‘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.