Craddock by Neil Jackson, Paul Finch Read Free Book Online Page B

tankards, which the landlord – a corpulent individual with red jowls and a canvas apron – was serving them as fast as he was able.
    At first, Major Craddock and his two men were barely noticed. Only when one particular hussar – a tall, broad-shouldered chap with a leonine head of shaggy golden curls – spotted them, was there a lull in the joviality. The fellow rose from his seat and approached. Craddock eyed him; the hussar might have been impressive had his richly-tasselled tunic not hung open at the collar and his gray pleated trews not been spattered up the sides with sandy mud.
    “ Captain Ryland at your service,” he said.
    Craddock shook the proffered hand. “Craddock. Chief Inspector of the Wigan Borough Police. This is Inspector Munro, and this Constable Palmer.”
    Ryland surveyed the three newcomers. Only Palmer, a young and fairly new recruit to the service, was in uniform, a heavy cape over his black tunic, his helmet tightly strapped under the chin. Craddock and Munro were in their usual civilian garb, which, given the time of year, included greatcoats and mufflers.
    Ryland seemed puzzled. “I was led to believe you were a military man?”
    Craddock nodded. “Was. You can call me ‘Major’ if you wish. All my lads do.”
    “ Is this all the men you’ve brought?”
    “ I’m afraid so.” Craddock removed his topper and brushed his hair flat. “The Wigan borough is a large and busy force-area, especially on a Friday night. In any case, I have you fellows, don’t I?”
    “ Yes, I suppose you do.” Ryland turned and indicated the landlord. “Care for a drink while we’re all here? Something to warm you up, perhaps?”
    Constable Palmer and Inspector Munro glanced longingly at the counter. Major Craddock, however, spoke for the three of them: “No thank you, captain. We’re on duty. Your cable said you had our fugitive pinned down?”
    “ That’s right, yes.” Ryland finished the dregs of his beer, then went to the mullioned window looking towards the sea. “A squadron of my chaps chased him out onto the beach. But he made straight for the Catherine-Maria. ”
    “ Catherine-Maria?” The name sounded familiar to Craddock.
    “ The old prison-ship. You know it, I’m sure.”
    Craddock remembered. It surprised him that he’d even forgotten. He joined the captain by the window. “Yes, I know it,” he said.
    Ryland pointed due north-west, and the shapeless hulk of the derelict emerged from the dark. She was wedged out there on a sandbar. The scant remains of her masts drew a skeletal pattern on the spangled lights of Lytham township far across the bay. Even at this distance, she dwarfed the minuscule shapes of the horsemen who were ranged in large numbers around her.
    Craddock recollected what he knew about the Catherine-Maria. A captured French man‘o’war, she’d been pressed into use as a prison-ship some time around 1808. She’d remained in that capacity until 1857, when she’d been taken out of service, as all the prison-ships had. But that was only after half a century of horror stories: reform groups in Liverpool and Manchester had complained bitterly and repeatedly about the appalling conditions on board her, and the deliberate maltreatment of those held there. Major Craddock, though sympathetic by nature, had seen the reality of violent crime up close, and was less inclined to be compassionate to the villainous class, but even he would admit that discomforting numbers of convicts had reportedly perished during their term on the Catherine-Maria . The same could be said for any of Britain’s other forty or so ‘hulks’, as they’d been known, though his particular vessel had been the only one located on England’s north-west coast, and as such was the one most familiar.
    “ And that’s where he is now?” Craddock said.
    “ As far as I’m aware,” Ryland replied. “He went aboard and hasn’t shown his face since.”
    “ He couldn’t have slipped away in the