Long Spoon Lane (2 page)

Beside him Narraway was craning forward, his lean body rigid. His face turned first one way then the other as he sought to catch a glimpse of the hansom ahead. Whitechapel had turned into Mile End Road. They passed the huge block of Charrington’s Brewery on the left.

“It makes no damn sense!” he said bitterly.

The cab ahead of them turned left up Peters Street. It had barely straightened when it disappeared to the right into Willow Place and then Long Spoon Lane. Pitt and Narraway’s cab overshot and had to turn and double back. By that time there were two more cabs slithering to a halt with policemen piling out of them, and the original cab had gone.

Long Spoon Lane was narrow and cobbled. Its gray tenement buildings rose up sheer for three stories, grimy, stained with the smoke and damp of generations. The air smelled of wet rot and old sewage.

Pitt glanced along both sides, east and west. Several doorways were boarded up. A large woman stood blocking another, hands on her hips, glaring at the disturbance to her routine. To the west one door slammed, but when two constables charged with their shoulders to it, it did not budge. They tried again and again with no effect.

“It must be barricaded,” Narraway said grimly. “Get back!” he ordered the men.

Pitt felt a chill. Narraway must fear the anarchists were armed. It was absurd. Less than two hours ago he had been lying in bed half-asleep, Charlotte’s hair a dark river across the pillow beside him. The early sunlight had made a bright bar between the curtains, and busy sparrows chattered in the trees outside. Now he stood shivering as he stared up at the ugly wall of a tenement building in which were hiding desperate young men who had bombed a whole row of houses.

There were a dozen police in the street now and Narraway had taken over from the sergeant in charge of them. He was directing some to the other alleys. Pitt saw with a cold misery that the most recent to arrive were carrying guns. He realized there was no alternative. It was a crime of rare and terrible violence. There could be no quarter given to those who had committed it.

Now the street was oddly quiet. Narraway came back, his coat flapping, his face pinched, mouth a tight, thin line. “Don’t stand there like a damn lamppost, Pitt. You’re a gamekeeper’s son, don’t tell me you don’t know how to fire a gun! Here.” He held up a rifle, his knuckles white, and pushed it at Pitt.

It was on Pitt’s tongue to say that gamekeepers didn’t shoot at people, when he realized it was not only irrelevant, it was untrue. More than one poacher had suffered a bottom full of buckshot. Reluctantly he took the gun, and then the ammunition.

He backed away to the far side. He smiled with a twist of irony, finding himself standing behind the only lamppost. Narraway kept to the shadow of the buildings opposite, walking rapidly along the narrow shelf of footpath, speaking to the police where they were taking as much cover as there was. Apart from his footsteps there was no other sound. The horses and cabs had been moved away, out of danger. Everyone who lived here had vanished inside.

The minutes dragged by. There was no movement opposite. Pitt wondered if they were certain the anarchists were in there. Automatically he looked up at the rooftops. They were steep, pitched too sharply to get a foothold, and there were no dormers to climb out of, no visible skylights.

Narraway was coming back. He saw Pitt’s glance and a flash of humor momentarily lit his face. “No, thank you,” he said drily. “If I send anyone up there, it won’t be you. You’d trip over your own coattails. And before you ask, yes, I’ve got men ’round the back and at both ends.” He took a careful position between Pitt and the wall.

Pitt smiled.

Narraway grunted. “I’m not waiting them out all day,” he said sourly. “I’ve sent Stamper for some old wagons, something solid enough to take a few bullets. We’ll tip them on their sides to give us enough shelter, then we’ll go in.”

Pitt nodded, wishing he knew Narraway better. He did not yet trust him as he had Micah Drummond, or John Cornwallis when he had been an ordinary policeman in Bow Street. He had respected both men and understood their duties. He had also been intensely aware of their humanity, their vulnerabilities as well as their skills.

Pitt had never set out to join Special Branch. His own success against the powerful secret society known as the Inner Circle had contrived an apparent disgrace, which had cost him a position in the Metropolitan Police. For his safety, and to provide him with some kind of job, he had been found a place in Special Branch to work for Victor Narraway. He had been superseded in Bow Street by Wetron, who was himself a member of the Inner Circle, and now its leader.

