Bloody Winter: A Pyke Mystery Read online

  ‘My name’s Detective-inspector Pyke. I’m from Scotland Yard in London.’ He turned cautiously to face his interlocutor. ‘I’m looking for John Johns. I was told by Sir Clancy Smyth that I’d find him here.’

  ‘What’s your business?’ The man took a step away from the trees, still holding the rifle.

  ‘I need someone to translate for me, someone who speaks English and Welsh.’ Pyke paused, trying to decide whether he should be honest with Johns from the start.

  The man holding the rifle was a head taller than he was, with broad shoulders and a muscular frame. He was about Pyke’s age, wore gentleman’s clothes and had thick, black hair that reached almost as far as his shoulders.

  ‘Are you Johns?’

  The man unbolted his rifle and let it fall to his side. ‘Aye.’ He took a couple of steps towards Pyke. ‘You said Smyth gave you my name?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Johns held out his hand and waited for Pyke to shake it. ‘Smyth’s a decent sort. They’re a rare breed in Merthyr.’

  Pyke tried to place his accent. He didn’t sound Welsh but he didn’t sound English, either.

  ‘So what brings you all the way from London?’

  ‘A child has been kidnapped.’ Pyke tried to assess whether this was news to Johns or not. Merthyr was a small town and some of the servants at the Castle could easily have told their family and friends.

  Johns stared at him, his reaction giving nothing away. ‘Aye, the Hancock boy.’

  ‘So you know.’

  ‘Clearly.’

  ‘You heard who might have taken him?’

  ‘I heard the Hancocks believe it might be some radicals, folks from the Bull perhaps.’

  Pyke tried not to show his surprise. Johns’ source of information was as good as his was. ‘You don’t think so?’

  Johns turned his attention back to the rifle at his side. ‘Far as I know, the Bull haven’t been active in this part of the world for a few years now, certainly not in Merthyr itself.’

  ‘I heard they were still organising in the mining villages farther up the valley.’

  ‘It might make folk feel good about themselves, to blacken their faces and dress up in cow hides, but as far as serious political agitation is concerned, the Bull is a spent force.’

  ‘Then why would someone want to make it seem as if they’re involved?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ Johns looked up the hill to the farther hut.

  Pyke sensed there was something he wasn’t saying. ‘I’ve heard the Hancocks aren’t the most beloved employers in town.’

  The skin above Johns’ nose was knotted into a frown. ‘A few years ago there was a strike at the Caedraw ironworks. It got nasty for a while. Perhaps you’ve already met Jonah Hancock? To keep the furnaces burning, he shipped over hundreds of workers from Ireland. That made the natives angry. They tried to picket the works. When that didn’t work, they broke into the one of the buildings, barricaded themselves inside – a hundred men in total. Jonah Hancock decided to enlist the help of some men who wouldn’t be afraid to crack a few skulls. There’s a bully in China called John Wylde, calls himself the Emperor. Wylde and his men stormed into the building and battered the strikers with pick handles and brickbats. None of the strikers was killed but they didn’t walk out of that building on their own two feet. The police stood by and let all of this happen. Hancock played his hand beautifully. The strikers had to grovel to get their jobs back, and he rewarded them with a massive cut to their wages.’

  ‘And Wylde?’

  ‘He’s pretty much allowed to do what he likes. Now he owns all of the prostitutes in China.’

  ‘So feelings ran high and a few heads were cracked. But would a veteran of that strike really have done something like snatch Hancock’s child in broad daylight?’

  ‘I don’t know, I wasn’t involved.’

  Pyke sensed that Johns was still holding back. ‘But you know some people who were?’

  ‘You could ask in the Three Horse Shoes. That’s where the Chartists and trade unionists have always gathered.’

  ‘We could go there now, if you aren’t busy? I could pay you a couple of pounds.’

  Johns’ gaze drifted again. Then he let out a deep sigh. ‘Look, I appreciate the offer, really I do, and I could always use some additional money, but I don’t want to get involved in anything that’s going to put me at odds with the people of the town. I don’t know how much Smyth has told you about my background but it’s taken me a long time to earn the trust of the kind of folk who frequent the Three Horse Shoes.’

