‘After your wilful destruction of Crane’s shop — which on a personal level I applaud, by the way — I couldn’t run the risk of you disrupting the man’s plans any further.’
‘Why? Are the two of you partners now?’
‘Reluctant ones, perhaps. Let’s just say we’ve arrived at a necessary agreement.’ Field sniffed the air in the carriage. ‘Is that you, bringing your stink into my domain?’
Pyke ignored the question. ‘Necessary for whom?’
‘For Crane, of course. When he discovered I had his mistress in my possession, let’s just say he was persuaded to accept my terms.’
Pyke felt his stomach jolt. ‘You’ve got Elizabeth Malvern?’ It explained why he’d found her front door unhinged and her house ransacked.
‘I believe I might have you to thank for that,’ Field said nonchalantly, inspecting the end of his cigar.
‘You had someone follow me.’
‘And you didn’t let me down. I’m told you spent a fair amount of time in her company.’ Field blew smoke into Pyke’s face and smiled. ‘I hear she has a rather… unusual sexual appetite — that she likes it hard and violent. I’m very much looking forward to satisfying her wishes.’
Pyke lunged at Field but, before he was out of his seat, Paxton had brought the end of the blunderbuss up to his throat.
‘If you move again, my young friend here will pull the trigger.’ Field took the cigar and rammed the burning ash down on to Pyke’s knuckles.
Pyke grunted rather than screamed, even though the pain was excruciating.
Field was just a few feet from his face, his oiled whiskers shining in the half-light of the carriage. ‘I have to say, I’m a little disappointed in you, Pyke. I thought we understood each other perfectly.’
Pyke tried not to let the pain, and a sense of panic, affect his thinking. ‘Bessie Daniels is dead. I think Crane killed her and tossed her away like a piece of rubbish.’
Field’s stare was cold and lifeless. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. I really am. She was a good girl. I’ll make sure her family are taken care of.’
In spite of his predicament, Pyke couldn’t help himself. ‘That’s it? Once she’d been sold to Crane, you used her, put her in even more danger than she was already in and then you sat back and let her be sacrificed?’
‘She knew the risks she was taking,’ Field said, smoothing his hair with the palms of his hands. ‘Anyway, your misplaced sense of ethics is beginning to bore me.’
‘Her blood is on your hands.’ Pyke waited for a moment, contemplating the wisdom of what he was about to say. ‘Your mother would be turning in her grave if she could see you now.’
Field’s gaze turned to wax and, for a moment, no one in the carriage spoke. ‘I did intend to allow you to live, Pyke. I really did.’ He shook his head.
Leaning forward, Field tapped on the roof of the carriage and waited for the horses to come to a complete stop. He opened the door, climbed down on to the pavement, pulled down the glass and peered back into the carriage. His sense of disappointment was palpable. ‘I don’t care what you do,’ he said to Paxton. ‘I don’t ever want to see or hear or read about him again. Just make him go away.’
With that, Field slammed the door and set off along the pavement, not once bothering to turn around, almost as though, in his own mind, Pyke had already ceased to exist.
As they moved off, Pyke glanced out of the window and concluded they were heading down St John’s Street in the direction of Smithfield and perhaps Field’s slaughterhouse.
‘I’d say this is the end of the road for you,’ Paxton said, as if this idea somehow pleased him. He wasn’t much older than a boy but his hand wasn’t trembling and his gaze remained calm, composed even. His index finger was curled around the trigger in preparation for firing. Pyke thought of the way he’d looked at the coins on the card table after Field had murdered his whist partner.
‘Have you ever seen a bar of gold?’ Pyke waited. ‘Have you ever picked one up, felt how heavy it is?’
Paxton regarded him lazily.
‘If you like, I can show you one. I might even let you keep it.’ He watched Paxton’s face to see his reaction. ‘A bar of gold is worth about eight hundred pounds. A good receiver might give you five hundred.’ He paused. ‘How much did you earn last year?’ Paxton didn’t answer immediately, so he went on, ‘I thought so. Nothing like that figure, was it?’
Paxton licked his lips. ‘I ain’t complaining.’
Pyke met his gaze and waited. ‘You’re not afraid of him, are you?’
‘Everyone’s afraid of Harold Field. Even you. I saw it in your eyes after he burned you with his cigar.’
‘I’m scared of the Harold Field I once knew, before you were even born. But now he’s getting older and perhaps a little careless. You’ve seen it but you haven’t said anything to him. You’ve just been watching, waiting, biding your time.’
‘Is that so?’ Paxton kept the blunderbuss pointed at Pyke’s chest but his face had already betrayed his interest.
‘And part of you, a little part at the back of your head, has been wondering what would happen if Field wasn’t around. Who would take over?’
‘You’d never get close enough to do it. He’d see you coming.’
‘But he wouldn’t suspect you, would he?’
Paxton shook his head and tightened his grip around the handle of the blunderbuss. ‘That’s as far as this conversation goes. I pull the trigger, you’re a dead man.’
‘But you’re not going to because you’re thinking about that gold bar.’ Pyke looked into his face. ‘How about I make it two gold bars? If you were careful, you could clear a thousand.’
For a while neither of them spoke. Through the smeared glass, Pyke could see that they were nearing Smithfield. Paxton wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his coat and finally put down the blunderbuss.
‘We’ll make a policeman of you yet,’ Fitzroy Tilling said, when he saw Pyke in the blue, swallow-tailed frock-coat and matching trousers. The brass buttons had been done up to the top and Pyke was carrying, rather than wearing, the tall stovepipe hat. He had hidden a knife, a jemmy, a cudgel, a length of chain and a padlock inside the hat and had wrapped as much rope as he could get away with around his chest and waist, before putting on the coat, which was a few sizes too large for him.
Tilling took a swig of gin straight from the bottle, wiped his mouth on his sleeve and passed it to Pyke.
‘A turnkey smells that on your breath, he’ll be suspicious right away.’
‘You’re right.’ He put the bottle down and went to stroke the old ginger cat. ‘You’ll be all right without me, won’t you, Tom?’ The cat lifted its head slightly and purred but didn’t move from the chair.
Pyke pulled out his watch and checked the time. ‘We should get going. The service will be finished by now and they’ll be taking him back to his cell.’
Morel-Roux would have been led in chains to the ‘condemned’ pew and forced to beg for God’s forgiveness in front of other prisoners and dignitaries invited by the governor. Pyke could only begin to imagine the depths of the man’s despair. He would perhaps be thinking of the moment on the gallows when the plank would be kicked away, wondering whether he’d feel pain, life and death colliding in the blink of an eye, and also perhaps whether the hangman would have to pull down on his legs to finish the job.
‘Is everything in place at the Bank?’
Tilling nodded. ‘The Home Office nearly insisted the hanging take place behind closed doors. Someone’s clearly worried that the crowds might be influenced by the radicals.’
‘And the guards?’ Pyke asked, even though he knew that Tilling had called a meeting earlier that morning involving all the soldiers responsible for guarding the Bank.
‘Before I went to see the governor, the plan had been to deploy them around the outer walls in case of an attack by radicals.’
Pyke immediately understood the significance of this. It meant that the bullion vault would have been left unguarded and, as such, explained why Crane had waited until now to execute his robbery.