The day brought no luck. By the time darkness arrived, Nottingham felt drained. But there was still work to do. Lister would go around the inns once more, asking more questions and trying to pry small nuggets of truth out of the lies.
He pulled on his old greatcoat, buttoning it to the neck, and slipped his cudgel into the large pocket. Men filled the taverns, finding relief in drink after a day of work. The whores were on Briggate, shivering in the cold and trying to look enticing as they set out to draw a few pennies from the night. But the dark-haired girl who’d taken Jane’s spot was nowhere to be seen. No one waited by the passageway.
He went from one woman to the next, but only two could remember her. No one knew her name, none had spoken to her. The most anyone recalled was that she’d stayed long into the evening, looking lost. There one minute and gone the next time they looked.
His face was chapped by the wind, he was weary and aching, but he wasn’t ready to give up and go home yet. Instead he stopped at the White Swan to lose himself in the chatter and the warmth for a few minutes. Michael the landlord poured him a mug of the special twice-brewed and he took a long sip. A fire burned in the grate and the air was thick with the smoke from a dozen clay pipes and the rank smell of bodies.
Nottingham sat and listened. Across the years he’d heard interesting things in the taverns and inns around Leeds. People dropped hints of this and that without thinking. Once someone in his cups had sat beside him and confessed to a killing.
Now all the talk was of the dead pimp and the moneylenders. People loved a good murder, the gorier the better. He heard imaginations roam, wild suggestions. But nothing to set him thinking.
The constable finished the drink and pondered another before pushing the mug away and leaving. Outside, he shivered. The sky was clear, the air sharp and bitter.
A lantern was burning in the jail. He turned the door handle. Crandall, the night man, was sitting at the table, a quill in his hand, looking anxious as he tried to write.
‘Is something wrong?’
‘Not really, sir.’ The man bit his lip, then he sighed and said, ‘We’ve found another body in the river. Pretty young thing, that’s all. It’s sad.’
He breathed in, feeling the fear rising up his spine. He hadn’t even seen the corpse but he was certain he’d know her face.
‘I’ll take a look at her.’
Nottingham lit a candle and walked back to the cold cell. The flame flickered and dimmed, then suddenly burned brighter so he could see her stretched out on the slab.
She looked even younger now, so much like Rose that it took his breath for a moment. Her skin was a startling white in the soft light, dark hair sodden, almost black, the same cheap gown he’d seen her wear the day before pressed wetly against her body There were tiny cuts on her hands, little red lines, and her nails were torn. A heavy bruise on her cheek and marks on her neck. He’d seen enough drownings in his time: this was no accident. Someone had hit her and forced her head under the water until she was dead. Then she’d been tipped into the Aire. She’d fought hard for her life and lost.
He bunched his fist, digging his nails into his palm until he could feel the pain. For a long time he stood, simply staring at her. Memories of his daughter surfaced and he could feel the hopelessness all over again. He hadn’t been able to help Rose when the fever took her and her unborn child. And he hadn’t been able to stop this one from dying.
‘I don’t suppose you found anything with her?’ he asked as he returned to the office.
‘No, sir.’
Dead without a name, all her past slipped away.
‘Call her Rose if you like.’ He blew out the candle. ‘I’ll wish you goodnight.’
Rob listened, watching the constable’s face. He looked drawn and serious as he sat in front of the fire with his shoulders slumped. The man had lost weight; it started once he retired. His wrists had become bony and his face was gaunt. Before too long he’d appear older than his years.
‘Are you still going to tell me it’s coincidence?’ Nottingham asked.
‘I don’t know.’ He wasn’t sure what to think. There seemed to be something the boss wasn’t saying, some undercurrent of anger or despair he couldn’t penetrate. ‘Let’s think about it in the morning.’
Emily was lost in the book she was reading, away in the world of Gulliver’s Travels. She probably hadn’t heard a word. Maybe that was just as well.
‘The cutpurses struck again,’ Lister said. ‘A couple came in just before I left. This time took a woman’s reticule and cut her arm. It was the Underwoods.’
Nottingham grimaced. Underwood was a wool merchant, not on the corporation yet, but aiming for election. He’d be loud in his complaints about law and order.
‘How badly hurt was she?’
‘Nothing really, only a scratch. But we need to catch them, boss. They’re becoming dangerous.’
‘We will.’ He looked up. ‘We certainly will.’
Another night of broken sleep. The dead girl’s face kept rising in his mind as if she was surfacing through the water. He’d wake for a minute, just long enough for her image to disappear, then drift back to his rest.
Lucy had the oven warm, and he breathed in the comforting smell of baking bread. Nottingham took the heel of the old loaf and some cheese before pouring a mug of ale.
