Long Spoon Lane (40 page)

Wetron was motionless. “What makes you think that, Sergeant?”

Now was the time to tell him what Narraway needed him to know. “He was the one who told Special Branch about Mr. Simbister using thieves and the like to collect money from the publicans, and he was the one who found out that the dynamite the anarchists used was kept in a boat down by Shadwell.”

Wetron’s eyes were glittering hard, his skin all but bloodless. “And how do you know this, Tellman? It sounds as if you have spent more time working for Special Branch than doing your job from the police who pay you. Just where does your loyalty lie? As if I didn’t know!”

“Like I said, sir, I’m courting Mr. Pitt’s maid. I happened to be there this morning, and I heard this from Mr. Pitt himself. Sir Charles tried to kill him last night, but he didn’t succeed.”

“Were you there?” Wetron demanded.

Tellman looked slightly aggrieved. “No, sir! I was on duty here!”

“What did you come for, Tellman?” Wetron said harshly. His lips were as thin as a knife cut.

“Loyalty to the police, sir.” That was believable. He had spent all his working life in the police force, and Wetron knew that. “I think it’s right that Mr. Simbister has to go. Seems he was rotten. But Mr. Pitt let some words slip out, and I can piece the rest together. Sir Charles plans to get rid of you too, sir, then get a man of his own in here, and spread the same kind of thing to Bow Street, but take the money himself. This is my station, sir. I’m not going to let that happen.”

He drew in a long, deep breath. “I don’t pretend I like you, sir, the way I liked Mr. Pitt, but I wouldn’t see you done for something you had no part of. It’s wrong. And I don’t want one of Sir Charles Voisey’s policemen running my station.”

“Indeed,” Wetron said softly. “And for what, exactly, does Sir Charles Voisey imagine he can have me ‘done?’”

“Not sure, sir.” Tellman was shaking and his stomach was knotted like a fist. “Something to do with blackmail, and the murder of a young man. Says he has a paper to prove what happened, and he’ll lay it on you.”

The silence in the room was like a growing thing, expanding to suffocate the spaces and take the air from the chest.

Wetron stared at Tellman, trying to control the rage inside him, trying to keep his brain cool enough to think. The truth of what Tellman had said was naked in his reaction to it.

Tellman could feel the sick fear grip him even more tightly.

“Will he?” Wetron said very slowly, his voice rasping. “Will he indeed?”

Tellman felt strangled. “Y-Yes, sir. I-I think perhaps he planned that all along. He’s got a terrible taste for revenge. That’s why he worked so elaborate, like, with Mr. Pitt, against the police bill—t-to set him up.”

“But you said Pitt escaped!” Wetron challenged.

Tellman let his breath out. “Yes, sir. Just luck. Someone else was passing on the river. Rescued him.”

“Mistake,” Wetron said with satisfaction. “Always finish the job yourself. Well, if Sir Charles wants my place, the fruits of what I’ve built…he can have it! Very good, Tellman. Very good. In fact, I shall see that he has it—and the blame that goes along with it.” He glanced at the clock on the mantel. “He will still be at home. Excellent. Just where the proof will be. I shall go and arrest him.”

His voice was shaking a little with a sudden excitement. “You say he tried to murder Pitt? Then he is a violent man. I had better take a gun with me. He may resist.” His smile was wide, mirthless, and filled with a savage pleasure. “Pitt is a fool, but his escape from last night’s adventure may prove useful. He won’t lie. If asked, he will say that Voisey tried to kill him.” He walked to a locked cupboard, took a key off his watch chain, and opened it. He picked a revolver, loaded it, and put it in the pocket of his jacket.

“I shan’t need you, Tellman,” he said, straightening up. “This is between gentlemen. You’ve done a good job.” He walked past Tellman and out the door, his back stiff, the gun invisible within the heavy fabric of his jacket.

Tellman waited until he was out of sight, then sprinted down the stairs and out the door. Pitt was waiting in an alley a couple of hundred yards away. They must follow Wetron and catch him at exactly the right moment, before he murdered Voisey. Then they would have them both, and all the evidence that was left. In their hatred, one would testify against the other.

He ran along the street, his boots echoing on the stones.

12

P
ITT WAS WAITING
in the alley, pacing back and forth, standing for a minute, peering around the corner, and then pacing again. He saw Tellman when he was still twenty yards away, his figure easily distinguishable in the momentary crowd on the footpath because he was running.

Pitt started out, then realized in the tangle of people they could miss each other, and stepped back again. The moment after, Tellman nearly collided with him.

“Wetron’s gone after Voisey,” he gasped. “At his house. He’s got a gun. I think he’s going to shoot him whatever, and say it was self-defense. No one’ll argue with him.”

“Voisey’s house? Let’s go. He can’t shoot all three of us, and the servants.” Pitt strode towards the main street, Tellman at his side, and hailed the first empty hansom to pass. He gave Voisey’s address, and they both leapt in, shouting instructions to hurry.

“It’s a matter of life and death!” Tellman added, his voice so sharp that passing drivers swiveled to pay momentary attention, but with disbelief.

The hansom plunged forward, fighting its way through traffic. Neither Pitt nor Tellman spoke. They were both trying to keep panic at bay, not allow their imaginations to race into all the things that could go wrong: the nightmare of Voisey winning, revenge feeding more revenge until there was nothing left.

And hope must be stifled too. They were not safe yet. They would arrest Wetron for attempting to kill Voisey, the proof of Wetron’s guilt would be there, and Voisey would have it. The whole machine of corruption would be broken, the bill defeated. But Voisey would be alive, with all that that meant.

