Long Spoon Lane (10 page)

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, and awkward courtship and seen how intense was the caring. “No,” he said quickly. “It’s police business.”

The fear ironed out of Tellman’s face. “Come in. I’ve got a better room now, bigger.” He did not wait for agreement but opened the door with his key and led the way inside. The hall was narrow and linoleum-floored. Framed samplers adorned the wall. A pleasant aroma came from the back of the house, strongly pungent of onions. It reminded Pitt that he was hungry.

Tellman went up the stairs to the first floor and opened the door of the room overlooking the street. It was spacious, with a brass bed in one corner, a table and chair by the window, and two upholstered armchairs near the fireplace where the coals were already burning nicely. He invited Pitt to sit, then after loosening his bootlaces and taking off his jacket he sat in the other.

Pitt did not waste time. “The bombing in Myrdle Street,” he said without preamble. “Anarchists. One dead, we have two of the others. Another one, maybe two escaped.”

Tellman waited. He knew Pitt would not be asking police help in finding them.

“I’ve been questioning the ones we have,” Pitt went on. “They’re young, naive; they feel violently about social wrongs. In particular police corruption.” He watched Tellman’s face to see if there would be any anger in it, any leap to deny it. It was not there. He simply looked guarded, waiting for Pitt to explain.

“My first thought was ‘Why Myrdle Street?’” Pitt went on. “There didn’t appear to be any answer other than random violence. Then I learned that the central house that was destroyed belonged to a policeman from Cannon Street named Grover.”

Tellman nodded very slowly. “I know him.”

“What can you tell me?”

“Big man, about forty-five, heavy-built.” Tellman was visualizing him as he spoke. “Been in the force since he was twenty or so. Worked his way up to sergeant but never seemed to want to go any higher. He knows the streets like the back of his hand, and most of the people in them. There isn’t a screever or a fence he couldn’t name, and tell you his business.”

“How do you know?”

Tellman’s lips thinned. “Reputation. If you want to know anything going on in the Cannon Street patch, ask Grover.”

“I see. According to at least two sources, some policemen are collecting protection money from pubs around the Spitalfields area,” Pitt went on. “I checked it myself, at Dirty Dick’s and the Ten Bells. A man they know as Jones the Pocket comes for the money every Wednesday, midafternoon.”

“You sure he’s in the police?” Tellman asked unhappily.

“No, I’m only sure the pub owners think he is. I have to know. I want him arrested, and I’ll take his place.”

“What for? He may connect with Grover eventually, but you’ll have to prove it. You don’t know who he reports to, first,” Tellman pointed out. “And he’s not going to tell you.”

“No,” Pitt agreed. “But if I have the money, someone will make it their business to find me.”

Tellman winced, his face grim. “Probably with a knife!”

“Not till they have the money from me, and know if I’m working alone.” But Pitt was perfectly aware of the danger, and he would much rather have found another way to the same end, but he could not think of one.

Tellman drew in his breath to argue, just as there was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” he said, then stood up as his landlady entered. She was a handsome woman, between fifty and sixty, carrying a warm, savory smell of the kitchen with her. A stiff, white apron covered most of her cotton dress.

“You want me ter keep yer dinner, Mr. Tellman?” she asked. She stared at Pitt. “There’s enough fer yer caller, if ’e’d like it. Just bangers and mash, an’ a spot o’ cabbage, but yer welcome.”

Tellman looked at Pitt.

Pitt accepted warmly, and Tellman asked her to bring it as soon as she could. They waited until it was carried up on a tray, and the landlady duly thanked, before continuing with the conversation between mouthfuls. It was plain food, but it was well-cooked and generously portioned.

“Spitalfields is in the Cannon Street area,” Tellman said unhappily. “That’s Simbister’s patch. Wetron’s got pretty close to him lately. He seems to be making alliances all over the place, more than I’ve ever seen others do. Usually there’s a kind of…” he looked for the right word, “rivalry…but not now. It’s different. It feels…different.”

Pitt knew what he was thinking. The Inner Circle was a web of secret alliances, promises, and loyalties between men who on the surface had no connection with one another. Outsiders did not know who they were, just that some people succeeded when others failed. Certain business deals went one way rather than another. Some men were promoted above rivals who had more skill. But if Wetron, now the head of what was left of the Circle, were making alliances with potential rivals from the most senior police command in the country, it was cause for anxiety.

“Simbister?” Pitt said aloud.

“And others, but him the most,” Tellman answered through a mouthful of sausage. “If it’s men from Cannon Street who are taking extortion money, it’ll be more than two or three. You won’t be able to count on anyone!”

“I know.” Pitt felt a chill, even sitting in this warm room, and with the food inside him. “That’s why I need you, and someone you can trust, to arrest Jones, when I find him. I have to know if what the anarchists say is true.” He did not explain why. It was not only to find who killed Magnus Landsborough, it was far bigger than that. At issue was the whole morality of the force they had both served and believed in all their working lives.

Tellman nodded, then finished the last of his meal without pleasure. The silence stretched on after they had swallowed their final mouthful and the tea in the pot was getting cold.