  ‘He just told me you used to be a soldier.’

  Johns watched a bird soar up into the gloomy sky. ‘Does Newport and the forty-fifth regiment mean anything to you?’

  ‘Wasn’t there a disturbance there a few years ago?’

  That made him smile. ‘A disturbance? You could call it that. Folk around here call it a rising. Our regiment was the last line of defence, stationed inside the Westgate Hotel. When the mob tried to storm it, I shot and killed two men.’

  Pyke could see the pain in the former soldier’s eyes. ‘You were only following orders. I do the same.’

  ‘That may well be true but no one apart from me pulled that trigger. I’ll always have it on my conscience.’

  Pyke thought about Frederick Shaw and all the other men he’d killed. In that moment he felt he could trust John Johns a little more. ‘I’d like to pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You’ve killed men in the line of duty?’ Johns looked searchingly into his face.

  Pyke just shrugged.

  Finally Johns said, ‘You’re wondering why I decided to settle here? Why I didn’t go somewhere else, start afresh?’

  ‘I’ve never left London.’

  ‘Guess who gave us the order to fire on the mob?’ Johns looked out across the valley.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Zephaniah Hancock. At the time he described the protesters as vermin. I don’t imagine his opinions have changed very much.’

  The Three Horse Shoes pub was situated on the east side of Market Square in the town centre. It occupied the ground floor of a stout, red-brick building with the taproom at the front and a private room to the rear. Johns accompanied Pyke into the taproom and made at once for Bill Flint, the Chartist Pyke had met on the train up from Cardiff. When it became clear that no introduction was necessary – and that he wasn’t needed to translate – Johns went to join another man at the back of the shabby room.

  Flint was wearing a blue-checked woollen shirt, open at the throat, canvas trousers, wooden-soled shoes and a red handkerchief tied around his neck. On the train, Pyke had let the man believe he was a journalist, intending to write a piece on the town in light of Thomas Carlyle’s description of it as the dirtiest place in the kingdom. Now Flint’s guard was up and he wanted to know how Pyke knew Johns.

  ‘I’m paying him to translate for me. He was recommended to me by Sir Clancy Smyth, the chief magistrate.’

  Flint leant against the counter and called out to the barmaid. Pyke noticed that one side of her face was so badly scarred that her skin had turned black.

  ‘Want to know how it happened?’ Flint whispered. ‘Once upon a time she worked for a man called John Wylde.’

  ‘The bully in China?’

  ‘I see you’ve been getting to know the place,’ Flint said, nodding.

  ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘Wylde runs all of the brothels in China. Meredith was one of his women. That is, until he found out that she was sleeping with his rival, Benjamin Griffiths. He poured hot oil down one side of her face and had one of his men hold her down while he whipped her with a cat-o’-nine-tails. Wylde did it to her in the street, in broad daylight, in view of a hundred witnesses. I suppose that was the point. To humiliate her publicly and show off his power.’

  Pyke waited for the woman to serve him his ale and left a few coins on the counter to
pay for it. ‘I take it Wylde was never prosecuted,’ he said, turning back to Flint.

  The Chartist nodded vigorously. Before he could respond, Pyke added, ‘I also heard Wylde and some of his men were responsible for breaking the strike at Caedraw a few years ago.’

  Flint glanced nervously at the other drinkers. ‘I wasn’t there but I’m told there were forty of ’em, armed to the teeth with picks, coshes, machetes, brickbats, knives, whatever they could lay their hands on. Bobbies didn’t lift a finger.’

  ‘And now Wylde can do as he likes?’

  ‘As long as he does as he’s told.’ Flint lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Now, every time we have a meeting, and word gets back to the Hancocks, Wylde and his bullies show up and try to put a stop to it.’

  ‘It can’t make Jonah Hancock a popular man in these parts.’

  Flint shook his head. ‘Actually he is popular at the moment. Wages have never been higher and jobs are plentiful. Merthyr’s booming and there’s no appetite for a strike.’

  ‘But among certain people – let’s say those hurt by Wylde or one of his men – there must be some desire for retribution.’

