The Last Days of Newgate - Andrew Pepper [43]
‘Gimme the money and I’ll tell you where you can find the Paddy girl. That’s what we agreed.’ Polly Masters crossed her forearms, as though to affirm the seriousness of her intent.
Pyke removed a ten-pound note from his pocket and held it out for her to see. ‘For now. You’ll get the rest if your information’s good.’
Polly’s frown deepened. ‘If I tell you what I ’eard, I ain’t gonna see you ’gain.’
‘And if I just give you the money and I don’t find this girl, I might not see you again.’
‘I got me business to run. Where am I going?’
‘What we have here is a failure of trust.’ He let the note fall from his fingers and flutter to the floor. They were standing in her drab office. Even though it was only ten in the morning, he could hear a man’s voice through the thin walls, grunting with desire.
As she bent over to retrieve the note, Pyke reached out and gathered up the skin around her neck and pulled her upright, ignoring her chokes and threats. Her plump fingers gripped the ten-pound note as though her life depended on it. He adjusted his one-handed grip around her neck and started to squeeze, and watched as her eyes filled with water and waited for her yells to subside to whimpers.
‘Listen to me, you old hag. You know where the girl is.
I want that information. I find the girl, I might contemplate giving you what I promised. You don’t give me that information right now, then I’ll kill you. Simple as that.’ He squeezed her neck a little harder and kept his stare hard and dry, like a hangman’s or one of the butchers’ who frequented his gin palace and told stories of disembowelling terrified cattle with three swift moves of the cleaver. He felt her limbs loosen, life draining from her.
He slackened his grip, to allow her to speak. He heard her fart. The stink filled up the office.
‘Jonathan Wild was strung up for less than what you do.
And people spat on his dead body.’ But there wasn’t any fight left in her.
He let go of her neck and wiped his hand clean with a handkerchief.
Sullen and beaten, Polly told him that the girl was hiding out at a small lavender farm owned by James Wren on the river at Isleworth.
‘Did you tell anyone else about this?’ He slapped her hard around the face with his open palm. She bit her lip and licked off the blood.
‘Answer me.’
‘No.’
‘You mention this to anyone and I’ll kill you. Do you understand?’
She stared at him, humiliated, but as Pyke left she didn’t once mention the forty pounds he owed her.
Sir Richard Fox’s private carriage, an old-fashioned wooden cab adorned on the inside with silk window curtains and velvet cushions, was pulled by two horses and driven by Gaines, a sour-faced man who seemed to resent having to transport Pyke to his destination, as though the act were somehow beneath him. The carriage transported Pyke through the traffic along Oxford Street and past crowds of people milling around the huge plate-glass windows of new luxury stores. The recently macadamised surface afforded them a smoother passage, as they passed parkland adjoining the Uxbridge Road and Paddington’s grand-looking terraces, decorated with pilasters and ironwork balconies and finished with stucco.
Past Bayswater and Holland House, they rattled on new turnpikes into the countryside, with small farms replacing the West London mansions. The city, which always seemed endless when you were in it, now felt as insignificant as a twig dropping over the edge of a waterfall.
Out here, Pyke felt a sense of release that he had not experienced for a long time. He had once served for three years on the Bow Street horse patrol pursuing thieves and housebreakers along turnpikes and across open land and had, ever since, hankered for country air.
As a boy Pyke had witnessed the execution of two men who had murdered a man travelling to a lavender warehouse in Feltham.