Chapter 9

Bailey and De Hogue stood together, staring silently down at the mangled bodies of Jack Kirby and Joe Arkwright.
Both lay face down in the ground, but where as Arkwright had been killed by a single blow to the back of the head, Kirby had been dismembered and disembowelled, his entrails dragged from his lower back and his right leg lying some several feet away. In the cold air, the frost had chilled the blood and it had retained the illusion of a fresh kill.
“Where is Stokes?” de Hogue finally asked.
Bailey shrugged. Stokes had found the bodies whilst they were still warm, and had set off at once to track the killer. There had been no word from him since then.
“What?” de Hogue regarded Bailey’s haggard face with concern. “Are you saying you haven’t heard from him since last night?”
Bailey heaved in a great breath but his words failed him. He spread his hands helplessly in the air and muttered that he didn’t know.
He had hardly slept in two days and de Hogue shook his head as the shorter man, unshaven, with blood shot eyes, grasped for words. He glanced aside at Arkwright’s corpse, Bailey’s friend and thought of Norris who had been shipped off to Chatham in the Alert, his face white as if he were already dead.
“I don’t know where he is” Bailey muttered.
“Why don’t you go and get some sleep before you collapse?” de Hogue asked.
Bailey looked up at him with narrowed eyes, then down at his hands which were caked with Norris’s dried blood.
“Aye perhaps you’re right.” He sighed. “Will you take care of Joe?”
Nodding, de Hogue took Bailey’s arm and motioned for one of the Chatham men to come closer.
“Take Mister Bailey back to his cottage will you?”
The man agreed keeping his eyes carefully from the mutilated body of Jack Kirby. He gently took Bailey’s arm and began to lead him away, but Bailey turned back to de Hogue and as tears began to run down his face, he looked the larger man in the eye.
“If you find him,” he said in a lethal voice “then you send word for me!”
De Hogue said nothing, but he regarded Bailey with determined eyes that gave their assent. Bailey nodded slightly to himself and turned away.
De Hogue was left standing under the swaying trees, his hair blowing across his eyes, watching as Bailey was led back to the village. Two of the other men from Chatham remained behind, but neither of them approached the bodies. They had both known Arkwright personally and the shock of his death, and the manner by which it had occurred had left all the Chatham men in a highly nervous state.

With Norris departed, and Stokes missing, de Hogue felt very much alone. Even Melchior was gone, returning to London with the Dutch gold on the Pegasus. He looked down at the two bodies and stiffened his resolve. It had to be done, but he was reluctant to examine Arkwright. Up until now the victims had been strangers to him, but Arkwright he had known, though briefly, and had liked. Now, standing over his corpse, de Hogue was gripped by an unwillingness to end his memories of Joseph Arkwright with this lifeless corpse lying face down in the cold grass.
He knelt beside the dead man and examined the wound in the back of the head. He felt it was easier if he simply thought of him, as the ‘dead man’, but this proved impossible when he turned the body over to examine the front. What ever weapon had killed Arkwright, had passed through his skull and brain and out through his mouth. It had broken several of the teeth from the lower jaw and severed the lip. For a long moment, the head still in his hand, de Hogue was forced to look aside and breathe deeply as his stomach heaved in several quick spasms.