Coolly, Cookson closed the book.
“Barging into my house and making demands isn’t the best way to find things out, Constable,” the Reverend announced.
“Where is he… sir?” He spat out the word with deliberate insolence.
“And why do you need to know so urgently?” He crossed one leg over the other, smoothing his breeches over his ample thighs.
“Because he’s murdered six people.” Nottingham kept his eyes on the Reverend’s disbelieving face.
“Another of your wild theories?” Cookson laughed. “It was George Carver last time, wasn’t it? Don’t be so stupid, man. Mr Crandall is from a good family in the county. Why would he do something like that?”
“I’ll tell you after I’ve talked to him,” the Constable replied grimly. “But he used to be in Chapel Allerton, didn’t he?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “There were people attacked there. One of them came back to Leeds and was killed just after your curate arrived.”
Cookson pursed his lips.
“Coincidence is hardly damning evidence, is it?”
“I’ll give him the chance to clear himself, if he can.” He chose not to mention the broken token or Worthy. Keep it straightforward, he thought. “But I need to find him, and I need to do it now.”
“He lodges with Widow Cliffe on Briggate. But she’s a good Christian woman. She keeps early hours. I don’t want you disturbing her.”
Nottingham said nothing, just walked past the servant and out of the house. He knew Widow Cliffe all too well, a prissy woman who’d plagued his office for years with ridiculous, petty complaints about her neighbours.
A merchant’s widow, she lived in an old house with a wide frontage, the plaster limewashed a crisp white every year. She spent her days peering out from the small mullioned windows and making carping comments about the people she saw.
He knew of at least five servants she’d turned out for their behaviour, and pitied those who stayed even more. She liked to think of herself as the city’s moral judge, and was constantly disappointed with everything she saw.
No lights showed through the shutters as his fist hit the door, but he didn’t care if he woke the entire street. When no answer came, he hammered on the wood again until a downtrodden girl pulled it open, her eyes puffy with sleep, clothes bundled quickly over her shift.
“Is Mr Crandall here?” Nottingham asked without introduction.
“No, sir,” the girl answered with lazy sleepiness, stifling a yawn. “He left this afternoon. He was all in a hurry. Said his father was ill and he needed to go home for a few days.”
“And where’s his home, do you know?”
“Harrogate, sir.”
“Thank you.”
The door closed quietly. His mind was churning as he strode back to the jail. Maybe Crandall really had run away and gone home. Not this afternoon, though; he’d been with Emily since then. He might have planned to leave, but the curate was still in Leeds; he knew it as surely as he knew his own name.
The jail was crowded with Sedgwick and the other men, all milling around in loud conversation that ended raggedly as he entered.
“They’ve had no luck yet, boss,” Sedgwick told him.
“I have,” Nottingham said. “It’s Crandall, the new curate at the parish church.” He heard a crescendo of sound around him and raised his hand. “I want you to go out and find him. He lodges with Mrs Cliffe, but he’s not there. I want two men on the place, front and back, in case he tries to return. He claimed he was going back to Harrogate, where his family lives. Check the coach inns and the stables, let me know if they’ve seen him. The rest of you get out there and start looking.”
Sedgwick rose, but Nottingham held him back as the others left.
“I want you with me.” He explained briefly about Emily and the token. “Worthy knew what it meant. I don’t know how, but he’s ahead of us. I don’t think he’s got Crandall yet; if he had he’d be crowing.”
“Where do you want to start?” the deputy asked, rubbing his arm in the sling.
“Crandall hasn’t been here long,” Nottingham considered. “He’ll want somewhere he feels safe.”
“The church?” Sedgwick suggested.
“It’s a good bet.” He reached into one of the desk drawers and removed two pistols.
“How’s your arm now?” Nottingham asked.
“Getting by,” Sedgwick answered, although it was far from the truth. The Constable loaded and primed the guns, and handed one to his deputy.
