‘We need to know where Stanbridge went after he left the Rose and Crown,’ Nottingham said. It was still full dark, frost sharp in the air, as they marched across Timble Bridge and into Leeds. The cocks had barely crowed and the dawn chorus was a cacophony of song from the branches. He dug his hands deeper into his greatcoat pockets to keep them warm.
‘I told the night men to go around asking,’ Lister answered. ‘They might have something for us.’
‘See if you can follow his path.’
‘Yes, boss.’
Exhausted as he was, the constable had lain awake long into the night, thinking and trying to make sense of the death. He felt like he was treading over ice, not sure whether it would hold his weight, scared of moving the wrong way.
Smoke was starting to rise from the chimneys along Kirkgate as servants set the morning fires. The town was beginning to come alive, breathing in the day. He unlocked the jail and stirred the coals left to bank on the fire, releasing the warmth.
The night man’s report lay on the desk. He glanced through it, then passed it to Lister. Two drunks in the cells, another man brought in for fighting.
They’d found two places where Stanbridge had been seen: at the Pack Horse on Briggate, then an inn just south of the river where he’d played cards in a back parlour until midnight.
‘He was probably killed on his way home,’ Lister suggested. ‘Knifed and then thrown off the bridge. That would be easy enough to do.’
‘Very likely.’ There’d been hardly any money on the corpse. If he’d won, someone could have followed and robbed him. ‘I’ll go over there. You take the Pack Horse.’ He didn’t need to say more; Rob knew what to do.
Nottingham walked past the inn. The door was closed, shutters up in the windows. But there was somewhere else he wanted to go first. Early still, but the streets were already bustling, men and carts on the move, women and servants with their baskets gossiping together as they walked off for their errands.
He stopped at a gleaming door on a small street and knocked three times. It was a full half minute before he heard footsteps inside, then someone drew back the bolt. He stared at a black face that slowly creased into a smile. Older now, the curls of hair turning white. But they were all ageing, uncomfortable with the pains of living and starting to make their peace with death.
‘Mr Nottingham. I heard you were back. You look well.’
‘No need to lie, Henry. I look like someone who’d be better off put out to pasture and we both know it. Is he up?’
‘Just finishing his breakfast. Come on, I’ll tell him you’re here. He’ll be right pleased.’
Henry had been Joe Buck’s servant for years, his molly boy, his friend, his bodyguard. He could never think of one without the other. The man opened a door and stood to one side with a wink.
Buck was sumptuously dressed. An impeccably cut coat, stock as dazzling as snow, and a long waistcoat of turquoise silk embroidered with some elaborate design. But he’d always been vain with his clothes, spending money on them like it was water. He’d never been short of brass, though; for many years he’d been one of the biggest, subtlest fences in Leeds, always two steps ahead of justice. Crook that he was, with his easy, merry laugh, it was impossible not to like the man.
‘Well, well, well.’ He put down a piece of bread and wiped his hands on a linen napkin. ‘Turning up like a bad penny. I told Henry it wouldn’t be long before we saw you.’ He stood and gestured to a pair of chairs in front of a roaring fire. ‘Settling back into the job yet, Mr Nottingham?’
‘It would be easier if I wasn’t starting with a murder.’ From nowhere, Henry appeared with a mug of ale for him.
‘A certain moneylender, from what I hear.’ Buck lit a clay pipe from a taper and blew a thin stream of smoke.
‘I don’t suppose you were out playing cards the night before last?’ He knew Buck’s passion for gaming.
‘Perhaps I was.’ He gave a slow smile. ‘A few of us play every week. It’s more a way to pass a dreary Monday night than anything. The stakes are never especially high. The gentleman we’re talking about has joined us a few times. A confident sort, very cocky.’ He sighed. ‘It’s a curious thing. Somehow he always managed to lose. You’d think he was old enough to know better after several lessons. We were never going to let him win. Of course,’ he added with a wink, ‘a little bird might have seen him as a mark and tipped him off there was a game to be had. It’s his own fault if he lacks skill at cards. And he’s a fool if he keeps coming back in hope.’
‘How much did he lose?’
‘Everything he’d brought. We cleaned him out, poor soul, and sent him on his way at midnight.’
‘How was he when he left?’
‘Downcast. I don’t know what he was like in business, but he was reckless at the table.’
‘Was he drunk?’
Buck shook his head. ‘No. It’s not that sort of evening.’
‘Could someone from the place have followed him? Anyone there you didn’t know, Joe?’
‘Mr Nottingham, there are more and more people around Leeds that I don’t know,’ he answered with a chuckle. ‘I’m not even sure I recognize the town any more. But no, there was nothing I saw. We all went home ourselves soon after.’
‘I’ll go to the inn and see if they can tell anything else.’
‘Take Henry with you. The people there can have poor memories. They know him, they’ll talk more freely, if you get my meaning.’
‘I do.’ He nodded. ‘And thank you. Is business good?’
‘Business is business.’ He drew on the pipe. ‘That’s changing, too. About time to let it go, I think.’
‘You were saying that long before I retired,’ Nottingham reminded him.
