Cold Cruel Winter Read Online Free PDF

been here twenty-five years, sir.’ He gestured at the others. ‘Mr Rushworth’s been a clerk with us for almost twenty years, and Mr Johnson eight years. Mr Graves trusts us to run things.’ His face reddened briefly in embarrassment and sadness. ‘I mean, he trusted . . .’
    â€˜Do you know who he was meeting in London?’
    The man shook his head. ‘He never said, but I’m sure there will be letters in his correspondence. I can look if you’d like, sir.’
    â€˜Do that, if you would. I’ll need everything you can find,’ the Constable told him. ‘What time was his coach?’
    The men looked between themselves again, shrugging.
    â€˜I’m sorry, sir, he didn’t tell us that, only that he’d be gone to London for a few days. Mrs Graves might know,’ he added, then paused. ‘Do you know what might happen to the business now? And to . . . us?’
    â€˜I don’t. I’m sorry.’ He understood their fear, not knowing whether they might be cast out in a week or a month. But there was nothing more he could learn here at the moment. ‘Can you bring all his correspondence about London to the jail, please?’
    Outside, a weak, watery sun had started to shine, but its faint brightness did nothing to warm the air. Nottingham pulled the coat close and the tricorn hat down tight and trudged back along the river, then over the patches of ice on Lower Briggate to the jail. The drunks had woken, and he let them go with a warning. They’d be back soon enough anyway, if they didn’t freeze on the streets first. All anyone could hope was that the weather would break soon, and that spring would arrive. They all needed new life, he thought grimly.
    He sat, letting the heat from the fire slowly fill him. A scrawled, almost illegible note on the desk told him that the undertaker had collected Graves’s body. Tomorrow there would be men hacking at the frozen earth for his burial and the day after a sombre crowd in thick woollen coats in the churchyard to hear his eulogy.
    Pinching the bridge of his nose, then sweeping the fringe off his forehead, he gathered together what he knew about the killing. It was precious little, a spider’s web made up of mystery and questions.
    To the best of his knowledge, Graves had never been one to frequent the inns and taverns. On a few occasions Nottingham had seen him at Garroway’s coffee house, and the merchant had seemed uncomfortable enough there, surrounded by brittle noise and the prittle-prattle of chatter.
    He was at the Parish Church every Sunday, in his own pew with his wife and some of the servants, parading down Kirkgate and back, the soul of rectitude. And that was what he might have been, a man who lived for his work and his family. But now, no more.
    That wasn’t the question that gnawed at him. What he couldn’t understand was why one man would take the flesh of another. Why had he held on to the body? What could he do with the skin? There seemed to be no reason behind any of it. His imagination could conjure up nothing, and that left him at a disadvantage.
    The more he considered it, the more certain he was that there could be nothing spontaneous about the killing. Everything had been planned with the greatest care. It had taken place somewhere the skin could be removed, and the murderer had held on to the corpse somewhere before leaving it, quite deliberately, to be found.
    That meant someone had a deep reason to kill Graves. So someone, somewhere, had a motive, some history, some explanation for it all.
    That much he could accept. But the skinning still made absolutely no sense.
    For now all he could do was wait until Sedgwick and Joshua returned, and hope they’d discovered something. In the meantime there were lists to complete, reports to be written, the terrible minutiae of his job.
    Writing never came easily to him. For his daughter Emily, who