A long week passed and they found nothing. Whoever had killed Samuel Graves had left no clues, no hints. For all the hours of questions and long searches, he might as well have been invisible.
Deep down, Nottingham knew full well that the man was still in the city. There was more to come, he could feel it. There had to be; no one did that then just vanished. All he could do was keep looking and wait.
Graves’s papers arrived. He’d pored over them for hours, reading through every piece of correspondence. He’d been going to London to try to secure a contract to provide blankets for the army. It would have made him a very wealthy man if it had happened, but the Constable was certain that it wasn’t the cause behind a murder like this.
Every day the Mayor ranted at him to solve the murder. Every night, when he lay in bed, it preyed on him, until the thoughts of Rose replaced it with something even deeper and darker.
What baffled him still was the skinning. It was easy enough to make sense of a killing, however warped it might be. But so carefully, so delicately, to remove the skin from someone’s back? There had to be a reason, but for all his thoughts he couldn’t find it.
He’d managed to learn that Wainwright had died, another victim of the killing winter. He’d dispatched a letter to London to learn if Abraham Wyatt had died in Jamaica or been released, but it could well be weeks before he received a reply.
Seven frustrating days had passed since Sedgwick had found the body, days of half-hopes that proved as substantial as October mist. The only consolation was that the weather had hesitatingly begun to warm, melting much of the ice and turning packed snow into grey, creaking slush.
He’d been sitting in the jail since seven. Sedgwick and Forrester had gone out to ask more questions, although he already knew the answers would be of no help. On Briggate the sounds of the Tuesday market echoed loudly, cheerful and competitive as the traders vied with each other.
The door opened and a boy entered hesitantly, his eyes wide at being in such a place. Nottingham looked down at him and smiled gently.
‘Please sir. .’ the boy began in a small voice. He was tiny but already careworn, and from his rags he was obviously one of the urchins whose life on the streets of Leeds would be pitifully short.
‘What do you need?’ he asked.
‘Someone told me to give this to the Constable.’ He brought a small parcel from behind his back, wrapped in an old sheet from the Leeds Mercury.
‘I’m the Constable,’ Nottingham told him kindly. ‘Who told you to do this?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ the boy answered. ‘But he gave me a penny for it.’
‘I see.’ He was alert now, staring at the package the boy had put on the desk. ‘And when did he do this?’
‘Just a few minutes ago, sir. Over near Lands Lane.’
‘What did he look like? Do you remember?’ He tried to make the questions sound casual; he didn’t want to terrify the boy into silence.
The lad shook his head. ‘I couldn’t really see him, sir. He had a hat pulled down, and a heavy coat.’
‘Was he big? Small?’
‘Not so big,’ the boy said with confidence. ‘But he said he’d watch me and if I didn’t do the job he’d take the money back and hurt me.’
‘Well, you’ve done it, so everything is fine.’ Nottingham smiled at him. ‘What’s your name?
‘Mark, sir. My mother said it’s for one of the followers of Jesus.’
‘She was right. Where is she now?’
‘Dead, sir.’
‘I’m sorry about that, Mark. You can go now, you’ve done your job well.’
As the door closed, he sat down and unwrapped the package.