‘He sleeps here,’ she said.

  ‘Not tonight.’

  She couldn’t make out most of the faces. Too dark, too hidden. But the man she’d followed wasn’t here; she was certain of that.

  ‘Where will I find him?’

  ‘Maybe he’ll come by later,’ one voice shouted.

  ‘Come here and I’ll show you where he is.’ A man. But it was empty talk. There was no threat in this place.

  She saw a young woman staring into the fire and squatted beside her.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  In the light she began to pick out a few features on the girl’s face. Sunken cheeks, rat’s tails of hair. Two fingers missing on her right hand.

  ‘Did you work in a mill?’ Jane asked. The woman turned, blinking as if she’d just woken from a deep sleep.

  ‘How …?’ The sentence withered before it could form.

  ‘The hands. I’ve seen it before. I was there once myself. Doffer girl.’

  The woman nodded.

  ‘Do you know the name of the lad I’m looking for?’

  ‘James,’ she replied vaguely. ‘Or maybe it’s John.’ A quick, nervous smile. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Where else does he go?’

  She shook her head, small, jerking movements from side to side.

  Around them, the others muttered or dozed. Jane was no threat; they could safely ignore her. She stood and wandered away, turning to look back from the broken wall. No one stared after her. She might never have been there at all.

  The sound caught her. Scuffling, down on the riverbank. She hurried, pulling out the knife.

  Simon. She recognized his shape. Kneeling over someone. He heard her and raised his head.

  ‘He tried to leave right after you went in. Is this him?’

  The man struggled as Simon dragged him towards a sliver of light. But his fight had gone; he knew he was caught.

  ‘That’s the one.’

  The nickname fitted well; he had a rodent’s sharp features, a long nose and deep-set eyes. Wiry, with bony wrists, as if he hadn’t grown into his body yet.

  ‘You certainly look like a weasel,’ Simon said. He kept a tight grip on the man’s jacket. ‘Why were you following me today?’

  ‘Paid me to.’ The words came out in gasps.

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘A man.’ His eyes were bulging with fear.

  ‘What man?’ She could feel Simon’s anger building.

  ‘He said he’d heard I was good at not being seen. He was brown. You know, like he’d spent a long time in the sun.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘He never said. Told me to watch a house and follow anyone who went there. Then I had to go and see him.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Place by the old ferry. He promised he’d give me five shillings.’

  ‘You didn’t go there straight away, did you?’ Jane asked.

  He turned his head, trying to make out her face in the darkness. ‘I nicked a watch. I thought Tom might buy it.’

  ‘And after that?’ Simon asked.

  ‘I went down to the ferry and told him. He paid me.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘No. I came back here. Look.’ A hand fumbled in the pocket of his trousers as he dragged out some coins. ‘Didn’t even have the chance to spend any of it yet.’

  She watched as Simon let go of the man and stood. He was breathing hard. Rain ran down his face.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Get out of here.’

  The lad scrambled away and stumbled off into the night.

  The old ferry. She’d been by it often enough, half a mile down the Aire and Calder Navigation, beyond Fearn’s Island. It was quiet down there, she thought; a good place to keep a girl hidden.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ she asked Simon.

  ‘We’ll go in the morning,’ he replied after a moment. ‘It’s too dark to see anything there now. We’ll make an early start.’

  ELEVEN

  They left just before dawn, feeling the early chill off the water. The rain had stopped; dirty puddles filled the roads. The few people on the streets wore haunted looks. Simon hardly noticed them; he was trying to picture the buildings around the old ferry. A storehouse, he remembered that, and the ferry office. But the rest? It was all so faint in his memory.

  No matter, he thought; they’d find out very soon.

  And by the time they arrived, White would already have gone. He’d been ahead of them every step of the way. He’d anticipated each move Simon had made. As if White had been testing him, to see if he was good enough.