The hansom careered along a half-empty street and swung around a corner, throwing them almost on top of each other. Still, neither spoke. They picked up speed again.

It seemed an age before they slowed to a stop at last. Pitt handed the driver a fistful of coins—roughly what he thought the ride would cost, plus a generous tip. He and Tellman ran across the pavement and up the steps of Voisey’s house. Pitt banged on the door.

A butler opened it with a look of distaste on his face. “Yes, sir?” His tone of voice conveyed his opinion of people who made loud and vulgar noise, whatever the circumstances. “May I be of assistance?”

“I must see Sir Charles immediately!” Pitt said, catching his breath. “His life is in danger.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but Sir Charles is at the House. He customarily goes at about this hour.”

“But he was here forty minutes ago,” Tellman protested, as if it could matter now.

“No, sir,” the butler said firmly. “Sir Charles left over an hour ago.”

“Superintendent Wetron said…” Tellman insisted, his voice raised.

“I’m sorry, sir, but you are mistaken,” the butler repeated.

Wild thoughts of conspiracy raced through Pitt’s mind, before he realized the obvious answer. “He wasn’t at home,” he said aloud. “Wetron misled us on purpose. We must get to the House.”

“He couldn’t do anything in the House of Commons!” Tellman said incredulously.

“Yes he could, in a private office.” Pitt started down the steps again in time to shout at the hansom. The driver had been giving the horse a few minutes’ rest while he enjoyed the spectacle in the doorway, and was only just pulling away now. He heard Pitt’s voice and stopped again.

“House of Commons!” Pitt ordered.

“I s’pose that’s as fast as yer can make it too, eh?” the driver observed. “Don’t you ever go nowhere at a normal speed like other fellers? More life an’ death, is it?”

“Yes. Hurry! Or if this horse is exhausted, catch up with another cab and we’ll change,” Pitt replied.

The driver gave him a look of total disdain, and started forward again, picking up speed rapidly.

“We’re going to be too late!” Tellman said between his teeth. “That bastard will have shot him!”

Pitt did not answer. He was afraid Tellman was right.

It seemed like another long, tedious, traffic-congested ride. All the impatience and sense of failure could not shorten it, or prevent what they now felt to be inevitable.

They finally reached the House of Commons. Pitt paid over nearly all the rest of the money he was carrying, with a request that it be spent on the horse, then sprinted to follow Tellman, who was already twenty yards ahead of him.

Once they had identified themselves they were allowed in and conducted up to Voisey’s office. But as soon as they turned the corner of the long corridor they saw it was already too late. There was a grim crowd blocking the way. Voices were lowered, bodies tense, faces white and anxious.

“What’s happened?” Pitt demanded, stopping as soon as he reached them, although he feared he knew.

“Terrible,” one of the secretaries answered. He was a pale young man formally dressed. He clutched a bunch of papers in his hand and it was shaking, making a slight rustle as the sheets flapped together. “Absolutely dreadful.”

“What is?” Pitt repeated urgently.

“Oh! Don’t you know? Sir Charles Voisey’s been shot. The superintendent of police is here. Man from Bow Street. To have a member shot dead in the House! What’s happening to the world?”

Pitt pushed his way through, elbowing people aside until he reached the door, and found himself a yard away from Wetron who looked pale and shaken. However, the moment their eyes met Pitt saw the gleam of triumph, and knew he had been defeated.

Wetron gave nothing away. To all other onlookers he was a man startled and grieved by an appalling event.

“Ah! Superintendent Pitt,” he said, as if Pitt still held his old rank. “I’m glad you’ve come. Dreadful thing. Irrefutable evidence, I’m afraid. Tragic. I went to question Sir Charles about it, hoping against hope that he had some other explanation, but he hadn’t. Guilt overtook him. He lunged at me with a paper knife in his hand. I had no choice.” His words were wrung out of him, harsh with shock and regret. His eyes burned with victory, and the hard, sweet taste of power. To those standing around, his expression could have meant anything, but Pitt read it for what it was.

“Evidence of what, Superintendent Wetron?” Pitt asked innocently, as if he had no idea.

Wetron’s expression did not waver. “Of corruption, Mr. Pitt. Deep corruption, not only of serving officers of police. I regret profoundly to have to say it, but Sir Charles was in league with Superintendent Simbister of Cannon Street. Worse than that, it seems inescapably evident that he was also involved with the anarchists who bombed Scarborough Street so appallingly. He is tied indisputably to the dynamite used. I wish it were not so.” He did not smile—there were too many others looking—but the victory shone in his eyes.

Pitt felt the taste of defeat as bitter as gall, but he could think of no weapon with which to strike back. There was no point in asking if Voisey had admitted any of it. Wetron would say he had, and Pitt would know it was not true.

“I shall tell Mr. Narraway,” Pitt managed to say. “Proof of the Scarborough Street bombers’ guilt will be very welcome.” Would Wetron give up his accomplices, the men who had obeyed his orders? Possibly. If they had no idea and no evidence of where the orders had come from, he had nothing to lose, and perhaps much to gain. The thought of Wetron taking the credit for that too made him sick with anger at the injustice of it, and his own helplessness, but there was nothing whatever he could do.

“Of course,” Wetron agreed slightly patronizingly. “I’ll be happy to pass it to him, when my men have sorted it out. We must settle the matter of Sir Charles’s death first, of course.”