“Just in case,” he said. “Don’t be afraid to use it.”
29
They walked together down Kirkgate. Apart from pockets of noise outside a pair of taverns, the city was quiet. A few torches gave out moments of light in the darkness.
Sedgwick breathed softly and glanced at the Constable. There was a hard, determined cast to his face, and his hand kept straying to his coat to rub the pistol. God help Crandall when they found him, he thought.
His mind slipped back to the thing it hadn’t been able to shake. If there was one person he could tell, it was the boss.
“Annie’s left,” he said casually, as if the news wasn’t so important. “Took James with her.”
“Are you going to bring her back?” Nottingham didn’t break his stride, although now he understood why the deputy had been so quiet. “You’d be within your rights, if you wanted.”
He didn’t even need to consider the question.
“No. She was always nagging and arguing.”
“What about James?”
Sedgwick straightened his back and chewed his bottom lip. They walked a few more yards before he answered with determination,
“I’m not letting him go. She can go to hell, but I’m having my son.”
“The law’s on your side,” Nottingham told him with certainty. “You can claim him and keep him.”
“Thanks, boss,” he answered sincerely.
“Just remember, though, you’ll need someone to look after him. It won’t be easy.”
“Aye, I know that,” Sedgwick said. He’d been giving a lot of thought to the responsibility of raising a child, and the way his own parents had been. “But he’s worth it. And I can see he’s brought up right.”
Nottingham touched his arm lightly. “I’m sorry, John.”
“It’s fine,” he lied glibly. “Everything’ll sort itself out.”
At St Peter’s they separated. Sedgwick lit a candle and explored the deep, shadowy nave while Nottingham searched in the vestry. Nottingham knew that Cookson wouldn’t be happy if he ever heard that the law had gone through his church, but it had to be done. There was no sign of Crandall, but one chest lay open, a surplice crumpled on the floor beside it, with books and a pile of papers roughly strewn over the stone floor. Crandall had been here, he was certain of it. He looked in the tall cupboards, pulling the doors open in a sharp motion, but they only held elaborate vestments. Holding a lantern, the Constable entered the body of the church and called, “Anything?”
His voice echoed around the high emptiness of the building.
“I don’t think so,” Sedgwick answered with caution. His light flickered around the font at the far end of the building. “But there are a hundred places someone could hide in here.”
“He’s been in the vestry. The question is, how long ago?”
Nottingham felt awkward as he walked around the altar and the chancel, as if he had no right to be there and was doing something sacrilegious. He pushed the light into dark corners, finding nothing more than a family of mice.
From the corner of his eye he could see the flame of Sedgwick’s candle moving around. Methodically he checked each of the elaborately carved family pews, kneeling to be sure Crandall hadn’t tried to tuck himself under the wooden benches.
Pigeons nesting in the rafters gave soft coos, their sleep disturbed by the noise below. Nottingham edged around pillars, feeling the prickly chill of holiness on his skin.
Finally they met i
n the middle of the nave. Sedgwick shook his head.
“We can come back when it’s light,” Nottingham decided. “Let’s go.”
Outside, the wind had picked up, and thick clouds scudded from the west to obscure the stars and bring a promise of fresh rain soon.
“Where now?” Sedgwick asked as they walked through the graveyard. He craned his head around, hoping to see a sudden movement behind the stones.
“I don’t know.” Nottingham was thinking hard. Crandall must have panicked when Worthy’s men grabbed Emily, not knowing what was happening, thinking that somehow they’d come for him. If he’d fled the city, where would he have gone? Not Harrogate, he was certain of that. There were plenty of places in England where a man could change his name and hide, but he didn’t have Crandall pegged as someone with the endurance for that. He was a son of privilege who’d probably taken to the church only because he had an older brother who’d inherit the estate and the wealth. But his father would still grant him an allowance; curates made less than Constables. Abroad, though, a man could live handsomely off very little money…
“We’ll take a walk down by the river,” the Constable announced suddenly. “There’ll be barges loading early for Hull. He might try and get on one of those.”
