Long Spoon Lane - Anne Perry [29]
“Oh yeah?” she said bitterly. “An’ wot about ’im wot comes, then, eh? I’m just gonna tell ’im ’e don’t get nothin’, an’ ’e’ll jus’ go away, peaceful-like?”
“No, you’re going to tell me when he comes, and what he looks like, and I’m going to take care of him.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Yeah?” She looked around. “You an’ ’oo else? There’s ’undreds of ’em! There’s the ’ole bleedin’ police force! Take one out, an’ two more’ll fill ’is place. ’Ow many is there o’ you, then?”
He thought only a moment before he answered. “Don’t you worry about that. Just tell me who he is, when he comes, and what he looks like and I’ll get rid of him. Then you pay me.”
She looked wary and frightened. There was knowledge of defeat in her eyes. Pitt felt a surge of fury so savage that the look of it in his face made her back away. Then he wanted to apologize, but that would undo all he had achieved. “Name?” he said aloud.
“Jones,” she replied. “We call ’im Jones the Pocket.”
“What does he look like?”
“Sharp nose, black ’air,” she said, her mouth puckering up. “Not very tall. ’Ard ter tell if ’e’s thin or fat ’cos ’e wears a big coat, summer an’ winter. Could be anythin’ under it.”
“Does he come regularly?”
“Like taxes an’ death.”
“When?”
“Every Wednesday. Middle o’ the arternoon when there’s ’ardly anyone ’ere.”
“Then next Wednesday will be his last,” Pitt said with acute satisfaction.
She mistook his pleasure for the greed he had expressed earlier. She lifted her shoulders very slightly. “Makes no odds ter me. Pay ’im, pay you, it’s all the same. Can’t pay twice or I got nothin’ ter pay the brewer. Then we all got nothin’.”
Before he relented and tried to offer her some encouragement that soon it would all end, Pitt turned away and walked across the sawdust floor and out into the street.
By dusk that evening he was standing in the entrance of the alleyway across from the house where Samuel Tellman lodged, waiting for him to come home. The wind was colder and it smelled like rain. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He had turned the problem over in his mind, and there was no other solution that made sense. Tellman worked in Bow Street. If anyone could have seen or heard who was behind the corruption, without being part of it, it would be he.
The wind was rising chill with coming rain. Pitt turned up the collar of his coat and stood a little closer to the wall. Doubt began to eat into him. Perhaps the anarchists were not naive at all, but were manipulating his loyalties on purpose. Their prime motive was chaos. What better way to achieve it than to turn Special Branch against the police, sowing suspicion between them? Perhaps they were also doing exactly the same thing in reverse. Someone might even now be suggesting to the police that Narraway was responsible for the bombing and the murder of Magnus Landsborough, in order to carve out his own little kingdom of power. Pitt did not believe it for an instant, but he would not be able to prove it to anyone else. He was amazed how little he really knew of Narraway.
An old man with white hair poking out from under a bowler hat walked briskly through the pool of lamplight and away again. Then the moment after, Tellman himself appeared—lean, lantern-jawed, his shoulders stiff.
Pitt left the shadow of the alley and strode across the cobbles to catch up with him just as he reached his own door. Tellman looked around in surprise.
“I need to talk to you,” Pitt explained by way of apology. “As privately as possible.” He did not feel free to ask to go into Tellman’s rooms. He was seeking a favor, and it was extremely important that they were not observed together, otherwise he would have suggested going to any of the nearby taverns.
Tellman looked suspicious. He glanced at Pitt’s disreputable clothes, but he knew him well enough from their days together to realize why he was wearing them. “What’s happened?” His body was rigid. “It’s not to do with Gracie, is it?”
Pitt felt a stab of guilt for not having said so to begin with. He had watched their slow, tender,