The Last Days (15 page)

One of the guards said he would go and make some enquiries. The other, meanwhile, led Pyke into a dingy antechamber, set off the building’s main entrance hall.

Pyke waited for almost two hours for Tilling to rescue him from the stares of the two guards. The burly man greeted Pyke without warmth and led him in silence through the main hall, past the same cantilevered staircase he had seen previously on his visit to Peel’s offices and down a flight of stairs, to a room in the basement of the building. It was furnished with two chairs and a wooden table. A gas lamp hissed quietly in the corner of the room.

Tilling told Pyke he could spare him ten minutes. He wore a well-cut jacket over a silk neck stocking and styled dark trousers. Though he possessed neither beard nor moustache, his sideburns were thick and as dark as the hair on the top of his head. He seemed agitated and distant, as though the prospect of spending even a few minutes in Pyke’s company was the last thing he wanted.

He listened, evidently bored, while Pyke explained what had happened and recounted, as briefly as he could, the course of his investigation.

While he spoke, Pyke wondered whether Tilling, as someone who knew Ireland well and had served under Peel while he had been under-secretary there, would be in a better position to comprehend the nuances of his account. He wondered, too, whether Tilling had Irish blood in him. He didn’t speak with a brogue and if he was, in part, Irish, then it was almost certain that he belonged to the Anglo-Irish planter class. This would, of course, influence the way in which he made sense of Pyke’s tale of Protestant bigotry and violence. Tilling might be hostile to the assumptions behind his claims. But in the end it was just a name that seemed to rouse the man from his indifference.

Pyke could not, of course, be certain that the name ‘Davy Magennis’ had registered as forcefully as he imagined, but it was also true that, as a rule, he rarely misread other people’s reactions.

Afterwards, Tilling’s demeanour did become more agitated and he stopped listening to Pyke’s account and fidgeted in his chair. His manner did not become obviously aggressive but almost at once, and without warning, he stood up and told Pyke that he had important business to attend to. Assuring Pyke that his claims would be properly investigated, he thanked him for his efforts.

Tilling left him with the two guards and did not bother to issue any form of farewell.

TEN

I
t was a long time since Pyke had spent any real time in his gin palace and it struck him what an unpleasant place it had become. Perhaps he had deluded himself when he had first bought and transformed the building, hoping it would become a sophisticated drinking venue, with a better class of customer attracted by brilliant interior gas lights that shone through large plate-glass windows. Pyke’s own reputation may have been successful in deterring society’s dregs from regularly drinking there - the scavengers, petty thieves, coal-heavers and prostitutes who gravitated towards the neighbourhood’s less salubrious alehouses and drunken ex-sailors who preferred the gin shops on the other side of the river. But offers of cheap gin were enough to lure all types of working men and women to the bar: porters from St Bartholomew’s, animal drovers, stable boys and meat cutters from the market and traders who sold fruit and vegetables from their barrows, all of whom wanted to get fall-down drunk and didn’t care about the ornamental parapets or the fact that the drinks were served in glasses rather than clay pots or pewter mugs.

Pyke had no affinity with his customers and showed little interest in the daily running of the place. It was an investment and it gave him a modest additional income. And if Pyke had no affinity with his paying customers, nor did he have anything in common with the people who worked for him. Aside from Lizzie, who was upstairs in the attic room tending to George, the faces were unfamiliar or hostile to him. But Pyke did not expect gratitude from his staff: those who worked behind the bar, the glass collectors, the cleaners, the ex-bare-knuckle boxer who policed the bar and the three kitchen hands who served up a simple menu of chops, baked eggs, hot eel and pea soup. The pay was low, the work hard and at times dangerous, and the hours were long. He exploited them but he felt no guilt for doing so. If they wanted to work elsewhere, he never tried to stop them.

Pyke sat on an overturned barrel at one end of the zinc-topped mahogany counter and looked at what his gin shop had become. Somehow the term ‘palace’ seemed too absurd for words. He looked at the painted barrels behind the bar, signs advertising ‘The Real Knock-Me-Out Firewater’ or ‘The Devil’s Own’ and the wooden floor covered with sawdust and vomit.