Pitt felt uncertain, too often wrong-footed. Special Branch, with its secrets, its deviousness, and its half-political motives, required a set of skills he was only just beginning to learn. He had too few parameters by which to judge Narraway.

But he was also aware that if he had gone on to further promotion in Bow Street he would soon have lost his connection with the reality of crime. His compassion for the pain of it would have dimmed. Everything would have been at secondhand, particularly his power to influence.

His situation now was better, even standing outside in a chilly lane with Narraway, waiting to storm an anarchist stronghold. The moment of arrest was never easy or pleasant. Crime was always someone’s tragedy.

Pitt realized he was hungry, but above all he would have loved a hot cup of tea. His mouth was dry, and he was tired of standing in one spot. Although it was a summer morning, it was still cold here in the shadow. The stone pavement was damp from the night’s dew. He could smell the stale odor of wet wood and drains.

There was a rumble on the cobbles at the far end of the lane, and an old cart turned in, pulled by a rough-coated horse. When it reached the middle of the lane, the driver jumped down. He unharnessed the animal and led it away at a trot. A moment later another, similar cart appeared and was placed behind it. Both were tipped on their sides.

“Right,” Narraway said quietly, straightening up. His face was grim. In the sharp, pale light, every tiny line in it was visible. It seemed as if each passion he had experienced in his life had written its mark on him, but the overwhelming impression he gave was of unbreakable strength.

There were half a dozen police now along the length of the street. Most of them seemed to have guns. There were others at the back of the buildings, and at the ends of the lane.

Three men moved forward with a ram to force the door. Then an upstairs window smashed, and everyone froze. An instant later there was gunfire, bullets ricocheting off the walls at shoulder height and above. Fortunately no one staggered or fell.

The police started to fire back. Two more windows broke.

In the distance a dog was barking furiously, and there was a dull rumble of heavy traffic from Mile End Road, a street away.

The shooting started again.

Pitt was reluctant to join in. Even with all the crimes he had investigated through his years in the police, he had never had to fire a gun at a human being. The thought was a cold pain inside him.

Then Narraway sprinted over to where two men were crouching behind the carts, and a bullet thudded into the wall just above Pitt’s head. Without stopping to think about it, he raised his gun and fired back at the window from which it had come.

The men with the ram had reached the far side of the street and were out of the line of fire. Every time a shadow moved behind the remains of the glass in the windows, Pitt fired at it, reloading quickly after. He hated shooting at people, yet he found his hands were steady and there was a kind of exhilaration beating inside him.

Higher up the street there was more shooting.

Narraway looked over at Pitt, a warning in his eyes, then he strode across the cobbles to the men with the ram. Another volley of shots rang out from an upstairs window, cracking on the walls and ricocheting, or thudding, embedded in the wood of the carts.

Pitt fired back, then changed the direction of his aim. It was a different window, one from which nobody had fired before. He could see the shattered glass now, bright in the reflected sunlight.

There were shots from several places, the house, the street below it, and at the far end of the lane. A policeman crumpled and fell.

No one moved to help him.

Pitt fired upward again, one window then another, wherever he saw a shadow move, or the flash of gunpowder.

Still no one went for the wounded man. Pitt realized no one could, they were all too vulnerable.

A bullet hit the metal of the lamppost beside him with a sharp clang, making his pulse leap and his breath catch in his throat. He steadied his hand deliberately for the next shot back, and sent it clear through the window. His aim was getting better. He left the shelter of the lamppost and set off across the street towards the constable on the ground. He had about seventy feet to go. Another shot went past him and hit the wall. He tripped and half fell just short of the man. There was blood on the stones. He crawled the last yard.

“It’s all right,” he said urgently. “I’ll get you safe, then we can have a look at you.” He had no idea whether the constable could hear him or not. His face was pasty white and his eyes were closed. He looked about twenty. There was blood on his mouth.