‘Those cutpurses I heard you and Master Rob talk about last night,’ she began.
‘What about them?’ he asked as he ate.
‘I think I’ve seen them a few times when I’ve been buying things from the market.’
The constable cocked his head. ‘Go on.’
‘They’re careful. Sly. I watched them follow a man for a few minutes. As soon as he met someone else they melted away.’
Lucy had spent long enough living wild when she was younger. She had the eye to notice something like that.
‘I don’t suppose you’d like to spend some time in town, would you?’
‘Keep my eyes open, you mean?’ She was grinning widely.
‘And tell one of my men if you spot anything.’
‘I suppose I could, if you’re asking. It’s market day, you can bet the pair of them will be around.’
Every Saturday and Tuesday, before the market came the cloth market. It had been that way for more years than anyone could remember, probably before there were even records. The constable made his circuit, watching as the weavers set out their cloth then vanished into the inns for their hot Brigg-end shot breakfast. They’d certainly need something warm this morning; frost had turned the ground white again as he walked into Leeds, leaving the cobbles shiny and slick.
The girl he’d called Rose was waiting at the jail. Her body was stiff now, bitterly cold to the touch. Seeing her in daylight he had no doubt: she’d been murdered. Hit with something to subdue her, then drowned.
She’d clung hard to life; her hands and nails showed that. Her killer would be marked. He leaned against the wall, studying her, turning as the door opened and Rob walked in.
‘No age at all, was she?’
‘She probably came here thinking she’d make her fortune,’ the constable said bleakly.
The deputy walked around the corpse, examining her from all angles.
‘Why?’ he wondered.
‘I’ve been asking myself the same thing,’ Nottingham answered. ‘I don’t know. But Jane, her, Kidd.’
‘I still can’t see any link to the moneylenders.’
The constable pushed himself upright and shook his head
‘I’m not sure what I know any longer. Come on, we have work to do.’
Nottingham left, but Rob lingered, staring again into the young, dead face. She was probably only a year or two older than Lucy, all the cares and trials stripped from her face now. He slammed the palm of his hand against the stone wall, letting the smack echo, and walked out.
He’d lain awake in bed, tossing and turning under the blanket. Finally Emily couldn’t take it any longer.
‘You might as well tell me,’ she whispered. ‘We’re not going to get any sleep until you do.’
Rob stared up into the darkness and put his arm around her shoulder. He didn’t want to do it, but he knew he had to let it out. His put his mouth close to her ear and whispered.
‘It’s your father.’
With a sudden movement she pulled away, resting on one elbow.
‘What? What is it? Tell me.’
He did, and it felt like sacred relief to finally say it, to talk about the man’s strange idea that one person could be behind the spate of murders in Leeds.
‘Well?’ Emily asked when he finished. ‘Could he be right?’
‘No.’ For a moment, moonlight leaked through the shutters and he could see her outline next to him. ‘He’s not. Don’t you think I’d know if there was anything like that? I keep trying to tell him, but someone put this idea in his head and he won’t let it go.’
‘Papa’s not a fool.’
‘I know he’s not.’ He exhaled slowly, trying to trace a path to the right words. ‘It’s as if he believes there’s another Amos Worthy waiting and planning. But there isn’t. There can’t be.’
‘Give him time, Rob. He’s coming back to the job.’ She stroked his hair and settled herself against his shoulder. ‘Please.’
And now, as he closed the door of the cold cell, for one tiny moment he wondered if he wasn’t the one who’d been wrong.
The constable was already issuing a crisp series of orders to the men.
‘Waterhouse and Dyer, I want you to go to every house on Lady Lane. Ask if anyone remembers a woman there yesterday evening. Young, dark hair, homespun dress. She’d probably have been wearing a cap and looking very nervous and cold.’
They left. At least the boss had picked two with brains for that job, Lister thought approvingly.
‘Carter, Naylor, I want you at the market,’ the constable continued. He described the two young cutpurses. ‘I have someone there looking, so be ready if you hear a shout. And if you see them yourselves, arrest them. The boy has a penknife, though: be careful.’ He held up his bandaged hands. ‘He’ll use it, too.’
‘If he pulls that on me I’ll make him wish he’d never been born,’ Naylor snorted.
‘Don’t be so cocky. He’s quick and he’s vicious,’ Nottingham warned.
That left two to patrol the town. Once they’d gone, Lister said, ‘What about us, boss?’
‘We start thinking.’ He leaned back in the chair and steepled his hands under his chin. ‘How many pimps do you know?’
‘Five,’ Rob answered after a few moments.
‘Do you talk with any of them?’
‘Only one.’ Joshua Bartlett. A stained, messy bull of a man. But he’d passed on plenty of good information in the past.
