The Broken Token (7 page)

The food was all gone so he was left hungry, but at least there was a tankard in his hand as he chatted to the landlord, a ramshackle, wiry man in his fifties with muscled arms and wild, dark
hair that grew in a bushy mass from his head.

“You heard about the preacher who was killed?” Sedgwick asked.

“Oh aye.” Walter Shipton wiped his hands on his leather apron and spat on the sawdust floor. “Whole town’s heard about that by now, lad. The preacher with his feet of
clay and the whore.” He shook his head.

“Was he in here last night?” Sedgwick asked.

“Ee, lad, not that I recall,” he answered slowly. “It were a quiet night, so like as not I’d have noticed him. You found out what he was doing with her,
anyway?”

Sedgwick laughed to himself. If the landlord couldn’t imagine what a man did with a whore, it wasn’t his place to educate him.

“Shame about her, though,” Shipton continued, drawing himself a small pot of ale and tasting it appreciatively.

“How do you mean?”

“She were a nice lass,” he said thoughtfully. “Bit strange, but nice, you know.”

“You knew her?” Suddenly Sedgwick was very interested.

“She were in here most nights, did a lot of her business from over there.” He nodded at a corner. “No trouble, mind, she’d just sit, and the men would come to her if they
wanted her. They’d go off and, you know, then she’d be back.”

Pleased at finally discovering something useful, Sedgwick drained his mug and pushed it forward for a refill. It wasn’t food, but it was the next best thing.

“How long had she been coming in?”

“A year, mebbe?” Shipton creased his brow, emphasising the drinker’s broken veins in his ruddy cheeks. “Aye, around that, I suppose. Bit less, mebbe.” He leaned
forward conspiratorially across the counter and added in a whisper, “She give me a tumble once, in t’back when the wife were gone. Called it my commission.” He chuckled wheezily
at the memory. “By Christ, lad, she were a good tup, too, passionate like. I thought she’d be the death of me that day. Made me feel twenty again, she did.”

Sedgwick shared the other man’s smile for a moment before pushing on.

“Was she in last night?”

“Last night? Let me think.” He called over the serving girl, a harried rail of a lass who looked the Constable’s man up and down briefly before giving Shipton her attention.
“Was Pamela in last night, do you recall?”

“Early on,” she replied without any hesitation, rolling her eyes when he looked confused. “You remember. You had to throw old George out for shouting the odds like he always
does when he’s drunk as a lord. She helped you get him through the door. I didn’t see her later, though.”

“Aye, that’s right.” Shipton brightened. “Must have been about nine. George Carver had had a few too many and he was trying to pick a fight with some ’prentice
lads. Always wants a brawl when he’s drunk, does George. I had to get him out for his own safety, else they’d have bloodied up my floor with him. Course, he didn’t want to go,
ranting and raving. Pamela started talking to him while I was trying to push him out and he ended up going meek as owt.”

“Did she leave with him?” Sedgwick asked carefully. He was alert now, on the scent.

“’Ee, I don’t know, I weren’t looking by then, once the bother were over.” He glanced at the serving girl who shrugged noncommittally.

“Do you know where she lived?”

“Somewhere close, I reckon, but I couldn’t tell you where. Never asked. It didn’t seem to matter.” He took a long drink and drained the pot. “ ’Appen
someone’ll know. I can ask for you, if you like, there’ll be more in later.”

Sedgwick nodded his appreciation.

“Did she have a pimp?” he wondered. The landlord might know.

“Pamela?” Shipton shook his head firmly. “Nay, not one like her. Too old, and not enough business to warrant one bothering with her.”

Sedgwick finished his ale and left, satisfied with the bit of business. He’d found out a little. In the doorway he almost collided with a familiar face trying to slide in for a quiet
drink.

Adam Suttler was the most talented forger in Leeds, an educated man with the ability to copy anything faithfully, but no sense of judgement. Twice Nottingham and Sedgwick had stopped him before
he became too foolish. Changing a will to favour a younger son could have found him on the gallows. So could his alteration of a merchant’s bill of lading to the continent, allowing thieves
to make off with some bales of cloth. On both occasions the paper evidence had handily been destroyed, saving Suttler from capital justice. They’d visited his rooms at the top of a winding
stair, surprisingly airy and clean, and put the fear of God into Adam with threats and promises as his wife and daughter had scuttled into the other room.

