Treachery at Lancaster Gate (14 page)

“Because of the way they were lured to the house in Lancaster Gate,” Tellman answered. “It looks as if someone got them there particularly. He sent a note, very brief. He'd informed them of opium sales before, and been right, so they trusted him.”

“So it were planned,” she said with certainty. “Mebbe weeks before 'e did it?”

He had not looked at it that way before. She was right. “Yes,” he agreed. “But we don't know why he did it because we have no idea who he is.”

“Then Mr. Pitt's right: yer gotta look at them police what was baited to go there, and see wot they done so bad someone'd want ter blow 'em all up. An' yer gotta look back ter before 'ooever it was began ter give 'em information about opium and that. Samuel, yer can't just look the other way 'cos yer don't like ter think it were a revenge for something as really 'appened! 'Ooever did this may be wicked, or mad even, but that's not ter say 'e don't 'ave 'is reasons! Or think 'e does, any which way. Yer can't afford ter—”

“I know that,” he cut across her. “But they were good men, Gracie. They've been in the police for years. Of course there are things that go on that aren't right. I hate to think of it, but there'll be those who lost their temper with someone who was beating a woman, or a child, and they gave 'em a good belting back.” He took a breath. “And sometimes we lose evidence, or don't take it the right way, and then even make up a lie so it can still be used, when we know damn well a man's guilty. And sometimes we let people go when we shouldn't. But you don't set off bombs that kill everyone in sight because of something like that!”

She looked at him very gravely, her small face without a flicker of light in it. “Then it must be summink worse. An' yer can't afford ter pretend as yer can't see it. Blind people walk over the edge o' cliffs, and I don't want that to 'appen ter you…ter us.”

The emotion welled up inside him till his throat was tight and his eyes stung.

“I know that. I promise.”

“Good. An' remember as it's a promise, Samuel Tellman! Life don't take no excuses. ‘I didn't see' in't no good if wot you mean is ‘I didn't look neither'!”

“I know that…”

At last she smiled. “Yer want a cup o' tea? I got cake.”

He nodded, swallowing back the feelings inside him. He wanted her to go into the kitchen and leave him a moment to compose himself. It all mattered too much. He had everything in the world to lose.

I
N THE MORNING
T
ELLMAN
began straightaway, going back to the station where Ednam had worked. He hated doing it, but once he had accepted the necessity, there was no point in putting it off. On the contrary, putting it off made things worse. It served no purpose, and it made him feel like a coward. That was a word Pitt had used that haunted him. The fear of being a coward had at times made him rash, not brave but foolhardy. It was all back to the school yard again, standing up to people bigger than you were, to prove to yourself that you were not afraid.

Was there reason to fear this time?

He reported to the sergeant at the desk and insisted, against some show of reluctance, that he see Superintendent Whicker again. He waited ten minutes before he was shown to his office.

He began with an expression of sympathy for Ednam's death.

He looked at Superintendent Whicker's face, and could read nothing in it. Was that a man concealing his grief in front of a comparative stranger? Or was his expression deliberately blank because his feelings were more complex, perhaps equivocal, toward men he had not liked?

“Going to catch who did it, sir,” Tellman added grimly. “I shall need your assistance, if you can spare a man, please, Superintendent.”

“Yes, Tellman. I'll spare you who I can. You'll understand we're a bit shorthanded, having lost five men.” He reminded Tellman of it bluntly, and with an undisguised resentment.

“Of course, sir. I'll try to be quick.” Tellman took a chance. “You'll have read what some people have started saying in the papers. We've got to get at the truth before anyone else does. Need to protect our own from accusations that come out of old grudges or fears gone wild.”

“Yes, Inspector,” Whicker agreed.

Tellman looked at him more closely. If there was any emotion in him, he was hiding it. Why? People expected anger, grief, even fear of what might happen next. What was it that was so deep within him that he showed nothing?

“Where would you like to start?” Whicker asked tartly.

