Cold Cruel Winter

by Chris Nickson

  ‘So you think he’s the one who murdered Sam?’

  ‘I’m sure of it,’ Nottingham said flatly. ‘It’s the first of four murders.’

  Worthy’s head snapped up, his eyes sharp and inquisitive.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘That’s what he implied in the first volume of his book with its special binding.’

  ‘Special binding?’

  ‘Now you know what happened to the skin,’ the Constable told him.

  Worthy remained silent for several breaths then shook his head. ‘That’s not the work of anyone human,’ he declared finally. ‘Four murders, he said. All like this? With the same ending?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You believe him?’

  ‘I do.’ Nottingham paused. ‘He’s already snatched the second victim. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘A man named Rushworth. He clerks for Graves, and he gave evidence at Wyatt’s trial.’

  Worthy nodded.

  ‘And who are the other two?’

  ‘Judge Dobbs. He handed down the sentence.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Worthy sighed lightly. ‘Who arrested him?’

  ‘The old Constable.’

  ‘Who was there with him?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘I know your mother didn’t raise you to be both blind and a fool, laddie,’ the pimp said in exasperation. ‘Old Arkwright’s dead.’

  Suddenly, Nottingham understood. He was the fourth victim. For the love of God, he must have turned stupid. How had he missed something so obvious?

  ‘Not nice to know someone wants to kill you, is it?’

  ‘You’d know if anyone would,’ the Constable responded, the anger at himself brimming over into his voice.

  ‘Aye, I would,’ Worthy replied mildly. ‘Enough of them have tried. And failed.’ He poured himself more of the beer and drank it down in a single swallow. ‘You’d have done it yourself if you could.’

  ‘I’d have put you in jail, Amos.’

  ‘It’ll never happen, laddie, and you know it.’ He tapped the side of his nose. Worthy had too many important protectors in the city to end up convicted of anything: the merchants and aldermen who used his whores or borrowed his money.

  Silence filled the air. Nottingham rubbed his chin, feeling the harsh bristle, a reminder that he needed a shave. He needed to be better armed, he thought. All he usually carried was a small dagger, little better than a penknife. Another knife, perhaps a primed pistol in his coat pocket. It wasn’t something he wanted to do, but he was forewarned now. Wyatt was clever. He needed to be constantly aware and alert.

  But unless they had the devil’s own luck and found Rushworth soon, it would likely be several days until Wyatt tried to strike again. He’d need time with his victim, and longer still to cure the skin and write his book.

  Doing that was as important to the man as the act of killing, Nottingham understood that. He needed it all to be known, put it all on paper, to indulge his evil and play out his part.

  ‘Penny for them, laddie?’

  Nottingham shook his head. ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘So how are we going to stop him?’ Worthy asked.

  ‘We need to find him.’

  ‘And when we do?’

  The Constable paused for a moment. ‘Kill him quietly.’

  Worthy nodded and drained his cup. ‘Aye, that’s what I thought. They won’t want folk to know too much about all this.’

  ‘But that doesn’t happen until I’ve talked to him.’

  The pimp gazed at him quizzically.

  ‘Why? You think you can make sense of something like this?’

  Nottingham shrugged. ‘I doubt if I’ll be able to do that,’ he admitted. ‘I just want to know.’

  ‘Don’t waste your time,’ Worthy advised. ‘There are some things that are beyond understanding.’

  The Constable stood up.

  ‘You’ll get your men out?’

  ‘Aye. Do you know anything about him that might help?’

  ‘He’s spent seven years in the Indies. His skin will still be dark, he’ll stand out. I don’t know what he’s doing for money. He’s probably taken a place that’s quiet. Not a room. Bigger.’

  ‘It’s a start. I’ll tell my lads.’

  ‘And he stays alive until I talk to him.’

  Worthy held up his palms in submission. ‘If that’s what you really want, laddie.’

  ‘It is. And I don’t need one of your men watching me.’