  Jane walked beside him, not speaking, caught in her own thoughts. He was grateful for the silence. Before they left the house, he’d caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror. Pale, the skin drawn taut over his bones. Eyes that seemed sunk in his skull. He’d barely slept. Every time he closed his eyes he dreamt of finding a faceless girl who died in his arms.

  When they arrived home the night before, a note from Barnaby Wade was waiting for him: I’ve asked about White. No one seems to know. If he’s here, someone is shielding him well.

  He was here. Simon could almost smell him. Who’d take in a man like that? Why? What hold could he have over someone after all this time?

  The barge crews were beginning to stir as they passed. The boats were lined up two and three deep by the warehouses, loud creaks as they bobbed lightly in the water. Soon they’d be loading, unloading, setting off back to the coast.

  He shook it all from his mind. The only thing to consider was what they’d find at the old ferry.

  A few more minutes and they drew close. The track down to the riverbank was overgrown with weeds. The ferry boat had long since moved to the new crossing further downstream.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Jane answered. Her voice gave nothing away.

  Simon felt the tightness around his chest. Each breath seemed like an effort. The anticipation. He’d be fine once they arrived, as everything began to unfold. He took the knife from his belt, another from his boot as they left the road. No one was watching.

  Just two buildings. No wonder he hadn’t been able to picture more. The ferryman’s hut and the old stone house used for storage.

  ‘You take the hut,’ he told her, and Jane moved off to the left, gliding over the grass. Close to the other building he stopped, looking around. Footprints in the mud, but that meant nothing; it was a good shelter. The door hung slightly open. The wood had rotted away where it met the ground.

  Simon raised his boot and kicked it wide open, letting the daylight pour in. A few empty crates, a tattered sack or two in the corners. A large spider waddled across the ground. Cobwebs hung from the rafters. The dust rose in heavy clouds as he moved a stack of boxes, and the remains of an old fire lay in the middle of the floor. Someone had slept here, but a long time ago. Most people had probably forgotten it had even existed. But not Julius White.

  ‘She’s here,’ Jane called out.

  He ran across the open ground and ducked under the sagging lintel. Hannah Milner was in the corner of the small room, hunched up, eyes bulging, trying to make herself small. Her wrists and ankles were tied, a scarf pushed into her mouth to keep her quiet.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Simon told her as he knelt. ‘We’re here to take you home. Cut the ropes,’ he ordered as he eased the gag out and heard her gasp. ‘It’s fine. You’re safe now, Hannah.’

  He watched as she rubbed her wrists, then her ankles. The bonds had been tight enough to leave marks on her skin. Then the tears began, a river of them down her cheeks. At least she looked unhurt. No bruises he could see. Her clothes weren’t torn. Simon glanced at Jane. She stared down at the girl, no expression that he could read on her face.

  Hannah had her face in her hands, still crying. He stood and watched helplessly as her shoulders shook. Finally it subsided and she wiped her cheeks dry with the back of her hands.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I just …’

  ‘You’re safe. No one’s going to harm you now. I promise. Can you stand?’

  He helped her up. She grimaced, and Simon steadied her as she took a few awkward steps round the room.

  It was a slow, aching walk back into Leeds. Hannah had her arm through his, hobbling, staring down at the ground. Jane’s shawl covered her hair; no one would know her.

  He needed to understand how it had all happened. But as he asked his questions, all she gave were brief answers, tiny sketches of memory.

  She remembered a man approaching. Well-dressed, polite. He claimed her father had sent him. A long silence as her words faltered. Slowly, Hannah began again: she was in a room, hands tied, mouth stopped with a dirty cloth. The man returned, warning her not to scream, then giving her water and food.

  ‘How long were you there?’ Simon asked. ‘What kind of house?’

  She didn’t answer him. The night before, after dark, she’d been taken out to the ferry.

  ‘I thought they were going to kill me.’

  ‘They?’ he asked, but she continued.

  ‘They tied me up and left. I couldn’t move. All I could hear was the water.’