There were two fights in the bar that night and Pyke wondered whether that was typical or not. One incident was relatively minor: a meat cutter, still wearing his bloodied work apron, swung at and missed a younger man, who stepped inside the punch and landed one of his own on the meat cutter’s jaw. The single blow sent the meat cutter sprawling on to the floor, and he was picked up and dumped outside by Billy, the ex-bare-knuckle fighter. The other fight was more serious. A ferret-faced man pulled out a pocket knife on a larger adversary and thrust the blade into the man’s abdomen. He got away before Billy could apprehend him but Pyke watched as the ex-boxer picked up the bleeding man, dragged his limp body across the crowded room and tossed him out of the side door.

But Pyke’s attention had been focused elsewhere. As he sat alone, amid the grim tumult of the place, a sea of unfamiliar faces quietly whispering to one another, just out of earshot, he could not get over the feeling that he was being watched; not simply by the drinkers lined up two or three deep along the entire length of the counter but maybe by an agent of the state who was masquerading as a market trader or a hospital porter. But he did not know whether his suspicions were genuine or had merely been fuelled by the laudanum he had ingested.

Pyke had other significant matters on his mind, too. He could not avoid the conclusion that he had somehow miscalculated or overplayed his hand with Tilling. Again and again, he tried and failed to make sense of the man’s strange reaction to his findings. He’d certainly expected some kind of message from Peel or Tilling but so far nothing had come, and he was unable to determine what this silence indicated.

By the following evening, Pyke still had not received any message from Peel or Tilling and his feeling of anxiety had intensified: so much so that he had further increased his intake of laudanum. The drug numbed him a little but did nothing to lift his unease.

What had Tilling’s changed demeanour signalled? That he knew Davy Magennis? Tilling had spent time in Ireland and Magennis lived there but the idea that they knew or had met one another seemed fanciful. But if Tilling did know or had met Davy Magennis and Magennis was responsible for the St Giles murders, did that, in turn, suggest that Tilling was somehow mixed up in them as well? The idea seemed too preposterous for words, not least because it implicated Peel himself. And whatever Peel was - cunning and ruthless - he didn’t strike Pyke as an assassin, even if the assassination had been carried out by someone else.

Then there was the question of motive. Certainly the murders had strengthened the case for a new consolidated police force, but as far as he could tell that particular argument had long since been won. The murders had also galvanised opposition to the Catholic Emancipation Bill; a bill which Peel supported and was about to present to the Commons. As such, the idea that Peel might be involved with the St Giles deaths did not make sense, but on the other hand Tilling’s nervous reaction perhaps indicated otherwise.

Pyke watched Lizzie serving drinks and, for some reason, thought about the woman in the Blue Dog tavern who had called out his name, to warn him of Flynn’s imminent attack. It bothered him that, although her voice had seemed familiar, he did not have an idea of who she was.

There was a time when he had thought Lizzie to be the most desirable woman in the whole of London. This sentiment was augmented by the fact that Lizzie had promised herself to a housebreaker whom George, her father, did not approve of. In order to break up this union, and to earn George’s respect, Pyke had solicited the man’s assistance, to steal jewels and bonds from a house on Great Russell Street, and arranged for four constables to make the arrest, while the robbery was taking place. During the trial the robber, who had a headstrong manner and a vicious disposition, had leapt from the dock, retrieved a knife from an associate who was seated in the public gallery and attacked Pyke. Now, a few years later, Pyke could not exactly recall how he had disarmed this man but he was struck by the gallantry of his own long-ago actions; the fact that he had been willing to risk life and limb for the woman whom he now took entirely for granted.

So engrossed was he in these thoughts that he did not notice Brownlow Vines until the man was practically breathing in his face. In his hat and gloves, Vines looked utterly out of place. It did not strike Pyke until later that Vines might be the emissary from Peel.

In an awkward gesture, Vines made to shake Pyke’s hand, and when he saw that Pyke had no intention of doing likewise, he patted him on the arm. ‘This is where you like to spend your time. How . . . colourful.’

Vines was dressed in a cream frock-coat, cravat, tight-fitting trousers and immaculately polished boots, and in the surroundings seemed even more foppish than usual.

‘What do you want, Vines?’

