Long Spoon Lane - Anne Perry [26]
“Actually I think your real complaint is exactly the opposite,” Pitt replied, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. The air in the cell was close and musty.
Carmody was exasperated. Pitt’s apparent stupidity defeated him. “Get out!” he shouted suddenly. “I’m telling you nothing! You killed Magnus—we didn’t. Why would we? He was our leader.”
“Maybe somebody else wanted to be leader?” Pitt suggested without moving.
Carmody regarded him with total contempt. “Is that what you do?” he asked. “You want promotion in your police, so you kill the man above you?”
Pitt pushed his hands into his pockets. “Wouldn’t work,” he answered. “There are rules against it.”
Blind fury touched Carmody’s face for an instant, then he realized he was being laughed at. “And of course you always obey the rules!” he said sarcastically. “I’ve seen a bit of that, down Bow Street way.”
Pitt had been about to retort, trapping him in his own need for rules, but the jibe about Bow Street cut him more sharply than he was prepared for. He cared intensely for its reputation, even now when it was Wetron’s responsibility, not his. Some of the men there were those he had worked with, especially Samuel Tellman, who had resented him so bitterly when he had first taken over. Tellman had thought him unfit for command, a man jumped up beyond his ability. Command belonged to gentlemen, ex-army or ex-navy officers who understood the merits of experience and did not interfere. He did not approve of those who rose from the ranks. It had been a long and often uncomfortable journey for both of them until they reached the place of mutual trust, before Pitt’s expulsion. Then it had been Tellman’s loyalty that had saved Charlotte’s life in Devon.
A look of triumph slowly lit Carmody’s face as Pitt did not answer him, and he realized that his shot had found its mark.
“If you don’t want any rules,” Pitt replied at last, “why are you complaining that some of the men in Bow Street don’t keep them?”
“Because you’re hypocrites!” Carmody spat. “You abide by rules well enough when it suits you!”
“Don’t you?” Pitt asked. “Isn’t that your point? Do what you like, no rules, even about keeping the rules.”
Carmody looked momentarily confused.
Pitt leaned forward. “Look,” he said gravely. “I want to know who killed Magnus just as much as you do, maybe more. Whoever did it broke my rules. You say that you don’t believe in rules, but that’s rubbish. You’re angry with me because you think I’m lying to you…”
“Aren’t you?” Carmody accused.
“So you have rules about lying!” Pitt observed.
Carmody drew in his breath sharply.
“And you think one of us shot Magnus,” Pitt went on. “Which makes you angry, because you don’t expect police to kill people in cold blood. So you have rules about murder. What about betrayal? Do you have rules about that too?”
Carmody stared at him.
Pitt waited.
“Yes,” Carmody admitted at last, his eyes careful, hurt.
“Whoever shot Magnus could just as easily have shot you and Welling as well,” Pitt observed. “Why didn’t he?”
Carmody blinked.
“Well, if he was a policeman, wouldn’t it make sense?” Pitt pressed his momentary advantage. “Why leave a witness? What’s the difference between one anarchist and another?”
“Magnus was our leader,” Carmody answered without hesitation. “Makes sense to kill the leader.”
“If it wasn’t one of your own, how would he know that?” Pitt said.
Carmody was silent, and he watched Pitt with absorption. The affectation of boredom had vanished.
“If we’d known anything about you, we would have arrested you long before you blew up Myrdle Street,” Pitt pointed out. “It makes us look incompetent. And of all the police in London, why Grover?”
“Because he ran all the dirty errands for Simbister at Cannon Street,” Carmody replied.
Pitt felt a tightening in his own chest. “How did you know?” he asked.
Carmody gave a grunt of impatience. “If you knew Magnus, you wouldn’t doubt it.”
“I didn’t know him.”
“He was careful. He collected times and places, amounts.