The Last Days of Newgate - Andrew Pepper [58]
The older man spluttered and choked, but Pyke had neither the resolve to finish him off nor the desire to deal with another corpse. Releasing the rope, Pyke hauled the receiver up on to his shaking legs and pulled him close enough to be able to smell his breath. ‘You made a bad decision and now you’re paying the price.’
‘Maybe they’ll hang us together.’ Flynn wiped spittle from his mouth.
‘I’m a thief-taker, not a thief.’
‘And now someone’s taken you,’ Flynn said, with a sneer.
‘Maybe I’m not as corrupt as you think I am.’
‘I don’t think you’re anything, Pyke.’
‘If you come within a hundred yards of me again, I will kill you. Is that understood?’
Flynn looked down at the floor.
Pyke hit him in the mouth with such ferocity that one of the man’s teeth lodged itself in his knuckles. Flynn collapsed in a heap. No one came to his assistance; in fact, no one seemed to be concerned by what had happened.
The following day Pyke paid ten guineas to the turnkey and a further thirty guineas was earmarked for the governor. He was transferred to a comfortable private room in the infirmary. If he had been a gentleman, the turnkey told him, then a little extra money might have secured him a place in the governor’s own quarters, but as it was, the infirmary was the best that a man of his breeding could hope for. Once ensconced in his room, Pyke ordered a new set of clothes, a bedstead with a sound flock mattress, additional blankets, a choice of newspapers, a copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince, writing paper, envelopes, a blotter and a pen, a chair for reading, a pint of gin, a pint of beer, a platter of cold joints and hams, two loaves of bread, a pipe and an ounce of tobacco.
It was a spartan room, warmed only by a small fire. Attached to the wall there was a crucifix, which he removed and threw under the bed.
As well as being private, the room was heavily fortified. It was locked from the outside by three solid bolts and guarded by two men; the only natural light came from a light-well built into the upper wall and fortified with iron bars.
Pyke persuaded the turnkey, with the governor’s permission, to remove his handcuffs but the leg-irons remained. It was a condition of the agreement that saw him move from the ward to the infirmary.
The arbitrariness of the legal system did not surprise Pyke. He had witnessed sufficient abuses of power and privilege in his time as a Bow Street Runner to immunise him against any romantic notion that the English system of justice, unlike, say, its French counterpart, was fair-minded and all men were somehow equal under the law. The French had their Bastille; the English had Newgate. And while he had long since heard of plans to close and demolish the ancient prison, symbol of a regime that was as much feared as it was hated, Pyke was under no illusion that a necessarily fairer system of incarceration and punishment would take its place.
Pyke was personally distrustful of all legal and political institutions, and believed individuals prospered not by pursuing some ‘worthy’ vision of moral betterment through civic and legal reforms, but by showing superior cunning and ferocity in the face of opponents. Success, or in his case freedom, wouldn’t come about through an appeal to the fairness of the law, but rather as a result of his own guile or through the discretionary authority exercised by Peel.
What bothered him most was his own impotence in the face of a system whose sole purpose seemed to be to destroy him. As a result of past successes, Pyke had naively come to believe in his own invincibility. Though he had never laid claim to radical sentiments,