Pyke thought about his own father, who had died in a crowd stampede when he was a boy, and about Godfrey, who had rescued him and brought him up.
‘Before you arrived in Merthyr,’ Johns said, ‘she’d finally agreed to come away with me. A new life, just the three of us.’
‘Before I arrived?’
‘She’d always carried a torch for you.’
Pyke bowed his head. ‘Give me the knife, John.’ He took another step towards the former soldier.
‘ What? Do you want to shake my hand, pretend we can be friends? Shake hands and go our separate ways, let ourselves believe that everything has worked out for the best?’
‘Did I say that?’
‘See here? People are dying because they can’t afford to eat.’
Pyke took another step towards him and held out his hand. ‘Give me the knife, John.’
‘The rich get richer and the poor are buried in a pit.’
‘There’s no way men like us can change things. Not now, not any more. We’ve seen too much, done too much. For that to happen you need someone younger, their ideals intact.’
‘Dinosaurs.’ Johns almost looked amused.
Pyke took another step. ‘The knife.’
Johns managed a smile and then took the knife in his other hand, turned it on himself and drove it into his belly. He fell to his knees and Pyke had to wrestle his hands off the handle in order to pull it out, blood spurting from the wound. Pyke cradled Johns’ head in his lap, stroked his hair and waited for the man to die.
THIRTY-TWO
WEDNESDAY, 10 FEBRUARY 1847
Lisvarrinane, Co. Tipperary
Knox had walked for most of the day, stopping anyone he passed and asking them whether they had seen or heard of a man called John Johns. No one had. Knox described him as best he could but his description jolted no memories. A few told him about the fire at the big house — and that the recently returned absentee landlord, Sir Clancy Smyth, had perished in it.
When Knox asked where Smyth had returned from, and was told Wales, it pricked his interest. He was tired but the walking relaxed him, and because he had sold his boat ticket at a profit, he had the funds to pay for food and shelter. He’d bought a good pair of boots, too. Knox didn’t know how Martha was going to react when he turned up on Father Mackey’s doorstep in a day or so, whether she would be pleased to see him or devastated that he hadn’t sailed for the New World. In the end, it was simple; he hadn’t been able to. It was a physical thing. He needed to be with his wife and child. But on the journey back from Cork, Knox had begun to think about his brother, the man he knew as John Johns, the murderer of a London policeman, and he had taken a detour to Lisvarrinane, the last place where Johns had been seen. The trail had gone cold now and he was keen to get back to Clonoulty as quickly as possible.
Knox wanted to get back to Clonoulty, but he was afraid of what he’d find there, afraid that Martha would be angry or, worse, indifferent.
So he decided to walk, to give himself time to prepare himself, and as he walked, he let his mind wander. He crossed from Cork into Tipperary, and to pass the time, he bought a notebook and a pencil. During breaks, he would scribble down his thoughts, his impressions of the folk he met, their suffering, their fortitude. Knox liked the idea of bearing witness, recording what he saw, not for any particular reason or because people would necessarily want to read what he had written, but because it was the worst of times and someone needed to document it so that much later, others would know how bad it had been.
Just outside Ballyporeen Knox came across two men groping for eels in a river — they swore him to silence and offered him a meal of eel cooked over an open fire. The next day on the road to Clogheen, he came across a family who’d left the nearby village the day before. The woman told him that the sickness — an droch-thinneas — had killed three families. Close by the village of Ardfinnan he stumbled upon a corpse, maggots feasting on the flesh, and as he neared Cahir, Knox came across a dog, a large mongrel, carrying what looked like human flesh in its jaws. He noted these things without outrage or moral indignation: this was just the way it was. Some nights he slept rough, other nights he lodged with families. He spoke in Irish. No one attacked him; no one tried to rob him. As he neared Clonoulty, he found himself longing for the open road. What was the saying? Better to travel hopefully than to arrive. That was how he felt, but to reassure himself, he would lie awake at night, either under the stars or in strangers’ cabins, and remember the way James smiled, remember the laughter lines around Martha’s eyes, and in those moments he knew that, regardless of what he found at home, he would find the strength to endure.
THIRTY-THREE
TUESDAY, 2 FEBRUARY 1847
Dublin, Co. Dublin
Pyke stood by the window of his lodging-house room, looking down on to the street below, a solitary gas lamp illuminating the wet cobblestones.
Two days earlier, Benedict Pierce had come to this same address. Pyke had written to him to let him know where he was staying.
At that first meeting, Pierce had muttered threats about arresting Pyke and taking him back to London, but he had listened to Pyke’s proposal and in the end he had done what Pyke had asked him to: travel to a small town in Tipperary and convince the authorities there that he, Pyke, was dead; that the body discovered on the estate of Dundrum House was him. Pyke had done his best to lay the groundwork, and make it appear as if he, and not John Johns, had been killed — he’d even left his pistol and precious letters from Felix in the room he’d taken in Dundrum village and paid off the landlord there. Still, he needed Pierce’s help.
‘I wrote to you because I want you to help me disappear.’
Pierce had looked at him strangely. ‘Why would I want to help you?’
‘If you do, I’ll never return to London, never set foot in Scotland Yard again.’
That had been when Pierce understood. He had nodded once, and he might even have smiled.
Down on the street, Pyke watched as a young boy hurried to catch up with a woman dressed in fine clothes, his mother perhaps. For days now, it seemed, he had wandered the labyrinthine streets of this unfamiliar city, with only his memories to comfort him.
Returning his gaze to the street below, Pyke saw a dog trot past and heard the wheels of another carriage, a hansom cab this time, grinding to a standstill under his window. Pierce emerged from the cab, told the driver to wait, and looked up at the shabby building. Instinctively, Pyke stepped back from the window; he didn’t want Pierce to see he’d been waiting for him. He listened as Pierce’s footsteps came up the staircase and waited for the knock on the door.
Pierce had taken off his hat and was cradling it in his arms.
‘It’s done,’ he said, removing a piece of paper from the pocket of his black frock-coat. ‘Coroner’s report. You died — wilful murder by a person or persons unknown — on the fourth of January 1847.’
Pyke took the piece of paper and inspected it. So that was it. He was a ghost, a non-person, which was exactly how he felt.
‘Any difficulties?’
‘The constable who investigated the murder looked like he might be getting close to the truth. He knew about Johns and talked about confronting the lord of the manor — Johns’ father, I discovered. I paid this man a visit — Lord Cornwallis. He was only too keen not to rock the boat. He promised to stop the constable from asking any more questions. The official story is that Johns killed you and then fled.’
So it was done. Arthur John Pyke, rest in peace. Pyke tried to summon up something approaching sadness.
‘Once my house is sold, you can keep half of the proceeds, and put my half into a bank. I’ll write to you once I know where I’ll be.’