Come the Fear by Chris Nickson Page A

it too many times before. ‘You know what they say, don’t you? If a woman sees a hare when she’s carrying the child, it’ll be born with a harelip. Well, I never saw one when I was big with Lucy, I’ll tell you that for nowt.’ She shook her head angrily. ‘All those bloody tales and she’s had to pay for it her whole life. They’ve allus made fun of her.’
    â€˜Is there anywhere else she could have gone?’
    â€˜Only to her brother. There’s just been the three of us since my man died, and they were just bairns then. But our Peter would have brought her back here if she’d turned up, I know he would.’
    â€˜Where does he live?’ Nottingham asked.
    â€˜Queen Charlotte’s Court, up off Lady Lane. Him and his girl have a room up there.’
    â€˜How tall is Lucy?’
    â€˜There’s not much to her,’ Alice Wendell said tenderly. ‘Thin as a branch and smaller than me.’
    He looked at her, seeing the love for the girl in her eyes, and knew he had to tell her. ‘You’d better sit down, Mrs Wendell.’ She looked at him curiously.
    â€˜We found a body in the fire last week,’ he began. He’d spare her the brutal details. ‘A girl who was pregnant. From what I could see, she might have had a cleft lip. It looks as if someone killed her before the blaze.’
    For a moment he wasn’t certain she’d understood him. Then slowly, by small degrees, her face crumpled and she brought up her worn hands to cover it.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ he told her.
    â€˜Why?’ she asked eventually, her words muffled. ‘What was she doing there? Who’d do that to my Lucy?’
    â€˜I don’t know. But I’ll find out.’
    He stood, knowing there was no solace he could give now, then he closed the door quietly behind him, leaving the woman to a lifetime of mourning.
    Back at the jail he sat and stared. The girl had been gone four weeks, and a little more than seven days had passed since they’d found the bodies after the fire. Now he had a name for her: Lucy Wendell. Pregnant and with a harelip, who else could it have been? He had somewhere to begin.
    But that meant she’d been somewhere for three full weeks before she was murdered. Twenty-one days was a long time.

Five
    Lister was yawning, barely awake after the long Saturday night. There’d been something in the air; he’d lost count of the fights they’d broken up, men filled with ale and looking for violence. They’d cracked heads, put some in the cells to face the Petty Sessions, and taken blows. His cheek ached where someone had hit him and he had a kerchief wound round his hand to staunch the blood from a cut to his palm. At least no one had died, although one seemed unlikely to survive, cut deep in the chest with a long tanner’s knife.
    A light, misting ran had drifted in with the dawn, softening the outlines of the buildings through the window of the jail. Soon the bells of the churches would begin to ring for Sunday services, the carillons echoing around to remind the faithful, and the people would parade around in their best clothes. He’d be home and in his bed, trying to rest before calling on Emily in the afternoon.
    He stretched out his legs on the flagstone floor and looked at the Constable.
    â€˜Sounds like it could have been worse,’ Nottingham said.
    â€˜Maybe,’ Rob agreed cautiously.
    â€˜You wait until they’re a real mob,’ Sedgwick told him. ‘It’s been a while since we had that.’
    â€˜I have a name for the girl who died in that fire down on the Calls,’ the Constable said. ‘Lucy Wendell.’
    This was the reason he’d come in early this Sabbath morning, Lister realized. He and the deputy both shook their heads. The name meant nothing.
    â€˜It looks like she was missing for three weeks before the blaze. She’d been working as a