Pyke didn’t even try to hide his disdain. Pierce was an unlikely combination of Christian piety and ruthless ambition — hence the kind of man who attributed the wealth he accrued to God’s grace rather than his own grubby machinations.
‘Let me guess. In the meantime, Mayne’s instructed you to take care of this “lesser” problem. Or make it appear as if you’re taking care of it.’
‘I see prison has made you even more cynical.’
‘I wonder how Mayne would feel if he knew you were offering work to a jailbird such as myself?’
‘If it came down to it, I could persuade him. Mayne listens to Peel and you know you still have a friend there.’
A few years earlier, while he’d still owned his own bank, Pyke had unwittingly done battle with, and vanquished, one of the Tory leader’s most feared political adversaries, and he had yet to call in the favour.
Pyke turned back to the window and stared up at the sky. It felt oddly exhilarating to see it without the imposition of bars or walls. And he had already decided to do what Tilling was asking him to do; it would be a way of trying to redeem himself in the eyes of his son. ‘I’ll need some money to live off and a purse to run the investigation.’
Tilling nodded but waited for a few moments. ‘Five pounds a week, until the killer is caught.’
Pyke turned back to face Tilling and shook his head. ‘Not enough.’
‘That’s more than a sergeant would earn.’ Tilling crossed his arms. ‘Of course, I could always take you back to Marshalsea.’
‘Fifteen.’
It must have been the way Pyke said it which angered Tilling because almost at once his colour rose. ‘You’re acting as if I’ve come to you holding a begging cup. In fact, you’re quite right. I could get a hundred men to do this job but I thought you might appreciate the chance to make a fresh start — if not for yourself, then for your son.’ Tilling’s expression softened. ‘Look, Pyke, I don’t see this as an act of charity. You’re the best detective I’ve ever known. But if you sink any deeper into the quagmire, you might not find a way back.’
Pyke considered Tilling’s outburst, admiring the man’s doggedness but hating him for being right. He nodded slowly.
‘So you’ll do it? You’ll find the man who did this to her?’ Tilling looked at him, expectantly.
‘I’ll see what I can find out. I’m not making any promises.’
‘None expected.’ Tilling waited. ‘What do you need?’
‘I’ll need an artist with a strong constitution and a sense of discretion who can sketch as good a likeness as is possible under the circumstances.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Some money to get things started.’
Tilling threw him a purse. ‘There’s twenty pounds. That should be enough for now.’ Pyke caught the purse and pocketed it without inspecting the contents. ‘Won’t you get into trouble for hiring my services?’
Tilling shrugged. ‘I might, but that’s for me to worry about.’
Lifting up the sheet, Pyke had another look at the woman’s mutilated face, but it wasn’t necessary. Every curve and undulation, every blemish and bruise, had already been lodged indelibly in his mind.
TWO
The landlord’s name was Thrale and he’d once been a bare-knuckled fighter. Pyke didn’t recognise him straight away, even though he’d seen the man fight William Benbow ten or fifteen years earlier. Thrale told them that the woman’s name was Mary Edgar; that she had rented a private room in his lodging house about a week ago and had paid in advance; and that she’d shared the room with a black man called Arthur Sobers, who, until that point, had been staying in one of the general rooms for two pence a night. Sobers, Thrale said, had first shown up about three weeks earlier, having just arrived on a ship from Jamaica. Thrale seemed to be in awe of Sobers’ physical presence and he struck Pyke as the kind of man who worshipped toughness, even though his own body was now old and broken. Pyke recalled the fight he’d witnessed all those years ago. In the end, Benbow had taken Thrale apart, punch by punch, but the beaten man had refused to lie down. It was as bloody a spectacle as he’d ever seen. Thrale should have stayed down but didn’t. That told Pyke something about his character.
‘So the two of them, Mary Edgar and this man Sobers, were intimate with one another already?’
‘I’d say so.’ Thrale’s nose had been broken in numerous places.
‘You’d say so or you know so?’
‘She told me she wasn’t used to the cold, coming from Jamaica. He told me he was just off the ship from the West Indies. They shared a room. The rest I worked out for myself.’
When they had shown Thrale her body, he hadn’t flinched, not even when he saw her face. He’d identified her immediately, and when Pyke had tried to push him — how could he be so certain, given the mutilations and the effects of quicklime? — Thrale had shrugged and said he just knew. He’d identified her dress, too. He’d seen her wearing it the night before she was killed.
‘Is Sobers still staying at the lodging house?’
‘Ain’t seen him for a couple of days.’ Thrale scratched his chin. ‘You think he done it?’
‘That was going to be my next question.’
‘How should I know? He’s a tough one, that’s for sure. Apart from that, he didn’t give much away, kept himself to himself. She did, too.’
‘You think they were attached?’
‘You mean was they fucking?’ His grin revealed an incomplete set of uneven, yellow teeth.
‘That’s one way of putting it.’
Thrale considered the question. ‘They was sharing a room not much larger than a cell. They’d have to be intimate.’
‘But you don’t know what brought them to London in the first place?’
‘No.’
‘Or which ship they came on?’
‘I didn’t say for certain they’d come on the same ship. He told me he was just off the ship; but he didn’t mention a name. She said she was from Jamaica. That’s all. I don’t like to pry into my guests’ affairs.’
Pyke waited for a moment. ‘You described him as black. Would you say she was a mulatto?’
‘A blue-skin?’ Thrale looked into his face. ‘If I walked past her on the street, I’m not sure what I’d think. She could certainly have passed as white.’
‘Anything else you can tell me about her?’
Thrale sniffed and then stared down at the corpse, now covered with the sheet. ‘I ain’t disparaging my lodging house or the folk who stay there. But she was nicely dressed and well spoken. She looked as out of place as a butterfly in a cage of rats.’
Pyke thought about the scrap of paper they’d found in her dress. It was almost as if the man who’d killed her had wanted them to find out who she was and that she’d stayed at the Bluefield. ‘But you didn’t ask her why she’d chosen to rent one of your rooms?’
‘Like I said, I don’t pry into my guests’ affairs.’
Pyke told him they’d need to find Arthur Sobers as soon as possible and that he would have to search the room and put some questions to Thrale’s lodgers about Mary Edgar. He arranged to drop by the Bluefield later that afternoon and made Thrale promise not to disturb the room — and, if he saw Sobers, not to tell him what had happened.
‘He seemed like a fine chap,’ Thrale said, ‘but I guess, with blackbirds, you just never know.’
Pyke asked Thrale whether he’d stay until the artist arrived, so that between them they could come up with a sketch of the dead woman.
‘I saw you fight Benbow, must have been fifteen years ago,’ he said, while they waited.
‘Hardest fight of my life.’
Pyke nodded. ‘At the time I thought you should have stayed down.’
‘And now?’
‘You did what you had to.’
Thrale looked at him with new respect. ‘I’d stayed down, I might as well have ended me life then and there.’
After the artist had sketched what Thrale reckoned to be a reasonable likeness of the dead woman, Pyke took a hackney carriage back to his uncle’s apartment in Camden Town. On the way he asked the driver to stop at a slop-shop in Battle Bridge where he purchased a presentable frock-coat, and on Camden Place he paid a barber to trim his hair and whiskers. He got all the way to the pavement outside the apartment before realising that he didn’t have anything for Felix. Not knowing what kind of gift was appropriate for a ten-year-old boy, Pyke dithered on the bottom step and was spotted through the front window by his uncle. A few moments later, the door swung open, and Godfrey hobbled down the steps to greet him.