The Last Days (27 page)

Barrack Street was thronging with uniformed soldiers and armed police dressed in dark green. It was also crowded with slow-moving traffic. The sound of horses and carts rattling over the uneven cobbles was drowned only by the excited chatter of a thousand conversations; shopkeepers told their customers in hushed tones about the shooting; road sweepers swapped embellished tales of murder with anyone who cared to listen. Everyone was nonplussed and excited by the news of Arnold’s death. The question that most people seemed to be asking was: had the mill owner been killed by papists? If nothing else, the shooting promised to further spice up an occasion already made fraught by Catholic emancipation.

Disguised as a mill labourer, Pyke moved carefully but unhindered through the crowds. At his heel, the dog panted with excitement. Megan had left by the time he awoke. He found the clothes next to him. Briefly he wondered whether she would be angered by the money from the card game that he had left for her, and whether he had done so in order to appease his own guilt.

While he ate his breakfast, an undistinguished meat pie, he watched as an older man wrapped a leather grip around one end of a four-foot brickbat. Alongside him, soldiers, shopkeepers and ruffians mixed uneasily on the narrow pavements. The cobbled street was awash with manure. From hand-held barrows, vendors sold fruit and fresh fish.

At the end of Barrack Street, Pyke turned on to Durham Place and the neighbourhood deteriorated further. Pigs, sheep and goats roamed freely in and out of brick terraces, whose makeshift windows were constructed from hessian sacks. Underfoot, the track itself was flooded with human effluvia and water that had broken the banks of the nearby river. The whole area seemed to be ripe for a cholera epidemic. From gloomy doorways, men and women dressed in ragged clothes stared at him without smiling and talked to one another in hushed voices.

The previous night, Megan had told him Sandy Row was so called because, at one time, the tidal waters of the Lagan had met the fresh waters of the Blackstaff to form a small sandy cove where mill workers had once washed their clothes. In the cold light of day, however, it was hard to detect any such cove. The area surrounding the river was boggy: an unclaimed scrub of land between two warring communities. A few slovenly thatched cottages hovered in the shadows of the giant linen mill. Farther back along the road, a group of mill workers attacked an unarmed coal carrier. A soldier looked on without interest, making no effort to intervene, even when the coal carrier fell to the ground clutching his knife-wounded belly.

Ahead of him, on the other side of the bridge, he could see more terraced houses. A crowd had gathered outside one of the terraces and someone was addressing them from a first-floor window. Pyke could not hear what was being said, but many in the crowd were supporting orange banners, fringed with gold lace. He decided to hold back, to allow the mob to disperse or go about its business. Eventually, after much whooping and pistol-firing, the crowd began to shuffle off in the opposite direction. At his feet, even the small dog seemed chastened by the whiff of violence.

On the other side of the river, he stopped a woman and asked whether this was Sandy Row. ‘Depends on who’s askin’,’ she said, with ill-concealed suspicion. Pyke enquired whether she knew which one the Magennis house was, but she ignored the question and disappeared into her front room. Others were similarly obstructive. It was only when the dog befriended a young girl that his luck turned. While the girl patted the dog’s head, and the dog wagged its little tail, she said, ‘Second house on the right, before the road takes youse up to Grimshaw’s mill.’ Pyke thanked her and handed her a shilling coin.

The house the young girl had identified was typically bleak. It was a small edifice with soiled walls. Its windows were sealed up with paper. The door was open and Pyke stepped into the hallway. ‘Hello?’ He dug into his pocket and felt the reassuring touch of the pistol. It took him a few moments to readjust to the darkness. In front of him, the staircase rose precariously to the upper floor; all the balustrades had been used for firewood. He entered the front room. There, a barefooted old woman tended to a young baby. In the back room, Pyke heard the clink of pots, and a voice shout, ‘Who is it?’ A younger woman, wearing a dirty cotton dress, joined them at the front door. She formed a protective barrier in front of the baby.

‘I was looking for Davy.’

‘An’ who are ye?’ the old woman said, staring at him through grizzled eyes. Her white hair was tied up in a bonnet. In her arms, the baby was crying.

