friend, one of the few merchants who didn’t look down on him or his office. But something stopped him saying more and he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps he felt too unsure about everything at the moment, still trying to tie down the tenuous connections between peoples’ lives.
‘I don’t envy you your job,’ Williamson said, shaking his head.
Nottingham laughed. ‘Why’s that?’
‘All you see is misery. People hurt, robbed, even dead.’
‘But we catch the people who did it. That rights a wrong. Surely that’s a good thing?’
‘It’s what you have to go through to do it. It makes my life seem very straightforward.’
‘For what it’s worth, I couldn’t be a merchant.’
Nottingham stood up, leaving his own history unspoken. His father had been a merchant, one who’d sold his business and moved away after throwing out his family. All he’d left his son was his surname.
‘Be glad you’re not,’ Williamson told him. ‘It’s a brutal business, Richard.’
The Constable grinned. ‘Just not as brutal as mine.’
With a wave he headed back to the city. He felt frustrated. The more he learned, the less he seemed to know or understood about this case. As he walked he pried the pieces apart in his mind and tried to slowly reassemble them to see if they made any more sense.
They had a girl who’d been murdered, one who’d been married for just a year to a man much older than her. She might have been pregnant. She had a lover she saw weekly who had killed himself after she’d died. She’d gone to visit her parents and taken her maid, but never arrived. The maid was missing.
Her husband had paid her parents handsomely to have her in marriage, but he’d fallen in love with her.
That was what they knew. He was certain that she hadn’t been the victim of a robbery on the highway. If that had happened she’d just have been left by the road. They wouldn’t have used an expensive knife and left it in her body. So it was someone who knew her.
He needed more. He needed the small pieces that would connect these items and let him see the real picture. As it was, the fragments he possessed couldn’t even tell him how large that picture might be. Until he had more information, something solid, he’d be like a dog chasing its tail and becoming more and more frustrated. Someone had wanted Sarah Godlove dead. If he could only understand why, he might be able to find out who.
The Constable was still trying to make sense of everything as he entered the jail.
‘Boss?’ Lister said, shaking Nottingham into the present. ‘I think I’ve got something here.’
‘What’s that?’ He sat down, hopeful for anything that might move them along.
‘I’ve been going through Will’s business letters. From the look of them he was trying to sell his share of Tunstall’s.’
‘What?’ He stopped. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m positive.’ He picked up the letters and riffled through them. ‘From what I can see, it started about three weeks ago. He wrote to a few people who might be interested. Said he was looking to leave Leeds.’
The Constable’s heart started beating a little faster. ‘Did he say why at all?’
‘Not that I’ve found,’ Rob replied. ‘He had two people who were interested, one from Bradford, another from Wakefield. Quite seriously, too, from the look of the letters. But it all stopped about three days before he killed himself.’
‘Which would be when news of Sarah’s death would have started to spread,’ Nottingham mused.
‘They could have been running off together.’
‘It’s possible,’ he allowed guardedly. ‘How much was he asking for his share of Tunstall’s?’
‘Enough to live on quite well for a while.’
The Constable sat down, brushing the fringe off his forehead.
‘Go back over all the letters from Sarah, see if there’s anything to indicate them leaving together.’
‘I didn’t see anything before-’ Rob started, but Nottingham held up his hand.
‘We didn’t know what to look for before. There might be something in there that makes sense in the light of