  ‘Retribution?’ Flint shuffled a little closer to him. ‘Let me explain something to you. We might complain bitterly about men like Hancock and Josiah Webb, promise to bring them to their knees, but if they were to walk in here right now, you wouldn’t hear a single word of dissent. You have no idea of the power they wield over us.’

  Pyke thought about what he’d been told and decided to push Flint a little harder. ‘So what if I were to tell you that someone has committed a crime against the Hancock family?’

  Flint’s expression became suspicious and his body stiffened. ‘You’re not a journalist, are you?’

  ‘I’m a police detective from London,’ Pyke whispered. ‘I just want to know whether anyone you know has decided to take matters into their own hands.’

  Flint’s expression hardened. ‘I don’t think I should say anything else to you, at least not in here.’ His bloodshot eyes glittered in the gaslight.

  He followed Pyke outside. ‘So have the Hancocks actually accused us of something?’ Flint sounded both angry and curious.

  Pyke looked around and wondered whether Johns had seen them leave.

  ‘If he has,’ Flint said, ‘ask yourself one thing: how does it serve his own ends? That’s the only thing that matters to men like Hancock. Because whatever he claims we’ve done, he’ll use it as an excuse to come after us.’

  Pyke considered this. ‘I want to talk to someone who was there at the works during the strike. Someone who’s still there. Someone on your side.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to know what’s going on at the ironworks. What the mood of the workers is right now.’

  Flint considered the request. ‘John Evans. He was a furnace-man; now he’s training to be a puddler. If you put a straight question to him, he’ll give you a straight answer.’

  Pyke watched as Flint stumbled back into the taproom then went to join Johns, who had appeared from another door.

  ‘Well?’ Johns fell in next to him and they walked a few yards in silence.

  ‘Jonah Hancock isn’t the most popular figure in the Three Horse Shoes. Nor is John Wylde. But I’m pretty sure Flint didn’t know anything about the Hancock boy.’ Pyke let a drunken reveller barge past them. ‘Isn’t it about time you told me how you know about the kidnapping?’

  Johns looked directly at him and said, ‘Cathy Hancock is a friend of mine.’

  Pyke tried to cover his surprise but he didn’t do a good job of it. The fact that Johns would openly describe Cathy as his friend seemed – given their differing social stations – a breach of decorum. Either he felt he had no choice but to reveal their friendship or he didn’t care what Pyke thought. Pyke wanted to ask how good a friend Cathy was but he knew Johns wouldn’t elaborate. Instead, he turned his thoughts back to his conversation with Flint.

  ‘Bill Flint said something interesting. Made it seem like the Hancocks might use this situation as an excuse to clamp down on dissent at the ironworks.’

  Johns dug his hands into his pockets. ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘I don’t know … Would you put it past the Hancocks to arrange the kidnapping, and then use it as an excuse to come down hard on whoever is suspected?’

  Johns didn’t have an answer but Pyke could see he’d struck some kind of nerve.

  When he returned to the Castle, Pyke found Cathy Hancock taking tea on her own in the drawing room. Her blonde hair had been arranged into ringlets and she was wearing an elaborately brocaded pink silk dress with puffed sleeves and a waist gathered in by a whale-boned corset. She looked like she was there to ornament what was an otherwise masculine room. The paintings on the walls were of unsmiling old men and a pair of deer antlers hung to one side of the fireplace. When Cathy saw Pyke, she sat up straighter and smiled; a display of politeness rather than an indication of intimacy.

  ‘Detective-inspector,’ she said, taking care to avert her eyes from his. ‘I believe you wanted to ask me some questions.’

  Pyke sat down in the armchair nearest to her and whispered, ‘Last night, why did you tell me I shouldn’t have come?’

  ‘Did I?’ She lifted her blue eyes to his and smiled, two dimples appearing at the sides of her mouth. ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember.’

  Pyke tried to find some indication of the person – the girl – he’d once known. ‘You must have had a reason for saying it – even if you don’t remember speaking the words.’

