Treachery at Lancaster Gate (7 page)

“What are you looking for?” she persisted. She never gave up.

“Lots of things, maybe,” he answered, swallowing the first mouthful.

“Like what?”

“Why those particular men,” he said to begin with. “Do they usually work together, or was it for a special case?”

“Why does that matter?”

“So we know if it was the case they were attacked for, or if it was them the bomber wanted,” he explained.

“Would an anarchist care who it was?” she asked, taking a second piece of toast off the fork and putting it back on so the other side faced the coals.

“They wouldn't,” he answered with his mouth full.

“So yer think they was after them police in particular?” she concluded.

“I have to make sure that isn't the case.” He evaded the question.

“So what'll you do? Give it back to Mr. Pitt, then?” She was not going to leave it alone.

“If it was anarchists, I suppose so. That's his job.” He realized he was not sure if that was what he wanted to do. There was a discomfort at the back of his mind, a need to defend his own men from the smear of corruption that had been suggested. And more than that, the victims were police. They deserved justice.

“Except I don't want to,” he said instead. “I want to follow it all the way, and see the end of it.” He looked up at her and saw the anxiety in her sharp, bright little face. Although she was married and expecting her second child, there was so much in her that was still like the quick, brave, confrontational girl he had first met years ago, when he was Pitt's sergeant and she was his opinionated little housemaid. She had challenged Tellman, contradicted him, and far too often been right. He had tried very hard not to fall in love with her, and failed utterly. It had taken him years even to catch her attention, let alone her respect. At least that was how it seemed.

Now she looked at him tenderly, the same way she looked at their child.

He felt a wave of emotion wash over him completely, and he concentrated on his toast as if it was a complicated masterwork.

“They're police, and they're dead, or worse,” he said finally. “I'm alive. They're my own people, Gracie. I've got to find out what happened to them, and who did it. I've got to show people that police are good men doing a job that shouldn't get them killed. I owe them that…them that are gone, and all them that are still here and still out on the streets.”

“Be careful,” she warned. “Somebody did it. They in't going ter want you finding them. Don't let 'em kill you too, Samuel.”

She was doing everything she could to hide her fear, but he saw it. He did not want her frightened, hurt in any way; but if she had not been afraid for him, that would have settled over him like a darkness, a loneliness he had not felt since the day she had said she would marry him. If anything did happen to him, could she possibly miss him as much as he would miss her?

Perhaps losing an arm, a leg, not being able to look after her, would be worse than being dead.

“I'll take care,” he said firmly, and then before she could argue, or get any more emotional, he ate the fresh toast with one hand, and poured himself more, hotter tea with the other.

T
HE FIRST THING
T
ELLMAN
did was go to see Whicker, Ednam's immediate superior. He knew that rumors would soon start about the motives behind the bombing. If he asked the right questions he might be able to kill any notion of police corruption before it took root. As he got off the omnibus and walked along the windy street he framed the questions in his mind. If he found there were minor errors, a little dishonesty here and there, would he report it? His own sense of justice said that these men were suffering enough. They might not ever recover sufficiently to return to the force anyway. You don't kick a man when he's down.

Was it to do with the Lezant case Pitt was talking about? Were all these five men involved in it? That was a place to begin.

But if they did always work together, how would anyone outside the force know that?

He would have to be extremely tactful when he asked his questions, avoiding the reason for his inquiry. He hated the idea of investigating his own, as if he thought those dead or damaged men were somehow at fault for the disaster that had struck them down. And everyone else would hate him too.

He turned the corner, stepped over a couple of deep puddles, and went in through the police station doorway and introduced himself to the desk sergeant on duty. The place seemed bare, and even drabber than usual, as if the bereavement could be felt in the wood and linoleum and the iron locks on the doors.

He asked to see whoever was in charge.

The sergeant nodded and sent a constable with a message. Five minutes later Tellman was in Superintendent Whicker's office in the best interview chair and facing Whicker across the desk. Whicker was perhaps fifty-five, solid, graying at the temples and with a ragged mustache.

“Of course they worked together now and then,” he said tartly when Tellman asked. “Doesn't your station cooperate, er…Tellman?”

“Yes, it does, sir. And I know when they do,” he added.

“What is it you're expecting to learn?” Whicker frowned. “You already know that they went mob-handed because they were expecting a big purchase of opium. There could have been half a dozen dealers or buyers there. People who trade in that kind of stuff expect trouble, you know. They come prepared, and they can be violent.”

“But they don't plant bombs in the rooms and blow them up,” Tellman pointed out. “Bad for business to kill yourself, not to mention your customers. They were set up.” He said the words between his teeth, the hot anger and guilt and the fear of death all making his voice almost choked. “I need to know if the bomber meant to get these men, all of them, or just some of them…”

“For God's sake, man!” Whicker retorted violently, his face suffusing with color. “They don't care who they get, they're anarchists. They want chaos—terror—panic! You'll never catch them if you chase after reasons.” There was pain in his eyes. He had lost five men.

Tellman sat still, fighting not to lose his own control.

“We don't know that, sir. And I'm afraid there will soon be rumors around that they meant to get these men particularly. I want to kill that as soon as I can. If it was revenge, I want to be able to prove to anyone that it was unjust, and none of us did anything out of order.” He leaned forward. “I want to get these bastards, and knowing why they did it is about the only chance I've got of finding out who they are. I want them on trial, then I want them on the end of a rope. Don't you?”

Now Whicker was pale. He looked as if he were ready to snap the pencil he held in half. “Of course I do. They were my men, dammit. I know they had the odd failing now and then, but they were good men, policemen. What is it you're imagining? I'll show you all the records you want. You'll see they were all just as good as your own men. I'll show you, and I'll show the bloody newspapers that are looking for blame. And I'll show bloody Special Branch! They should have seen this coming, and stopped it!”

