Treachery at Lancaster Gate (2 page)

“Not yet.” Tellman looked around him. “What about the bomb? Bombs are your business. What was it made of? Where was it put? How did they let it off?”

“Dynamite,” Pitt told him. “It always is. Detonating it is simple enough with a fuse. Just make it long enough so that you can get away before the blast.”

“Just like that? That's all?” Tellman asked bitterly.

“Well, there are more complicated ones, but it seems unlikely they would be used for this purpose.”

“Complicated how?” Tellman demanded.

“Upside-down bombs, for example,” Pitt said patiently as they both turned and made their way gingerly back toward the open air. The stench of burned wood and plaster was overpowering, filling the head, stinging the nose and throat. “You make a container with two halves, carefully perforated. Keep it up the right way and it's safe. Turn it upside down and it explodes.”

“So you carry it in the right way up, and hope someone turns it over?”

“Make it into a parcel. Put the strings tied on the other side, or the name of the sender, or anything else you like,” Pitt answered, stepping over a fallen beam. “It works very well.”

“Then I suppose it's a miracle we don't all get blown to hell.” Tellman lashed out and kicked a loose piece of wood, which flew through the air and crashed against one of the few walls still standing.

Pitt understood the violence. He had known some of these men also, and hundreds of others just like them, working hard at an often thankless job, underpaid for the danger it too often involved. He had done it himself for long enough.

“Dynamite is controlled,” he said as they stepped out onto the pavement. The street had been closed and there was no traffic. One fire engine still remained. The ambulances were gone. The closed-in wagon for the morgue was waiting at the curb. Pitt nodded to the attendant and the police surgeon. “I don't think we can learn anything more,” he said quietly. “Give me your report when you can.”

“Yes, sir,” the police surgeon responded, taking it as his cue to enter the bombed building.

“Controlled,” Tellman said sarcastically. “By whom?”

“It's not for sale,” Pitt replied, walking slowly along the pavement away from the still-smoldering wreckage. “They use it in quarries, and occasionally in demolition. You'd either steal it from there, or buy it from someone else who had stolen it.”

“Like anarchists,” Tellman said sourly. “Back to where we started.”

“Probably,” Pitt agreed. “But as you pointed out, Special Branch is unaware of any current police investigation to do with an anarchist group. And this doesn't fit the usual profile.”

“Maybe it was a random attack, a cell that is so damn crazy they don't care who they hurt.” Tellman stared across toward the bare trees in Kensington Gardens, a black fretwork against the sky. “I suppose you know what you're doing, letting terrorists stay in Britain.” He didn't inflect it as a question, but he might as well have. “Personally I'd rather they went home and blew up their own cities.”

“Speak to the firemen.” Pitt did not bother answering the challenge. “See if they can tell you anything useful. We can see from poor Newman's body roughly where the bomb went off, but the pattern of burning might locate the site even more closely.”

“And how will that help?”

“It probably won't, but you know as well as I do that you don't prejudge the evidence. Get it all. You know what to look for. And find out whatever you can about who lives in this house, what they look like, when they come and go, who visits them, what they say they do and, if possible, what they really do.”

“You don't need to tell me how to do police work,” Tellman said angrily. He stood still and looked at Pitt for several seconds, then turned away. The grief was clear in his face.

“I know,” Pitt said quietly. “Sorry…”

He remembered Newman at his wedding, the way his young bride had looked at him. No one should end up as he was now.

“I'm going to the hospital,” he said gruffly. “One of the injured men might be able to tell me why they went to that house.”

He walked smartly toward the Bayswater Road, where he could get a hansom quickly. He needed to feel as if he were doing something with a purpose. St. Mary's in Paddington was not far, a few minutes' ride up Westbourne Terrace to Praed Street and he would be there.

There was a stationary cab close to the curb, as if the driver had known he would be needed. “St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington,” Pitt said as he got in.

“Yes, sir,” the driver replied gravely. “You'll be wanting me to hurry,” he added.

