The Killing Man

by Andrew Wareham

  There were owls hooting and screeching, a little more noise than usual. He made his way down the track he had created, eased himself and then turned to come back, watchful, scanning the moorside, picking up faint movement from the corner of his eye. He stepped thirty yards cautiously, into the cover of a clump of thick brambles, dropped to one knee and looked out over the moor, quartering the hillside slowly, watching the track down to Leek particularly.

  The track followed the dale, winding its way uphill on the easiest gradients, turning from shadow into bright moonlight and back again half a dozen times. The frost was already glittering on the boulders on either side. There were figures moving, plodding carefully uphill, the frozen pathway slippery underfoot.

  There was no sense to it that Sam could see. Why climb uphill, two hours of hard scrambling in the darkness, to rob a labouring man working a coal drift? Had they been vagabond rebels, wandering the hills seeking food and shelter, then it might have been more rational – they might find a meal, would certainly sleep warm. But these were coming uphill, from the direction of the town.

  They must think that he had something valuable, worth stealing, unless perhaps Josh Banford had decided to save his daughter from temptation. Was that likely? Doubtful, there were safer ways of getting rid of him – a quiet word to Uncle Abe and he would be sent back home, with no risk of a body or a beaten man bringing the town constable into the business.

  No, if these men were after him, then they thought he had valuables in his possession.

  It occurred to Sam that Uncle Abe had known that he had made more than a hundred from prize and bounty – he might well have mentioned his good fortune, in all innocence, to his wife, or more likely to his son… Abe knew that he had put his money in the hand of the banking man – he would not, perhaps, speak of that to his family, regarding it as private business.

  Tom fancied Josie, and he had not had a look in since Sam had turned up on the scene.

  The conclusions were unpleasant, and he probably would not be able to prove anything. It would be as well to keep his mouth shut for the offence it would cause inside the family… but Tom might just be on the wrong end of a kicking some dark night.

  Sam watched, silent in cover, trying not to shiver. He was twenty yards, no more, from the entrance to his bothy, breathing down into his coat so that no clouds of condensation betrayed him. He saw the three scuttle as quietly as they could up to the front, two of them with pickaxe handles, the third carrying a billhook; they were not intending to leave a live witness behind them. The man with the billhook suddenly stood and ran through the entry, the other two crowding behind, stopping as he shouted.

  “It’s bloody empty! No bugger ‘ere!”

  Sam rested the dragoon pistol on a boulder, pointed and squeezed the trigger; dropping the weapon and lifting the second. An ounce and a half of heavy birdshot, spreading wide from the ten inch barrel; unlikely to kill, except it penetrated through an eye or ripped into the throat, but sufficient to knock men down. The two fell and the third came out waving his billhook.

  ‘Sits on his intellects, that one do, needs to learn what’s what,’ Sam thought, contemptuously, wondering what sort of fool threatened a man with a gun when carrying no more than a short hand axe. He fired again as the man turned to face him, sneered as he dropped, lesson taught.

  There was no gain to waiting. Sam picked up the empty pistols and ran across to the three, two of them struggling to rise, the third, the last man, motionless. He put his pistols into the dry and then grabbed up the nearest club and swung hard at one head, then at the second.

  ‘Two dead, one as good as.’

  He rapped the third across the skull, hard, to make sure of him. Then he sat next to his fire to think.

  The constable might accept self-defence – but Sam was the outsider, the three probably were men of the town, young enough to have angry parents perhaps. Even if they thought it was justifiable killing, the local magistrates might be inclined to get rid of a man capable of besting three attackers – not the sort they might want hanging about their quiet little town, except literally, perhaps.

  Wisest not to bring the constable into this business, which meant getting rid of the bodies, which was easier said than done. There were boulders in plenty to make a cairn, but a new pile of rocks might be seen as suspicious if there was any search for the missing men. Impossible to push them off the sides of the track, further downhill, as if they had fallen, for the existence of shot wounds would need a lot of explaining away.