  The pimp’s eyes twinkled. ‘The thought never occurred to me.’

  Thirteen

  Wyatt would need to buy food. The Constable had said that, but Josh had already worked it out for himself. A man couldn’t live on air. But a man could be sly. Josh knew the tricks, the places to find food without spending money and without being seen by those who cared.

  For the last few days he’d kept his eyes open, talking quietly to the folk who lived that way themselves, out on the edges of society. They were what he’d been himself just a few short months before. The dispossessed, the invisible, the hopeful and the hopeless. Most of the time they stayed out of sight, taking only what they needed, so that the good citizens were hardly aware of their existence. But there were those who saw things the others missed. These were the ones who’d notice someone like Wyatt. They were the ones to talk to.

  His hair was wet from the light rain, lank against his face. Frances had cut it with an old pair of scissors a few days before. The blades were dull and she’d ended up hacking off hunks. Still, at least he didn’t look like a beggar lad now, she’d told him. He’d caught his reflection in a shop window a few times, taken aback by the change, his hair short, almost neat. The boss had said nothing, but he’d noticed and exchanged a short glance with Mr Sedgwick.

  Josh drifted up the road that extended beyond the Head Row into Woodhouse. Beyond lay Headingley, then Otley, Ilkley, and a whole country past that. All places he’d never been and didn’t care about.

  After a mile he turned on to a small track of bare, muddy earth and made his way up to a copse on the peak of the hill. Hidden away within the trees was a small community of people surrounded by their painted wooden caravans, with all the horses, their real wealth, hobbled beyond that. Old canvas had been pitched from the branches for shelters.

  They’d arrived before winter’s grip turned cruel, and made the raw place their own. They’d been coming for years now, arriving with the season and departing in spring. Josh had first gone to see them when he was still a child, oddly drawn to these exotic folk. They’d treated him kindly, and he’d come to know a few of them, to like and trust them. He’d often brought Frances with him. She been entranced by the bright colours of their clothes and caravans, by the simple pleasure they took in their hard lives, and even by their strange tongue. Once they’d discovered he’d become a Constable’s lad they’d been wary, but their suspicions had quickly vanished.

  Josh nodded at some familiar faces. A stewpot hung over a fire, and the tempting smell of rabbit meat filled the encampment. Water sat nearby in a pair of ewers, both cracked and ancient.

  Women young and old tended babies and small children ran wild, their faces and hands rimed with dirt, feet bare in the mud. They laughed and danced, and Josh envied them the carefree times he’d never known. He walked on to where five men gathered together around a small fire by a cluster of the painted vehicles. Two were still youthful, their beards wispy, the other three older. The eldest sat in the centre, a man of indeterminate age, his skin darker, a sharp contrast to his heavy white moustache. They knew Josh, they’d welcome him, but they still kept their reserve. He was an outsider here; he was the law.

  He bowed his head for a moment and drew a loaf of bread from under his heavy coat, putting it down near the flames.

  ‘Thank you,’ the oldest man said, his eyes smiling, speaking slowly in strongly-accented E
nglish. ‘You are well?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Josh responded, and added, ‘thank you.’

  ‘And your girl?’

  ‘She’s going to have a baby.’

  The man beamed and translated. Everyone smiled widely.

  ‘New life is a good thing,’ the old man told him. ‘But I think you come for other reasons today.’

  ‘I’m looking for someone. I thought you might have seen him.’

  One of the young men, who wore a permanently angry expression, raised his voice.

  ‘And why would we tell you if we had, boy?’

  ‘Because he kills people,’ Josh answered.

  The elder raised his hand to bring calm. ‘Why you think we see him?’

  ‘You and your people see things most folk miss. You go to the places a lot of people don’t go.’

  The man nodded slowly. ‘And this man, who is he? How we know him?’

  ‘He has dark skin. He was in the Indies for a long time.’ Josh hesitated. ‘That’s all I know.’

  The men looked from one to another, communicating with small facial inflections.

