Long Spoon Lane - Anne Perry [13]
“Yes,” Pitt agreed grimly. “Welling says it was us.”
“He’s a liar.”
“Not someone in uniform.”
“We were all in uniform, sir,” Linwood said stiffly. “The only ones in plainclothes were you and your boss from Special Branch.”
“I don’t think Welling was lying,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “I think it was someone he didn’t know, or didn’t recognize.”
“Still one of his own,” Linwood’s face was hard, anger making his voice cutting. “He was shot in the back.”
“I know. Looks as if anarchy’s an even uglier business than we thought. Thank you, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir. Is that all?” Linwood stood to attention, or close to it. He did not consider Special Branch to be real police.
“For the moment,” Pitt replied.
Linwood left, but Pitt stood still in the room, picturing in his mind the sequence of events. He had come up the stairs behind Narraway and the three policemen. He had been one flight up when he had heard the shot from the room above, and the shouting.
When he had got there, seconds after the police, they had been standing still to this side of the gunman. The far door had been swinging. Someone else had just gone out of it. No one had mentioned seeing him, so he must already have disappeared when the first man came in at the front.
Welling and Carmody were refusing to name anyone else, but they insisted the police had shot Magnus Landsborough. From the angle of the bullet and the way Landsborough was lying, the shot had to have come from the door to the back stairs. Presumably the man had escaped that way, Welling and Carmody assuming him to be police, and the police at the back mistaking him for one of the police with Special Branch from the front, in hot pursuit of an anarchist. They must have let him go right past them!
The mechanics of it were beginning to make sense.
Had the police at the back been careless and let at least one man through, perhaps more? Or corrupt, and intentionally allowed them to escape?
Who was the man who had shot Landsborough from behind the door, and then raced downstairs pretending to be a policeman? Had he seized a chance suddenly presented to him by fate, or had he waited in the building in Long Spoon Lane, knowing that after the explosion the bombers would return here?
Why? An internal rivalry, one group against another? A clash of ideals, a war for territory? Or a fight for leadership within one group?
Or something else altogether?
Pitt walked slowly across the room and out of the door to the back stairs, the way the killer must have gone. Outside in the street he found another constable, but he could tell him nothing more.
2
PITT CLOSED THE front door quietly, took off his boots and walked along the passage towards the lights and the sounds of laughter in the kitchen. It was nearly eight o’clock, and although it was a mild evening, he was shivering cold with exhaustion, not so much of body as of mind.
He pushed the door open and was engulfed with the warm smells of hot pastry, vegetables, and the dry, delicate odor of clean linen on the airing rail above. The gaslight shone on the blue-ringed china on the dresser and the pale, scrubbed wood of the table.
Charlotte swung around to smile at him. Her hair was still pinned up, but wisps of it were coming loose, and she had an apron on over the sweep of her skirt.
“Thomas!” She moved quickly towards him, then looked at his face and frowned. “There was a bomb! What happened? Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m just tired,” he answered her. “No one was hurt in the blast. One policeman was shot in the siege, but it was just a flesh wound.”
She kissed his cheek quickly and pulled away. “Have you had anything to eat?” she said with concern.
“No,” he admitted, pulling out one of the hard-backed chairs and sitting down. “Not since a ham sandwich at about three o’clock. But I’m not really hungry.”
“Bombs!” Gracie said with a snort of disgust. “I dunno wot the world’s coming ter! We should put