  The sole answer Sam could come up with was to strip the bodies and pull them round the shoulder of the moorland a few hundred yards, hide them away in the gorse and let the foxes and crows and ravens and rats have their way. Two or three weeks should suffice to reduce them to bones, and their clothing could be easily dumped out of sight next to them. He built up his fire to keep the bothy hot; he would want to come back in to warmth.

  It took two hours and then another thirty minutes at first light, shivering cold but needing to scavenge the scene for evidence of what had happened.

  Sam decided that it was no longer possible to sleep out in his little shelter – he would not survive the winter, for the cold, so he would tell Uncle Abe. He packed his knapsack and waited for Tom – one last load and he would go downhill with him.

  “Last one for this season, Tom. Too bloody cold up here to sleep last night. I had to sit up over the fire all night long for bein’ freezing.”

  “My Da said that he did wonder you had not called it a day yet, Sam. Folks are still buying coal, so he had no argument with you keeping on cutting the while, but he did say as how he would talk with thee come the weekend.”

  Sam noticed Tom to be peering about him, perhaps looking for trace of the three villains. He finished loading the wagon and then pulled out his knapsack and blankets and his billy and made a show of hooking the two holsters with their big pistols to the straps of the bag.

  “Dunno why I bother with they great old beasts, Tom. Habit, I suppose, for looking after meself. You can do a lot of no good to a man with one of they old pistols, our Tom.”

  Neither man said more about them.

  “Just put me tools up in the back, Tom, and we can go.”

  They walked down off the moor, shoulder to shoulder, apparently in perfect amity.

  Josie rode across as they passed the turn to Banfords, having noticed the pair together.

  “I’m leaving the pit now that the winter’s come in hard, Miss Josie. I was like to freeze last night, ma’am! No doubt your good father and Mr Makepeace will discuss what is to be done in the spring.”

  “I had thought it might be too cold, Mr Heythorne. As well, I believe there must be poachers out on the moors! The housekeeper said that she heard shots in the night. My father is rather upset at the thought, though he cannot imagine what they would find to kill.”

  “Perhaps the odd grouse, Miss Josie. I have not seen deer on the moor, but there might be a hare or rabbit about.”

  “Papa was concerned that there might be rebels walking the hills still.”

  Sam allowed that might be possible, but he much suspected that they would have tried to get into the big towns for winter, or perhaps have walked off to the south, to the lower lands there.

  “Few people and mortal cold up on our moors, Miss Josie. If rebels have turned to highway robbery, or poaching, then they will go towards the richer lands, or so I would expect. Would not you think so, Tom?”

  Tom mumbled agreement.

  “I shall be lonely in my rides of a morning now, Mr Heythorne.”

  “Best you should not go up onto the moors if there might be villains there, Miss Josie. Safer to keep to the lanes lower down.”

  That made good sense, she thought. She might perhaps bump into him if she passed by the inn, she suggested. Sam agreed that was well possible.

  “Will the coal pay for itself, Uncle Abe?”

  “There is a steady call for house-coals, Sam
, and men are willing to pay the price for them. They will cough up five pence ha’penny for a hundredweight delivered to their cellar or barn in town. Twenty-four shillings and thruppence, or thereabouts, for the chaldron. Thus, Sam, I can pay a coal-cutter half a crown a day, and a driver for the dray three shillings. Feed for the nags comes in at another eighteen pence a day, though that is seven days a week, even on the Sabbath when they do not work. There is the cost of wicker baskets for the coal, which is very little when spread over the days. Then I shall have to build the bothy up into a little more like a cottage, which will cost but very little, just putting a door on. I have sat down with pen and paper and make my costs to be nine shillings and eight pence on the day, and that leaves a surplus of fourteen shillings and seven pence, six days a week, Sam! Mr Banford is to take two pounds a week, and that leaves me with two pounds seven shillings and sixpence! And that is just with one chaldron a day!”