  ‘It is possible,’ the old man admitted cautiously. ‘We maybe see man like that.’

  ‘I need to know where he lives,’ Josh told them. ‘Before he kills more people.’

  The old man talked with the others once more, words flying in their incomprehensible language. Josh half-watched the men while he listened to the lively sounds of the camp and the whinnying of the horses tethered in the distance. The Gypsies made their money from horse trading, they’d told him, and from the small things they could sell.

  ‘We see him again, we find out where he live,’ the man agreed finally. ‘Some of my family, they feel is wrong to help the law. The law is often unkind to us.’ He frowned momentarily as memories slipped through his mind. ‘But you are our friend.’

  ‘Will he pay to know?’ the young man burst out.

  ‘The Constable will pay for information,’ Josh said. ‘And you’ll have his gratitude.’

  ‘That can be a good thing to have,’ the old man decided.

  ‘If you find him, you can send one of the children to tell me.’

  The old man nodded. The deal had been done. Josh walked back through the camp and down the track, finally resting against a dry stone wall.

  He knew they were men of their word. They’d keep any eye out for Wyatt, and if they found him, he’d hear. There’d be a small tug on his sleeve, a few whispered words.

  Slowly he stood and began to walk back into Leeds. He gazed down at the city from the hill, smoke rising from the chimneys, the low grey haze of cloud. Wyatt was there. Rushworth was there. Frances was there. But he had a day’s work to do before he saw her again.

  Nottingham felt the grit churning in his soul. Many people had threatened him in his time as Constable, but few had ever done anything about it, and never as cold-bloodedly as this.

  He’d been given his warning. But if Wyatt wanted him dead, he’d have a fight on his hands. At the jail he took a pair of knives from the cupboard and sharpened their blades carefully on a whetstone before sliding them into their sheaths and then into his coat pockets. For a brief moment he considered a pistol, then dismissed the idea. He’d never enjoyed the idea of guns; they only offered a single chance, and he preferred better odds than that when playing for his life.

  Armed, he gathered his coat tight about him and locked the jail. Outside, the wind was beginning to whip up from the north. The temperature was falling again and the rain was turning to light snow that rushed angrily around his face.

  No more winter, he prayed. There had been enough of that already, too much of it, too many dead, too many hopeless. As he walked up Briggate, past the Ship Inn and the Moot Hall, he saw the faces of the people, the happiness drained from them, walking with heads bowed like penitents.

  He ducked into a court between two houses, the opening barely wider than his shoulders, and the wind ceased. He stopped, breathing slowly. Beyond the short passage the ground opened out, muddy and cloying, surrounded by ramshackle houses of stone and wood where the gardens had once stood a century or more before.

  Nottingham picked his way across the mire and hammered on a faded blue door. There was no latch or lock he could see, but he knew the man inside would have taken care to make it secure.

  He waited, standing back slightly so he could be seen. Finally, as he was about to give up and turn away, the door opened soundlessly. He walked into a dark hallway, following a moving shadow, then into a room where sober grey light fell through dirty glass. Finally he stopped and said, ‘Peter.’

  The other man turned. He had to be in his fifties now, the Constable thought, wizened, the wrinkles carved deep into his face, grey hair a thinning tangle on his head, like so many other men who’d been ground down by life. He wore a dusty, dark coat with rips in the shoulders and pockets and dirty, buff-coloured breeches. In a crowd no one would notice him, which was exactly what he wanted. Peter Hawthorn was a peacher, a man who heard about crimes and made his money by informing on the criminals.

  ‘Mr Nottingham.’ He had a rough, low voice, scarcely more than a growl. As long as the Constable had known him he’d never used more words than absolutely necessary, hoarding them close like bullion.

  ‘You know who I’m looking for.’

  Hawthorn nodded.

  ‘There’s very good money in it for whoever finds him for me.’

  Hawthorn nodded again.

  ‘But it has to be soon.’