“Yes, if you please.” Pitt desperately wanted to speak to the injured men, if they were still conscious and not in the operating theater—or dead.

It seemed like an endless journey, and yet in other ways far too short.

Pitt got out, paid the driver, and thanked him.

“Ye're welcome, sir. You just catch the bastards!” the driver called after him.

Pitt half turned and raised his hand in a swift acknowledgment. There was nothing he could promise.

The doctor in charge told him that he couldn't see the patients. They were still in great pain and heavily dosed with morphine.

Pitt explained again who he was. It was one occasion when a uniform with plenty of buttons and braid would have helped.

“Special Branch,” he said yet again. “This was a bombing. Right in the middle of London. We have to catch the perpetrators and stop them before they do it again. So it's vital that I speak to these men, if they are able.”

The doctor's face paled and he bit back his insistence. “Then be quick, Mr. Pitt. These men are in a bad way.”

“I know that,” Pitt said grimly. “I've just been looking at the dead.”

The doctor winced, but did not say anything more. Instead he led Pitt briskly along the corridor to a very small ward where three beds were occupied by men in different states of treatment. Two of them appeared to be unconscious, but could have been merely silent, motionless in suffering.

The most senior of the injured was Ednam, and he was awake, watching Pitt as he approached. His face was bruised and there was a dark red, angry burn across his left cheek. His left arm was bandaged from the shoulder to the wrist and his leg was propped up and also heavily bandaged, so whatever treatment it had received was concealed. Pitt guessed it was broken, and probably burned as well. When Pitt asked quietly if he could speak to him, Ednam looked back guardedly, taking a moment or two to recognize him. Then he relaxed a fraction, with just an easing of the muscles around his mouth.

“I suppose.” His voice was dry. Clearly his throat hurt, and probably his chest, from inhaling the smoke.

“If you can tell me anything,” Pitt prompted.

“If I'd known there was a bloody bomb I wouldn't 'ave gone!” Ednam retorted bitterly.

“Why did you go?” Pitt asked. “And with four other men? That's a big force. What were you expecting to find?”

“Drugs. Opium, to be exact. Big buy there, we were told.”

“By whom? Did you find any evidence of it?”

“We barely had time to look!”

Pitt kept his voice soft. “Was anyone else there?”

“Apart from us? Not that I saw,” Ednam answered. “But the information came from a good source. At least…one we've trusted before.” His voice was now little above a whisper. The effort to speak cost him dearly. “Newman and Hobbs are dead, aren't they?”

“Yes.”

Ednam swore until he couldn't get his breath anymore.

“I need to know your source,” Pitt urged, leaning forward a little. “Either he set you up or someone else set him up.”

“I don't know his name. He calls himself Anno Domini.”

“What?”

“Anno Domini,” Ednam repeated. “I don't know if he's religious or what. But we've had a few good tips from him before.”

“How? Do you talk with him? Get letters?”

“Letters, just a line or two. Delivered by hand.”

“Addressed to you?”

“Yes.”

“By name?”

“Yes.”

“Telling you what?”

“Where a purchase will be or where drugs are stashed.”

“How many arrests have you made on this information?”

Ednam's eyes did not leave Pitt's face.

“Two. And found about two hundred pounds' worth of opium.”

More than enough to establish trust; in fact, enough to raise the funds to buy a small house. Pitt could not blame Ednam for following the lead. He would have himself.

“Do you think he was setting you up?” he asked. “Or was someone else using him?”

Ednam thought for a few moments, his face tense with concentration. “I think someone else was using him,” he said at last. “But it's just a guess. Find who's behind this. I want to see them hang.”

“I'll try,” Pitt promised. It was one of the rare moments when he agreed. Usually he found hanging a repulsive idea, regardless of the crime. It was an act of revenge that reduced the law to the same level of barbarism as those who had broken it.

He walked over to the bed opposite and found Bossiney. Pitt spoke to him only a few moments. He was very badly burned and must have been in savage pain, drifting in and out of consciousness.