  It was a very profitable business.

  “It is no more than a small pit, Sam, and only a few buyers in Leek and the area, so I doubt I may grow it much greater. Was we closer to a large town, I do not doubt we could do well indeed.”

  Sam agreed. There was money in coal, on a far greater scale…

  A few years of profitable gin-selling and he would have money enough to buy a coal mine of his own.

  “Josh Banford said as how there was something by way of poaching going on up in the hills, Sam. Did you hear anything while you was up there?”

  “Not poaching, Uncle Abe. There’s nothing up there to take – I couldn’t even lay me hands on a rabbit. If so be there ‘ad been anything worth takin’, Uncle Abe, I reckon I might ‘ave known of it first.”

  Abe laughed, said he had suspected as much.

  Later in the week he returned to the topic of poachers in the hills.

  “I did hear, just in passing like, that three of the lads from town, a bit on the wild side, you might say, Sam, do appear to have gone missing these last few days. Tom says as how he spoke to them in the market last week, but ain’t seen hide nor hair of them since.”

  “Can’t imagine what might ‘ave ‘appened to ‘em, Uncle Abe. Was they the sort to take a gun out at night, maybe? Could be they took a deer or two from down in the dales and then walked the meat across to Chesterfield or one of the big towns where they could sell it.”

  “No guns, and besides, you wouldn’t find those idle objects walking ten or fifteen miles cross country, not even for money at the other end of it.”

  Sam shrugged – he did not know and was not especially interested in what might have happened to layabouts unknown to him. His uncle was obviously suspicious – he wondered what Cousin Tom might have let slip.

  “No matter, Sam. I shall be firing up the old still come Monday or Tuesday, time for you to have a look at how it’s done. I talked to Johnny Higby, what does the smithing around here, and he’s putting a pot still together, with the piping it needs, on the sly like, so it won’t be seen in his yard. Be ready soon after Christmas, all in clean copper. Josh Banford says as how you can set up in one of his barns – for a fee, of course, never gives something for nothing, that man. Then, as soon as you got something going, pony and trap takes less than two hours to get across to Stoke, even loaded. Got people moving in there, folks coming from all over to work the earthenware and pottery there. Goodly bit of money floating about – men who wants cheap gin especially like and can pay a penny for half a pint, and others who want something a bit better, when you get round to it. Make more money out of the whisky rather than gin – sell it for twice as much, but it don’t cost two times over to make it, not once you’re set up proper for the job.”

  “I suppose I ought to meet up with Mr Banford, if I’m to work on ‘is land, Uncle Abe. I’ve met ‘is Josie a few times – she likes riding, used to go out on the tops, but I told ‘er not to go there no more, not on ‘er own.”

  “Pretty girl, I recall, Sam…”

  “Very. Young yet, Uncle Abe. Maybe, if I put some money together, then three or four years from now, I might be talkin’ to Mr Banford.”

  Abe shook his head doubtfully; Josh Banford had ambitions to rise in the world, to marry his Josie to a local squire, not to a farmer’s younger son.

  “Josh has got a son as well as Josie. Couple of years younger than her. If his Josie marries well, then maybe the boy can too. Do him no favours if his sister is married to some sort of low businessman, no matter how rich he might be getting.”

  Sam could see the reason in that and was not too much upset by it. She was a handsome girl, and pleasant to talk to, but he would not be heartbroken if he never saw her again.

  “I can hang on another ten years and more before I look to take a wife, Uncle Abe. I’ll just make me money, for the while.”

  Abe was suspicious that it was too easy, that Sam had given up his romantic ambitions far too quickly.

  Sam grinned – there were more important things in life than any young lady, though, offhand, he could not really think of anything at all that was necessary to him, other than money, of course. One day, perhaps, he might find out what this love was that the girls talked about – his sisters had nothing else in their heads, from all he remembered, but he suspected it was little more than childish fancy. The real world was about other things than love – living, for example, was far more important, and he had perhaps already caused too many to die. It might well happen that he would finish a few more, but that would depend on luck and how things worked out over the years. He could not be bothered too much with all this fuss and bother, not just now.

