'It isn't the club,' Sandman agreed, 'because they decided to buy me off, but the only member with sufficient funds immediately available was Lord Robin Holloway, and he detests me.'
'He does,' Berrigan agreed, 'but they all contributed.'
'No they didn't,' Sandman said. 'Most of the members are in the country and there won't have been time to solicit them. Skavadale doesn't have the funds. Maybe one or two members in London donated, but I'll wager the largest part of the twenty thousand came from Lord Robin Holloway, and he only did it because Skavadale begged him or ordered him or persuaded him, and I think he probably agreed to pay me, but privately arranged to have me killed before I could accept or, God forbid, cash his note.'
Berrigan thought about it, then reluctantly nodded. 'He's capable of that. Nasty piece of work, he is.'
'But maybe he'll call off his dogs,' Sandman said, 'now that he knows I'm not taking his money?'
'Except if he killed the Countess,' Berrigan suggested, 'he might still want you nubbed. What the hell's happening here?' His question was caused because the only thing moving on Newgate Hill was a trickle of dirty water in the gutter. The carts and carriages in the roadway were motionless, all held up by a wagon that had shed its load of pear saplings at the corner of Old Bailey and Newgate Street. Men shouted, whips cracked, horses buried their faces in nosebags and nothing moved. Berrigan shook his head. 'Who'd want half a ton of bloody pear trees?'
'Someone who likes pears?'
'Someone who needs their bloody brains reamed out,' the Sergeant grumbled, then stopped to gaze at the granite facade of Newgate Prison. It squatted grim and gaunt, sparsely supplied with windows, solid and forbidding. The rain was falling harder, but the Sergeant still stared in apparent fascination. 'Is this where they hang them?'
'Right outside the Debtor's Door, whichever one that is.'
'I've never been to a hanging here,' Berrigan admitted,
'Nor have I.'
'Been to one at Horsemonger Lane prison, but they hang them up on the roof of the gateway there and you don't see a lot from the street. Bit of jerking, that's all. My mum used to like going to Tyburn.'
'Your mother did?'
'It was a day out for her,' Berrigan had heard the surprise in Sandman's voice and sounded defensive. 'She likes a day out, my mum does, but she says the Old Bailey's too far—one day I'll hire a coach and bring her up.' He grinned as he climbed the prison steps. 'I always reckoned I'd end up in here.'
A turnkey accompanied them through the tunnel to the Press Yard and pointed out the large cell where those to be hanged spent their last night. 'If you want to see a hanging,' he confided to Sandman, 'then you come on Monday, 'cos we'll be ridding England of two of the bastards, but there won't be a crowd. Not a big one, anyway, on account that neither of 'em is what you'd call notorious. You want a big crowd? Hang someone notorious, sir, someone notorious, or else string up a woman. The Magpie and Stump got through a fortnight's supply of ale last Monday, and that was only 'cos we scragged a woman. Folks do like to see a woman strangling. Did you hear how that one ended?'
'Ended?' Sandman asked, puzzled by the question. 'I assume she died.'
'Died and went to the anatomists, sir, what do like a young 'un to slice apart, but she was hanged for the theft of a pearl necklace and I do hear how the owner found the necklace last week.' The man chuckled. 'Fallen down the back of a sofa! Might be rumour, of course, might just be rumour.' He shook his head in wonderment at fate's arbitrary ways. 'But it's a strange business, life, isn't it?'
'Death is,' Sandman said bitterly.
The turnkey fumbled with the Press Yard's padlocked gate, unaware that his callousness had provoked Sandman's anger. Berrigan saw it and tried to divert the Captain. 'So why are we seeing this Corday?' he asked.
Sandman hesitated. He had not yet told the Sergeant about the missing maid, Meg, and it had crossed his mind that perhaps Berrigan had not really changed sides at all. Had the Seraphim Club sent him as a spy? Yet that seemed unlikely, and the Sergeant's change of heart appeared to be sincere, even if it was prompted more by an attraction to Sally than any sincere repentance. 'There was a witness,' he told Berrigan, 'and I need to know more about her. And if I find her…' He left that thought unfinished.