Tellman thought of what Gracie had said. “Let's say a month or so before the first tip-off you had from this fellow that calls himself Anno Domini,” he answered.

Whicker looked surprised. “Before?”

“Yes, please. Let's see the cases that Ednam, Newman, Yarcombe, Bossiney, and Hobbs were on.”

“They didn't work together that often, Inspector.”

“No, I imagine not. I'll just look at the cases in general, and see if I can find anything that gives me an idea.”

“Did Special Branch put you up to this?” Whicker asked with raised eyebrows.

“Not at all, sir. Don't know I'm doing it,” Tellman said truthfully. “If there is anything, I'd like to get there before they do.” He watched Whicker's face, waiting for the reaction.

Whicker's black eyes were unreadable. “You can have the same room as last time, and I'll have Constable Drake bring you the records, Inspector.”

“Start a month before the first contact from Anno Domini, if you please, sir. And come forward from that, a case at a time,” Tellman told him.

“Yes, Inspector.” Whicker turned on his heel and left Tellman to wait.

It was going to be a very long task, and Tellman was perfectly aware that the amount of cooperation he received might be deliberately small.

Drake was a young man whose fair hair and a fair skin probably barely required him to shave. Tellman thought he looked too innocent to be a policeman of any effect at all, until he caught a glimpse of laughter in the man's eyes that changed him altogether.

“That's the month before the Anno Domini tip-off, sir,” Drake said, putting a thick bundle of files on the table in front of Tellman. “I'll bring the next lot up for you, sir, as soon as I get them all sorted.”

“Thank you.” Tellman eyed the foot-high stack without pleasure. “Are any of the men who worked on these cases available, if I need to talk to them?”

“Yes, sir. But best read them first, sir,” Drake replied, meeting Tellman's eyes for an instant and then leaving without asking permission.

Tellman worked all morning. He stopped for tea and a ham sandwich at lunchtime, and then went on again. It was so dull he had trouble keeping awake. It was exactly the sort of police work he was accustomed to. The notes were those such as he had made a score of times himself. He could have been any of these men. Their choice of words and their handwriting was individual, but now and again an exact phrase was repeated, as if they had agreed on what to write.

It was only when he realized that several files were out of order, and he rearranged them, that he began to see a pattern. He went back and read them again. There was one case in particular of a man who had been injured in a brawl and had later given information, been charged with theft, and found not guilty. It was Yarcombe's case, then passed to Bossiney.

When Tellman put those reports in the right order, the story looked very different. The dates had been changed, very carefully. Which made him realize the case had begun with Yarcombe, gone on to Bossiney, and ended with Ednam taking charge of it. The events had happened in a different order. The brawl had come last, when two of the named participants had already been in jail. The only conclusion was that it had been a beating by someone quite different, which made no sense.

It was the witness who had been beaten, and who had refused to testify against the man charged.

Was this the error of a tired and confused man, trying to get it right and failing? A misunderstanding? Or even carelessness? Perhaps the injured man was not well enough to testify, or worried about his family?

Tellman put the files aside and read the cases that followed. He found more mix-ups, stories that did not make sense when looked at closely. Many notes appeared merely hasty, as if written up by busy men made to work out details too long after the events and making mistakes in good faith. That was what he wanted to think. He had made such errors himself. It was easy to do. You started seeing something another way, and then got the whole pattern wrong.

He forced himself to study the files long into the evening. The errors added up to a few people not being convicted because evidence was lost. A few people had had accidents rather conveniently and were unable to testify. Whoever was looking after evidence was selectively careless. Some people were arrested quite often but never seemed to get convicted.

The next day he asked for other files, of cases not involving Ednam. He searched for the same carelessness, and did not find it. He also compared the rates of conviction for certain crimes, and found them lower than for Ednam, especially where theft was concerned.

There was little he could prove because some sorts of evidence were consistently missing, but by the end of the second day he was certain that there was a lot of well-concealed graft going on, favors for certain people, evidence deliberately misplaced.