‘Find out if anyone’s been threatening him.’
Lister grinned at the idea. ‘He’d beat the brains out of anyone who tried.’
‘Ask him, anyway. He might have heard things. Let’s see what we can discover, shall we?’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘See if there’s anyone from the old days who might know a few things.’
Another visit to Joe Buck brought only two names. Dinner time had arrived before the constable tracked down John Wood at the Turk’s Head, settled on a bench in the far corner where he could watch people come and go.
He seemed to have shrivelled. Wood had never been a large man, but now he looked to have sunk in on himself. In his time he’d tried plenty of things – run girls, broken into houses – and failed at every one of them. But Buck said Wood knew some of the pimps.
The constable carried a cup of ale across and placed it in front of the man. Wood’s eyes darted around.
‘I don’t want anyone seeing me with you.’ His voice was quiet and urgent. ‘I don’t want anyone thinking I’m in trouble with the law.’
‘Then you’re too late.’ He took a sip from his own mug. ‘I’m already here.’
‘I’ve got an honest job these days.’
‘Work?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘That must have come as a shock to you.’
‘I’m employed by Mr Warren now.’
Warren? He knew that name. Then he placed it. The bookkeeper who’d dined with Stanbridge the night he died. Interesting.
‘What do you do for him?’
‘Turns out I’ve got a mind for numbers.’ Wood grinned, showing a set of brown teeth. ‘Hadn’t expected that, had you, Mr Nottingham?’
‘No,’ he admitted. But he wouldn’t have expected anything at all from the man.
‘Goes to show, doesn’t it?’
‘What do you hear, when you’re not adding columns of figures?’
‘Me?’ Wood blinked with surprise. ‘I told you, I’m an honest man. Got a woman and everything.’
It was hard to believe that anyone could find Wood attractive, with his bulging frog eyes and thick nose. But the world was a strange place.
‘And no ear to the ground? Hear anything about pimps these days?’
‘Not any more. Left it all behind.’ There was the ring of truth in his words. The constable changed tack.
‘Tell me something, John. How honest is Mr Warren’s work?’
‘Look at it yourself if you like.’ There was a note of offence in his voice.
‘Maybe I will.’ Nottingham pushed himself up, knees aching. ‘I wish you well of life.’
The market was still busy, people crowding around the stalls at the top of Briggate. Men and women hawked their wares, voices competing. Everyone had the best goods, the best prices. The constable stopped for a minute, eyes searching for Lucy, for his men somewhere in the press of people, and for the boy and girl who were becoming too dangerous.
He didn’t spot any of them and moved on, glancing through the clean windows of the Talbot as he passed: there was barely room to stand. In the old days only a bloody cock fight would have drawn so many. It looked as if Harry Meadows had made the right decision in changing the place.
The man he wanted wasn’t in any tavern. A few more yards and he could make out the sound over the noise and bustle. The scrape of a bow over catgut floated from the market cross at the head of the street. Con the blind fiddler playing his tunes. A jig to set feet moving faster, an air so gentle it could pull softly at the heart. A battered old hat lay between his feet, the coins inside glittering; a market meant good money for any man who played so beautifully.
He waited as Con let the last note fade before he approached. The man turned his head just as if he could see and smiled.
‘That sounds like Mr Nottingham.’
His voice was cracked and rasping, but full of good humour. Con always had a sweet smile and a ready laugh. He’d arrived in Leeds not long after Nottingham first became constable, and somehow decided to stay. He had to be sixty now, still thin as a sapling, fingers every bit as nimble as a young man’s. He’d been spry with his tunes back then but over time he seemed to discover a deeper quality in his music. It moved directly from his soul to his fingers.
The constable laughed. ‘Well met, Con. You haven’t lost your hearing.’
‘Everyone’s tread is different. I’ve told you that before.’ He put up the instrument, lightly plucking a string with his thumb. ‘With you in charge again and old Jem back in town it’s starting to feel like better times.’
‘I wish that was true,’ Nottingham said.
‘I know.’ Con nodded his head. ‘We all lose the best things, don’t we?’
He’d never seen Con with a woman, never even heard of one. For a few years a boy led him around. But he disappeared and since then the man had managed alone.
‘Times change.’
‘And yet we’re still here, Mr Nottingham. The Good Lord has his own ways of working.’
‘Do you still hear bits of this and that?’
People seemed to think that if Con was blind, he must be deaf to their words, too. They gossiped, they garbled their secrets where he could hear them and he passed them along.
‘Not so much these days,’ Con replied. ‘People have become—’
The scream cut him off and Nottingham started to run. From the far side of the market, he thought. People had stopped as if they were frozen, heads craning round. He pushed through them, shouldering them aside, the cudgel already gripped tight in his hand.