‘I had to see you,’ Cathy whispered. ‘I had to know whether you found anything in Dowlais.’
‘One of your son’s shoes — and his coat.’
She gasped and then was silent for a short while. ‘You’re quite sure men from that part of the town have my son?’
Gently, Pyke tried to extricate himself from her grasp. ‘At the moment, I’m not sure about anything. Look at me, Cathy.’ This time he was rougher and pushed her away so he could see her face. ‘I want to know why — when I first saw you — you said I shouldn’t have come.’
‘I don’t remember what I said…’
‘You’d been drinking. I could smell the wine on your breath. You barely recognised me.’
She gave an unpleasant laugh. ‘Did it dent your pride?’
Pyke tried to make sense of her erratic behaviour, flirting with him one moment then humouring him the next. ‘Something isn’t right here, and I’m not just talking about the fact that your son is missing.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She stopped fidgeting and stared at him, her eyes glinting in the moonlight.
‘Both the man who was shot and the men who shot him had to have known about the kidnapping and the second ransom letter.’
‘How so?’
‘One group has your son, the other group doesn’t. How did they both know about the arrangements?’
‘I don’t know.’
Pyke let her go but she remained where she was. ‘Why did your husband write to me, Cathy? Why me and not someone else?’
‘You’ll have to ask him. I can only speculate. But I do know word of your success at Scotland Yard has travelled.’ She was shivering slightly in the cold.
‘But you didn’t write to me, did you?’
Cathy avoided his eyes and let out a small sigh. ‘Perhaps you’re unaware of the division of duties and responsibilities in a marriage. I could never have proposed such a thing without my husband’s sanction.’
Pyke reached out and touched Cathy’s cheek. When she still refused to look at him, he moved his finger down to her chin and gently lifted her face. ‘Who do you think has your son, Cathy?’ He knew what he was thinking was a bad idea, but he couldn’t deny he found her attractive and he could see that she was drawn to him. It was a dangerous combination, her vulnerability and his loneliness.
A flash of anger lit up her eyes. ‘Do you really think I wouldn’t have told you if I had my suspicions? If I was forced to guess, I’d say it was someone my husband had wronged in business. But that would be pure conjecture.’
Pyke watched as Cathy slipped the cloak back over her head. ‘It’s getting late,’ he said. ‘We should go back to our rooms before we’re missed.’
Cathy’s eyes fell to the ground. ‘Of course. My husband will be wondering where I am.’
Pyke started to walk back towards the Castle but then stopped and turned around.
Cathy still hadn’t moved. ‘If you find my son and bring him back to me safely, I’ll be indebted to you for the rest of my life.’
The following morning, Pyke collected Johns in the Hancock’s open-topped phaeton and backtracked first of all to Caedraw before turning on to Pennydarren Road and following it up the hill to Morlais. In the phaeton next to them was the body of the Irishman who’d been shot and killed up near the old quarry. Briefly Pyke told the former soldier what he intended to do. Once he’d listened to Pyke’s proposal, Johns rubbed his chin.
‘You think this is a good idea?’
Pyke shrugged. ‘Someone must know who he is.’
‘But it’s not treating the dead man with much respect, is it?’
These words echoed around Pyke’s head as he lugged the corpse into the first beer shop they came to on Irish Row and dumped it on to the floor.
The beer shop was called the Exiles of Erin and reeked of stale bodies and gin. A few sullen-faced men dressed in ragged clothes stood near the counter. They watched as Pyke turned the body over, so that the dead man was lying face up.
‘I want a name.’ No one looked up at him and no one uttered a word. Johns stood in the doorway, arms folded.
‘Who is he?’
When no one answered again, Johns barked a few words at them in what Pyke presumed was Welsh. One of the men looked up at Pyke and then at Johns and suddenly darted for the back door. He was too quick for either of them so instead of chasing after the man, Pyke took out his pistol and let the rest of the men in the beer shop see it.
‘This man was shot and killed up near the old quarry. Apparently he lodged at a place here on Irish Row, number fifty.’ As Pyke waited for Johns to translate, he tried to assess the reactions of the men standing in front of him. They watched him carefully, not moving, not even looking at each other.
Eventually a man at the far end of the counter — tall with broad shoulders and sandy-coloured hair — took a step forward and peered down at the dead body. When Johns asked him something, he hesitated then rattled off a few sentences.
‘His name’s Deeney. Just off the boat from Dublin, came here like everyone else to look for work. Kept himself to himself, no family, no real friends, a loner.’ Johns turned from Pyke to the man who’d told him this. ‘Apparently the dead man didn’t lodge at number fifty. No one does. Place has been unoccupied for months.’
But if this was true, why did the rent book indicate to the contrary? Pyke had inspected the rent book carefully; it hadn’t given any details about the landlord. He had another look at the corpse, just a grey slab of flesh. A man just off the boat, presumably escaping the ravages of the famine in Ireland. So how had he become involved in the kidnapping? Perhaps he had simply been used as an errand boy, paid a few coins to go up to the old quarry and pick up the purse, then been shot and killed for his troubles.
Outside, as they carried the body back to the waiting phaeton, a small crowd had gathered. The mood wasn’t pleasant.
Johns leapt up on to the carriage, took the reins and geed up the two horses. Pyke joined him, pistol in hand. The phaeton lurched forward through the mud and a path cleared for them. Turning around, Pyke kept the barrel of his pistol aimed at the crowd. It wasn’t until they had turned back on to the main track that they felt able to relax.
‘Dead men have souls too,’ Johns said, after a few moments’ silence.
Pyke nodded. ‘It was lucky for us that man spoke Welsh.’
Johns turned briefly to look at him and then returned his stare to the muddy track. ‘We weren’t talking in Welsh.’
Pyke hadn’t expected this. ‘So you speak Irish as well?’
‘I am Irish, or at least I was. I was born there, left when I was seventeen. I haven’t been back since.’
Later that afternoon, Pyke presented himself at the ironworks’ offices and told one of the agents — Dai Jenkins — that he wanted to talk to John Evans, the man that Bill Flint had suggested. Jenkins was a squat, ugly man with jug-handle ears and a cropped haircut. He wanted to know whether Evans had done anything wrong. Pyke shook his head but refused to let the agent know what his business was. In the end Jenkins shrugged and instructed Pyke to follow him.
They crossed the river using a pedestrian bridge and came to a row of blast furnaces, vast brick-built edifices towering seventy feet into the air. Men at the top were feeding barrows of coke and iron ore into the furnace mouths, the materials having been levered up there by an enormous water wheel. Behind them, one side of the mountain had a scorched look, hot cinders cascading down into the valley. Pyke and Jenkins entered the forge, an enclosed building where the molten ore, having been released from the furnaces, was directed into channels cut into the earth.
Jenkins went to find Evans and when he finally returned, it was clear that the puddler wasn’t going to say anything of significance in his presence. Pyke told the agent he wanted to speak to Evans alone and waited until Jenkins had retreated to other side of the forge.