Bloody Winter: A Pyke Mystery (22 page)

‘Will you be on duty for the rest of the day?’

Startled by the change in Pyke’s tone, the clerk took a moment to answer. ‘Yes … yes, I will.’

‘All day?’

‘All day.’

‘My son Felix may turn up here looking for me. If he does, I
wonder if you could keep him here and send word for me up at the Castle.’

The clerk gave him a bemused nod. ‘That shouldn’t be a problem, sir.’

Pyke thrust a silver coin into the man’s reluctant hand. ‘Write me a note, to be opened only by me. Please don’t just pass on a verbal message.’

Just to be on the safe side, he didn’t want anyone at the castle to know Felix was visiting him. He didn’t yet know who were his friends, and who were his enemies.

At the railway station Pyke was told there was just one service from Cardiff and it would arrive at four in the afternoon. He was now looking forward to Felix’s visit. He hadn’t been aware of how much he missed home until he’d received the letter. He missed the comfortable feel of their house, its smell, the presence of his three-legged mastiff, now almost fifteen and blind in one eye. He missed drinking wine in his armchair, pulled up close to the fire. He missed his son, too, but Felix had been gone for a while.

What kind of home, he wondered as he entered the Castle, had this been for Cathy and her son? He didn’t imagine it had been a happy one. As he crossed the hall, he remembered his dream from the previous night. Frederick Shaw had been in it. Felix as well. Something terrible had happened, but he couldn’t remember what. He’d woken before dawn, his back bathed in sweat. The room still smelled of Cathy, of what they had done.

But Cathy wasn’t waiting for him now. Instead Jonah Hancock appeared from the library and beckoned him over. The ironmaster’s face was full of fury and Pyke feared the worst.

There was a newspaper laid out on the table. The
Merthyr Chronicle
– the town’s other newspaper. Without speaking, Jonah pointed at the report in the far left-hand column.
Riot in Merthyr
.

It described the events of Friday afternoon – the door-to-door search by the town’s constabulary. It reported that there had been minor disturbances and, right at the end of the piece, it speculated that the police had been searching for a missing child. It didn’t mention the Hancocks by name, nor did it say that the child belonged to one of the town’s eminent families.

‘I can see why you’re angry but there’s no mention of your family or William here. No one will think to connect this to you.’

‘No?’ Jonah Hancock scrunched the newspaper into a ball and hurled it across the room. ‘The fewer people who know what’s happened to William, the safer he will be. That’s what you said.’

Pyke watched the blood rise in the ironmaster’s face.

‘Think about it. There’s no way the newspaper could have found out about the exact reason for the search,’ Pyke said, hoping to placate Hancock. ‘But this is a small community and I’m afraid that word of what’s happened to your son is bound to spread sooner or later. Can you be
absolutely
certain that none of the servants has mentioned that William is missing to a friend or family member?’

Hancock told him that the household staff had all been sworn to secrecy, although he seemed to know as well as Pyke that people were bound to gossip.

Pyke looked at the shelves stacked high with books and wondered how many of them the ironmaster had actually read. It struck him, too, that no one had told him very much about William. No one had talked about what kind of a lad he was, what he liked to do, what made him laugh, what made him cry. Pyke tried to remember Felix at the same age. What had
they
talked about? Felix had always been a warm-hearted boy but Pyke hadn’t been an especially attentive father.

‘By the way, I was wondering whether you’d managed to locate my son’s former nursemaid,’ Jonah Hancock said.

‘You mean, as a possible suspect?’

The ironmaster shrugged.

‘I put this point to your wife. She assured me it would be impossible as Maggie Atkins has found work far away from here.’

Hancock gave him a look he couldn’t quite interpret. ‘Since you’re here, we should go to my study to discuss arrangements for tomorrow.’

Pyke followed him back through the entrance hall and along a wide passageway to a large oak-panelled room at the back of the Castle. There, Jonah Hancock unlocked the door of a safe, built into the wall. Reaching inside, he scooped up a large cloth sack, then turned around and emptied its contents on to the desk. There was, he said, a thousand pounds in coins and nineteen thousand in Bank of England notes. He urged Pyke to count it.

Pyke stared at the pile of gold coins and the neat stacks of notes held together with string. ‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary.’

