The Revenge of Captain Paine by Andrew Pepper Page B

‘Has someone been blabbering?’
    ‘Not that I know of.’
    ‘But you suspect someone?’
    Pyke shook his head. ‘Not at this end.’
    ‘But you suspect that someone knows? And you’re fishing to see if one of my lads might have talked?’
    Pyke shrugged. ‘Is that a possibility?’
    ‘No.’>
    They exchanged a cold stare. ‘Then there’s nothing to worry about.’
    ‘Good.’ Villums stood up and pulled his short, double-breasted jacket down over his belly. ‘I’ll show myself out.’
    ‘Ned?’
    Villums turned around at the door. ‘Yeah?’
    ‘Let’s both try and be even more careful in the future.’
    Villums left without saying a word. Pyke wondered whether he had unnecessarily antagonised a man with a history of and propensity for violence.

FIVE
    The magistrates’ court at Bow Street was located at the front of a tall, narrow, box-shaped building on the west side of the street, and by the time Pyke had pushed his way through the throng of law clerks, Bow Street Runners and lawyers assembled either on the steps at the front of the building or in the entrance hall and corridors, the hearing was about to start. Formerly the parlour in a private house, the room had long since abandoned any claims to respectability, and now the general air of dreariness, fostered by many years of neglect, had become institutionalised. Pyke knew it well, of course. As a Bow Street Runner, he had proffered testimony on many occasions from the witness stand, and it was the smell of the room, a musty odour of mildew, unwashed clothes, dried sweat and cheap tobacco, which carried him back to an earlier moment in his life. There were still one or two people he recognised from the old days but they either ignored him or refused to meet his stare: back then his reputation meant that few people had been willing to cross him and even fewer had sought him out as a friend or confidant.
    Pyke’s uncle, Godfrey, stood alone in the dock, an elevated platform in front of a large mirror with a wooden rail running around it, while the chief magistrate, Sir Henry Bellows, conferred with the man who would be presenting the evidence against Godfrey. The point of the hearing was to determine whether the charges against the accused - in this case, criminal libel and possibly also sedition - merited a trial in a higher court. Once the evidence had been presented by the Crown’s barrister, Godfrey would be allowed to ask questions both about the evidence and the witness statements made against him in the hope of exposing contradictions and lies in the Crown’s case. On the Crown’s part, it was hoped that Godfrey’s testimony might be used against him if the case came to trial.
    Wearing a blue, double-breasted Spencer coat with polished brass buttons over a cream embroidered waistcoat and frilly white shirt, his uncle did not look like a common criminal. He greeted Pyke with a hug and took a swig of gin from his flask before casting an eye across the crowded room. ‘A sniff of scandal and the jackals come running. They could have charged on the door and still packed the room three times over.’ He was a tall, broad-shouldered man approaching seventy years old, overweight, with a face as red as a beetroot and a shock of bone-white hair.
    Pyke looked at the row of well-fed, smartly attired men sitting alongside Bellows on the bench. ‘Which one is Conroy?’
    ‘The silver fox with the coiled moustache. The bulldog next to him is his lawyer, Charles Frederick Williams, a King’s bencher no less.’ Godfrey took another swig from his flask and belched. ‘I know this poison will kill me in the end but who would want to live in an age of moral propriety?’ He shook his head with disgust. ‘That’s what I heard someone call it the other day.’
    As a much younger man Godfrey had published provocative essays by the likes of Paine and Spence, risking imprisonment to do so, but his political idealism had waned in his middle years and he had