  Close to Leeds, as the noise began to wrap around them, more faces on the street, Hannah seemed to feel a little more at ease. Simon glanced over his shoulder. Jane was three paces behind, alert, keeping guard.

  He led her to Swinegate, seeing her panicked look as he opened the door to his house.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. I live here. My wife will look after you. I need to tell your father we’ve found you.’

  The back door, the familiar servant, a few muttered words, then instructions.

  ‘We’re going to meet your father’s carriage in an hour,’ he told her.

  Hannah looked brighter, more alert. She’d washed and eaten and exchanged her dirty clothes for one of Rosie’s gowns. Now she was sitting in the kitchen, and the boys pestered her with questions.

  ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’ She seemed dazed by everything. But what else would she feel after being taken by a devil? ‘All of you.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Rosie shooed the twins away upstairs. ‘It’s Simon’s job.’

  He tried a few more questions, but she simply shook her head. Rosie glared at him. Perhaps it was best to let her start forgetting.

  Then it was out to Drony Laith for a final time. Milner took his daughter’s hand and kissed her cheek. The servant smiled to see her.

  ‘I don’t think she’s been hurt at all,’ Simon said. ‘In any way.’

  The merchant nodded. ‘Her mother will be glad to have her home.’

  ‘You should be gentle. She’s had a bad time.’

  ‘Yes. And no one will know what happened.’ The words were a warning.

  ‘No one.’

  ‘What about the one who took her? He still has my money.’

  ‘That’s up to you,’ Simon told him.

  ‘What in God’s name do you think I want?’ He spat his answer. ‘Get it back. Kill him if you have to. And you can take your fee out of what he stole from me.’

  ‘That’s not what we agreed.’

  ‘Your money was for returning my daughter before I had to pay. You failed, Westow. You want that two hundred guineas? You know what to do.’

  He turned his back and marched back to the coach.

  ‘You’ve been very quiet.’

  ‘We were meant to find her, weren’t we?’ Jane said. ‘That was the plan.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘we were.’ White had left a trail of people to guide him there. Every step had been intended as a challenge to him: follow if you’re good enough.

  ‘It’s like he’s taunting us,’ Rosie said. ‘If we hadn’t been able to do it, she’d have been left there to die.’

  She was right. Hannah Milner had never mattered to White. She was simply a device to bring him money and weigh Simon’s skill.

  ‘And we still don’t have any idea where he is.’

  ‘Or what he’s going to do next.’

  ‘I can tell you that,’ Simon said. ‘He’s going to have his revenge. He’s a rich man now.’

  ‘He might be. We brought Hannah home and we don’t have a penny for it,’ Rosie reminded him.

  ‘We’re not going to see one until we find White and get that thousand pounds back.’

  ‘That’s what he really wants, isn’t it? This is where it’s all been leading. Him against us.’

  Simon stopped and looked at her. The battle was still to come. He turned to Jane.

  ‘This isn’t your fight. He doesn’t have a grudge against you.’

  ‘He wants his revenge on you. You and Rosie.’

  ‘He does. Not just us, but yes, that’s why he’s come back. Unfinished business.’

  ‘Then it’s my fight,’ she said.

  He smiled. It was as close as she’d ever come to saying she was one of them.

  ‘I’ll be glad to have you. But it’s not going to be easy.’

  Jane shrugged. ‘That doesn’t matter.’

  Rosie slammed a pan down on the stove.

  ‘Milner didn’t even thank you?’

  ‘No.’ Clients were usually grateful. They might bargain over the fee, but they were glad to see their property returned.

  ‘Then he should have seen his daughter when you brought her here. The poor girl was terrified. I could hardly get any sense from her at first. This is going to stay with her for the rest of her life.’

  ‘Milner said I hadn’t done the job I promised.’

  ‘And I suppose he could have gone out and brought her back himself.’ Her tone was withering.

  ‘He said to take the two hundred from the money when we recover it.’