Hancock stood beside the desk, his hands resting on the edge. ‘In my original letter I promised you a certain fee.’

‘We can talk about that when your son is returned to you safe and well.’

Hancock returned to the safe and took out a much thinner stack of banknotes, then slid them across the desk. ‘A thousand, just as I promised.’

Pyke stared at Hancock. ‘I wouldn’t usually expect to be paid until my work was finished.’

‘Take it.’ The ironmaster ran his hand through his hair and made an effort to smile. ‘I’m happy with what you’ve done.’

Pyke let his fingers rest on top of the stack of notes. ‘But what if, heaven forbid, something were to go wrong tomorrow?’

Hancock was gathering up the twenty thousand and putting it back into the cloth sack. ‘I think it’s best I settle my debt now, don’t you? If something bad were to take place, and I hope and pray for all our sakes that it doesn’t, I’m not sure that doing so would be foremost in my mind.’

Pyke loitered in the entrance hall as long as possible, waiting for Cathy to return, but eventually he set off down the driveway, hoping to stop off at the station-house before meeting the four o’clock train from Cardiff.

He saw the man – a priest, in fact – waiting outside the gates, but as he hurried by, a voice called out, ‘Detective-inspector Pyke?’

The man had grey hair, a round face and a ruddy complexion. He was wearing a long black cassock and a miniature wooden cross dangled from a gold chain around his neck. He introduced himself as Father Carroll and explained he was parish priest at the Catholic chapel in Dowlais.

‘How can I help you, Father?’ Pyke glanced up at the clouds gathering above them and felt a spit of rain on his face.

‘I wanted to talk to you about the disturbances the other day in Bathesda Gardens and Quarry Row.’

‘Oh yes?’ Pyke decided not to say anything more. He wanted to find out what the priest knew.

‘I read in the newspaper that the police were searching for a missing child.’ Father Carroll turned and looked up at the Castle. ‘I also heard a rumour that it was the Hancock boy who was missing.’ He spoke in a soft brogue.

‘Who told you this?’

‘So it’s true, then? The Hancock boy has been taken?’

‘I didn’t say that. I just asked who had relayed this information to you.’

The priest looked away and shook his head. ‘I can’t exactly say. It’s just a rumour I heard. The point is, I was told you were lookin’ into the matter and I felt it was my duty to reassure you that no right-thinkin’ Irishman would attempt such a stupid thing.’

‘Perhaps I could ask who told you I was looking into the matter?’ Pyke searched the priest’s face.

‘That would be Sir Josiah Webb, sir,’ he said, without hesitation. ‘In fact, he was the one who suggested I come and talk to you.’

Pyke digested this information. Webb owned the Morlais ironworks.

‘I see. Then can I assume Sir Josiah shares your thinking and your concerns on this subject?’

‘I’d say so, but for different reasons.’

‘Go on,’ Pyke said. He had a quick look at his pocket watch. It was already a quarter past two.

‘You’d be amazed how quick a disturbance like that can spread. Last night the windows of the Catholic chapel were smashed.’

Pyke stared at him, trying to work out how the two events were related.

Father Carroll must have seen his confusion. ‘Maybe you don’t know how uneasy things are at the moment between the Irish and the Welsh, sir. You not being from around here.’

‘And you suspect that what happened to your chapel was retaliation for … ?’

‘Welsh folk don’t much care for the Irish. Mostly I’d say they’re afraid we’ll take their jobs.’ He looked up at the rain clouds. ‘Relations haven’t been good these last few years, and, well, if the locals thought some Irishmen had kidnapped a little boy, they’d do something about it.’

Pyke looked at the priest, interested now. ‘And that’s why you think your windows were smashed?’

The priest sighed. ‘No one gains when something like this happens; when Irish and Welsh folk fight among themselves. That’s what Sir Josiah said, too. And that’s why he’s worried. If the fighting spills over into the works, well, it wouldn’t be good for business.’

Now Pyke understood why Father Carroll had been summoned to see Webb, and why Webb had sent him here. Both men wanted to make it clear that no Irish gang would do something as stupid or desperate as seize the Hancock boy.

‘I’m afraid I have to go, Father. I have an appointment in town.’ Pyke had another look at his watch. ‘But I’m pleased you came and I promise to treat what you told me with the utmost seriousness.’