‘Was I?’ The ready grin returned. ‘Then perhaps I’ll do it one of these days.’
The inn must have been a house once. A crudely painted sign over the door showed an attempt at a bishop’s hat and the words The Mitre. Nottingham hammered on the door, waiting until a man appeared with a cudgel in his hand and a weary, angry look on his face. Before he could say a word, Henry stood tall and said, ‘Mr Buck would like you to help this gentleman, Billy. He’s the constable.’
Grudgingly, the landlord let them in. He answered gruffly, still trying to pull himself awake. Yes, Stanbridge had been there three or four times. Always on a Monday. He played cards with the other gentlemen in the back room. Left somewhere near midnight.
‘Did anyone else follow him out?’ Nottingham asked. ‘Were there any strangers in here?’
The man’s laugh was like an ugly bark.
‘It’s hard enough to get folk in here when they’ve just been paid. On a Monday, when they’ve hardly got a farthing to their names? You must be joking. No. Nobody I didn’t know.’
One more road that led nowhere, the constable thought as he walked back into town. He stopped on the bridge. Barges and boats were loading cloth from the warehouses that lined the riverbank. More buildings than ever now, as the wool trade kept growing and the men at the top grew richer and richer.
Could Stanbridge have been killed right here and bundled over the parapet into the water? It would have been so simple, exactly as Rob said: a cut and a push, then the quiet splash as he entered the river in the darkness. Deep in the night, would anyone have even noticed? No lights burned here. It seemed as likely an explanation as they were ever likely to find.
At ten in the morning the White Swan was still quiet, a few older men gathered in a corner, talking and eking out their ale.
‘A serving girl at the Pack Horse remembered Stanbridge,’ Lister said. ‘She said he tipped her well. But she didn’t notice him leave. The landlord never even saw him. He must have gone over the river after that.’
‘Then we’re back to the beginning.’ He watched Nottingham frown as he toyed with his bread and cheese.
‘We’ve traced him to midnight. That’s something.’
‘It doesn’t bring us closer to the killer, does it?’
‘I know,’ Lister agreed quietly. ‘Just remember, boss, Stanbridge is no loss.’
But he understood the constable’s frustration. He needed to prove himself. In part to the mayor and the corporation, but above all to Richard Nottingham, to show he was the man he used to be, that he was still master of the job.
‘I’m sure he’s not, but we still have to find whoever killed him.’ The constable’s face softened. ‘How would you do it?’
‘The same way you have,’ Rob admitted after a moment, and he was pleased to see the man give a brief grin. ‘We’ve followed his trail, we know where he went. We’ve talked to his main competitor and the ones we know who owe him money.’
‘How many more moneylenders are there?’ Nottingham asked.
‘Apart from Toby Smith? Just that one who was away from town. And a couple of very small fish on top of that.’
‘Even small fish can put up a fight.’
‘Not these two. I’ve talked to them. I’d swear they had nothing to do with it.’ He finished the last of his meat and potato pie and asked the question that had been nagging at him. ‘Who was it who told you about that third missing pimp?’
‘Someone I’ve known a long time.’
‘Do you trust him?’
Nottingham’s chuckle surprised him. ‘Not as far as I can throw him. But I told you: he wouldn’t be responsible for anything like that.’
‘It worries me when people know things before we do.’
‘It’s always been that way.’ The constable shrugged. ‘If we’re lucky, they tell us. Just be grateful when they do. I learned long ago that you can’t know everything.’
‘We can try,’ Lister said.
‘For whatever it’s worth,’ the constable agreed with a shrug. ‘But it was impossible twenty years ago, and the place was smaller then.’ He looked around. ‘What chance do we have now? I’m happy if any secrets manage to slip out at all. Why, do you think we should be concerned about these disappearances?’
Lister shook his head. ‘I’d be glad if they all vanished. It would make our lives easier.’ Fewer cuttings, he thought, and fewer beatings.
‘We’re always going to have pimps to deal with. Anyway, what about Stanbridge? Any other ideas?’
‘Just ask people we know.’ It felt strange, wrong, to be giving him advice. But Nottingham listened and nodded. ‘Stanbridge mostly lent to people who own small shops and are having a bad time,’ Rob continued. ‘You know how it works – the interest keeps mounting so they can never repay it all.’ He leaned forward, elbows on the bench. ‘And they have to keep going to moneylenders because there’s nowhere else to turn.’
The constable rubbed his chin. ‘Do you remember Amos Worthy?’
‘Yes,’ Lister answered, surprised by the question. He’d never known Worthy; he died not long after Rob became a constable’s man. But there were enough stories about him and the boss and some strange connection that bound them. He knew that Worthy had left money to Emily, enough to start her school and keep it going. Some said that was his revenge on Nottingham, his laughter from beyond the grave. But they’d never talked about it, leaving it all buried in the past.
‘He lent money, too. But his went to the merchants and the aldermen. He let them use his whores, as well. It gave him a hold over them. Stanbridge was much smaller than that.’
‘Worthy caused plenty of misery, didn’t he?’ Rob said
‘Too much,’ Nottingham agreed. ‘We don’t want a return to those days.’