  “When do you reckon to fire up your own still, Uncle Abe?”

  “Tuesday, as is. Pick up some sacks of malt come Monday and run some of the barley through the cracker in the afternoon. The old stream’s running high and clean – useful time of year for working the still – no good in summer when the water’s low. Got plenty of yeast – been making that for two months now, clean and right. Bought in some sugar cones as well, to add to the malt. There’s some what says as how sugar does nowt but add to the costs, Sam, but I reckon it gives a better spirit at the end. Not sure what flavour to add in yet. Got some juniper berries to hand, and that’s probably what I’ll use. Might be I could drop some wood chips in at the end, to give a bit of colour. See what it’s like. I’ve got hold of some good charcoal for the fire – easier with charcoal, burns evenly so that the heat can be kept just right. I’ve got it all up in the old barn just a mile along the road. There’s a small bit of woodland just there, around the front so as to shield it from the road, and the wind blows down the dale, off the high tops, and takes the smell away. Good place for it.”

  On Monday, Sam watched carefully and was prepared to learn all he could. He sat on the trap as Abe picked up his sacks of malt from the loft, proclaiming it to be extras as he was brewing a bit more beer this season.

  “Took me cartload last week, Sam, for the beer. That’s in its casks and settling already, but as far as they know, I’m going for extra this year – the old White Horse doing better than before. They know what’s what, but they got the excuse if any bugger asks. They don’t know nothing about no stills. That’s all they ever ask for, Sam – not to know.”

  “Are the Revenue Men likely to be pokin’ their noses in, Uncle Abe?”

  “No. They don’t go after the local men, not unless they get an Information from the Bench of the Justices of the Peace – and that only happens if some slack sod is knocking out bad liquor. Other than that, they keep their noses clean out in these parts. We ain’t big enough to be worth the effort, Sam. You get a man produces a hundred bottles of gin every month, such as I do, well, it ain’t but chicken feed. In town you get men who produce a hundred gallons a day, at perhaps eighteen pence a gallon – more than fifty quid a week, which is money and worth chasing for the tax that ain’t paid. Of course, what happens is that the Revenue Men get hold of the chap’s warehouse and sell everything off themselves, pocketing the l
ot. Nothing of that size and worth bothering with, not out here.”

  Sam nodded – if he was to produce on a large scale he must pay off the Revenue Men.

  He stood to one side in the barn as Abe set the cracker to work. It was very similar to a mangle such as his mother had used on washing day. There was a wooden hopper on top of a pair of millstone rollers, a big handle to turn them. The barley was dropped into the top, fell through the slots in the bottom of the hopper and was broken up by the rollers, set so that they did not pulverise the grain into powder. It was tedious labour and Sam took his turn on the handle.

  “Soon as we got enough, Sam, we tucks the sacks up high, where the rats can’t get into them. Then we gets the still out from the back, behind the hay.”

  The pot still was covered over with fresh hay, not a thick layer, just sufficient to show willing so that a casual passer-by would see nothing. There was a second pot by its side.

  Abe had built a stone furnace to take the charcoal fire, with a strong stone lip to rest the still on. He lifted one of the copper pots and set it carefully level in its proper position. It was much the same size as the copper used for the washing, need not seem too much out of place, unless the observer knew what he was looking for.

  “Start off in the morning, Sam, with heating up a half pot of water. Got to have warm water to start with – not too ‘ot. Getting the heat right is what makes all the difference, Sam. When we got hot water, we lifts this pot off and puts the still on. Part fills it with cracked barley – I’ll show you just how many measures – and then steeps it in the warm water. Stir it and watch it till it’s right for colour, then throw in the malt and a bit of yeast and a few ounces of sugar and stir it some more till it gets to working. Then we puts the lid on top.”