Vines made a point of appearing to be hurt. ‘May I suggest that I buy us both a drink?’ He glanced over at the bar and tried to attract someone’s attention. ‘Miss. Miss?’ It took Pyke a few moments to realise he was talking to either Lizzie or one of the barmaids.

It was a nauseating spectacle, Vines’s attempt to flirt with Lizzie while one of the other barmaids poured two mugs of stout and placed them on the counter before him. Vines seemed pleased with himself, as though his efforts revealed his common touch. Lizzie had acted along, laughing at Vines’s efforts at humour. She had even appeared to be flattered.

‘Cheers,’ Vines said, lifting up his mug.

‘You’re not from this world, are you, Vines?’

‘Maybe not, but I can see its earthy appeals,’ Vines said, making a point of winking at Pyke.

‘In a place like this, you so much as look at someone else’s woman, you’re a dead man.’

The colour drained from Vines’s face. He glanced across at Lizzie and then around the room, to see whether anyone had noticed.

‘Lizzie,’ Pyke called out.

After serving another customer, she came to join them. Pyke reached over the counter and kissed her on the mouth. It was an ugly, sloppy gesture, made worse by the fact that Lizzie bridled at his feigned attempt at intimacy, doubtless realising she was being used. Still, it elicited the reaction Pyke had wanted. Vines stared at them aghast, though Pyke didn’t know whether he was appalled by the show of affection or by what it suggested about Pyke’s choice of woman.

‘Don’t pretend this is a social visit, Vines,’ Pyke said, once Lizzie had left them. ‘What do you want?’

Vines was ambitious but stupid. Usually he had nothing but contempt for Pyke, but now he was pretending to be his friend. Pyke wondered whether Vines really believed he was taken in by his false show of bonhomie.

‘Straight to the point, eh?’ Vines looked at him with apprehension. ‘I wanted to talk to you, away from the eyes and ears of Bow Street, about Sir Richard.’

‘What about Sir Richard?’

They both took a long drink.

This time Vines whispered, ‘I’m worried about him, Pyke. I think he’s losing his mind.’ He wiped froth from his mouth with his sleeve. ‘Have you noticed the way he’s been acting of late?’

‘Acting?’ Pyke raised his eyebrows. He’d noticed Fox’s erratic behaviour but didn’t say anything.

‘The mood swings, the ecstatic highs, the lows.’

‘It must be a hard business, watching everything that you’ve worked to build threatened by the people you most trust.’

Vines refused to meet his stare. ‘Quite so, but he’s blind to the realities of the situation, Pyke. This new police force is going to happen, whether he likes it or not. I know it. You know it. Why can’t he see it? Sometimes progress is inevitable.’

‘Depends what you mean by progress.’

‘Many people would call a new, uniformed, city-wide police force progress.’

‘And you?’

Vines smiled unconvincingly. ‘My admittedly humble task is to serve, and not to make difficult decisions.’

Pyke rubbed his eyes and tried to focus. He felt light-headed, drunker than he should, even though he had imbibed only three gins and a mug of stout. Usually he could consume a bottle of gin and still shoot a man between the eyes at twenty paces.

Through blurry eyes, he stared at Vines and tried to work out what the man wanted. Vines had not, as yet, mentioned the murders, and did not seem to want to know about the investigation. All of which suggested that he had not been dispatched to Pyke’s gin palace by Peel or Tilling.

Vines ordered another round of drinks and insisted on paying for them himself.

Emboldened by the alcohol, Pyke asked Vines whether he’d struck a deal with Peel or whether Peel had offered him a role in the new police force. They both took a drink.

‘Is that what you think?’ Vines looked at him, shaking his head.

Pyke didn’t like being this drunk. He didn’t feel particularly in control of the situation.

‘Sir Richard thinks you’re the magistrate that Peel is employing to preside over Hume’s investigation.’

‘Really?’ Vines said, sounding more amused than perturbed. ‘And that’s why you think he’s been acting strangely around me?’

Pyke felt his vision blur and closed his eyes, trying to revive himself. The room started to spin around him. He tried to respond but words failed him. Vines placed his hand on Pyke’s shoulder and asked whether he was all right.