  ‘This last week has been a stressful time for me. I’m sure you can understand.’ She pulled a dainty woollen shawl over her shoulders.

  ‘Quite so.’ Pyke removed a notepad and a piece of charcoal from his pocket. ‘Perhaps you could tell me what happened last week. I believe that you and William were returning from the cemetery at Vaynor.’

  She nodded carefully. ‘My husband and I had a daughter, Mary. She died two years ago. Every week I go there with my son to put flowers on her grave.’

  ‘And your carriage was ambushed on the road back into town. You remember how many of them there were?’

  She bit her lip gingerly. ‘Four, I think. One of them held me down while another one snatched William.’

  ‘Do you remember anything about the man who held you down?’

  Cathy inspected her gloved hands. ‘He was dirty – that much I do remember. His breath smelled of beer. He’d tied a handkerchief around his face, to hide his features, but I could see he had a beard and two small, quick eyes.’ Until this point she hadn’t displayed a modicum of sentiment but now her top lip began to tremble. ‘It was horrible, quite horrible. Just the thought of it makes me quiver with fear.’

  ‘I’ll do everything in my power to ensure your son is returned to his home safely.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Briefly she raised her head and Pyke felt that she was truly looking at him for the first time.

  ‘Am I to understand that my assistance was sought on your recommendation?’ He let his gaze linger on the whiteness of her neck.

  ‘Your ability as a detective is well known in this household. Therefore when this terrible thing happened, it was naturally to you that my husband wrote.’

  Pyke digested what Cathy had just told him, unsure what to make of it. It seemed to confirm what she had intimated the previous evening: that he was there at Jonah Hancock’s insistence, not hers.

  ‘Last night, your husband suggested I interview your son’s former nursemaid, a woman called Maggie Atkins. Apparently she left under a cloud. Do you think I should bother with her?’

  ‘Who … Maggie?’ Cathy tried to laugh but the tension in her voice was clear. ‘Not in a million years.’

  ‘Then why would your husband tell me she should be a suspect?’

  She looked down and fingered a frayed piece of lace on her dress.

  Pyke decided to try a different approach. ‘I met a friend of yours today
. A man called John Johns.’

  That was sufficient to puncture her façade. Her expression suddenly fell and she shot him a pleading look.

  Pyke’s eyes darted around the room, aware for the first time that someone might be listening to their conversation. He stood up quickly and stretched. ‘That will be all for now. In the meantime, I’d just like to repeat what I said earlier. We will do our best to ensure that you and your son are reunited.’

  As he went to leave, her eyes were moist and she mouthed a silent thank-you.

  Dinner was an awkward affair; Jonah Hancock at one end of the table and Cathy at the other. Pyke was sitting opposite Zephaniah, who had to be fed by one of the servants. When Jonah wasn’t speaking, the only sound in the cavernous dining room was the clinking of silver cutlery on bone china. Zephaniah didn’t say much but his eyes didn’t leave Pyke.

  ‘In this household, Detective-inspector, we’ve always been assiduously reminded of your abilities.’ Jonah looked directly at Cathy, whose stare remained fixed on the food on her plate, which she barely touched.

  It had been a petulant remark and once again Pyke thought about Zephaniah’s claim from the previous evening. My daughter-in-law has always carried a torch for you.

  After dinner, the three men retired to the library to have their brandies and cigars, and discuss Pyke’s plans for the rendezvous at the old quarry the next morning.

  ‘You’ll have to trust me to do my job. The letter instructed me to go there alone and so I will go there alone.’

  Some of Jonah’s bonhomie had returned and he nodded briskly. ‘A sensible decision, sir. You have the hundred pounds?’

  Pyke nodded. Zephaniah Hancock had given him the purse full of gold sovereigns before dinner.

  ‘Let’s just hope that tomorrow we’ll be clearer about the second letter and whether or not it was sent by my son’s kidnappers.’ With a cigar in hand, Jonah Hancock blew a smoke ring up into the air. He watched it rise and then dissolve.

  Zephaniah looked at Pyke and smiled, as though they shared a secret. ‘I would trust the detective-inspector with my own life, son. He will do as he sees fit and we will support him.’