The hurt was naked in Tellman’s thin face. He came from a poor but fiercely respectable family. His father had worked all the hours he was awake in order to keep them clothed and fed. His mother was energetic, angry, and scrupulously fair, and loved them with a defensiveness that bordered on violence. She scolded them for laziness, deviousness, too much laughter, for telling lies or minding other people’s business. But let anyone else find fault with her children, and they’d have their ears burned by her defense. Their achievements were considered to be no more than their duty to perform while their faults were addressed with a whirlwind of discipline. She loved them all, but she was proudest of Samuel, because he fought for what was right. She embarrassed him furiously by holding him up as an example to his younger siblings, and yet next to Gracie’s approval, hers mattered more to him than anyone else’s.

To see his own force tainted cut him to the bone, perhaps even more than it did for Pitt.

“I want to know too,” he said quietly. “I have to. If it’s in our patch as well, our men taking protection money, then it’s down to me to stop it. If I don’t, then I’m part of it too.” He stared at Pitt, defying him to argue.

“Be careful!” Pitt warned impulsively, knowing how easily Tellman could be falsely disgraced, or even killed.

Police officers were sometimes killed in the line of duty. It would be a hero’s death. Wetron himself would eulogize him. Pitt would be helpless to prove otherwise. And he realized with a tightening of his stomach, a weight inside him, that in spite of Tellman’s belligerence, his odd, stiff vulnerability, his prejudices and his doggedness, Pitt liked him more than anyone else outside his own family. It would be more than guilt for involving him that he would suffer, it would be a loneliness, a searing and permanent loss.

In the morning, Pitt went to Narraway, who was sitting in his office, a pile of papers on the table in front of him, a pen in his hand.

“Yes,” he said abruptly, looking up as Pitt closed the door.

Pitt sat down without being asked to. It was the first time he had done so. He was still very aware of Narraway being his superior, and while his position was not officially insecure anymore, the feeling of uncertainty had never left him.

“I looked around yesterday at the corruption Welling and Carmody are accusing the police of,” he said bluntly. “I wanted to prove them wrong.”

“And you didn’t,” Narraway replied, still holding the pen.

Pitt was jolted. “You know!” He felt oddly betrayed that Narraway had not spoken of the charge of corruption, as if he did not trust him to be loyal to his principles above his past associations.

Narraway gazed at him steadily. His face was tense, deeply lined in the sunlight that came in through the window to his left. His eyes were nearly black. His hair had once been just as dark, but now it was liberally streaked with gray at the temples.

“No, Pitt, I did not know,” Narraway replied wearily. “I can see it in you. You signal the magnitude of it like a ship’s beacon.” He smiled bleakly. “What is it? A little fencing of stolen goods, a blind eye here and there, favor for favor?”

“Worse than that,” Pitt replied, thinking of the landlady at the Ten Bells. “Intimidation on a large scale, regular collection of part of the takings from more or less honest businesses.”

Narraway looked somber. “Not our job. And hardly enough to provoke a man like Magnus Landsborough to anarchy. But I’ll speak to the commissioner. Looks as if he has a little housecleaning to do. I’m sorry. It’s unpleasant to find corruption in your own patch.” He looked down at his papers again, then, when Pitt did not move, he raised his eyes. “Is that why Myrdle Street was bombed?”

“Yes. Man from the Cannon Street station—named Grover—lived in one of the houses. Carmody said he was connected to the extortion. Have you found a link between Landsborough and any foreign anarchists?”

“No. We know where the most active anarchists are, and the most competent.” His mouth twisted wryly. “The incompetent ones blew themselves up and are either in hospital or dead. As far as I can tell, Landsborough had no European connections. If Welling and Carmody are examples of his recruitment, they are naive social reformers who haven’t the patience to do it through the usual ways, and imagine that if they destroy the system, they can build a better one in its place. Which is patently absurd, but without the bombs, we might consider them saints.”

Pitt studied him, trying to measure the emotion lying behind his words. Was there pity there, a mourning for the tortured innocence that had driven those young men to rage at injustice and dream of changing it? Or was he simply making a professional judgment so he could act accordingly, and perhaps weigh Pitt a little more closely at the same time?”

“That isn’t what bothers me,” Pitt told him, and was rewarded to see a flicker of surprise in Narraway’s face. “I went to see Samuel Tellman yesterday evening. In his own rooms, not Bow Street,” he added quickly, seeing Narraway’s sharpened gaze. “I told him about Grover, and Carmody’s accusations, and what I had found.”

“Don’t dance around it, Pitt!” Narraway snapped.

“Tellman believed it,” Pitt said. “Without proof. And he knows it must go higher.”

“That’s obvious,” Narraway retorted curtly. “What is your point?”

Pitt felt his body tighten. He loathed having to tell anyone this, and Narraway was not making it easier. “Tellman says Wetron is making alliances with men who would normally be his rivals for promotion. Specifically, with Simbister of Cannon Street.”

Narraway let out his breath slowly. “I see. Is Simbister in the Inner Circle?”

“I don’t know. But if he isn’t now, I imagine he soon will be.”

“And Wetron’s purpose in this?” Narraway’s fingers were gripping his pen and he moved it up and down very slowly, but with a tension as if he would not be able to stop.

“Power,” Pitt answered simply. “Always power.”

“Using Simbister?” Narraway’s voice rose very slightly. He found it hard to believe.

“It seems so.”

“How is a corrupt police force in his interest?” Narraway questioned. “If he wants to be commissioner, he needs to be seen to be not only highly competent but also above suspicion. If he isn’t, Parliament won’t sustain him, even if he’s as rich as Croesus. Men in power want stability; above all they want the streets safe. If property isn’t safe, the voters are unhappy.” There was a faint challenge in his face, as if he expected Pitt to argue with him.

“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.