Sedgwick wasn’t naïve enough to think he’d returned to the straight and narrow – apart from working as a clerk or a scrivener, what could Suttler do? – but at least
they hadn’t heard much of him in the last year.

“Evening, Adam,” the deputy said breezily. “Staying out of trouble?”

“Of course, Mr Sedgwick,” Suttler answered uneasily. It was a lie, and they both knew it, but for the moment they accepted it as the truth.

“You heard about the murders.”

Suttler shook his head sadly. “A terrible business. I saw him preach on Saturday, very inspiring.”

He might be a criminal, but the forger was also a thoughtful, religious man, in church without fail every Sunday. Still, the deputy supposed, what he did was no worse than some of the merchants,
and they were always ready to bow their heads piously.

“A lot of people didn’t like what he said,” Sedgwick pointed out.

“True,” said Suttler, bobbing his head in agreement. “But perhaps they chose not to hear.”

“Did you see him at all after Saturday?”

“I didn’t,” he said with regret. “I’d have liked to talk to him.”

“You go and enjoy your ale,” Sedgwick told him. “And keep out of trouble, Adam. Next time we might not be able to save you.”

With a shy, embarrassed smile, Suttler ducked into the tavern.

Oh well, the deputy thought. Even if there was nothing to be gained from Suttler, the information about Pamela and George Carver was worthwhile. Now all he needed was a little more luck at Queen
Charlotte’s Court to make it a good night.

But it seemed as if fortune had just been teasing him. By ten he’d discovered nothing new. His long legs ached from walking and standing, and his knuckles were sore from rapping on doors.
At least he’d been able to find many of the dwellers in the court at home. Yet however much he tried to joke and charm information from them, there was little to be had. A couple believed
they might have heard something in the middle of the night, but they weren’t certain. Most, it seemed, had been dead to the world. And perhaps they’d earned that, he thought. Working
too many hours for too little money, with hardly any food in their bellies, sleep was their only escape from drudgery, the only place where all things and all people could be equal. When simply
living was an act of concentration, how could he blame them for not noticing the deaths of people they didn’t even know?

Still, he continued to go methodically around the court, knowing he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d done everything possible. In the attic of a building that should have been razed
twenty years before, its stairs rickety and rotted beyond danger, he found an impossibly young mother, with her husband and tiny baby. She looked barely thirteen, her eyes not yet lost in
desperation, wearing a dress that had likely been fourth- or fifth-hand when she found it two or three years earlier. Her man barely seemed older himself, a walking jumble of rags tied to his body
with string.

“We heard summat, didn’t we, Will?” she told Sedgwick. “I were up with the baby – he’s got the croup, I think – and there was this noise.”

Sedgwick smiled down at her.

“What kind of noise, luv?”

“I wasn’t sure at first. Like someone was dragging something heavy. You remember, Will, I woke you?”

The lad nodded.

“What time was that?”

The girl looked confused.

“Time? I couldn’t tell you that, mister. It were dark, and it felt lonely, so it must have been the middle of the night. You know how everything feels far away then? Except him, of
course,” she added, rocking the child in her arms.

“Did you look out?” Sedgwick asked. The room’s sole window opened on to the court.

The girl shook her head.

“Not at first. I mean, the noise stopped, so I didn’t think much more of it, and I had to deal with the babbie. But when it started again, I did.”

He looked at her pinched face, alert now.

“Started again? You mean there was more? How much later was that?”

She considered her answer.

“Not long. I don’t know, I’d just got him settled and fed, and I was going to go back to sleep when I heard it.”

“And what did you see?”

“There wasn’t much of a moon, so I couldn’t really make it out proper. But it looked like someone pulling something, I thought it were a sack of rubbish or summat. I thought it
was an odd time, but folk are strange, aren’t they?” she asked with an almost childlike sense of wonder at the world.

“They are, yes.” He smiled kindly at her. “Did you see or hear anything else?”

“Not really.” She frowned as she tried to recall. “A bit more noise from down there, and that’s it. I didn’t really see anyone, not enough to make them out or owt.
Once it went quiet again, that was it.”