Was Ednam overzealous? Now and then was he taking the law into his own hands when he felt certain a man was guilty but could not prove it legally, so he resorted to doing so illegally? Was he exercising his own form of justice? Or was he driven by his own ambition? Please heaven all of this was not for his own profit?

No! Tellman refused to think that.

Had somebody felt a rage hot enough to plant that bomb in Lancaster Gate as revenge for being framed for a crime?

Tellman wondered how much the other four men had collaborated with Ednam and how far outside the law they had gone. Had they knowingly convicted an innocent man, possibly not even caring, or were they just being obedient? They might even have been afraid of Ednam, who was, after all, their senior.

Newman he had known himself, and liked. He was cheerful, outgoing, prone to thinking the best of people—more than Tellman himself did. That was what Tellman had liked about him.

Suddenly it hurt all over again, recalling seeing him blown to bits on the floor of the house in Lancaster Gate. Had he trusted Ednam when he shouldn't or was he afraid to fall out with his comrades? There was no hint of guilt in Newman's case notes.

Yarcombe's notes were terse, saying no more than they had to, like the man.

Bossiney wrote a lot. Was he drowning the truth in too many words?

Hobbs's notes were careful, written in a schoolboy's hand. It was a job he disliked.

It was Ednam whose words wrapped it all up, taking care of the omissions.

But even so, that did not justify the appalling bombing at Lancaster Gate, though it might well have been the cause of it.

Had Drake, this young constable detailed to help him, reordered the files intentionally? He thought so. But when he left late on the second evening, there was nothing in the innocent face to make him certain.

There was still a great deal more to find out. And he had tied it to nothing that related to the informer, Anno Domini. He had found the letter with the information, and the report of the opium sales and the amounts. There was nothing about the letter from which he could deduce anything further.

Tellman chose to walk a good distance before even looking for a bus to take him the rest of the way home. The bitter cold edge of the wind kept his thoughts sharp, a knife-edge outside to match the one cutting him inside.

He must have been terribly naïve to have kept his ignorance of dubious police behavior for so long. He dealt with the worst aspects of humanity most of the time so none of this should come as a surprise. Yet it did! And it hurt!

He knew the police were fallible, because everyone was, but he had believed they were honest, loyal to the best in themselves. They would face what they saw, the violence and the pain, because they also knew the good.

Ednam had soiled that! He had twisted and distorted it. His betrayal was unforgivable.

Tellman pushed his hands hard into his coat pockets and turned the corner off the main street to take a shortcut. Suddenly he felt shattered. He stopped leaning into the wind and stood straighter, then began walking again.

He came out at the far end of the alley and faced the wind again. It seemed even harsher. Ednam had betrayed his men. And he had betrayed Tellman as well, because in a way he stood for all leaders that men had believed in.

He quickened his pace toward the omnibus stop. It was too cold to walk the streets any longer. He very much needed to go home.

H
E TOLD
P
ITT WHAT
he had done when they met at Lisson Grove mid-morning the day after. Tellman was tired and his head pounded from all the reading by lamplight. But at least his cold was beginning to go away. He forgot about it for hours at a time. Perhaps he was simply too angry about the dishonesty and the violence he had found to care about a hacking cough or aching chest.

Briefly he told Pitt what he had found. He did not apologize for their last meeting. He thought his actions since then were apology enough. He did not want to remind Pitt of it, if he was willing to forget.

He watched Pitt's face and saw the sadness in it. It was only then that he realized the disillusion was as sour to Pitt as it was to him, just maybe not as much of a surprise.

Maybe Pitt's awakening had come some time ago. Perhaps it had dawned when his superiors, far above Cornwallis, had bowed to pressure over the business in Whitechapel and dismissed him from the police. Special Branch had been the only place still open to him to make his living in the profession he knew. That seemed like a long time ago now, but old wounds don't stop aching. They are always under the surface, ready to remind one of the original injuries.