A space had opened up around the man on the ground as people pulled back, horrified. He was awake, groaning, face ghostly pale as one hand tried to cover the wound in his side. Blood had leaked, staining the silk waistcoat. His wig had slipped on to the cobbles. The woman kneeling at his side picked it up and pushed it under his head as a pillow.
George Armistead. The manager of a cropping mill where they cut the nap off the wool to finish the cloth.
The constable squatted and stared down at the man.
‘We’ll help you,’ he said, gazing up at the crowd. Where in God’s name were his men?
‘It was a boy and a girl,’ the woman with Armistead began, and he already knew the rest of the tale. Then someone else was next to him, plump fingers taking charge of everything.
‘It’s not deep,’ Lucy said as she examined him, then gave a reassuring smile. ‘And it’s in your side, nothing too dangerous. Don’t you worry. We need someone to help him home.’
One of the stallholders found an old door and laid it next to Armistead. Very gently, a pair of men lifted him on to it.
‘Send for the physician. I’ll come and talk to you later,’ the constable said to the woman as they carried the man away.
‘I never saw them,’ Lucy told him as she watched them leave. Like a wave, people flowed back into the empty hole, chattering loudly. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s hardly your fault. It’s impossible to see anything here. Will he survive?’
‘Him? He’ll be fine. It’s only a gash, and that’s mostly in the fat.’ She pursed her lips. ‘He has plenty of padding. He could probably walk home if he’d a mind to.’
‘His wife said it was a boy and a girl.’
Lucy looked at him sharply.
‘That’s not his wife. Her name’s Sophie Marsden. Acts like Lady Muck.’ Her mouth twitched into a grin. ‘He’s going to have an interesting time explaining her to his missus.’
‘It won’t help us find the pair who did this.’ He could feel the sting of the boy’s knife on his palm. This was the third time he’d used the blade. If they weren’t caught soon, the lad would kill someone.
By the time Carter and Naylor arrived, Lucy had gone, basket over her arm. The constable talked to a few who’d witnessed the attack. The girl had stopped the couple while the boy started to cut the man’s purse. Armistead tried to stop him and the lad had lashed out with his penknife before the pair darted away.
‘Sorry, boss,’ Naylor said. ‘We were on the other side of the market.’
As soon as the man opened his mouth, Nottingham could smell it. He turned to Carter.
‘Say something.’
‘What?’ He looked confused. ‘He’s telling the truth, boss. We couldn’t get through the people.’
‘You’re dismissed. Both of you.’
They looked at him, not believing his words.
‘I told you to patrol here,’ the constable said. ‘Not spend your time drinking. Any questions?’
The men glanced at each other. Naylor reddened and looked down at the ground.
‘It won’t happen again,’ he said.
‘No,’ Nottingham agreed. ‘You’re damned right it won’t. You don’t work for me any more. Mr Lister will pay you what you’re owed. Now get out of here.’
‘But—’
‘Go.’ For a second he wondered if they’d defy him, then Carter’s shoulders slumped and he turned away. With a glare, Naylor followed. If they’d been doing their job, the boy and girl could have been in jail now.
Lister could hear the girl sobbing softly upstairs. But Joshua Bartlett didn’t even seem to notice. He sat in front of the roaring fire in his dirty shirt and breeches with a mug of ale clamped in his large hand.
‘You’ve had no threats? None of your girls, either?’
He snorted. ‘Not unless someone has a death wish.’
Bartlett was a large man, with a barrel chest and a blacksmith’s muscles. Long dark hair covered his neck, a mat of it on his chest, and a pale scar stood out on his chin. He did well enough to afford a small house by Mill Hill, out on the western edge of Leeds. Plates covered with scraps of food sat on the table. A mouse scurried quickly across the far corner of the room.
‘Did you hear about the murder last night?’
The man raised his tankard, staring into the blaze. ‘What about it?’
‘A pimp. That’s on top of three who’ve vanished in the last few weeks.’
Bartlett snorted. He was a man who relished violence; it was his answer to everything. But he was clever enough with it not to be caught. And people knew better than to complain to the constable about him.
He was a man with his tiny empire, three girls who either earned him money each day or wore their bruises. Once their bloom had faded, he found others to take their place. But he wasn’t ambitious – all he wanted was not to have to work, to keep a little money in his pocket and some ale in his belly.
The sobbing upstairs grew quieter.
‘Anyone tries it with me or my lasses, they’ll be the ones who vanish,’ he warned. ‘And you can take that as a promise.’ He tipped the mug up and drained it. ‘Was that it?’
‘Yes.’
He was glad to get away from the house, with its perfume of rotting food and the woman’s crying. After that, the stink and the noise of Leeds swept over him like pure relief.
