The Last Days of Newgate - Andrew Pepper [49]
Pyke sat on an overturned barrel at one end of the zinc-topped mahogany counter and looked at what his gin shop had become. Somehow the term ‘palace’ seemed too absurd for words. He looked at the painted barrels behind the bar, signs advertising ‘The Real Knock-Me-Out Firewater’ or ‘The Devil’s Own’ and the wooden floor covered with sawdust and vomit.
There were two fights in the bar that night and Pyke wondered whether that was typical or not. One incident was relatively minor: a meat cutter, still wearing his bloodied work apron, swung at and missed a younger man, who stepped inside the punch and landed one of his own on the meat cutter’s jaw. The single blow sent the meat cutter sprawling on to the floor, and he was picked up and dumped outside by Billy, the ex-bare-knuckle fighter. The other fight was more serious. A ferret-faced man pulled out a pocket knife on a larger adversary and thrust the blade into the man’s abdomen. He got away before Billy could apprehend him but Pyke watched as the ex-boxer picked up the bleeding man, dragged his limp body across the crowded room and tossed him out of the side door.
But Pyke’s attention had been focused elsewhere. As he sat alone, amid the grim tumult of the place, a sea of unfamiliar faces quietly whispering to one another, just out of earshot, he could not get over the feeling that he was being watched; not simply by the drinkers lined up two or three deep along the entire length of the counter but maybe by an agent of the state who was masquerading as a market trader or a hospital porter. But he did not know whether his suspicions were genuine or had merely been fuelled by the laudanum he had ingested.
Pyke had other significant matters on his mind, too. He could not avoid the conclusion that he had somehow miscalculated or overplayed his hand with Tilling. Again and again, he tried and failed to make sense of the man’s strange reaction to his findings. He’d certainly expected some kind of message from Peel or Tilling but so far nothing had come, and he was unable to determine what this silence indicated.
By the following evening, Pyke still had not received any message from Peel or Tilling and his feeling of anxiety had intensified: so much so that he had further increased his intake of laudanum. The drug numbed him a little but did nothing to lift his unease.
What had Tilling’s changed demeanour signalled? That he knew Davy Magennis? Tilling had spent time in Ireland and Magennis lived there but the idea that they knew or had met one another seemed fanciful. But if Tilling did know or had met Davy Magennis and Magennis was responsible for the St Giles murders, did that, in turn, suggest that Tilling was somehow mixed up in them as well? The idea seemed too preposterous for words, not least because it implicated Peel himself. And whatever Peel was - cunning and ruthless - he didn’t strike Pyke as an assassin, even if the assassination had been carried out by someone else.
Then there was the question of motive. Certainly the murders had strengthened the case for a new consolidated police force, but as far as he could tell that particular argument had long since been won. The murders had also galvanised opposition to the Catholic Emancipation Bill; a bill which Peel supported and was about to present to the Commons. As such, the idea that Peel might be involved with the St Giles deaths did not make sense, but on the other hand Tilling’s nervous reaction perhaps indicated otherwise.
Pyke watched Lizzie serving drinks and, for some reason, thought about the woman in the Blue Dog tavern who had called out his name, to