'And if you find her?'
'Then someone will hang,' Sandman said, 'but not Corday.' He nodded a curt acknowledgement to the turnkey who had unlocked the gate, then led Berrigan across the stinking yard and into the Association Room. It was crowded because the rain had driven the prisoners and their visitors indoors and they stared resentfully at Sandman and his companion as the two threaded their way through the tables to the shadowed back of the room where Sandman expected to find Corday. The artist was evidently a changed man for, instead of cowering from his persecutors, he was now holding court at the table closest to the fire where, with a thick pile of paper and a stick of charcoal, he was drawing a portrait of a prisoner's woman. A small crowd surrounded him, admiring his skill, and they parted reluctantly to let Sandman through. Corday gave a small start of recognition when he saw his visitors, then quickly looked away. 'I need a word with you,' Sandman said.
'He'll talk to you when he's finished,' a huge man, black-haired, long-bearded and with a massive chest, growled from the bench beside Corday, 'and he won't be finished for a while, so wait, my culleys, wait.'
'And who are you?' Berrigan asked.
'I'm the cove telling you to wait,' the man said. He had a West Country accent, greasy clothes and a thick matted beard. He probed a finger into a capacious nostril as he stared belligerently at Berrigan, then withdrew it and gave the pickings a close inspection. He cleaned his nail by running it through his beard, then looked defiantly at Sandman. 'Charlie's time is valuable,' he explained, 'and there's not much left of it.'
'It's your life, Corday,' Sandman said.
'Don't listen to him, Charlie!' the big man said. 'You've got no friends in this wicked world except me and I know what's—' He stopped abruptly and uttered a gasping, mewing noise as his eyes widened in shock. Sergeant Berrigan had gone to stand behind him and now gave a jerk with his right hand that made the big man grunt in renewed pain.
'Sergeant!' Sandman remonstrated with mock concern.
'Just teaching the culley manners,' Berrigan said, and thumped the man in the kidneys a second time. 'When the Captain wants a word, you nose-picking piece of garbage, you jump to attention, you do, eyes front, mouth shut, heels together and back straight! You don't tell him to wait, that ain't polite.'
Corday looked anxiously at the bearded man. 'Are you all right?'
'He'll be fine,' Berrigan answered for his victim. 'You just talk to the Captain, boy, because he's trying to save your miserable bleeding life. You want to play games, culley?' The bearded man had stood and attempted to ram his elbow back into Berrigan's belly, but the Sergeant now thumped him across the ear, tripped him and, while he was still off balance, ran him hard and fast until he slammed into a table. Berrigan thumped the man's face down hard. 'You bleeding stay there, culley, till we're done.' He tapped the back of the man's head as an encouragement, then stalked back to Corday's table. 'Everyone on parade, Captain,' he reported, 'ready and willing.'
Sandman edged a woman aside so he could sit opposite Corday. 'I need to talk to you about the maid,' he said softly, 'about Meg. I don't suppose you knew her surname? No? So what did Meg look like?'
'Your friend shouldn't have hit him!' Corday, still distracted by his companion's pain, complained to Sandman.
'What did she bloody look like, son?' Berrigan shouted in his best sergeant's manner, and Corday twitched with sudden terror, then set aside the half-finished portrait and, without a word, began to sketch on a clean sheet of paper. He worked fast, the charcoal making a small scratching noise in the silence of the big room.
'She's young,' Corday said, 'maybe twenty-four or-five? She has a pockmarked skin and mouse-coloured hair. Her eyes have a greenish tint and she has a mole here.' He flicked a mark on the girl's forehead. 'Her teeth aren't good. I've only drawn her face, but you should know she had broad hips and a narrow chest.'
'Small tits, you mean?' Berrigan growled.
Corday blushed. 'She was small above the waist,' he said, 'but big beneath it.' He finished the drawing, frowned at it for a moment, then nodded in satisfaction and handed the sheet to Sandman.
Sandman stared at the picture. The girl was ugly, and then he thought she was more than ugly. It was not just the pox-scarred skin, the narrow jaw, the scrawny hair and small eyes, but a suggestion of knowing hardness