  He didn’t know how the peacher had managed such a long life, and he’d never asked. Over all the years some must have known he’d given them up. But he was still here, still making a bare living from his trade in souls.

  ‘He’s been in the Indies, so his skin will be burned dark. He’s staying out of the way, but he’s in Leeds somewhere.’

  He waited for an acknowledgement, but Hawthorn said nothing. Finally Nottingham turned on his heel and left.

  On Briggate snowflakes still lashed his face and hands, and it felt even colder than before. If this grew any worse, he thought, the slush would freeze and the streets would be treacherous. The snow was already starting to settle on his shoulders and in his hair as he walked, and back at the jail he had to shake his greatcoat clean.

  He stoked up the fire in the grate and settled into his seat to compose his latest report for the Mayor. It would be brief; there was precious little new to tell. As he wrote, he wondered about Rushworth. Was he still alive, or had Wyatt already killed him? He realized in his heart that they’d never find him in time. The next they’d see would be the body and then the book that would inevitably follow.

  Worthy’s help could make the difference. He hated to admit it, but he knew it was true. With more men looking, it had to only be a matter of time until they took Wyatt. But how much time did he have? Not enough, that was certain. And there’d be a price to pay in the future for the pimp coming to his aid. There’d be some kind of favour to be done, an eye to be turned away at a crucial moment. Nothing in this life came free.

  He set the pen down. He couldn’t settle; the world was buzzing in his head. Someone wanted to kill him. Someone he loved more than his own life was dead. He’d have given himself up for Rose to live, and so would Mary. But God never made his bargains so easily. Instead you had to learn to live in the long shadow of sorrow and face whatever else He put before you.

  There was nothing more he could do here. Putting on the coat, still wool-damp and heavy, he set out for home. The temperature had dropped further, the mud freezing rapidly and crunching under his boots, the snow still coming down, small patches lying deceptively white and pure atop the hardening dirt. It would be bitter tonight, and for the next few days as winter gave a harsh reminder it wasn’t done with them yet.

  Emily was sweeping the floor. She held the broom awkwardly, pushing it in short stabs that gathered no dust. Without thinking he came up behind her, put his hands over hers and
said,

  ‘Try it this way, love. It’ll be easier.’

  He guided her so she made long strokes across the wood. This had been Rose’s job when she lived here, and she’d always tackled it briskly and efficiently.

  ‘That’s the way,’ he told her. ‘You’ve got it now.’

  She turned and smiled gently at him. He was aware of how small and dry her hands were, and uncomfortable with the way her hips swayed as she moved. He returned her smile, for a moment feeling the weight of all the dying lifting from him.

  She was the future now, with her dark eyes and long, smooth hair. His only little girl, a young woman now, moving further away from him with each day. Pray God she’d survive, even if his name didn’t.

  ‘I didn’t know you could do housework, papa,’ she teased. They were the first joyful words he’d heard from her in weeks.

  ‘You know me, I can do anything.’ He winked and walked into the kitchen. Mary was trimming the fat off a piece of pork.

  ‘I just wanted to be with you for a little while,’ he explained before she could say anything. He needed this woman, he needed her love, her trust, the way she accepted his devils and his truths.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve ever come home in the daytime before, Richard.’ Her voice tried to be light, but he could hear the undertone in it.

  ‘I just wanted a few minutes of peace.’

  She put down the knife and wiped her hands on an old cloth before holding him close.

  ‘Well, there’s precious little of that around here today. Emily’s decided she wants to be helpful, and I’ve spent half the morning having to go over what she’s done.’

  ‘She’ll learn. At least she’s trying. We should be grateful for that.’

  ‘Oh, I know. But it would be quicker if I did it all myself.’

  ‘She needs to know. Before we know it she’ll be a wife herself.’

  He could feel the ghost of Rose rise briefly, then vanish again.

  ‘All in good time,’ Mary said.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘No hurry.’

  But time might not be something they possessed. He dared not tell her that his name was on Wyatt’s list. She felt warm in his arms, a part of himself, the best part.