You couldn’t get from the standard-class to the first-class carriage while the train was moving. Pyke had already checked. Perhaps the man charged with collecting the money planned to join the train at the next station.
Reminding himself that this was not his concern, Pyke stepped out on to the platform. The porters’ shouts were louder, the departure imminent; a handful of late arrivals hurried along the platform, clutching their possessions, then boarded the standard-class carriage. There were only two men in first class and neither of them had displayed any interest in the suitcase.
The shrill blast of the whistle cut through the air and without warning the engine and carriages clattered forward. Running alongside the first-class carriage, Pyke peered through the rough glass-plate and saw that no one else had joined the train. He stopped, hands on hips, and took a moment to catch his breath.
As the train disappeared around the bend in the track, he checked the time. Five past nine. That gave him almost an hour to walk to the police station and still get back for ten.
It took Pyke fifteen minutes to get to the police station on Graham Street. This time, a different clerk was on duty, but as soon as Pyke asked whether his son had arrived, the man’s face brightened.
‘You’re Detective-inspector Pyke?’
Pyke looked at the man, surprised. ‘My son’s arrived?’ He had come to the conclusion that Felix hadn’t travelled there after all.
‘About an hour ago.’
‘Can I see him?’
‘He said he didn’t want to stay here. Said he would take a room at the Southgate Hotel on High Street.’
High Street ran perpendicular to Graham Street. Pyke turned left, as he’d been told to, and saw the Southgate Hotel on the other side of the street. Not a salubrious place at all. It didn’t seem like the kind of hotel his son would choose.
The entrance hall was a depressing spectacle, with peeling wallpaper and tallow rings on the ceiling. Pyke waited at the desk but no one came to meet him; the entire downstairs was deserted. He couldn’t picture his son arriving at a place like this and wanting to stay. Why hadn’t he just waited at the station-house? Perhaps this was all the lad felt he could afford and he’d wanted to assert his independence.
A narrow staircase corkscrewed up to the first floor. Pyke took the steps two at a time. A single lantern hung on the landing wall.
‘Felix?’ Pyke’s voice echoed down the corridor. None of the rooms appeared to be occupied. Perhaps Felix had already left, tried somewhere else. Somewhere above, on the upper floor, he heard footsteps, floorboards creaking. Pyke called out again. ‘Hello?’
Someone coughed. The sound came from a room at the other end of the passageway. Pyke moved towards it. Everything was quiet, eerily so. He heard the cough again and now he could see a weak shaft of light emerging from the room. ‘Hello?’ Pyke walked towards it, suddenly not feeling at all comfortable. ‘Felix?’
He approached the partly open door, knocked twice and waited for a response. He heard footsteps behind him, on the landing. Turning, he saw a figure silhouetted against the half-light of the lantern.
‘Do you run this place?’
Pyke took another step back along the landing, then saw the man raise what looked to be a blunderbuss.
He bolted back towards the half-open door but now the man who’d been coughing stepped on to the landing. John Wylde was grinning, a pistol in his hand. Pyke was trapped, with nowhere to go.
Wylde fired first, the blast lighting up the corridor, and deafening in the confined space. Pyke threw himself against one of the doors, felt the frame splinter. He fell into the room, but not quite in time. He knew he’d been hit but he didn’t know how badly, although his whole left side was suddenly wet. He staggered to his feet, nothing else on his mind but survival. Wylde’s accomplice stood in the doorway, his blunderbuss raised, about to fire. Running, Pyke hurled himself against the window and crashed through the glass just as the ball-shot from the heavy gun peppered the wall beside him. Moments later, he landed on his back, fell through the flat roof of the building below and found himself on the floor of what looked like the back of a shop. His mind went blank. He might even have passed out. What saved him was that Wylde and the other man had no clear shot from the window above.
When Pyke came around he tried to stand up. His legs wouldn’t hold him, not at first. Touching the left side of his stomach, he felt the wetness and saw that his fingers had turned crimson. Finally on his feet, he looked around the storeroom and staggered towards the door. It hurt to move but at least the blood wasn’t gushing from the wound. He reassured himself that it hadn’t been a direct hit. Forcing open the door, Pyke stepped into the alley, and started to hobble away, trying not to think about the pain. Behind him, he could hear noises, screaming. Ahead was a dead end, so he kicked down one of the side doors and stepped into someone’s backyard, then passed through the house. Out on the street, Pyke looked right and left, but he didn’t see Wylde or the other man. He turned left and limped on for twenty yards. Behind him, the shouts were getting louder, closer. Someone’s front door opened and Pyke lurched towards it, falling into the room and clutching his stomach. He heard a woman gasp and looked at her terrified face. ‘Close the door,’ he spluttered. She did as she was told, even though he found out later that she didn’t speak English. Pyke rummaged in his pocket and produced one of the banknotes Jonah Hancock had given him.
‘That’s a hundred pounds.’ He waited for the woman to take it.
A man had joined them. He barked something at Pyke in Welsh.
‘Please help me.’ Pyke gave them a pleading look and held out his hands. He didn’t know whether they’d understood him or not.
The woman drew the curtains and Pyke felt his eyelids flutter.
EIGHTEEN
MONDAY, 1 FEBRUARY 1847
Tipperary Town, Co. Tipperary
The driver of a coal-cart dropped Knox in the middle of Tip Town at half-past nine the following morning, and from there it took him less than five minutes to find the barracks, the most imposing building in the town. It was a bitterly cold day, perhaps even colder than the previous one, and on the ride over from Dundrum they had passed another corpse slumped in the hedgerow. Knox had stared at the frostbitten landscape, and thought about Martha and James, whether they were awake yet, what the day held in store for them.
In the courtyard, Knox asked a soldier in uniform to direct him to the clerks’ office. The soldier pointed to a door on the far side of the courtyard. Knox entered a long passageway and stopped outside the third door on the left-hand side, as he’d been instructed.
Knox explained to the clerk that he was trying to find his long-lost brother and that the only thing he knew about the man was he’d left home in the spring of 1825 and joined the army.
The clerk gave him a sympathetic smile. ‘No word from him since?’
‘I have no idea if he’s even still alive.’
A silence settled between them, while the clerk considered how to proceed. ‘Do you know which regiment he joined?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
The man let out a pained sigh. ‘You see, sir, there is no permanent regiment based here. The soldiers serve a period of time here, a year, sometimes longer, and then move on.’
‘But you could find out which regiment was based here in the spring of that year?’ Knox laid a five-shilling coin on the clerk’s desk.
The clerk eyed it carefully but didn’t pick it up. ‘If I really had to, I suppose I could.’
‘And if you were able to settle upon a regiment, there would be a record of all new recruits, I presume?’
‘Somewhere, perhaps. Among all this paperwork. But as you can probably imagine I’m very busy this morning.’
Knox considered his rapidly shrinking purse and wondered whether this was just a case of throwing good money after bad. How much Indian corn could he buy with five shillings? With ten?