Bartlett thought with his fists. No one was going to cow him or send him packing. And if he was telling the truth, no one had tried. Maybe there was something else behind Kidd’s death.
Rob had a hard job even finding the other pimps. It was late afternoon by the time he’d seen them all, pathetic men content to make their living off a woman’s body. But none of them had been threatened; their denials were real enough.
‘How do you feel, Mr Armistead?’
The man was in his bed, a servant dancing attendance. The doctor had been and gone, prescribing a poultice to draw out any sickness from the wound. Armistead was wealthy enough to have a hearth in the bedroom, and the servants had the fire blazing merrily.
‘I’ll be fine. That’s what they say,’ he answered gruffly. But he looked shaken. Without his wig and fine clothes, Armistead looked older, more frail, with a worn, padded body. His face was pale, and he kept sipping from the glass of brandy at the bedside. His expression turned hard as he looked at the constable. ‘But it’s no thanks to you, is it?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Nottingham answered. ‘I had men there. But we couldn’t catch them.’ It was a lie, but he wasn’t about to give him the truth.
‘Then you’d damned well better try harder! I’ll be sending John Brooke a letter about it. I was lucky. Happen the next one won’t be.’
The constable nodded. With one hand on the doorknob he turned and said, ‘I take it you’d prefer I said nothing to Mrs Armistead about Miss Marsden’s presence at the market.’
That changed the man’s tone. But he was right. The boy and girl needed to be found very soon. Five more minutes and he left, passing the icy, disapproving stare of the man’s wife and hearing the longclock in the hall ominously ticking away the seconds.
‘Carter and Naylor were waiting for me,’ Rob said. ‘They had some story that you’d dismissed them.’
‘I have. We need to find a pair who won’t spend their duty drinking. They could have had those cutpurses.’
They talked about it all as they walked out to Marsh Lane. The night hung cold and foggy around them. How did you catch a pair who were small and nimble? The constable’s men couldn’t be everywhere in town to stop them.
‘Tomorrow we’ll start going through Leeds. Everywhere they might sleep.’
‘They’ll simply disappear for a while and go back as soon as we’ve left,’ Lister said.
‘I know,’ Nottingham agreed wearily. ‘Maybe we’ll be lucky.’ But he didn’t believe his own words. ‘What else can we do?’
‘Two wounded,’ Brooke exploded. ‘One of them a woman.’
‘Three,’ Nottingham said as he held up his bandaged hand. Not long after seven o’clock and still pitch dark outside. Candles burned bright in the mayor’s office. The anger came off him in waves. Brooke picked up Armistead’s letter then tossed it down again.
Damn the man, he’d written anyway, the constable thought. He’d hoped the mention of Miss Marsden might keep pen from paper.
‘Why haven’t you caught them yet? I asked you back because you were good, Richard. Now we have all this.’
‘We have five murders—’
‘Moneylenders, a pimp and a pair of whores!’ He slammed down a fist. ‘Do you really think decent folk give a damn about them? They want to feel safe when they walk down Briggate. That’s what’s important.’
‘We’re going through all the places they could be.’
‘Then catch them. I want them in the jail, Richard. That’s an order.’ He picked up the dish of coffee going cold on his desk. ‘Well? What are you waiting for?’
‘You don’t look happy,’ Rob said.
‘I’ve just been flayed alive by the mayor,’ Nottingham said. He poured a mug of ale and downed it in a single gulp. ‘For now, we go after the cutpurses and ignore everything else.’ He paused. ‘That’s what he wants.’
Lister hadn’t expected anything else. If people didn’t feel secure, they’d complain. To the aldermen, to the Mercury. That embarrassed the corporation. Simon Kirkstall had been good at keeping them all sweet; it had been his sole talent. But he’d never had to deal with anything like this pair.
‘Waterhouse and Dyer are already out. They’re starting by the old manor house. I sent the other two down past Fearn’s Island. They’ll work their way back from there.’
‘We’ll begin by the grammar school,’ Nottingham decided.
They’d barely crossed the Head Row when Lister heard someone calling his name. He turned and saw the sexton of St John’s church, a large, sweating man with a halo of wild white hair around his head, puffing his way out of the lych gate.
‘What is it, Mr Castle?’ he shouted. ‘We’re busy.’
‘At the church,’ the sexton said. ‘Please, sir.’
Rob looked at the constable. Nottingham nodded. A minute or two would make no difference. They followed as the sexton waddled along the flagstones and into the porch of the church.
There, wrapped in a bundle of rags, lay a baby.
‘I just came in and I saw it,’ Castle explained. ‘I was going to fetch me wife.’
‘Get the poor thing inside,’ the constable said. ‘It’s bitter out here.’ He picked up the child. ‘Skin’s cold. It only looks a few hours old. In the vestry. Start a fire before it freezes to death.’