  ‘We’ll take a sight more than that. Two jobs, two fees,’ Rosie said. ‘I’ll give him an accounting and he’ll be lucky to get his two sovereigns back. I’m going to bleed him for it.’

  ‘First we have to find White. We need to do something he’s not expecting,’ Simon said.

  ‘What?’ Rosie asked. ‘Look at it. He’s done a very neat job of leading us by the nose so far.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Silence filled the kitchen.

  TWELVE

  The sun had appeared, shimmering and muted through the smoke rising from the chimneys. It lit up the colours on women’s dresses and caught in the water of the potholes and puddles. Weather was weather, Jane thought; dry was better than wet, she liked the warmth more than the cold. But you couldn’t change it. You survived.

  Out here, lost in the shouts and the noise and the bustle, caught in the haze and the stench, she could think. There were places she could run if she needed, one or two who’d hide her if she asked. She knew Leeds in a way White never could, better even than Simon. He’d been respectable for too long.

  A thought kept pricking at her. How had White managed to stay hidden since his return? He’d been able to find people, to select his victim, rent a house, all without anyone seeing him. But Australia hadn’t turned him into a ghost.

  Nine years since he’d been convicted; that was what Rosie had said. A long time to be away. She’d had a family then, a mother and father she believed she could trust. A lifetime ago.

  Only two kinds of people were able to hide themselves well: the very rich and the poor, and no man without money could have done what White had achieved. He had a thousand pounds more now. Enough to purchase any number of lives and deaths, and build thicker walls around himself.

  She crossed Quebec Street, along Eyebright Place, by the Infirmary, the roads outside Park Square, then back along Park Lane and Merry Boys Hill, before she entered the yard behind the Green Dragon.

  A dog dug into a midden, growling as she passed. At an opening between two houses, Jane turned again, following the passageway into another court where flagstones covered the ground and the small houses were neatly tended. A few plants were poking out of the soil in an old barrel under one of the windows. The glass sparkled clean in the light.

  It had the calmness of a country lane. The houses all around cut off the sounds of the town. Jane tapped on the door, happy to see the old woman who answered. She was spry, dressed in a style that had been in fashion well before the French wars. Her grey hair was carefully tucked under a cap, she wore a dress with a high waist and square neck, the sleeves puffed out over her small shoulders. A pair of spectacles perched on her nose and she held a book in her hand, one finger marking her page.

  ‘Oh my,’ Catherine Shields said with pleasure. ‘Jane. Jane. Come in, my girl, it’s lovely to see you again.’

  Mrs Rigton had been the one who’d first sent her here, delivering a bottle of tonic. As soon as she set foot in the tiny court, Jane had felt her heart ease a little. After that visit she came back often, just for the pleasure of being here. She brought little gifts, flowers she picked, a glass bottle she found, and Mrs Shields accepted them all as if they were the most beautiful presents she’d ever been given.

  There was a radiance about her, a serenity that Jane loved. For one long summer, it felt as if she’d been here every day, cleaning things, running off to shop for Catherine at the market, planting seeds in pots and tubs and watching them grow. Mrs Shields had talked: about her husband, a man who’d died before Jane was even born, the children she’d birthed, all dead before they’d been alive for a year. Plenty of sorrow, but she was content. She was happy.

  It had taken time, but eventually Jane had talked, too. She’d remember the things she had when she was part of a family. Some of the things she’d seen since then. Not all; never all. But this place, this house, this woman, took her outside all that. It was a haven.

  Jane had grown; life had changed. She’d drifted away. She had her work with Simon and she didn’t come to visit as often. Yet as soon as she entered the yard, Catherine’s gentle magic seemed to lift her. Once, she’d brought Richard and Amos. The woman had fussed over them like a grandmother, finding treats tucked away in cupboards to give to them.

  They sat with the door open, letting sunlight warm the room, drinking the sugared water Catherine loved.