“Was it a man or woman you saw?”

The girl shook her head.

“I didn’t really notice. Just a shape.”

“Thank you.” Sedgwick noticed that the boy she called Will had barely glanced up throughout the conversation, a sullen expression on his face.

“Will Littlefield,” he said, and the youth turned sharply. “You do right by this lass of yours, or I’ll be back.”

“You know him?” the girl asked, taken aback.

“Oh aye,” Sedgwick replied. “Been friends a long time, haven’t we, Will? Just haven’t seen much of him recently, and you might say that’s a good thing for
everyone.”

He bowed to the girl and left.

Not a bad night after all, he said to himself as he strolled back down Briggate towards home. It might even make the bollocking he’d get from his wife worthwhile.

Telling the girls about Pamela’s death hadn’t been as bad as he’d feared, Nottingham reflected the next morning. Rose, with her feelings always close to the
surface, had sobbed, comforted by her mother, but Emily, always self-absorbed, had been stoic.

As he poured water from the ewer into the basin and cleaned his teeth with a piece of sponge, he could hear them all in the kitchen. Mary was issuing her quiet instructions, Rose was trying too
hard to inject some gaiety into her voice, to sound lively and happy, while Emily’s brooding presence was evident in her silence.

The subject of death was carefully avoided as they broke their fast with porridge and small ale. But the conversation remained stilted, almost as if Pamela’s ghost was in the room with
them. As soon as he’d eaten Nottingham pulled on his coat and left, eager to escape the close atmosphere of the house.

Sedgwick was waiting at the jail, dark circles underlining his eyes. He’d arrived home long after the clock struck midnight and had been back by six, listening to the reports of the two
men who made up the night watch. He was a good young worker, the Constable thought, there was no doubt of that.

Nottingham sat and listened carefully as his assistant explained what he’d discovered the previous night.

“Good,” he nodded appreciatively. “I talked to Amos Worthy yesterday, and he told me Pamela was often at the Ship. Now we need to find where she lived. I’ll take care of
that. Have we found the killing ground yet?”

“Not yet. But from what that lass said, it can’t be far away. I’ve got a couple of men searching; we should have it this morning.”

“You keep on looking for anyone who might have seen Morton the night before last. The bugger was somewhere before he was killed.”

“What about George Carver?” Sedgwick wondered.

The Constable rubbed his chin. Carver was a local legend. He’d been a successful merchant once, selling cloth to the Continent. Somehow the business had slipped away from him and
he’d lost everything, his family, his house, whatever money he’d had. No one knew how he earned a living now, but he was in the inns every night, drinking. Pleasant, even charming,
company when sober, once he was drunk he turned belligerent and violent, going out of his way to pick fights. He was under five feet six, his body bloated by years of alcohol; all too often he was
the one who ended up bloody and unconscious. He’d spent plenty of nights in the cells, as much for his own protection as for the trouble he caused. It was hard to picture him as any kind of
murderer, let alone killing in cold blood. But stranger things had happened.

“If anyone saw him with Morton, we’ll bring him in,” he decided.

Sedgwick nodded, then said, “By the way, the cutpurse hit again last night. Twice.”

Nottingham sighed slowly and pushed a hand through his hair.

“Jesus God, how many times is that? Are you sure it’s the same one?” Anger rippled through him. He didn’t need this on top of the murders.

“Got to be, boss. No one saw or felt anything. One of the victims this time was a merchant.”

Nottingham swore.

“He’ll be complaining to the Mayor. That’s all we need right now.”

“He’s a clever bugger, whoever he is,” Sedgwick said, shaking his head in admiration. “Slick, too.”

The Constable rubbed his face. Already it seemed as if this was going to be a very long day.

“You know it’ll be sheer good luck if we get him, don’t you?” He sighed again. “Still, we’d better show willing and put someone on it. Who can we
spare?”

Sedgwick pursed thin lips and thought for a moment. Including the two night walkers, they had a total of six men. It wasn’t enough, and they both knew it. Nottingham kept trying for more
money from the Corporation, but they weren’t prepared to pay. Safety was good, as long as it came cheap.