‘A friend,’ he said, without conviction.

‘Oh aye, sure ye are.’

Finding her voice, the young woman said, ‘Aye, the big man’s gone, mister.’ She was a small woman with pale, freckled skin and curly red hair.

‘Ann,’ the older woman snapped.

‘Wha’? We don’t know where he’s away to, Mam.’

‘But he was here?’

‘Aye,’ the older woman said, still suspicious. ‘Left about a week ago, so he did.’

‘Why did he leave?’

The old woman studied him carefully. ‘Ask a lot of questions, don’t ye?’

‘I think he might be in danger.’

The young woman shrugged. ‘Big man just said something about the grim reaper comin’ for him.’ She looked across at her mother. ‘Mind, he’d been in an odd way, the whole time he was stayin’ here. Wouldn’t sleep inside. Said he was happy with the yard out back. He didn’t show much interest in food and no interest in going to work, even though da fixed him up with a job in the mill. See, my da and his are brothers. Didn’t know what Davy did with his days until one of the lasses followed him to the church on Fisherwick Place.’

‘A church? What was he doing in a church?’ Pyke asked, certain now the women were telling the truth.

‘Prayin’,’ the older woman said, staring at him. ‘What else do ye do in a church?’ When Pyke didn’t answer, she continued, ‘Davy done something wrong, then?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘You’re not here to shake him by the hand, are ye?’

‘Davy say anything about his time in London?’

This time it was the older woman’s turn to frown. ‘The big man was in London?’

‘He went there to find his brother, Stephen.’

Briefly the two women exchanged looks but neither of them said a word.

As he watched their reactions, he thought about the two brothers, Stephen and Davy, and the nature of their relationship. Was it possible that Davy could have killed his own brother? And how, if at all, did that profit Tilling, and therefore Peel?

Pyke felt he had overlooked something that might bring the whole affair into focus.

‘We’re just poor workin’ folk, mister, but we’re honest and God-fearing, so we are. The men are out there marchin’ ’cos we’re proud to be Protestant but none of us care much for violence, and that’s the truth. It ain’t our fault the papists want to drive us from our homes and run us off the island.’

Focusing his attention on the younger woman, Pyke asked, ‘Was Stephen your cousin?’

Before her mother could intervene, the woman had nodded. She was shaking a little.

‘You do know that Stephen was murdered? And that he had just had a baby himself? Look at your own baby. Could you imagine doing that? Throttling its tiny throat with your bare hands . . .’

The older woman stepped in between them, to shield her daughter from Pyke. ‘I think you should be leavin’.’

‘You know whereabouts Davy might have gone?’

The old woman crossed her arms and stared at him. ‘Who shall I tell the menfolk was askin’ after the big man?’

 

It was a clear night with a full moon and from his vantage point on the far side of the Ormeau bridge the town might have looked almost peaceful, silhouetted against the dark shadows of the hills, had it not been for the numerous fires, whose reflections shimmered brightly on the glassy surface of the river. He was too far removed from the town to hear the sound of clashing rioters but occasional gunpowder blasts and musket shots skimmed across the water and illuminated the night sky. Pyke was glad of the disturbances because they distracted soldiers and police from their search for him. That said, earlier in the day he had taken no satisfaction from what he had seen: a mob of young Catholic men carrying muskets and pitchforks, rampaging down a narrow residential street and sacking the houses, regardless of who was inside them, dragging mattresses out and setting light to them.

Behind him, in the opposite direction, he turned his attention back to the imposing, Tudor-style house in the far distance, with its faux-crenellated walls and grand spires, and then to the stables, which were much closer, a few hundred yards across well-maintained grounds.

Having locked the dog inside a disused building on the other side of the river, Pyke was now alone. He had been informed that the house, and especially the stables, which belonged to the marquess of Donegal, would furnish him with what he required.

Skirting around the lodge, which occupied a prominent place at the front of the stables, using the moonlight to guide him, Pyke negotiated his passage across a small courtyard and slipped into a much larger courtyard around which individual stables were arranged. He could, of course, have taken any of the horses at gunpoint but, more than anything else, he did not want to raise the alarm and be forced into a position where soldiers on horseback chased after him in direct pursuit. It was important the theft went unnoticed until at least the following morning.

