‘What you did was stupid and, even worse, it was bad for business.’ Pyke drank from his pot and wiped foam from his mouth with his sleeve. ‘We might have avoided an all-out war but a man like Gold won’t forget what you did.’
‘I killed him, didn’t I?’ The shock had subsided, but Nash’s hands trembled as he picked up the gin bottle.
Pyke closed his eyes and tried to summon a memory that wouldn’t quite come to him. ‘The first time I killed a man it kept me awake for a week.’
That drew an astonished look. ‘You’ve killed a man, too?’
‘In spite of what you might think, I wasn’t always a banker.’ Pyke went to retrieve his greatcoat from the back of his chair. The morning had already taken its toll on him. In his former profession as a Bow Street Runner, he’d been kicked, punched, garrotted and attacked with a machete, and although he’d brought these survival instincts with him into his new career, it had been a while since he had fired a pistol or faced an imminent threat to his life. ‘You owe me a hundred pounds: either you can pay me from your own account or I’ll deduct it from your drawings.’
‘What did you used to do?’ Nash’s eyes bulged with a boyish excitement.
Pyke tossed a few coins on to the table. ‘That’s for the gin. Drink it and you might actually sleep tonight.’
Outside, the wind had picked up and storm clouds were gathering on the horizon. Farther along the street, Pyke hailed a hackney coachman and climbed into the cab just before it started to rain.
TWO
‘I regard the railways as central to the future well-being of our economy and our nation. Notwithstanding the competitive advantage the railways will afford our industries — I mean, just imagine being able to transport coal from the Tyne to London in less than a day — I think their impact will be far greater than anyone can presently imagine. You see, gentlemen, I was fortunate enough to be introduced to train travel earlier than most and I can say that once you’ve experienced the thrill of racing through the countryside at thirty miles an hour, sparks flying, smoke billowing from the engine, England’s green and pleasant fields no more than a passing blur, once you’ve felt that intoxicating mixture of speed and freedom coursing through your blood, you can lay your hand on your heart and say, without a shadow of a doubt, the future has arrived.’
Sir Robert Peel sat down behind his desk, looking mightily pleased with himself. He had aged well in the intervening years since Pyke had last seen him. His reddish hair had retained much of its thickness and his robust figure and ruddy complexion suggested good health.
He carried himself with the air of someone who expected great things to happen to him. And, Pyke mused, ever since he had seized control of his party from the Tory Ultras and formed a credible opposition to Lord Melbourne’s Liberals, this didn’t seem like such an outlandish idea.
‘That was a quite a speech, Sir Robert. Perhaps you should take a bow and allow us to applaud now?’
Peel shot him a sardonic look. ‘If I hadn’t already made your acquaintance, Pyke, I’d be rather offended by that remark.’
Pyke smiled easily. ‘If you’re offended then I accept the compliment.’
Peel chose to ignore him. ‘I say this as preamble, to give you some context for our meeting.’
Pyke let out a brief yawn.
‘I’m sorry. Am I boring you?’
Edward James Morris, who was sitting next to him in Peel’s disappointingly bare office, chuckled more from embarrassment than humour.
Morris was a new customer to the bank and, though Pyke didn’t know him well, he had already warmed to the older man. As a general rule, Pyke didn’t like members of the landed gentry. It wasn’t just a matter of their physical appearance — though it was true their general unattractiveness was almost guaranteed by their insistence on breeding with their own. Rather, Pyke didn’t like their effete manners and private codes of behaviour, or the way they conveyed their privilege with a look or a sneer, as though it were a stick with which to beat others. Morris was not a good-looking man, with his big-boned face and pinkish, jowly cheeks, but he was sincere and well meaning and, though he was the firstborn son of a landed aristocrat, he had given up his claims on the family pile to pursue a career in business.
His demeanour and enthusiastic persona made him seem younger than he was, but his real age could be deduced from his choice of clothes. Preferring garish colours to the more sober hues that had come to dominate in recent years, he looked like a man better suited to Regency excess than the austere world of commerce he actually inhabited. His dark green coat and purple waistcoat were set against a pair of tan breeches and a bamboo cane.
Pyke listened while Morris and Peel talked enthusiastically about the prospects for the mammoth venture Morris had been charged with overseeing: building a 186-mile railway line that linked the capital and York via the cathedral cities of Cambridge, Ely and Lincoln. But he was a little perplexed by their behaviour and didn’t fully understand the need exhibited by the great and the good to talk only in oblique terms about difficulties they faced. In the world of the tavern, if someone had a problem, they told you what it was and if you were the cause of it you could expect them to come at you with a knife or a pistol. Here Pyke could tell only from Morris’s slightly awkward manner that something was amiss. If someone had been eavesdropping on their conversation, they might have been forgiven for thinking that the railway’s progress so far had been wholly positive.
In fact, the railway’s problems had been well documented from the start. Disputes with landowners and an acrimonious fight for parliamentary approval had set the project back before a yard of track had been laid. More recently, progress had been hampered by various disagreements between subcontractors and suppliers, rows involving engineers and surveyors and disturbances involving crews of navvies. And rumours had now started to spread that the project’s costs had spiralled out of control and that the company would soon need to go back to Parliament and investors to plead for additional money.
Nonetheless, it was only when Pyke interrupted and asked them directly about the problems facing the railway that the mood in the room changed.
Morris shot him a sheepish look. ‘I knew that building a railway from London to York would be an arduous task but I thought everyone would pull together for the greater good. I didn’t think I’d have to fight tooth and claw every step of the way.’ He seemed relieved that he no longer had to pretend everything was fine.
‘But at present, am I right in assuming that your task has been made a great deal more difficult by the presence of radicals stirring up trouble among your workers?’ Peel asked him.
Morris nodded vehemently and Pyke thought, with sudden alarm, that it was as if they were putting on a performance for him.
‘Perhaps you’ve heard about the activities of this rogue everyone’s calling Captain Paine?’ This time Peel was addressing Pyke. ‘There are slogans bearing his name daubed across walls and gable-ends throughout the city.’
Pyke nodded but didn’t say anything. Four years earlier, agricultural riots had broken out across much of southern England, apparently led by a mysterious figure known as Captain Swing. They had been easily crushed but Captain Swing had never been arrested, leading many to conclude that he did not actually exist and had been created by radicals in order to give a focus to their struggles. So when Pyke had first read newspaper reports about this new figure — he presumed he was named after the revolutionary writer and pamphleteer — apparently now agitating among the urban poor, he had assumed it was simply the same trick. He hadn’t for a moment considered that Captain Paine might be a real figure or that someone of Peel’s stature and astuteness might be sufficiently worried about him to call a meeting.