There was no way Pitt could carry him because he dared not stand up; he would make a perfect target. He might even be accidentally hit by a ricocheting bullet from his own men, who were now firing rapidly again. He bent and picked up the constable’s shoulders, and inching backwards awkwardly, pulled him over the cobbles, until at last they were in the shelter of the carts.

“You’ll be all right,” he said again, more to himself than anyone else. To his surprise the man’s eyes flickered open and he gave a weak smile. Pitt saw with heart-lurching relief that the blood on his mouth was from a cut across his cheek. Quickly he examined him as much as he could, to find at least where he was hit, and bind it. He kept on talking quietly, to reassure them both.

He found the wound in the shoulder. It was bloody but not fatal. Probably hitting his head on the cobbles as he fell had been what had knocked him senseless. Without his helmet, it would have been worse.

Pitt did what he could with a torn-off sleeve to make a pad and press it onto the site of the bleeding. By the time he was finished—perhaps four or five minutes later—others were there to help. He left them to get the man out, and picked up his gun again. Bending low, he ran over to the men with the ram just as the frame splintered and the door crashed open against the wall.

Immediately inside was a narrow stairway. The men ran up ahead of him, Narraway on their heels, Pitt right behind.

There was a shot from above them, raised voices and footsteps, then more shots in the distance, probably at the back of the house.

He went up the stairs two at a time. On the third floor up he found a wide room, probably having originally been two. Narraway was standing in the hard light from the broken windows. At the far end, the door to the stairs down towards the back was swinging open. There were three police cradling guns, and two young men standing still, almost frozen. One had long dark hair and wild eyes. Without the blood and the swelling on his face he would have been handsome. The other was thinner, almost emaciated, his hair red-gold. His eyes were an almost too pale greenish-blue. They both looked frightened and trying to be defiant. Simply and violently, two of the police forced the manacles on them.

Narraway inclined his head towards the doorway where Pitt was standing in a silent instruction to the police to take the prisoners away.

Pitt stepped aside to let them pass, then looked around the room. It was unfurnished except for two chairs and a bundle of blankets crumpled in a heap at the farther end. The windows were all broken and the wall pockmarked with bullet holes. It was what he had expected to see, except for the figure lying prone on the floor with his head towards the center window. His thick, dark brown hair was matted with blood and he did not move.

Pitt went over to him and knelt down. He was dead. There was even more blood on the floor. A single shot had killed him. It had gone in the back of his skull and emerged at the front, destroying the left side of his face. The right side suggested he had been handsome in life. There was no expression left but the remnants of surprise.

Pitt had investigated many murders—it was his profession—but few were as bloody as this. The only decent thing about this death was that it must have been instant. Still, he felt his stomach tighten and he swallowed to keep his gorge from rising. Please God it was not one of his bullets that had done this.

Narraway spoke softly from just behind him. Pitt had not heard his footsteps. “Try his pockets,” he said. “Something might tell us who he is.”

Pitt moved the man’s hand, which was in the way. It was slender and well-shaped, with a signet ring on the third finger, expensive, well-crafted, and almost certainly gold.

Pitt turned the ring experimentally. It came off with only a little effort. He looked at it more closely. It was hallmarked on the inside, and there was a family crest on it.

Narraway held out his hand, palm up. Pitt gave it to him, then bent to the body again and started to look through the pockets of the jacket. He found a handkerchief, a few coins, and a note addressed
Dear Magnus.
Most of the rest of the paper was missing, as if it had been used for a further message.

“Dear Magnus,” Pitt said aloud.

Narraway was looking at the ring, his lips pursed. In the hard morning light his face was troubled and weary. “Landsborough,” he said as if in answer.

Pitt was startled. “Do you know him?”

Narraway did not meet his eyes. “Seen him a couple of times. He was Lord Landsborough’s son—only son.” His expression was unreadable. Pitt did not know whether the heaviness in it was sorrow, anxiety for trouble to come, or simply distaste for having to break such news to the family.

“Could he have been a hostage?” Pitt asked.