The baby hadn’t woken. Rob wasn’t sure it ever would.
‘We can’t take it,’ Castle protested. ‘We’ve had six and my wife won’t stand for another.’
So much for Christian charity, Lister thought.
‘What about Mrs Brett?’ Nottingham asked. ‘She used to take care of foundlings.’
‘She died last year, boss.’
‘Who do we have, then?’
‘No one,’ Rob admitted. He watched as the constable held the child close inside his greatcoat, trying to keep it warm and alive.
‘A girl,’ Nottingham said after a moment and looked at Castle. ‘Your wife’s going to have to look after her until you can find a wet nurse.’
‘But—’ the older man began.
‘She was left here,’ the constable reminded him quietly. ‘The church will want to do its share, I’m sure.’ He put the child in Castle’s unwilling arms. ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, isn’t that the verse?’
‘What about the mother?’ Lister asked as they walked through the churchyard.
‘We can’t do anything about her,’ Nottingham replied bleakly. ‘Except hope.’
Nottingham remembered some of the places they searched, a few from his childhood, others from all the years of work. Rob knew more spots. But by the time they arrived, most of the children had scattered. The ones who remained were ill or simply too tired to run off.
The constable saw their faces, grim, defiant as they stared up at him. They couldn’t know he’d once been exactly like them. He’d waste his breath if he tried to explain. He was authority, he was the enemy.
‘Those are all the camps I know,’ Rob said by late afternoon. It was already dark, with a chill that ate through their clothes. They hadn’t found the pair, but Nottingham had never truly expected they would.
‘More children than there used to be,’ the constable said as he settled into his chair at the jail, grateful for the warmth of the fire.
‘Sign of the times, boss,’ Lister told him, pouring a mug of ale. ‘People keep coming here. You must have seen that.’
‘It’s been that way as long as I can remember.’ He had the scrawled reports from the other searchers. Nothing, of course. He pushed them across the desk for Rob. ‘So how are we going to catch them?’
‘Unless we have a stroke of luck, we probably won’t,’ Lister answered.
It was the bleak truth and Nottingham knew it. He sighed and nodded.
‘You might as well go home. There’s nothing more we can do here.’
‘What about you?’
‘I have a few people to see first.’
Never mind what the mayor said. Nottingham wasn’t going to ignore the murders. Brooke could issue all the commands he liked but those deaths wouldn’t vanish.
For two hours he walked up and down Briggate, trying to talk to the whores about the dead girl, about Charlotte, about pimps and moneylenders. He wasn’t about to give up. He ducked into the inns and taverns, talking to the few old faces he recognized.
It was futile, he decided as he walked back down Kirkgate. But it confirmed what he suspected. Only one man, working alone, could stop any word from spreading. The knowledge didn’t help him find the killer, but at least that offered some faint direction.
He tried not to think about the children he’d seen earlier. They’d freeze on a night like this, gathered tightly together to try and stay warm. He knew them better than they could ever imagine, and there was nothing he could do to help them.
Rob didn’t go home immediately. Five minutes after leaving the jail he was knocking on Sexton Castle’s door, a tiny stone cottage tucked behind Harrison’s almshouses on the edge of St John’s churchyard.
‘Have you found her?’ the man asked. ‘The mother.’
‘No.’ There was no sense in saying they had too many things to do; he’d never understand. ‘I was wondering if you’d found somewhere for the baby.’
The image of the tiny girl had stayed in his mind throughout the day. Not just her, but the way Nottingham held her and gazed at the child. It had stirred something. He couldn’t even put a name to it, just a sense of unease, and a little fear. Emily wanted a child, but no matter how they tried, she never caught. Her miscarriage two years before seemed to have changed something inside.
‘Mrs Webb is suckling,’ Castle told him. ‘She has milk for one more.’
‘Will the girl survive?’
‘That’s in God’s hands now. Mrs Castle said she was very sickly. Maybe it would be better for her if she passed.’
Rob stared at him, shocked. ‘Why do you say that?’ How could any death be good?
‘Why?’ The sexton seemed surprised by the question. ‘The poor girl’s come into the world with no one to want her. It would be a blessing.’ Reproach crept into his voice. ‘But we’ll do what we can for her while she’s here, sir.’
‘The poor little thing,’ Emily said when he told her. She didn’t need to ask how anyone could abandon a baby. Emily spent her days with the poor and the desperate; she understood their hold on life was precarious.
‘She might not live.’ He sat by the fire with his boots off, toying with a cup of ale as he soaked in the warmth.
‘Too many don’t.’ She looked at him and arched an eyebrow. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘I don’t know.’ The only thing certain was the way the thought of the girl’s face and tiny, helpless body had stayed with him. ‘I …’ He shook his head.