Betrayal at Lisson Grove - Anne Perry [5]
Narraway had shaken his head, as if awakening himself. ‘This is a different breed, Pitt, and the tide of victory is with them now, but not the violence. We don’t change that way in Britain, we evolve slowly. We’ll get there, but not with murder, and not by force.’
The wind was fading, the water smoother.
They were nearly at the south bank of the river. It was time to make a decision. Gower was looking at him, waiting.
Wrexham’s ferry was almost at the Lavender Dock.
‘He’s going somewhere,’ Gower said urgently. ‘Do we want to get him now, sir – or see where he leads us? If we take him we won’t know who’s behind this. He won’t talk: he’s no reason to. We practically saw him kill West. He’ll hang for sure.’ He waited, frowning.
‘Do you think we can keep him in sight?’ Pitt asked.
‘Yes, sir.’ Gower did not hesitate.
‘Right.’ The decision was clear in Pitt’s mind. ‘Stay back then. We’ll split up if we have to.’
The ferry hung back until Wrexham had climbed up the narrow steps and all but disappeared. Then, scrambling to keep up, Pitt and Gower went after him.
They were careful to follow now from more of a distance, sometimes together but more often a sufficient space between them that a casual onlooker would have taken them for strangers merely travelling in approximately the same direction.
But Wrexham seemed to be so absorbed in his own concern now that he never looked behind him. He must have assumed he had lost them when he crossed the river. Indeed, they were very lucky that he had not. With the amount of water-borne traffic, he must have failed to realise that one ferry was dogging his path.
At the railway station there were at least a couple of dozen other people at the ticket counter.
‘Better get tickets all the way, sir,’ Gower urged. ‘We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves from not paying the fare.’
Pitt gave him a sharp look, but forebore from making the remark on the edge of his tongue.
‘Sorry,’ Gower murmured with a slight smile.
Once on the platform they remained close to a knot of other people waiting. Neither of them spoke, as if they were strangers to each other. The precaution seemed unnecessary. Wrexham barely glanced at either of them, nor at anyone else.
The first train was going north. It drew in and stopped. Most of the waiting passengers got onto it, but not Wrexham. Pitt wished he had a newspaper to hide his face and appear to take his attention. He should have thought of it before.
‘I think I can hear the next train,’ Gower said a minute or two later, almost under his breath. ‘It should be to Southampton – eventually. We might have to change . . .’ The rest of what he said was cut off by the noise of the engine as the train pulled in, belching steam. The doors flew open and passengers poured out.
Pitt struggled to keep Wrexham in sight. He waited until the last moment in case he should get out again and lose them, then he and Gower boarded a carriage behind his.
‘He could be going anywhere,’ Gower said grimly. His fair face was set in hard lines, his hair poking up where he had run his fingers through it. ‘One of us had better get out at every station to see he doesn’t get off at the last moment and we lose him.’
‘Of course,’ Pitt agreed.
‘Do you think West really had something for us?’ Gower went on. ‘He could have been killed for some other reason. A quarrel? Those revolutionaries are pretty volatile. Could have been a betrayal within the group? Even a rivalry for leadership?’ He was watching Pitt intently, his blue eyes staring so hard it was as if he were trying to read inside Pitt’s mind.
‘I know that,’ Pitt said quietly. He was by far the senior, and the decision was his to make. Gower would never question him on that. It was little comfort now, in fact rather a lonely thought. He remembered Narraway’s certainty that there was something planned that would make the recent random bombings seem trivial. In February of last year, 1894, a French anarchist had tried to destroy the Royal Observatory at Greenwich with a bomb. Thank heaven he had failed. In June, President