Trevelyan still wouldn’t look at him so Pyke spat into his ear, ‘Answer me, you pathetic coward.’
‘ Yes,’ the banker mumbled. His hands were shaking. He took a deep breath and waited. ‘I was there. I saw it.’ There were tears streaming down his face. ‘A man called Sykes strangled her, to the point where she was dead or as good as dead. Then Crane set up the camera.’ Trevelyan swallowed. The way he was telling it, he had played no role in what had happened. ‘That’s what he wanted to capture, as an image. The moment she actually passed away; she hardly moved. That was important. If she’d moved, the image would have been ruined. But later, when I saw the daguerreotype, it was almost as if I could see her dying.’ The way he finished the sentence indicated wonder rather than revulsion.
Pyke knelt for a moment, the air rushing through his ears as Trevelyan’s confession sunk in. The fact that Trevelyan still couldn’t see the vileness of what he’d done only made it worse.
Kneeling over the trembling man, Pyke took his throat with both hands and began to squeeze. ‘Is that working for you?’ He squeezed a little harder. ‘Are you aroused now? Are you? ’
The banker tried to splutter something but Pyke’s hands were clasped too tightly around the man’s throat.
‘She was a woman. She was just like your wife, just like your daughters will grow up to be. You might not have strangled her with your own hands but you as good as killed her. Your money as good as killed her.’ Pyke felt his anger swell. ‘What kind of a monster are you? Watching a man take an innocent’s life as though they were performing on stage?’
‘But that’s just it,’ Trevelyan spluttered, as Pyke relaxed his grip slightly. ‘They weren’t performing. It was real.’
That made Pyke squeeze even harder, and he watched as the man’s face turned crimson.
‘Did it excite you? Seeing her dying? Seeing them all dying.’ Pyke felt a tear roll down his cheek. ‘How many were there?’
He let go.
Perhaps if he’d squeezed for a few seconds more Trevelyan would have died. As it was, he held his throat, gulping air.
Pyke knelt down and pressed his face against Trevelyan’s. ‘ I said, how many were there? Two, three?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Two or three or more?’ He thought of Bessie Daniels and Lucy Luckins and about the eyeballs kept in glass jars deep underground.
‘Four, I think.’
Pyke stood up and drew his sleeve across his mouth. More than anything, he wanted to kill the man lying at his feet. But death would be an escape, a blessing. Pyke wanted the man to live with his shame. Publicly. And he needed Trevelyan alive because the banker was the only one who could be used to trap Crane.
‘How much did you pay for each daguerreotype?’ When Trevelyan didn’t answer, Pyke repeated the question, this time louder. ‘How much for the daguerreotype and the best seats in the house?’
‘A hundred.’
If Crane had bought Bessie Daniels for five, that meant a net profit of ninety-five pounds.
‘Tomorrow morning you’re going to go to the police office at the Guildhall and you’re going to change your statement.’ He knew this wouldn’t happen but wanted Trevelyan to think he thought it might.
‘I can’t. If I do that, he’ll drag me down with him.’
‘If you don’t, your life is finished. I’ll tell your wife, your family and everyone at the Bank what you’ve just told me.’
Trevelyan began to weep again. For himself and his own predicament, Pyke supposed. But not for the dead women.
Suddenly the idea of spending another second in Trevelyan’s company made Pyke feel ill. He started to walk. To get as far away as possible from the sourness of the man’s sweat. If he stayed, he would kill him. He knew that much about himself.
‘That’s it? You’re leaving?’ Trevelyan sat up, dazed, as if none of it had actually taken place. ‘Who are you?’
Pyke kept walking.
The tide was rising, and by the time Pyke had climbed down from Dowgate Wharf to the sludgy riverbank, water was already lapping around his ankles. A patchy mist clung to the river, and from his vantage point on the north bank, a hundred yards from Southwark Bridge, Pyke couldn’t see the other bank or indeed New London Bridge, a few hundred yards farther along the river. Using the lantern, he peered into the tunnel entrance. The soil from the sewer had mixed with the rising river water and the resultant brown sludge sloshed around at the mouth of the tunnel. It was eerily quiet, and after midnight had come and gone, and there was still no sign of Field or Paxton, Pyke started to think that perhaps Field had had second thoughts, or that Paxton had told Field about his plans. All these thoughts went through his mind, but at about a quarter past midnight he heard whispered voices above him on the wharf and then Field call out, ‘Crane?’
‘Down here,’ Pyke muttered, trying to disguise his voice. He didn’t want Field to recognise him, at least not yet. Not until he was down with him on the bank.
Pyke waited; he could hear Field talking in a hard, clipped tone. But the man had shown up. That was the important thing.
Pyke looked up and saw a man’s shoes and then the bottom of a pair of trousers. Field was first down the ladder. Pyke kept himself hidden from view as Field reached the bottom and looked around; he was carrying a lantern. Paxton climbed down the ladder to join him. He was armed but it didn’t look as if Field was. ‘Crane?’ Field waited, holding up the lantern.
Pyke stepped out from behind the wooden legs of the wharf. Field’s face was a mixture of surprise and resignation. In that instant, he knew. He turned to Paxton, who raised the barrel of his pistol and fired. Field fell to the ground, the ball-shot tearing a chunk out of his frock-coat but nothing more. Pyke took aim and fired, too, but Field rolled away from that one. He kept moving, and in the time it took Pyke to reload, Field had retreated into the mouth of the tunnel. Pyke went after him, but told Paxton to stay where he was.
Without the lantern, Pyke could barely see his hands, let alone Field. But he could hear him, footsteps sloshing in the soil. Field was running, Pyke following. With the rising tide, the level of the soil came almost to their knees, which made it even more difficult to run. Pyke raised the pistol and fired into the darkness. Briefly the explosion lit up the tunnel. Field was less than twenty yards ahead of him. Pyke heard a grunt, heard Field stumble, but he kept moving. Field’s footsteps had slowed, became more erratic. He was wounded. Pyke could hear him wheezing. Another few steps, and Pyke heard Field stagger and fall. He was less than ten yards ahead. Panting, Pyke stood over Field’s body. In the darkness, he could just about make out his face. He seemed to be smiling.
‘Better you than someone else.’
Pyke crouched down and pulled Field’s head up out of the soil. ‘It wasn’t personal. If I didn’t do it you’d have killed me.’ He now saw that his shot had struck Field in the middle of his back. Blood was leaking into the black ooze.
‘Tell Paxton…’ Field hesitated and coughed up some blood.
‘Tell him what?’
But Field died before he could finish his sentence. His eyelids fluttered and his body went limp. A long-tailed rat scurried past them, heading deeper into the tunnel.
On the riverbank, Pyke found Paxton and told him that Field was dead. Paxton took this news in his stride.
‘And the woman?’
Paxton was still holding his pistol and, just for a moment, Pyke thought he was going to use it. Instead he put it into his pocket and started climbing up the ladder. ‘If you give me what you promised me, I’ll take you to her.’
TWENTY-NINE
She was sitting at the dressing table, staring at her reflection in the looking glass. Field may have been holding her captive, but the room was comfortable and well appointed, with a proper bed and a place to read and write. She looked up as Pyke entered the room, then turned around, her lips parting and her eyes widening with surprise. He had to admit she looked fantastic. She had just combed her hair and it fell around her face and down her back. For a few moments they stared at one another, Pyke at her flawless complexion, long, slender neck and, above all, her eyes: brown with yellow flecks around the irises and rimmed with circles of black.