The Last Days by Wye8th Read Free Book Online Page A

to determine its sex, but when he had done so, he would pass on that information.
    Once he had finished, Fox offered him a generous smile. ‘I think, Brownlow, your skills might be better used here tonight, keeping up the men’s spirits.’
    Vines looked away without speaking.
    ‘I think that settles it, doesn’t it?’ Fox nodded his head vigorously, apparently pleased with himself.

FOUR
    O utside, the temperature had plummeted and the cobbles of Drury Lane were as slippery as sheets of ice. The footman who had pulled down the steps from Fox’s carriage said, ‘Watch how you go, sir,’ but something about the way he’d said ‘sir’ suggested he did not believe the word applied to Pyke. The street was still thronging with carts and wagons, in spite of the late hour, and the yard in front of a nearby hotel was a hive of activity in the wake of a coach that had just come to halt. It was a murky night and the air tasted of dirt. Pyke had never ridden in Fox’s carriage before and was surprised at its luxuriousness. The seats were cushioned and the curtains made of lace. Fox pulled them closed in order to block out the sea of faces outside on the street and tapped on the ceiling of the carriage, to indicate that they were ready to depart.
    As Fox pushed backwards in his seat and exhaled, Pyke took a moment to consider the man he had always thought of not exactly as a friend but certainly as a mentor. The lines etched on to his forehead indicated fatigue as well as worry. Perhaps the strain of having to safeguard Sir Henry Fielding’s vision for the Bow Street Runners was beginning to take its toll. Certainly he had been more irritable than Pyke had seen him for a long time. Neither of them spoke for a while. Fox’s mood was funereal; Pyke suspected he was less affected by the deaths than he was concerned about the likely implications for the future of the Bow Street operation.
    ‘Did you find the girl?’ Fox asked, eventually. He had a habit of peering down his nose at people as he spoke to them. He pulled his woollen muffler tight around his neck and blew into his hands.
    Pyke said he’d talked to Goddard and Townsend but they hadn’t managed to locate her yet. He assured him that they would continue to look for her. Fox shook his head, as if the blow were a personal one, and told Pyke that locating the girl was their top priority.
    ‘I hope you don’t think I was too harsh with Brownlow earlier,’ Fox said, with studied casualness.
    Pyke had enjoyed Vines’s humiliation but said nothing.
    ‘I fear he might have already struck a deal with Peel, or at least with someone involved in the process of setting up this new police force.’
    ‘What kind of a deal?’
    ‘Brownlow is not an idiot. He senses that the writing is on the wall for us, so to speak, and he’s been making contingency plans to safeguard his own future. Exactly what has already been agreed upon, I’m afraid I don’t know.’ Fox seemed disappointed, above all. ‘When things are changing so quickly, it’s difficult to know who one can trust.’ He waited for Pyke to look at him. ‘We trust one another, don’t we, Pyke?’
    Pyke nodded in a non-committal way. He didn’t think Fox wanted a firmer response.
    Shortly after he had joined the Runners - he had been recommended by George Morgan, the now bedridden father of Pyke’s mistress Lizzie - Pyke had been compelled to come to Fox’s rescue; and his actions had forever affected the way in which Fox dealt with him. At the time, Jim Salter, a blackguard who had been arrested by a team of Runners and was awaiting trial on multiple charges of theft with violence, grand larceny, embezzlement and house-breaking, had arranged for members of his gang to break into Fox’s office and hold him at knife-point until Salter had been released. Pyke had inadvertently interrupted their efforts to subdue Sir Richard and, by chance, had had on his person a Long Sea Service flintlock pistol that had just