Pitt walked over to the nurse in the corner of the ward. She gave him a bleak smile but would not confirm or deny anything; she had hope that he would survive, but would not commit herself to more. Her emotional exhaustion from witnessing such pain was marked on her face.

Finally Pitt went to the bed closest to the window, where Yarcombe lay staring at the ceiling, his face blank. A glance told Pitt that his right arm was missing from the elbow downward. Pitt struggled for something to say and could find nothing that was remotely adequate. His own right hand clenched till his nails bit into the flesh of his palm, a sweet reminder that it was there, real and alive.

“I'm sorry,” he said awkwardly. “We'll get them.”

Yarcombe turned his head very slightly till his eyes focused on Pitt. “Do that,” he replied in a whisper. “They set us up!” He added something more, but it was unintelligible.

Pitt left the hospital with his head pounding and a vague, sick feeling in his stomach.

H
E ARRIVED BACK AT
the Special Branch offices at Lisson Grove to find a message waiting for him to report to Commissioner Bradshaw of the Metropolitan Police. It did not surprise him. Bradshaw would be deeply upset about the bombing and remiss in his duty if he did not contact the head of Special Branch. Pitt had wanted to return to Lisson Grove only to see if there was any further information he could give to Bradshaw.

Stoker knocked on his door almost as soon as Pitt had closed it and looked at the papers on his desk.

“Sir?” Stoker said as soon as he was inside. He was a man of few words, but this was brief, even for him.

“Nothing more,” Pitt replied. “They are hurt very badly. Yarcombe lost part of his arm. Nobody can say if they'll live or not. Ednam doesn't look fatal but you can't tell what's inside. Or how bad the shock will be. He says they went there on a tip-off that there would be a big opium sale. They expected a degree of resistance, and they didn't want anyone escaping with the proof.”

“Was there a sale?”

“No.”

“Any idea who set them up?”

“The tip came from a man they know only as Anno Domini.”

“What?” Stoker looked startled.

“Anno Domini,” Pitt repeated. “No idea why. But Ednam said he's been reliable before.”

“Setting them up for this,” Stoker said straightaway.

“Could be. Tellman's our police liaison. You'd better check on all the potential bombers we know of.”

“Already started, sir. Nothing useful so far. But I suppose if it was someone we know, we'd have had wind of it before.” He made a grimace of unhappiness. “At least I damn well hope we would! We've got enough men infiltrated into their groups. I've already spoken to Patchett and Wells. They don't know a thing. But dynamite's easy enough to get, if you have the right connections.”

Pitt did not argue. Unfortunately what Stoker said was true, hard as they tried to prevent it. “I'm going to see Bradshaw,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

P
ITT WAS SHOWN INTO
Bradshaw's office immediately. This time there was no pretense at being busy with more important things, as there had been on occasion. Bradshaw was a good-looking man in his early fifties. His thick hair had little gray in it and he had not yet developed any surplus body weight. He was well dressed, as always, but creases of tension marred the smoothness of his face.

“How are the men, Pitt?” he began without ceremony the moment Pitt was in and had closed the door. He waved toward one of the elegant chairs but did not bother with an invitation.

“Two dead, sir,” Pitt replied, walking over toward the desk, his feet silent on the heavy Turkish rug. “Newman and Hobbs. Ednam, Bossiney, and Yarcombe injured. Yarcombe lost part of an arm. Too early to say if they'll recover.”

Bradshaw winced. “It's police who were killed,” he said sharply. “It was a police case.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know what it was about?”

“A very large opium sale.”

Bradshaw's face paled, the muscles in his jaw tight. “Opium,” he said quietly. “Have you…have you any idea who is involved?”

“Not yet…”

“Why is Special Branch taking the case?” His voice was hard-edged, challenging. “What evidence have you that it's terrorists? Do you know who's behind it? Did you know before?”

“No, sir. We were not consulted until after the bomb went off this morning. It was one of their informers who lured them to the meeting, and with information that caused them to bring five men, rather than just a couple.”