Long Spoon Lane - Anne Perry [33]
“I don’t know,” Pitt admitted. “Are you prepared to take the chance that he isn’t?”
Narraway did not bother to answer. “What did you ask Tellman to do?”
Pitt hesitated. He had not wanted to tell Narraway about his plan to have Jones the Pocket arrested, and then take his place, but perhaps he should have realized he would have to. Now it was unavoidable. He did so as briefly as possible. There was no need to explain why he needed Tellman’s help. Special Branch had no power of arrest themselves, and he could hardly trust any man from Cannon Street.
“Be careful, Pitt,” Narraway said with surprising urgency. All the irony was gone from his face now. He leaned forward a little in his chair, all pretense of interest in his papers forgotten. “You don’t know who is involved, or how many. It’s not just greed you have to consider; it’s old loyalties. God knows, you should understand that!”
“I know,” Pitt said quietly.
“Do you?” It was a challenge. “And any association with you will make Tellman a marked man. I assume you realize that? Wetron is nobody’s fool, least of all yours. You gave him the chance to destroy Voisey and take over leadership of the Inner Circle, but he knows you are its most powerful and most successful enemy. He won’t ever forget that, and neither must you.”
Pitt felt cold. He had known it already, but here in this quiet room it seemed more real. He had been careful to go to Tellman’s rooms to see him, and at dusk when the streets were busy and half-lit. There was no one else he could trust, especially at Bow Street. War does not allow you to spare your friends and send only strangers into battle.
“I know that,” he said aloud. “And so does he.”
“Then get on with it,” Narraway said quietly. “I want to know who was behind this bombing. Was Landsborough the leader? Where did the money come from for the bombs? And above all, now that Landsborough’s dead, who’s the new leader? By the way, who did kill Landsborough?”
“I don’t know,” Pitt replied. “Carmody and Welling behave as if they believe it was one of us, which suggests it was someone they don’t know. A rival anarchist? One of Simbister’s men?”
“Which means one of Wetron’s?” Narraway said almost under his breath. “Find out, Pitt. I want to know.”
Pitt spent the rest of the day in the bombed-out ruins of Myrdle Street. He made several more inquiries about Grover, but no one was willing to say much about him beyond verifying that he had lived in the center house, and of course was now homeless, as were they all. Yes, he was a policeman. Their faces had closed expressions, defensive, and he thought also that there was fear. No one spoke ill of him, but there was a coldness in their eyes, without sympathy. It tended to confirm rather than disprove what Carmody had said.
Deep in thought, walking along the Thames Embankment, he was pleasantly half-aware of the steamboats on the river, which were crowded with people enjoying themselves, wearing hats with streamers and waving to the shore. There was a band playing somewhere just beyond the curve where he could not see them. Street peddlers were selling lemonade, ham sandwiches, and various kinds of sweets. It was all exactly as London should be late on a summer afternoon. The breeze carried the smell of salt with the incoming tide, the sounds of laughter, music, horses’ hooves on the cobbles, and the faint, background surge of water.
“Good evening, Pitt. All looks very normal, doesn’t it.”
Pitt stopped abruptly. He knew the voice even before he turned. Charles Voisey, knighted by the Queen for his extraordinary personal courage in killing Mario Corena and saving the throne of England from one of Europe’s most passionate and radical republicans. Now he was a member of Parliament as well.
What Her Majesty did not and would never know was that Voisey had then been the head of the Inner Circle, on the point of achieving his ambition to overthrow the monarchy and become the first president of a republican