The Revenge of Captain Paine by Andrew Pepper Page A

much they wouldn’t give you up, if and when Peel’s men have to come looking for me?’
    That seemed to register with Yellowplush. He put the pistol back into his belt and shrugged. ‘You’d better come with me, then.’
    It was a damp night and the air smelled of wet leaves. The street was deserted and they walked in silence as far as the watch-house where prison cells were visible from the street through iron grilles.
    The watch-house was besieged, with men of all ages lining up in an orderly queue that snaked around the building. The magistrate explained they were waiting to be sworn in as special constables. Once this had been done, they would be allocated a weapon of their choice. The selection was a rich one. Lining the wall at the back of the watch-house were brickbats, muskets, shovels, swords, machetes, pick handles and even a few rifles. When Pyke likened the scene to an army preparing to go to war, Yellowplush looked at him and smiled.
    ‘I take it you’re expecting trouble,’ Pyke said, as he followed the magistrate down a flight of stone steps to the cellar of the watch-house, where the headless body was being stored.
    The flickering light given off by the magistrate’s lantern barely illuminated the tomblike corridor.
    Pyke smelled the corpse before he saw it, a ripe odour that filled the windowless room.
    Yellowplush put the lantern down on the floor and said, ‘I’ll leave you the light. I don’t imagine you’re used to spending time with dead bodies.’
    Pyke looked at him. ‘And you are?’ The air around them was cloying, fleshy and sickly.
    ‘I used to serve in the army. The regiment was travelling to India when the ship caught fire in the Bay of Biscay. A casket of rum split open and one of the ship’s officers dropped a lantern. The fire spread from the hold to the rest of the ship. I was tasked with the job of raising men from their cabins on the port side of the ship towards the stern but the fire spread too quickly for me. The screams of those men will live me with the rest of my days, sir. The next day, after the ship had finally blown up, we discovered the charred remains of a young child. I was there in the boat with his father when we came across it. The sound that came from the man’s mouth was not one I ever want to hear again. So to answer your question, sir, the idea of spending some time in the presence of a dead body doesn’t concern me in the slightest.’
    The heels of Yellowplush’s leather boots clicked against the stone as he ascended the stone steps.
    The air in the cellar felt cool against Pyke’s skin and it took him a few moments to adjust to his new surroundings. Holding his nose as best he could, Pyke pulled back the sheet, but the stench of rotting, decomposing flesh was too much and he snapped his head backwards, a hot spike of vomit spurting from his mouth. The next time, he whipped the sheet off with a single jerk. Underneath, the bloated corpse looked inhuman, a fatty torso already as stiff as a washboard and discoloured from decomposition, and just a bloody stump where the head had once been. Wiping bile from his mouth, he brought the lantern closer to the corpse and bent down to inspect it further. Pyke’s eyes passed across the corpse’s clammy skin but he couldn’t see an obvious cause of death. There was no stab wound and no visible scars or bruises of any sort except for a cluster of what looked like burn marks at the top of his arm. Four or five reddish circles, no larger than a five-shilling coin. Pyke prodded them with his thumb, trying to work out what might have caused them.
    He walked around the corpse a few times, taking note of the thickness of the arms and thighs and the hairiness of the chest and arms. He’d been a young man, Pyke decided, no more than thirty years of age, and physically active, with well-developed leg and arm muscles. There was a zigzag scar running down the length of his forearm and a birthmark on his chest. From the