But as he went to leave, the priest reached out and grabbed one of his wrists. ‘Mark my words, this whole town is ready to go up in flames, and it will, if people like you let it happen.’

Pyke found the clerk in the storeroom of the station-house and reminded him about Felix’s arrival. On the front steps of the building he ran into Sir Clancy Smyth, who was swaddled in a greatcoat, muffler, top hat and gloves.

The chief magistrate greeted Pyke warmly, in spite of their fractious encounter the day before. ‘I was informed your son is expected here at some point today. We’ll make him quite welcome, of course,’ he added.

Pyke had hoped to keep news of Felix’s visit secret but the clerk had clearly informed Sir Clancy.

‘But I do have some worrying news – about our mutual friend John Johns.’ He rubbed his hands together and watched Pyke’s reaction. ‘According to witnesses, he was set upon by a gang of ruffians at the top end of High Street. They dragged him into one of the alleyways. I’ve had my men out looking for him ever since but they’ve found nothing.’

‘Are they sure it was Johns?’

‘He’s a tall man and well known around here. One of the witnesses was quite sure of it.’ Smyth looked up and down the street. ‘I was wondering whether he said anything to you – whether he knew of anyone who would want to attack him?’

Pyke’s thoughts turned immediately to what they had done to John Wylde, but they had both been disguised. Still, Johns
was
a tall man and perhaps someone in the beer shop had recognised him.

Pyke raised his eyes to meet the magistrate’s. ‘No, I’m afraid not. Johns kept his thoughts to himself.’

Smyth nodded. ‘It’s just I regard John not simply as an acquaintance but also a friend. I’d like to think he’s safe.’

Pyke tried to remember what, if anything, Johns had said about Smyth, and wondered whether their mutual dislike of the Hancocks explained their friendship.

‘There are hundreds, if not thousands, of my countrymen here in Merthyr but I’ve only ever talked about the old country with him. You know he came from the same county as I did?’

‘He told me. Left at seventeen.’

‘To join the army.’ Smyth blew on his hands to warm them. ‘Both of us Tipperary men. Protestants in a Catholic country.’

‘I’ll have a look for him.’

‘I’d appreciate that.’ Smyth’s smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. ‘One of the witnesses thought the men who’d attacked him were part of a China mob.’

If Pyke’s expression revealed anything, it would have been only for a few seconds, but Smyth was watching him carefully.

‘What business did Johns have in China?’

‘I don’t know, Detective-inspector.’ Smyth moved off down the stone steps and added, almost as an afterthought, ‘That’s why I asked whether he’d said anything to you.’

When Pyke went looking for John Wylde in China, he found that the Boot beer shop had been set upon with sledgehammers and crowbars. There was nothing left of it and no one wanted to talk about what had happened. Pyke had watched, for a moment, while a hawker tried to push his barrow through knee-deep mud and caught sight of a man, trousers around his ankles, fucking a woman against a brick wall. Across the alleyway, another man had collapsed and was muttering to himself, too drunk to stop a boy from emptying his pockets. A stray pig stopped briefly next to the inebriated man, sniffed him, and moved on.

By the time he made it back to the railway station in lower
Merthyr, it was almost four and the platform had started to fill up with people waiting to greet the service from Cardiff. Compared to the giant concourse at Paddington, the station was a drab, squalid affair, with a low ceiling, built from wood rather than iron. Pyke took a moment to think about what might happen when he brought the suitcase the following morning. He looked for the entrances, the nooks and crannies where people might be able to hide, the food stalls, the ticket office, and where the porters liked to stand.

At about five minutes past four, the train appeared around the bend, steam billowing from its engine. It chugged slowly into the station, coming to a halt with a violent hiss. The doors opened and the first passengers stepped down on to the platform. Pyke scrutinised the faces as they appeared through the mist. There was a man wearing a fustian jacket carrying his own suitcase; a woman dressed in a crinoline leading a porter who was struggling with a large chest. More passengers emerged: Pyke watched as an older man wearing a shooting jacket and billycock hat embraced a younger woman, perhaps his daughter. A young man stepped down from the first-class carriage and Pyke thought for a moment it might be Felix. He went to greet him but soon realised that the man looked nothing like his son.