Bloody Winter: A Pyke Mystery by Andrew Pepper Read Free Book Online

went to collect some quicklime and sprinkled it over the clothed body. Now Knox understood why Bill had wanted to undress it.
    Reading his mind, the gravedigger said, ‘I wouldn’t worry. A few more bodies, and they’ll close up this pit and dig another one.’
    Knox just nodded.
    ‘Who was he, anyhow?’
    ‘A vagrant.’
    The older man’s eyes narrowed. ‘Aren’t they all?’
    The previous afternoon, Knox had taken the
Tipperary Free Press
to his nearly blind neighbour, Jeremy Brittas. Knox rented his smallholding from the Brittas family and twice a week read for the grandfather, who lived alone in the Mount Judkin house’s lodge. Despite the old man’s curmudgeonly manner, Knox relished these moments, as it was a chance to engage with a world beyond his front door.
    Brittas liked him to read everything, even the notices for cold creams, macassar oil and pills to treat gonorrhoea. The previous day, the paper had reported more deaths in Skibbereen. On the same page, a notice for the new edition of the
Economist
magazine lauded the role that free trade had played in bringing about the moral and intellectual advancement of society. To Knox, it seemed like a bad joke.
    ‘Has free trade put bread on anyone’s table?’ he had asked Jeremy Brittas. ‘Well, has it?’
    The old man hadn’t an answer.
    Knox had read some more of the newspaper. ‘Why don’t they report the deaths we’re suffering here?’ He had looked up almost accusingly at his neighbour.
    Brittas had taken his stick and banged it into the floor. ‘Read on, man. Read on.’
    Knox had got to the end of the report about US President Polk’spromise to increase his country’s famine relief. He’d found himself nodding in agreement. ‘
Does America live under laws made by herself? She does. Does Ireland live under laws made by herself? She does not! Ireland pines, and starves and dies beneath the Upas tree of British Legislation.
’ At that point Brittas coughed and Knox had looked up.
    ‘Free trade might’ve made a rum job of feeding people but do you really think democracy would’ve improved the situation?’
    ‘I’d prefer to die poor but with my head held high than poor and enslaved,’ Knox replied.
    ‘And if food was just handed out to folk, who would ever bother to work for a living?’
    ‘But there is no work. That’s the problem. No work and no food, at least at prices that poor folk can afford.’
    Knox was still thinking about this exchange when Duffy, a constable from Roscommon, shouted from the door. ‘Finally found you. They want us at the workhouse straight away. There’s a mob gathered outside.’
    Six policemen assembled in front of the barracks. All except for Knox were Catholics from hard-working families; they had come from all over Ireland and lived together in the barracks. It made him an anomaly, and while nothing was ever said aloud, Knox knew that none of them really trusted him, believing that he’d been appointed as an informer to the Protestant commanders. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. In fact, Hastings and the other head-constables had always regarded Knox with suspicion, wondering why he had been willing to work for the same pay and conditions as the Catholic constables.
    Hastings appeared from the station and told the men to go to the workhouse at once and disperse the mob. He did not say how they were meant to do this or what would happen if the mob refused to go quietly. He didn’t mention the word ‘force’ but it was implicit in everything he said. Why else had he instructed them to take their carbines?
    A couple of days earlier, Knox had read about food riots in Clonmel. Now, it seemed, the same thing was about to take place in Cashel.
    They trudged in silence along Boherclough Street past the OldCourt building on their left, and then the Fever Hospital. Knox couldn’t speak for the others but he had already made a promise to himself that he wouldn’t open fire on his own