Why had Lucy’s eyeballs been cut from their sockets just like Mary’s?
Pyke’s thoughts turned to Phillip Malvern. Somehow the two matters were related; they had to be. For a while, he sat at the kitchen table trying to remember all the bits of information about Phillip he’d come across. Eventually he came back to what the bone collector had said: He likes his women dark. But where would he find a black woman on the Ratcliff Highway? Pyke thought about Eliza Craddock’s brothel and about Jane Shaw, who had been abandoned because she’d contracted syphilis. It was a remote possibility but it was a possibility none the less. He left the house via the front door. At first Pyke thought that Jane Shaw was dead, but then she coughed and turned over, perhaps disturbed by the light from his lantern. Down below, in another part of the building, he heard raised voices and then a scream. He stepped into the tiny, airless room and waited. The air stank of faeces and death. Her eyes opened slightly and she tried to sit up. He thought he saw her smile but it could have been a grimace.
‘You came back.’ This time the disease had spread from her face to every part of her body. There was almost nothing left of her.
‘How could I keep away?’
That seemed to make her laugh, but as she did so something caught in her throat and she coughed. ‘If I’d known you were coming, I would have combed my hair.’ She touched her bald head.
He sat down next to her and took her hand. It felt like a skeleton’s. ‘I wanted to ask you a question.’
‘Lucky you didn’t wait too much longer.’ She grimaced each time she tried to move and Pyke guessed that her back was covered with sores. ‘You find the one who killed the mulatto?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Is that why you here?’
‘In part.’ Pyke waited. ‘When I was last here, you said you could remember the faces of all the men you’d ever slept with.’
‘I ’member. So?’
‘Were you ever visited by a blind man?’
‘Phillip.’
Pyke didn’t try to hide his excitement. ‘That’s right. Did you see him often?’
‘While I was still working at Craddock’s. He was a little mad but he was also gentle and considerate, not like most of ’em.’
‘Mad in what sense?’
‘He believed there were evil spirits trying to harm him.’
Pyke thought about what he’d learned about Phillip Malvern in Jamaica. ‘Did he ever talk to you about what he did, where he lived?’
‘He scavenged the sewers, reckoned he could make a living from it, too. That’s why they called him Filthy.’ She tried to smile. ‘You could smell it on him, too, but I didn’t mind. Better that he was gentle.’
‘Did he say anything else?’
‘No, not really. He wasn’t much of a talker, to be honest. Is he in trouble?’
‘He might be.’ Pyke waited. ‘I need to find him. It’s important. Do you know where he lives?’
‘He didn’t tell me.’
‘Or where he went to scavenge?’ Pyke waited. ‘He sold rats to a landlord in Saffron Hill.’
Jane tried to move and grimaced again. ‘He did mention this sewer or tunnel he found under the City…’
‘Yes?’
Jane closed her eyes. ‘He told me he found a barrel of wine down there once. Said you could walk into it from the Thames at low tide underneath Dowgate Wharf.’
As he moved away, she took his hand and tried to squeeze it. ‘You can’t leave me like this, Pyke.’
‘I have to go. I’ll come back, though. I promise.’
‘I meant, you can’t leave me like this. I want you to finish it. I’ve asked other folk but they’re all too afraid…’ She motioned up towards the ceiling.
‘Eternal damnation.’
‘I was thinking you might be different.’
‘I was damned a long time ago.’ Pyke looked into her pale eyes. ‘You want me to end your life?’
‘Take my pillow, put it over my mouth. It won’t take more than a few seconds. I can’t go on like this any longer.’
‘Is that what you really want?’
Jane nodded. ‘I’m so tired, in such pain.’
‘What you’re asking me to do,’ Pyke said, thinking about it, ‘some would consider it to be a mortal sin.’
‘I ain’t said my prayers for years now, if that’s what you’re asking me.’
‘And you’re ready to go?’
She produced a bottle of gin from beside the mattress. ‘You’ll have a last drink with me, won’t you?’
In the end she was so weak he had to help her hold the bottle to her lips. She sipped at the clear liquid like a suckling baby. Pyke took the bottle, put it to his mouth and drank until he needed a breath.
‘The funny thing is, I used to think I’d make something of my life.’ Jane looked around the dingy room and shook her head. ‘Everything I had, I’ve bartered away or it’s been stolen.’
‘We come into this world with nothing, we leave it with nothing.’ For some reason, Pyke found himself thinking about Felix.
She touched his hand and tried to squeeze it. ‘You’re a good man.’
They stared at one another for a few moments. ‘Are you quite sure you’re ready?’
‘Living here, like this,’ Jane smiled sadly, ‘I been ready for a while now.’
Pyke cupped the back of her head in his hand, pulled out her pillow and helped her lie back down on the mattress.
‘You actually going to do it?’ Jane seemed scared all of a sudden.
‘Only if you want me to.’
Pyke sat there and watched while she considered the decision. ‘I want you to,’ she said, eventually. Her eyes were as dry as a tinderbox.
‘You’re sure?’ Suddenly the pillow felt heavier than a bag of anvils.
‘Either do it or leave,’ she said, a hardness in her tone. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and whispered, ‘But whatever you decide, I’m ready.’
Even though she’d been expecting it, and indeed had asked for it, the moment that he forced the pillow down against her bony face, her body seemed to jolt with surprise and after that, in spite of her weakened condition, she battled, arms and legs convulsing until there was no more fight left in her.
Putting the pillow down, Pyke looked around the room. Apart from the empty gin bottle, there was nothing.
Like the Fleet, which until the thirteenth or fourteenth century had been a navigable river that cut through Alsatia, Holborn and Saffron Hill before rising in Hampstead, Walbrook had once flowed into the Thames near Southwark Bridge, having followed a path from Moorfields directly through the City of London. Pyke was told this by a mudlark who showed him to the entrance of the tunnel. The river had long since been built over and had actually been reconstructed as a sewer, in order to transport the city’s soil directly into the Thames. It had served this function, of course, for as long as people had lived in the City.
The tide was out and the smell emanating from the mudbanks was horrendous but, as the mudlark gleefully informed him, it was nothing compared to the stink inside the tunnel. The two of them clambered down under Dowgate Wharf and the mudlark directed Pyke to a small, dark entrance directly under the creaking wooden edifice. ‘That’s you, cock,’ he said, accepting the coin Pyke gave him, then added, ‘You got a stick to beat off the rats?’
Alone, Pyke checked to make sure he still had his sheath knife, a handkerchief to cover his mouth, a nosegay, a lantern, a ball of twine, his jemmy and an old pair of gloves. Pinching his nostrils with the nosegay and tying the handkerchief around his mouth, he picked up the lantern and moved towards the tunnel entrance. A trickle of brown soil was emanating from the tunnel and the ground was marshy underfoot. At the entrance itself, he held up the lantern and peered inside. The walls and ceilings of the sewer had been built using bricks, and it was about as tall as he was and as wide as a brougham. He stepped into the tunnel and almost gagged, through the handkerchief, from the vileness of the stink.
‘Phillip?’
He walked another few yards along the tunnel, trying to ignore both the stink and the feeling of entrapment that being in such a confined space induced, then hesitated. Holding up the lantern, he peered down at the thick soil blackening his knee-high boots. It was difficult to imagine how a man might live in such a place. Ahead, he saw his first rat, but it scuttled off in the opposite direction. The mudlark had mischievously told him that sewer rats liked to attack humans but Pyke had dismissed this as fantastical. Yet alone in this damp, foul-smelling tunnel, he found himself stepping more cautiously through the sludge, trying not to step on or disturb any vermin.