The animal he finally selected did not appear to be too bothered by Pyke’s presence in his stable. He was a large black horse with a long mane. Pyke approached the beast carefully, maintaining eye contact throughout, and went to pat its nose. He had done so countless times while he had served on the Bow Street horse patrol. The animal whinnied slightly but did not seem to mind his touch. Taking care not to make any sudden movements, Pyke set to work, fixing a saddle and reins, which he had discovered in a cupboard at the back of the room, on the seemingly pliant horse. He had almost completed this task when he heard what sounded like two men on the other side of the courtyard but apparently heading in his direction. There was no chance of making a break for it, which meant he would have to hide in the stables and wait for them to pass.

As he went to close the door, he felt something brush against his leg.

Instantly the horse was aroused. Pyke pulled on its reins, attempting to bring it under control, but the powerful beast broke free from his grip and reared upwards, baring its gums as it whinnied. Then he heard a timid yap and saw the dog, its deformed tail wagging with obvious delight. Letting go of the reins, Pyke fell on top of the dog and seized its small head with his arms and hands. Now sitting on the straw-covered ground, he clamped the dog’s jaws closed with his hands and listened out for the two voices. The horse seemed placated and shook its head a few times, neighing without much animosity. In spite of its size, however, the small dog was a determined, muscular creature and squirmed almost uncontrollably in his vice-like grip. At one point, Pyke lost control of the dog’s mouth and it issued forth a terrorised yap, though the sound was perhaps not loud enough to alert the two stable hands, who had come to a stop in the middle of the courtyard. Still, Pyke could no longer risk being exposed and made his decision. Holding the dog’s snarling jaws tightly shut with one hand, he took the animal’s neck with the other, clamping its body with his shoulders, and squeezed it as hard as he could. The little dog fought him in unadulterated terror for what seemed like minutes, squirming in his arms, but Pyke’s hold on its neck did not relent and finally, with a sickening gurgle that seemed to emanate from the pit of the poor dog’s stomach, its taut frame went limp and the struggle was over.

It was only then that the voices from outside began to recede into the distance. A little shocked, Pyke laid the dead animal on the ground and covered it in straw. It had defecated on him: a hopeless final act before dying.

Later, once Pyke had led the now amenable black horse from the stables and mounted it, using moonlight to guide his boots into the stirrups, he took a few moments to arrange himself in the saddle, and then kicked the heels of his boots into the horse’s midriff and steadied himself as the beast surged forward, carrying him into the darkness of the marquess’s estate.

He’d liked that little dog, Pyke thought without joy, as he took up the reins and steered the horse away from the main house.

SEVENTEEN

T
hough the sun had been up for almost three hours, the air was still cool - it smelt of burning wood and freshly cut hay - and the dew-covered ground shimmered like a dazzling carpet of precious cut stones. It was attractive country, Pyke thought, as he looked down on the tiny hamlet from his vantage point on ground that rose gently up from the Blackwater river. In one direction, four miles away through estate land and orchards and beyond sporadic dwellings linked by hedge-lined tracks, was the village of Loughgall. In the other direction, the hills fell away gradually towards an expansive lough. The small valley below him was dotted with beech, ash and sycamore trees.

He had ridden for three hours the previous night, stopping to rest only when the terrain had become too marshy to negotiate in the fading moonlight. Sleeping fitfully on the floor of an abandoned cottage, Pyke had resumed his journey at first light and it had taken him a further two hours of hard riding to reach Loughgall, and from there, following directions given to him by a passing farmer, another hour to find the hamlet where the Magennis family lived.

The hamlet itself, straddling a junction between two tracks, consisted of seven mud-walled cottages roofed with straw thatches. From what he had been told by the farmer, the Magennis family occupied the farthest dwelling from the crossroads. In the centre of the hamlet was old Dan Winters’ pub. The farmer had said this as though he would know exactly who ‘old Dan Winters’ was.