Sedgwick glanced at him speculatively but said nothing, simply loping along beside him. With his arm close against his chest in the sling he looked like an awkward, wounded bird. It was quiet along the Calls; only a few lights shone in the windows of rooming houses and somewhere a drunk vainly tried to remember the verse of a broadside ballad.
They followed the path past the water engine, its pumps pulling liquid from the Aire along pipes to feed the reservoir up by St John’s Church. At the riverside the bridge loomed above them, the roar of the current through the arches achingly loud.
“Keep your eyes open for Worthy’s men,” Nottingham warned, taking the pistol from his coat pocket.
They tried the doors to the new brick warehouses, checking they were locked and secure, moving cautiously and quietly.
“I can hear something,” Sedgwick whispered. They stopped to listen, taking shallow breaths, ears and minds alert. “Over there,” he said finally, pointing to the undergrowth that rose from the quay up to Low Holland.
“An animal?” Nottingham whispered.
Sedgwick shook his head.
“No idea.”
“We’ll wait here for a while and see what happens.”
They remained tense, muscles cramping from standing still, hidden by the deep shadow of the buildings.
“It’s there again. It’s too big for an animal.”
The Constable had heard nothing, but trusted him. He leaned against Sedgwick, speaking softly into this ear,
“Give it some more time.”
He’d never hunted, although he had very faint memories of his father riding off with the hounds as he watched with his mother. Or perhaps that was simply his imagination. Here, though, there were no horses and hounds, no trampling of crops and spills over hedges. This game involved stealth and patience, and not even the certainty he had the right quarry. It could be just someone sleeping rough in the grass; he’d done that often enough in his youth.
Finally, after the dampness of the night air had leeched into his skin, he signalled for them to move. He went one way, Sedgwick the other, moving slowly over the gravel path and into the grass.
But they’d barely taken ten paces when the sound of footsteps and muttered curses filled the air at the top of the hill. The Constable froze, tightening his grip on the pistol.
“Right, you two go down there, see if he’s hiding,” a voice ordered, and Nottingham heard three men push their way down the hill. Worthy’s men. He stood still, safe and invisible in the faint moonlight. As long as John kept out of sight, everything would be fine. The pimp’s thugs could do their work for them.
It was only a couple of minutes before they discovered the man in the undergrowth, pulling him to his feet as he howled and protested. Very likely thought he was going to be robbed and beaten, the Constable imagined, and probably he would be. But he couldn’t stay and stop it; the voice wasn’t Crandall’s. Cautiously, he retraced his steps to the doorway, relieved to see Sedgwick had done exactly the same.
“Looks like they haven’t found him yet,” Sedgwick said in a low voice.
“If he was round here, that’ll have scared him off.” Nottingham pushed the fringe off his forehead.
“Pushed him deeper, maybe.”
“What do you mean?”
“No one came out past me,” Sedgwick explained. “If he’s here, he’s still here. If.” He emphasised the word.
“And if I knew where he was, we’d have him in custody now,” Nottingham retorted sharply. “All we can do is play the odds. The men are out searching, Worthy’s lads are looking. You and I are taking the likeliest places. The bastard’s somewhere.”
Worthy’s men had moved off, crossing the bridge noisily while their victim lay moaning in the grass. To the east, there was the faintest smudge of light on the clouds against the horizon. My God, Nottingham thought in surprise, have we been looking all night?
“You go along the path, I’ll cover the water side.”
It was awkward, laborious going. The banks were sheer and slippery, and he found himself grabbing thick tufts of grass to try and keep his balance as time and again he slid perilously close to the river. The warehouses rose tall, their walls sheer, broken only by doors and pulleys for moving bales on to the barges. A couple of flatboats were tied up, ready for loading, but as he approached the warning growls and bark of a dog kept him away.