Tellman found himself answering before he considered whether it was wise or not.

“No matter how hard we work, sir, or how clever we are, we can't stop all crime, and Special Branch can't either. What we can do is catch the bastards afterward. Now if you'll let me see those records, I'll be much obliged.”

The records were brought to him, and he spent a long, miserable day searching them. It took him a little while before he found the Lezant case. He could see immediately that the five men caught in the bombing had been involved.

A constable brought Tellman a cup of hot, over-strong tea, and he was so absorbed he forgot to drink it until it was cold.

The case centered on another suspected sale of opium, on the information of an informer considered reliable but named only as Joe, which could have been anyone.

The arrest had gone badly wrong. The two young men, both addicts, who were presumed to be the buyers, had turned up, but the seller had not.

The disaster was that one of the young men had been carrying a gun, and was extremely tense and jittery. In Ednam's opinion, he needed his drugs and was almost out of his mind from withdrawal symptoms. A passerby had chosen this alley as a shortcut home. The young man was so highly strung he had completely lost his nerve and shot the passerby, killing him immediately. He had realized what he had done, and turned to run away.

The police could then show themselves and chase both young men. They caught the one who had fired the shot, but the other had escaped. Tellman looked for a description of him, but it was so vague as to be useless. He was average height, possibly thin. He looked in the faint lamplight to be dark-haired.

Dylan Lezant was charged with murder.

Tellman read the report again, slowly and even more carefully. All five men said exactly the same thing, agreeing on the details. But then they were so few, and so general, there was nothing much to disagree about. It was not a complicated story where disagreement on details was to be expected.

It was a simple tragedy, correctly handled.

He read on, looking to see if there were any questions that had arisen later, but there were none. The seller of opium was never found. But then when he read about the shooting in the newspapers the next day, he would very naturally have moved his place of business.

Tellman stopped for a few minutes, rubbed his eyes, tired of reading handwriting, relatively neat as it was. He was glad of a fresh cup of tea and a couple of biscuits.

Then he began on other reports, including financial ledgers. He had always been good at arithmetic. It had a kind of logic to it that he liked. There was a right and a wrong. It balanced itself. He was working on accounts of money from robberies, arrests, stolen-goods receipts. He checked the addition and found an error. He tried it again, and realized someone had read a five for an eight. Easy to do, especially when you were tired and had probably been working all day. A man could easily be too eager to go home to his family, a warm hearth, and a decent meal to check his sums. Not everyone found numbers easy.

Working on a little further, he found more, a seven mistaken for a one; threes, fives, and eights written carelessly and misread.

He went back to check all of them, and realized that in every case, the error resulted in a smaller sum. It only added up to a few pounds, but a pound was a lot of money. A few years ago, it had been a constable's weekly pay.

He closed the ledger and sat back. Another thing he had noticed, much as he did not wish to: all the errors had happened when Sergeant Tierney was on duty.

What had happened to the money? Had it lined his pocket? Someone else's that he owed? Bribes? Tellman hated the thought, but he would have to follow it up, sooner or later, whether it had anything to do with the bombing at Lancaster Gate or not. Who was paying whom? And why?

It left him with a sour taste, as if something clean and long loved had been soiled. Did it take him any closer to finding out who had planted the bomb? Possibly. More probably not.

He walked the last half mile or so home from the bus stop through the thickening fog. The only traffic was the occasional hansom cab going over the cobbles. He could hear the clatter of hooves and the hiss of wheels in the water before he could see the lights. It was a night any sane man was at home beside his own fire, not out turning over and over lies and stupidity in his mind and trying to find excuses he knew were worthless.

He saw the lights of the Dog and Duck tavern, golden yellow and warm. Someone opened the doors and came out, laughing and waving his hand toward someone inside. Tellman succumbed to temptation and went in. He was not ready to go home yet. However much he tried to pretend that everything was all right, Gracie would see right through it. She would know he had found something wrong. They were only small things, but like a piece of grit in the eye, they were painful, and unforgettable. And, like a sore eye, he kept rubbing at it.

He was chasing errors, repetitive petty theft. Yes—police corruption, but very minor.

He sat on one of the bar stools and ordered a pint. It was warm inside, and damp from too many warm bodies and from wet clothes steaming in the heat from the fire in the great hearth at the far side of the room. Now and then beer slopped over onto the straw-covered floor. Normally he did not like such places, but tonight it was good, perhaps because it was so very normal.

The barmaid brought Tellman's beer and passed the time of day, but she could see his mood, and she did not pursue conversation. Tellman was glad of a small table out of the way where he could watch others but remain essentially alone.

He was troubled, afraid of what all these small errors might mean. If someone else were to look at Tellman's work, would they find as much unaccounted for? He did not think so.

Did that make him a better policeman? Did details matter, or was he losing himself in them because it was a way to escape from the larger picture of violence, dishonesty, and waste?

He finished his ale and went to the bar and ordered more. The barmaid was a big woman, friendly, her shock of hair falling out of its pins as she strove to serve everyone. Not the kind of woman he found attractive at all. But this evening her warmth was welcome, her cheerful, meaningless chatter a good distraction.

He must find out more about Tierney, and the financial errors, although he strongly suspected that whatever petty carelessness he had committed, it was trivial. Grubby, of course, but of no consequence. It could have nothing to do with the bombing. It was just a small mistake that might never have been discovered if he were not looking for corruption.

What if he did not report these accounting anomalies to Pitt? What if he said there was nothing? Or was replaced by someone else, someone who would not expect police to be better than another man, above temptations of any sort? Someone who cared less. Maybe someone with a little less childlike idealism, who did not think of police as the guardians of law, of the vulnerable, whoever they were, gentleman or pauper.