Where was Crandall? He climbed back to the path by Dyer’s Garth, where men and women spent their days colouring finished cloth. The stink of the dyes they used hung in the air and he wrinkled his nose, his eyes watering. Maybe they didn’t notice it after a while.
“Boss!” Sedgwick’s loud, hoarse whisper pulled him back.
He ran quickly back along the path to the deputy. Sedgwick was squatting, eyes searching the ground. He held up a large piece of expensive black material in a good, tight weave.
“It could be a cassock,” Nottingham speculated, running his fingers across it, and suddenly the memories clicked in his brain. “Dear God. Do you remember young Forester saying he’d seen a woman the night of the second murders?”
Sedgwick nodded slowly.
“A curate in a cassock,” the Constable explained. “In the dark that would look like a woman in a dress.”
“Looks like he was here, then.”
“Maybe. But where’s he gone?” Nottingham wondered. “And how did the cassock get torn?”
“Do you want me to go and get the men and have them comb down here?” Sedgwick asked.
“No,” he decided after a moment. “He can’t have got inside the warehouses and he’s not down by the river. If he’s still anywhere around here, he’s on the hillside.” He scanned the trees and the undergrowth.
“There could have been a struggle here,” Sedgwick observed marks in the wet dirt. “It’s difficult to tell.”
“Over there, too.” Nottingham pointed at the grass on the hillside. “You see where it looks trampled?”
He waded through the tall stalks, the dew on the cattails soaking his breeches. There was a space, about five yards by three, where the stems were broken in thick patches too rough to be someone’s camp. Two trails ran to it, one from the hill top, another from the path below. Squatting, he ran his fingers lightly over the ground, feeling for anything that might have dropped. It seemed a hopeless task with so much to cover. He tugged at roots and the short young stems of trees poking from the ground, looking for something that might yield to his touch and give a clue. But there was nothing to proclaim beyond doubt that Crandall had been here.
Back on the towpath he joined Sedgwick. It was close to dawn now, and Nottingham could see the signs of strain and weariness on the deputy’s face. They were probably
on his own, too, seamed and magnified by age. But they’d have to continue until they found the curate or were certain he’d left Leeds.
“Nothing up there,” he said in a voice edged heavily with frustration.
“You think Worthy’s men got him?” Sedgwick asked, echoing his own thoughts.
“I don’t know,” he replied, shaking his head. “It’s beginning to look as if they might.” He gave a dark, forbidding frown. “For Mr Crandall’s sake, let’s hope they don’t.”
“So where now, boss?”
He had no idea, he realised. The church had seemed obvious, the riverside an inspiration. But they’d missed him at the first, and Nottingham had a growing fear that they’d also arrived too late at the second. They could go to Worthy’s and tear the place apart, but he had so many rooms and rat’s nests around the city it would be impossible to find and check them all.
“Back to the jail. See if any of the others turned anything up.”
Inside, he was raging, the anger boiling, as if he’d been cheated but unable to prove it. Crandall was around somewhere, he felt it, but in a place just beyond his reach. If Emily had said something immediately, if Bartlett had recalled the curate leaving, if Tom Williamson had found his information sooner… but none of that was worth a damn now.
He knew no one could have put together the threads any earlier; there was too little to make any kind of pattern. But he blamed himself anyway. It was his responsibility; he was the Constable, in charge of the investigation. And if Crandall had found his way out of the city, Nottingham’s career was over. Even a squawking gaggle of aldermen wouldn’t be able to save him.
“Maybe the lads got him and he’s waiting in a cell,” Sedgwick offered with a small, hopeful smile.
It was possible, but he doubted it. Still, maybe one of the men had discovered something useful. He’d keep them looking all day and all night if he had to, but for the moment he simply didn’t know where to send them. And, as if to crown his despair, the first fat drops of rain began to fall from a heavy sky.
He trudged on, his mind churning, eyes on the ground, until Sedgwick nudged him.
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